In a recent Conversation article, I wrote about what cars in movies tend to say about the men who usually drive them. For this blog, I’d like to focus on one way similar narratives of hegemonic masculinity operate in real life. I’d like to take a look at the Cybertruck.
The car’s promotional materials are full of the trappings of an idealized rugged masculinity. Though it may strain credibility to call advertising real life, it certainly has real-life implications. What’s more, it’s a great analogy for the ways dominant ideologies get perpetuated through social coercion.
Like the ideals of hegemonic masculinity, advertising doesn’t reflect reality. It’s not supposed to. Advertising tells a story about how things could be, if only you wore those jeans, or drank that beer, or drove that car. Most people don’t fully believe the stories themselves, but they believe just enough for the stories to stick in their heads. Then repetition, saturation, and social pressure do the rest of the work, and suddenly, you can’t afford not to buy it.
With the Cybertruck, Tesla is telling a story about manhood. The official promotional video tells one version. The truck is seen exclusively in rural, or at least undeveloped, environments, suggesting Cybertruck owners prefer frontier-like spaces to the modern city. Including the construction site setting suggests both the physical strength of the workers shown and the idea of being in on something new and important. The promo incorporates the trappings of family life – grocery shopping, an errant baseball – but it characterizes them as demands to be handled with the same imperviousness as the truck’s armour-like body. The women are there to do the cleanup afterward. The ad appeals to a buyer who values hegemonic masculinity: action, independence, and a tough hide.
Then there’s this less official video, posted to Elon Musk’s Twitter account (it was still called Twitter then). This video pointedly doesn’t appeal to the needs of a target market, but to how the Cybertruck’s imagined consumer would like to see himself. If a central characteristic of hegemonic masculinity is the perpetual state of being challenged, this video certainly satisfies that. In the video, the Cybertruck driver is the hero in a post-apocalyptic war. With his beautiful female companion riding shotgun (somewhat literally), the driver hero combines his driving skill with the truck’s celebrated features to complete a mission that allows humanity access to a better world. This hero isn’t just admirable; he’s indispensable. This video trades on the notion that hegemonic masculinity is a morally necessary trait.
As I mentioned, the second video is unofficial, and it’s so unrealistic as to come across as harmless fun. I’ll refer you back to my description of social coercion and the many ways dangerous ideologies thrive on cultural images that are easily dismissed as harmless.
But even setting aside these videos’ potential harm, Tesla has another problem to face. When you traffic in metaphors to align a product so closely with a particular image, if that product goes wrong, its failures risk becoming another part of the metaphor. Since the Cybertruck was first announced, a long series of design and execution flaws has emerged that invites scrutiny of the ideology reflected in its design.
Some windows have been broken by hailstones, some customers have reported rust on the truck’s body, and one owner experienced a total shutdown after taking the vehicle through a carwash, all suggesting its image of toughness simply masks an unreasonable list of handling requirements. The door and trunk closures lack pinch sensors, so the truck’s sharp angles mean anyone who isn’t consistently careful risks losing a finger. Most recently, the entire production run thus far was recalled because of a faulty pedal that threatens to “send the truck accelerating beyond control.” Is there a more apt metaphor for the dangers of a fixation on action over talk? If these were the traits of the villain in a Cars movie, reviewers would call the character “a bit on the nose.” So much of Tesla’s hyper-masculine concept simply doesn’t make sense for real life.
If Tesla wants consumers to think of the Cybertruck as a metaphor for the ideals of hegemonic masculinity, it’s certainly giving us all a lot to think about.
Photo by Somalia Veteran on Unsplash
