Stories of Millennial Car Culture by Steven Phillips
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American Dreams: Stories of Millennial Car Culture by Steven Phillips B.A. in Psychology, May 2013, Austin College A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts August 31, 2017 Thesis directed by Susan Sterner Program Head for New Media Photojournalism © Copyright 2017 by Steven Phillips All rights reserved ii Abstract American Dreams: Stories of Millennial Car Culture This is a multimedia project that uses photos, videos, and an essay to profile two young men - German Coello and Corey McKenzie - involved in two very different types of car culture: stanced Hondas and Volvo rally cars, respectively. The project explores the automotive subculture and racing can have a profound impact on young people in terms of finding personal identity, and building positive and supportive relationships and communities. American Dreams relates stories beyond cars about finding your place in a new country after immigration and finding joy in Appalachian Maryland. iii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................................ iii Chapter 1: The American Automobile on Culture and Landscape ............................................................. 1 Section 1: Consumption and Identity .............................................................................................................. 4 Section 2: Driving Expansion ............................................................................................................................ 9 Section 3: Cars in American Culture and Entertainment ....................................................................... 12 Section 4: Cars = Family .................................................................................................................................. 17 Chapter 2: A Review of Cars and Documentary Media .............................................................................. 25 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................................. 42 Appendices ................................................................................................................................................................ 46 Appendix A: Still Images ................................................................................................................................. 47 Appendix B: Project Website .......................................................................................................................... 52 Appendix C: Community Engagement ........................................................................................................ 89 iv Chapter 1: The American Automobile on Culture and Landscape There’s something enthralling about cars when you’re a kid. Some kids grow out of the obsession with toy trucks and Hot Wheels and move on to other hobbies. But, ask any self-proclaimed “car-person,” and they’ll tell you it all started when they were kids. My hometown, Houston, is the 8 th largest in the United States measured in square miles. It is the quintessential picture of urban sprawl, spreading 40 miles in every direction from the city center. It is flat, hot, and sweaty. If New York is the Concrete Jungle, Houston is the Concrete Desert. Cars are essential, and they’ve always been a central part of my life. So many of my earliest memories revolve around cars. One of my earliest memories (perhaps when I was two, according to my mom) is just an image of building a Hot Wheels track with my dad in the living room of our suburban home before we moved in to the city. Then there was the time, when I was four, that my younger brother and I fought in the back seat of my mom’s car, while she was driving. Someone (surely my brother, not me) lobbed a juice-box over the front seat, bouncing off my mom’s head. She pulled over immediately – coincidentally in to the parking lot of our favorite chain of Donuts, and I exclaimed, “Ooo, donuts!” before receiving a “reward” that was most certainly not donuts. I once stuck a piece of half-chewed LaffyTaffy in between the cloth seats and left it there for days, where it hardened into a radioactive green colored husk; won’t forget that smell, or having to clean it out. The smell of sour apple candy still reminds me of the tan cloth interior. Some of my favorite memories, though, are of going to Texas World Speedway in College Station, Texas, and watching amateur races there with my dad and brother. It was always loud, and hot, but 1 I’ll never forget the drivers letting us kids sit in their race cars and dad always talking to them about what it might cost to rent one and never doing it. Every time we left we begged him to rev the engine like the racecars we just watched before backing out of the parking space. I regularly annoyed my parents by pretending to drive and playing with the radio volume knobs while the car was parked in the driveway. The next time they started the car, the volume would be so loud it would make them jump. I remember staring at and sitting in and smiling at my first car for a good thirty minutes before starting the engine just to hear it; and I remember the bloodcurdling screams from my then girlfriend when we were struck by a red light runner just three months later. The car was totaled; my eyes welled up watching the tow crew scrape it on to the flatbed. I’ve had my current car for nearly ten years, and have gone through all sorts of life milestones with it. I’ve autocrossed it, fooled around in it, been shot at in it, slept in it, graduated high school and college in it. It doesn’t have a name, but it’s as much a part of my life as a pet would have been – and it will always be part of my identity. Both of my parents had more than a casual interest in cars, but my dad much more so than my mom. My dad introduced me to racing, and my mom always thought it was important to drive and appreciate cars that had enough get-up-and-go to get out of their own way. Karting with my dad and my younger brother was a weekend staple. He thought it was important for both of us to start learning car-control at a very young age. It wasn’t too long after I started in a kart at 11 that I was lapping faster than almost every other adult that frequented the track. It was a struggle to hide my disappointment when the Red Bull Driver Search program visited one of the tracks we went to and my dad 2 didn’t let me participate. I believed in my talent, and I believed that was the start of the motorsports ladder, but life moves on and I was content to continue racing casually against my dad and my brother. At 16 my dad introduced me to autocross, and I was hooked. Each car completes a cone course individually, and whoever sets the fastest time wins. If you hit a cone it’s a two-second time penalty. It was a place for me to find and learn the limits of my car, and as my dad always stressed, practice car-control. And like in the karts, I was quick, frequently beating much faster cars than my small Mazda hatchback. My farmer’s tan from spending all day in the sun and stickers on the windshield signaled that my car passed autocross tech and was allowed to compete. These were the badges of honor I displayed with pride. My parents owned a series of Saabs until they divorced and my dad discovered BMWs, but my mom gets credit for the coolest one: the Saab Viggen – Saab’s performance hatchback named after the Saab fighter jet. She adored that bright blue, Swedish mobile – and so did I. That car ferried me around from late elementary school until I eventually learned how to drive in it. I can still remember the way the leather smelled, the finicky clutch that you had to put to the floor to put the car in gear, and most of all, the way the steering wheel would try to rip from your hands when you put the loud pedal to the floor. Once I had my own car, I modified it, making it look, sound, and behave according to my perfect vision for it. I nearly got arrested for street racing at 18, and frequently cruised up and down Westheimer Road with Project M, the Mazda club I hung out with. I still have their stickers on my car. There are a lot of memories attached to them, and despite thinking that they look a little immature as I’ve gotten older, I’ve left them where they are – they remind me where I’ve come from. Growing up, and 3 especially as a teenager, my relationship with cars was a snapshot of the 20 th Century American experience. The car has been an American staple since the turn of the century, and has gone hand-in-hand with the growth of modern America. We owe much of our modern car culture and modern sociocultural habits to the genius of Henry Ford and the inventions he created. Section 1: Consumption and Identity In order to talk about cars and the culture they have engendered, it is important to understand the sociology and philosophy of object consumption and how that consumption creates culture and identity. First, as sociologist Roger Silverstone notes in his 1994 book, “Television and Everyday Life,” “consumption stimulates production.” This is the basic economic understanding that demand for a product determines the amount of the product sold. In his 2011 Saturday Evening Post article, “Celebrating America’s 125-Year Love Affair With Cars,” author William Jeanes writes that the story of the American automobile and mass production began when two businessmen, Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford both recognized a market need. According to Jeanes, Olds was able to put 5,000 Oldsmobiles on the road in 1904 using the first ever assembly line of his own design, while Henry Ford, having recognized the growing market need, streamlined Olds’ invention, creating a hyper efficient production tool for the Model T, and, in turn, meeting market demand, and then some. As Jeanes notes, “By 1916 some 55 percent of the world’s automobiles were Model T’s, a record that was never equaled.