At my high school, seniors were allowed to spend lunch off-campus, and out of a hatred for that miserable institution I spent those forty-five minutes speeding in my car on a sleepy and secluded road. The speed limit was forty-five miles per hour, and because I had never seen any cops there, my tendency to violate that law depended entirely upon how much gas was in my tank. The road was hilly, canopied with live oaks, and had enough sharp turns to maintain a thrill. At its end was a bank of expensive homes whose back windows looked over the river, where water would have been if not for the drought.
Often, I gave up lunch for these drives (nevermind that those saved dimes and quarters were later spent on the tank of gas that spun the wheels of my shiny white sedan.) I would simply slide sunglasses behind my ears, turn the air conditioning off, roll down my windows, and turn up the stereo, letting the waves of shadow and sunlight roll across my face to the taillights. When the keys were in the ignition, my car transformed into a space all my own, free from snooping parents and the judgment of others. It had seats, four wheels, and could move me wherever I chose to go.
Cars, in the American canon, time and time again are equated with freedom. In American literature, a whole sub-genre of cross-country road trip novels was popularized by Kerouac’s roman-à-clef On the Road, and whose momentum was maintained by novels such as Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and John Steinbeck’s semi-autobiographical Travels With Charley: In Search of America. Steinbeck, when asked why he chose to go on a ten-thousand mile long road trip across the U.S. (accompanied only by the titular Charley, his poodle), said that he wanted to fully experience the country on which he had built his writing career. Steinbeck’s eldest son, Thom, attributes a different motivation for the trek: “Steinbeck knew he was dying.” Critics now suggest that his travels were a ‘final hurrah’ preceding his future of dreary hospital stays. For Steinbeck, driving cross-country was a momentary, escapist respite—a freedom.
When Americana legitimized the literary genre, Hollywood became keen to translate its success to film. Currently, Wikipedia has 198 entries categorized as ‘American road movies.’ American children raised with a TV set are probably familiar with Ferris Bueller and the forbidden, cherry-red Ferrari, the flag-flapping drag-race in Grease, or Smokey and his four hundred cases of beer. All of these movies place a quick-on-his-feet rebel behind the wheel, driving away from the suffocating vise of authority. Each of the drivers have a flashy grin, adapt easily to his compounding problems, and effortlessly attract women: all ideals for the American man. (Good-looking) rebellion is, in America, a cardinal means of exercising freedom.
Becoming increasingly popular on social media is the ‘car-free movement,’ which advocates for a major societal shift away from cars and toward walkable cities and public transportation. Some supporters of the movement post videos in which pictures of American highway infrastructure are improved with tree-lined paved paths, wide bike lanes, and benches for pedestrians.
They’re happy pictures. But, to me, the movement is overly idealistic and contrary to traditional American values. Arguably more than any other country (especially more than the Netherlands, which have been ‘going car-less’ for years now and serve as inspiration for the social media edits), America values independence of the self from society and its conventions. Driving has, for decades, been an outlet to express our independence which is constantly frustrated by bosses, corporations, and bills in the mail. Cher, in the 1990 film Mermaids, says it best: “If you hate a place, you can get in your car. Poof, you’re gone.”
This is not all to say that cars really are perfect vehicles for freedom, only that American tradition sees them as such. And because of our reverence for our individualistic culture, there will never be a car-less America. John Wayne wouldn’t be caught dead taking a Greyhound bus to a gunfight.