posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 5:59 AM
by
Jeremy RVARC
Lament for the Hummer
Many folks have encountered, and rightly criticized,
this recent piece in the
Washington Post bewailing the potential sale of the Hummer by GM. Generally, I'm skeptical that many people really
need to own a Hummer, though I can envision some scenarios when it makes sense. And even though I feel the Hummer is ridiculously wasteful, I also tend to side with allowing people to choose what vehicle they want. Still, the author does Hummer drivers no favors when he characterizes them thus:
The Hummer appeals to large men of even larger ego, men who aren't worried about their carbon footprint and believe that obstacles in life
are meant not just to be surmounted but squashed flat.... Every once in while, you see a little guy clambering out of a Hummer, painfully in need of a
ladder, and you realize that it can also be viewed as a $57,000 ticket to enlarged self-esteem.
He continues on in this hyper-macho vein for most of the piece, reminding the reader of the worst impulses that can drive a car-buying decision, and leave you hoping that this whole thing is really parody (its not, or if it is, it's so subtle that no one has yet gotten it). If this is really deBord's attitude, it gives credence to the caricature that most crunchy types like to draw of Hummer owners in specific and SUV drivers in general, one I would normally classify as unfair, but in this case is justly earned. To deBord's comment that the Hummer is necessary to make Americans
feel like we have access to unlimited abundance and resources, my friend
Dan Larison responds with characteristic common sense:
As an icon of the fantasy of “endless abundance,” the Hummer fulfills far more than the fantasies of insecure men–it perpetuates the myth that technology and progress will triumph over all things, there are no limits, resources are practically infinite, and a standard of living that has now become prohibitively expensive is within the reach of all. In other words, it is an invitation to insanity.
Nonetheless, In the midst of deBord's verbal swagger there is a nugget of truth:
Americans don't just drive their cars -- they proclaim something about themselves by driving them.
This is clearly true. The auto industry is probably America's signature industry, and the automobile holds an almost holy place in our society, symbolizing those qualities we most like to associate with ourselves: Freedom, self-sufficiency, power. deBord's lament, though obnoxious, illustrates that love affair well.
Currently, I'm in the midst of reading Neal Stephenson's
Baroque Cycle. Set during the late 17th century, the novels are science-fiction/punk/pirate/historical novels dealing primarily with the economics of war and the intricacies of the aristocracy. Over the course of the 1,200 pages or so I've read so far, much attention has been paid to wigs. The French and English aristocrats put enormous effort and expense into their wigs, which symbolized, for them, their power and position in society. They could be made so elaborate that by wearing them the nobility could prove that they had so much money that they didn't need to worry about how they spent it. They were enormous, they were ostentatious, they were impractical.
Sound familiar?
Perhaps its time to stop investing so much of our national image in a piece of machinery. I don't really hear many people complaining about the disappearance of powdered wigs from society parties.