'You Belong Outside'- Advertising, Nature, And the SUV

'You Belong Outside': Advertising, Nature, and the SUVGunster, Shane.

Ethics & the Environment, Volume 9, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2004,pp. 4-32 (Article)

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4 ETHICS & THE ENVIRONMENT, 9(2) 2004

ETHICS & THE ENVIRONMENT, 9(2) 2004 ISSN: 1085-6633

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‘YOU BELONG OUTSIDE’ADVERTISING, NATURE, AND THE SUV

SHANE GUNSTER

And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, towipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists? —Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

Images of nature are among the most common signifiers of utopia in com-mercial discourse, tirelessly making the case that a certain commodity orbrand will enable an escape from the malaise and drudgery of urban exist-ence. The invocation of natural themes has been especially prominent inthe marketing and promotion of sport utility vehicles over the past decade.Speeding through deserts and jungles, fording raging rivers, and even scal-ing the heights of Mt. Everest, the SUV is routinely depicted in the mostspectacular and remote natural locations. These fanciful themes now at-tract the scorn of many who draw upon them to underscore the ratherglaring contradictions between how these vehicles are marketed and howthey are actually used: the irony of using pristine images of a hyper-purenature to motivate the use of a product that consumes excessive amountsof natural resources and emits high levels of pollutants lies at the core ofthe growing public backlash against the SUV. While generally sympatheticto this critical perspective, I argue that we need to think through the roleof nature in constructing the promotional field of these vehicles in a more

Mary Botto

5SHANE GUNSTER ‘YOU BELONG OUTSIDE’

rigorous fashion than is often the case. Otherwise, we risk failing to fullyunderstand the complexity of the SUV’s appeal; even worse, simplistic criti-cism can have the perverse effect of reinforcing the ideological conceptionsof nature that constitute a cornerstone of that appeal. Through an exami-nation of recent print and television advertising campaigns, I develop analternative account of the significance of natural imagery based upon thedialectical relation between nature and society that dominates the SUV’spromotional field.1 Instead of reifying the conceptual distance that dividesthese two categories, we must look to how they flow into and define eachother, often blending together into a dense cluster of associations in whichthe images of one connote and invoke ideas of the other.

WELCOME TO THE (NOT SO) GREAT OUTDOORS:THE MANY FACES OF NATURE

Since the emergence of the automobile as a commodity in the earlytwentieth century, natural themes and imagery have been used to attach autopian flavor to movement through space. From the 1920s onward, caradvertising has often invoked the fantasy of leaving behind the constraintsof a crowded, mundane, and polluted urban environment for the wideopen spaces offered by nature. In words that have guided advertisers (andurban planners) ever since, Henry Ford once quipped, “we shall solve thecity problem by leaving the city.”2 Charting the evolution of automotivepromotional discourse, Andrew Wernick argues that the reliance uponnatural imagery intensified in the 1970s and 1980s as people grew disen-chanted with technology (and its militaristic overtones) and expressed con-cerns over growing traffic congestion, energy consumption, and roadconstruction. Among the easiest tactics for advertisers wishing to deflectthe negative associations invoked by the car was, and remains, an image-based rearticulation of cars with nature.3 Invoking nature as the endpointof vehicular travel affirms one of automobility’s most precious and fiercelyguarded illusions, namely, that spatial mobility offers access to places, ex-periences, and events that are fundamentally different from everyday life,that one can escape to somewhere other than where one is now. Further-more, as Martin Green explains, the use of nature to frame flight to thecountryside summons up a powerful nostalgia for the simpler times andlives connoted by idealized scenes of rural life.4

Nevertheless, SUV marketing takes the appropriation of natural themesand imagery to new ‘heights,’ with epic campaigns that place vehicles atop


mountain peaks, in the midst of dense forests, or racing across vast deserts.Leading the way in this appropriation of nature has been the Ford MotorCompany. Although its market share has suffered recently, Ford spear-headed the promotion of the SUV in the 1990s with the Explorer whichquickly became the best selling family vehicle of the decade, producingimmense corporate profits. Guided by consumer research that showedpeople wanted vehicles that made them appear bold, adventurous, and care-free, Ford successfully positioned the SUV as an embodiment of the tradi-tional ‘frontier’ fantasy of leaving the city for the authenticity, purity, andfreedom of the great outdoors.5 “Looking to get away from it all? Escapethe pressures of urban living?” asks one of the vehicle’s first ads. “In a new4-door Explorer, there’s no such thing as city limits.”6 Eight years later,virtually identical copy captions an image of a couple swimming togetherin a deserted lake at sunset: “With every splash, you can feel the city wash-ing off you.”7 In October 1999, Ford systematized this articulation of theSUV with nature in a sweeping new campaign entitled ‘No Boundaries.’Drawing upon a wide range of promotional strategies, it used outdoorimages, locations, and activities to reach customers whom the companyclaims “have a spirit of rugged adventure.”8 Print ads, for example, showedpeople engaged in wilderness activities such as hiking, kayaking, or rock-climbing, an SUV parked nearby on a beach, rocky plateau, or forest grove.In one sequence, geographic coordinates are used to entice readers to visitFord’s website to discover the identity of these pristine locations.

