Cars, Culture and Media @ UVM : “Top 10 Key Insights About Cars, Culture and Media" Jillian Petrone

Environmental Impacts

“In response to the rising costs of gasoline, hundreds of thousands of families had bought new, smaller cars; including hybrids such as the Toyota Prius” (Lutz & Lutz)

Cars have created an even higher demand for foreign oil to maintain the amount of gas Americans consume annually, this oil comes at a high cost for more than just our wallets. Oil that is extracted from the ground is a non-renewable resource and we surpassed the peak of its availability years ago. The planet is suffering from the over exhaustion of extracting oil and the pollution that burning oil has created, but there is a new alternative of hybrid cars that many families are buying to reduce their consumption of oil. Hybrid cars are a way to reduce your consumption of oil and impact on the environment, but still have the mobility of a car.

(http://persuasion-and-influence.blogspot.com/2013/01/smart-less-polluting-car-of-world.html)

Appearance

“From the perspective of carmakers, the ideal consumer is one who is unhappy with what he has a year later.” (Lutz&Lutz)

Americans focus too much on the way they appear to others, it has moved past the point of “keeping up with the Joneses” and we are competing with people we do not even know. We are too focused on what people see us driving and doing, because we think that people are judging us on what we appear to be. Cars companies feed into this thought, they want you to consume more and they provide you will new models of cars every couple of years. Most of these new models only have slight changes, but they create a "buzz" about the new features and lure consumers to buy the newest version of their cars. The car advertisements that we watched throughout the semester are aggressive and persuasive to make the consumer want to improve their appearance with a new car.

Costs of Ownership

“However, it is not just lack of a car, but car ownership itself, that is helping to make the poor poorer and the rich richer.” (Lutz & Lutz,Page 101)

Car ownership is costly and only some socioeconomic classes can afford the costs that come with owning a car. There are constant issues and time that need to be spent prepping your car to run its best performance. In "Car Jacked," we learned about the hardships that women and minorities faced when trying to own cars. Today there are still those challenges, people who cannot afford the costs of cars are sometimes forced to give up opportunities because of lack of transportation. ZipCars and Vermont Carshare give people the option to only use cars when it is necessary and never have to worry about the maintenance of the car. Living in an urban area also allows you to use other modes of transportation as well.

Success

“Quickest to uproot themselves are the educated classes, generally to advance their corporate careers.” (Kunstler, Page 148)

Material goods are a way to show that you have created wealth to buy something expensive. Teslas are an example of something that someone with a large amount of money and an environmentally conscious mind might purchase. When consider yourself successful you are able to have the mobility to move and in the future as a country we should be moving into sustainable green cities and towns. To continue to advance our culture we should change what makes you successful. Success should be focused on how you can create new ways to get to work and around town without using a motorized vehicle and not purchasing the newest car on the market.

(http://www.scbankruptcyattorney.com/blog/bankruptcy-car-ownship-expense-supreme-court/2011/01)

Emotions

“What driving does; and we have seen it described as liberating, individuating, revivifying, equalizing.” (Seiler, page 130)

Cars are a man's best friend in America, we love and live in our cars. Whether we are commuting long distances or driving our families around town, most trips completed in America are done in cars. Americans feel free and happy when in their cars and become emotional attached because of the places they are able to go, when there are "warm fuzzies" in car commercials you think that if you buy that car the same thing will happen to you. When I think back to all of the times I have been in a car, I remember all of the trips I have taken with friends or family and the amount of time I have spent in a car over my lifetime.

Greed

“In America, with its superabundance of cheap land, simple property laws, social mobility, mania for profit” (Kunstler, Page 37)

EV1 fanatics were heartbroken when their vehicles were taken from them without a reason or even notice. The car was a successful vehicle, but was taken off the road for the wrong reasons, every player in the scenario was to blame except for the beloved EV1. GM revoked the cars to keep the oil companies at peace, oil companies are large stakeholders within the government and have power over the car companies. The oil companies did not like the idea that EVs would not need their product and their greed for more money was being jeopardized. Big companies like the oil industry are focused on creating big profits and to keep their profits high they needed cars to need gas, they have too much power over other decision makers.

(http://dearsusquehanna.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html)

Pursuit of Happiness

“This new wealth was spent on suburban houses, and on cars to get to them and appliances to put in them. It transformed American culture.” (Kunstler, Page 229)

The American Dream is to live in a nice house with a great job and be able to afford everything you need in life. This dream has turned into what makes people happy and car companies are able to create advertisements that entice people to buy their cars to continue to build this dream. Our country was built upon suburban towns with people driving their cars everywhere and driving everywhere. What if we were able to transform towns and cities into walkable communities where it was not necessary to have a car and people enjoyed creating higher social capital by interacting with people more often. We would be able to change people's view on what makes them happy because in our current culture in America cars make people happy.

Development

“Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last fifty years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading.” (Kunstler, Page 10)

If you reside in a suburban or rural area you are depend on your car and public transportation is not as strong as in the cities. Kunstler focuses on creating smaller cities that are walkable, like Burlington, throughout the country to reduce the need for cars. He refers to suburban sprawl as a future wasteland. Our current suburban development depends car, but our highway infrastructure also was created for the usage of cars. In the future can we create more public transportation and walkable streets in suburban areas.

Health Impacts

“But much of the shopping we do is more impulsive and some of this is spurred by the mobile advertising- ads we see on billboards or hear on the car radio.” (Page 139) Week 6

The emissions that come from driving cars is toxic and the implications they have on our personal health are atrocious. We are addicted to driving and the acts that come along with traveling in our cars, when we see a sign for a fast food drive-thru we cannot help ourselves from stopping. When three quarters of all trips are made in cars we are spending more time sedintary and not being mobile with our feet. Between the unhealthy drive-thru fast food and the lack of walking places we are becoming an unhealthy society. When you look at other countries with great public transportation and safe bike lanes, people are less likely to drive making the population more fit and cleaner air from less pollution.

www.adweek.com

Future of Transportation

Transportation will change in the future as we change the types of transportation available. In the past few decades we have been able to create hybrid and electric cars and who knows what the future holds. The best future for transportation is to create walkable and safe bike lanes to create a healthy community that does not rely on any fuel to be mobile.

http://origamibandit.blogspot.com/2009/01/another-vote-for-walkable-cities.html

Thanks for a great semester, it was an awesome class and I learned a lot about the culture and media of cars.

Cars, Culture and Media @ UVM

Thursday, December 5, 2013

“Top 10 Key Insights About Cars, Culture and Media" Jillian Petrone

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