What’s the saying? “When you’re holding a hammer, every problem looks like a nail?” Well, being a scholar of mobility culture is a weird hammer to have.
I’m an avid binge watcher, and it seems lately every time I seek out a new show that’ll entertain me without making me think about work, I stumble on a scene like this, from BBC’s The Tourist (content warning: collision). Don’t get me wrong, the full scene is definitely entertaining, from the delight of Dornan’s car karaoke to the thrill of the offroad car chase to the jump scare of the crash. But as I watch, I reflect that those emotions only come as one accepts certain conditions of automobility as given: that a person’s car should be a free and safe space for them; that each driver should respect the rights of the others; that cars belong on the road, not tearing across the Outback flats.
There are more abstract assumptions at work here, too. In literature and pop culture, the road is a familiar metaphor for life in a plural society. It’s a space of hope, not fear, a space stripped of identity, where this scene’s targeted attack is shocking because it shouldn’t matter who you are. The scene amuses us as it reinforces these assumptions and horrifies us as it challenges them.
Then there are the assumptions the scene doesn’t challenge. Everyone in it, including the gas station attendant, is a cisgender white man, reflecting the ways English-language media often presumes white maleness as universal. On top of that, the conflict between the two drivers repeats a long-standing association between cars and male potency, as the chase stages a debate over which is more important – size or how you use it. However the scene might be re-imagining the road, it’s still presenting it solely from the perspective of hegemonic masculinity, on the assumption that such men represent all.
But does reality reflect the image? One day back in January, while in line at Second Cup, I caught sight of a recent KitKat ad campaign framed as a cross-Canada road trip. Their $10k prize offer was tagged, “Where you go is up to you.” The same day, I came across a Bluesky post in which trans artist Lelaina Brandt shared her drawing of a US map showing only states that haven’t passed restrictions on trans-affirming care. The title riffs on Dr. Seuss: “Oh, the Places I’m Allowed to Go!” How different these two perspectives on mobility are! At the same time as corporations celebrate the road trip as the ultimate form of independence, individual people are having their mobility severely limited by structural controls that threaten their very lives. (And yes, it’s happening in Canada too.) There’s an idealized image of the open road as uniting a nation with the freedoms of the individual, but to study mobility is to recognize that image for what it hides.
And the conflict between reality and image isn’t new. As Cotten Seiler has examined, automobility has been unevenly administered as long as the car’s been around. He highlights the early panic about extending driving permissions to young people, the prevalence of derogative stereotypes about women drivers, and especially the structural racism in the US that prompted specialized travel guides for African Americans.
American automobility culture is especially active and its assumptions especially tenacious. Since World War II, after which federal investment in freeway construction began transforming the American landscape into what it is today, the promise of freedom and self-realization on the open road has been celebrated in every major US medium from novels to films to pop songs (Dal students might remember this bonus track from Kim Brooks’s winter term playlist). The images abound, and each of them calls attention to another harsh reality begging to be seen.
Yes, mobility studies might be my hammer, but the fact is there are a lot of nails out there.
Photo by Jeremy Cai on Unsplash
