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Color and Chrome: Car Culture in Southern California
| Article
# : |
19539 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
3,285 Words |
| Author
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Deirdre Evans-Pritchard
Folklorist and anthropologist Deirdre Evans-Pritchard is
executive director of the Sustainable Tourism Initiative of
the Eco Institute of Costa Rica. She studied the street
culture of L.A. while teaching at the University of Southern
California. |
Nowhere is America's fascination with the automobile better exemplified than in Southern California. Customized cars both new and old, of every conceivable shape and design and covered with glittering color and chrome, are to be seen everywhere. So are the high-powered, big-engined "muscle cars" from the sixties and seventies, as well as newer, more expensive high-tech sports cars cruising the boulevards.
So strong is this love affair with automotive adventure that car clubs organize members according to types of cars and methods of competition among them, such as high-profile auto shows for vintage cars, or races for modified street cars.
The way in which motorized travel became integral to the daily lives and social values of the American people is part of the communications revolution of the twentieth century. It is also an indicator of the pleasure we take in the freedom of fast, comfortable, independent travel. What was a plaything for the wealthy at the turn of the century became a tool for the establishment and definition of the middle class by the 1950s. Automobiles were significant in implementing the democratizing of America, and the specific catalyst for this process was Henry Ford's introduction of the first mass-produced cars, the black Model T Ford (1913) and the Model A (1928), the first cars sold at a reasonable price.
Vehicles for expression
By the 1950s, owning a car was becoming the norm, not the exception, and by the end of that decade, more and more car models were offered to consumers by Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, American Motors, and Packard. Then as today, people decided on a car not only on the basis of technical considerations such as utility, dependability, and price, but also because a particular model conveyed information about the owner: who and what he aspired to be, his social status, personality, and preferences, his ethos.
Automania, which had always involved a love of machinery and the thrill of speed, thus acquired new foci as people began to conceive of their cars as pleasure vehicle, as objects of beauty and symbols of style. This process was propelled by the car manufacturers' effective advertising, by Hollywood film stars and rock 'n' rollers driving "cool" cars, by the new degree of independence and mobility possible, and by the association of cars with romance and courtship. Roland Barthes, the influential French authority on signs and symbology, included the automobile as a primary
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