Recently I've spent a lot of time fixing my car, and the other day I experienced a paradigm shift in how I think about automobiles. Whereas previously being under the hood of a car was someone else’s territory, the curtain of prestige had fallen. I could now just as easily think of myself fiddling inside a car as the next person. I am a mechanical engineering student at the University of New Orleans. When one thinks 'mechanical engineering’ and immediately jump to 'cars and engines and stuff,’ that person wouldn’t be far from the truth. So it’s not saying much that I now regard myself as mechanically inclined, and maybe disingenuous to say that I’m now just as likely as the next Joe to work under the belly of a monstrous machine. And yet I had this image of cars being a black box of mystery. Or rather a sleek, two-toned, glossy and personified chariot of mystery. Driving away from the auto parts store and worrying about gas, I had an image:
It was an image of cars everywhere, naked. By naked I mean stripped of their aerodynamic shells and oh-so-clean paint jobs to their raw musculature. Naked as in de-sexualized and dethroned from their american-dream pedestal. Naked and defiant, guilting us for ever covering up their functional beauty and dirty secrets -- for it is the filth in a car that brands it as ours, that makes it special. Everywhere these naked cars were zooming, spewing fumes and radiating heat, free to be seen. But everyone looks right past them.
I think the shells that cover an automobile obscure the immense energy and environmental resources cars consume. Moreover, they give us permission to take for granted the true beauty of cars. If everyone saw their cars as the complex, resource-intensive and inertial beasts that they are, maybe they would think twice about shaving two minutes off of their daily commute, or succumbing to rage and self-righteous indignation at complete strangers.
Thanks to Kevin Hulsey for the great rendering.