When the No Boundaries theme was expanded to cover all Ford ve-hicles in March 2001, a television spot entitled ‘Discovery’ featured Will-iam Ford Jr. reminiscing about how his grandfather invented the SUV bytaking Model Ts cross country on camping trips with various U.S. presi-dents. As Ford speaks about his own great love of nature, images of off-road driving are intercut with scenes of people riding mountain bikes,snowboarding, white-water rafting, fly-fishing, and so on.9 Concordantwith a world of ‘converged’ marketing, Ford has drawn upon a variety ofinitiatives in addition to advertising to position its SUVs as ideal comple-ments to an outdoors lifestyle. At the onset of the campaign, for example,Ford provided dealers with camping equipment to reframe them as ‘Out-fitters’ helping consumers prepare for wilderness adventure: one dealereven planted trees and built a river with live fish inside the showroom.10 Atravelling consumer fair entitled the ‘No Boundaries Experience’ has vis-ited several U.S. cities, setting up off-road courses for prospective buyers


and even offering children the opportunity to drive miniaturized fullymotorized SUVs.11 No Boundaries magazine was launched in September2001 as a way to “spark emotion and encourage readers to explore thenatural world [by featuring] seasonal editorial coverage of outdoor-adven-ture activities, gear and travel.”12 In the spring of 2002, Ford co-producedthe ‘No Boundaries’ reality-tv show in which contestants engaged in awilderness trek from Vancouver Island to the Arctic Circle. The companyregularly sponsors outdoor festivals, events, and competitions, including aMay 2002 attempt by an all-woman team to climb Mt. Everest. Ten monthslater, Ford premiered its latest SUV model—the Everest—at an auto showin Thailand.

The No Boundaries campaign may represent the best organized andmost extensive effort to unite nature and the SUV, but every automakerhas embraced similar themes at one point or another. Nature appears as abenign, forgiving refuge from the everyday, a place in which people canimmerse themselves in soothing contemplation of the mysterious beautyof the wild. Ads wax poetically about the quiet virtues of isolation in con-trast to the crowded, noisy streets of the city. “I never found the compan-ion so companionable as solitude,” notes a Chevrolet Blazer ad, approvinglyquoting the words of Henry David Thoreau.13 Appearing in magazinessuch as Wired, Barron’s, Business Week, and Cigar Afficonado, a 2001campaign showcased the H1 Hummer nestled unobtrusively in sparse yetspectacular landscapes.14 “How did my soul get way out here?” asks onead, noting with Zen-like humility that “Sometimes you find yourself in themiddle of nowhere. And sometimes in the middle of nowhere you findyourself.”15 More often than not, the landscape remains untouched as theSUV slips through, blending into the natural environment. “Road maps?Who the heck needs road maps?” boasts a Nissan Pathfinder ad.16 Or evenroads for that matter. “These vehicles occupy the wilderness in the sameways animals do,” points out media scholar Robin Andersen; “within thedepiction they attain the status of a biological phenomenon. No longermachine or the product of human endeavour, they become a natural partof the ecosystem.”17 In a breathtaking act of myth-making, the social andphysical infrastructure required to support mass automobility, as well asthe broader ecological consequences that accompany the mass consump-tion of these vehicles, are magically erased. Instead, the SUV is offered as atechnology for the redemption of nature, a lens through which we mightglimpse its secret aesthetics and truly experience and appreciate its sub-


lime majesty. Urban (and suburban) space implicitly figures as a blanddystopia from which we all ‘naturally’ wish to escape into the rugged pu-rity of the wild.

The promotional juggernaut behind SUVs has become literally ines-capable in contemporary media. Automakers and their dealers spent $9billion advertising SUVs between 1990 and 2001.18 Between January andNovember 2002, media spending on the top ten models alone was wellover $500 million.19 The ubiquity of SUV ads shadows the tremendousmarket success of SUVs themselves, joining personal computers, cellularphones, and mutual funds as the most explosive new consumer commodi-ties of the last decade. As a share of all new vehicle sales in the UnitedStates, SUVs have risen steadily from 1.8 per cent in 1980 to more than 25per cent in 2002, producing a remarkable transformation of the contem-porary automotive landscape.20 The North American auto industry reliedheavily on SUV sales in its return to profitability in the 1990s: low cost ofdesign and production, the absence of competition from foreign automak-ers, and high consumer demand positioned the SUV as an ideal commod-ity. Although increased competition and supply has gradually lowered netunit earnings, automakers continue to generate profits of 15–20 per centon an SUV compared to 3 per cent or less on a car.21 Attracted by this rateof profit, Japanese and European firms have flooded into the SUV marketin recent years: between 1995 and 2002, the total number of models hasalmost tripled from 28 to 75.22 In particular, the SUV has quickly come todominate the luxury vehicle market: the highly successful entry of expen-sive ‘crossover’ models such as the Porsche Cayenne, Volkswagen Touareg,and the Infiniti FX45—built upon car rather than truck frames—has madeluxury SUVs the fastest growing vehicle category in an otherwise sluggishautomotive market.23 Given the high profits at stake, automakers have apowerful incentive to increase (and defend) the profile of their brands withina crowded field of choices. It is a classic case of what advertising criticsRobert Goldman and Stephen Papson have suggestively called ‘sign wars’;24

and the principal semiotic territory over which this battle is fought is nature.War, in fact, is an especially fertile metaphor through which to con-

sider the evolving promotional field around the SUV. In the last decade,more and more advertising has forsaken Arcadian visions of natural blissin order to foreground the SUV’s power to confront the dangers of anuntamed wilderness. Leaving aside for a moment the explicit militariza-tion championed by vehicles such as the Hummer, violence has become


one of the preeminent strategies through which brands distinguish them-selves from the competition. Occasionally this appears directly. Mimick-ing the puerile confrontational style more at home in pickup advertising, a2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer ad proclaims: “Our 270 horsepower enginecan beat up your . . . wait, you don’t have a 270 horsepower engine.”25 Asimilar DaimlerChrysler ad asks “Why drive some pathetic excuse for anSUV when you can wrap your hands around Dodge Durango?” braggingthat “this baby carries around chunks of those wimpy wanna-be [SUVs] inits tail pipe.”26 More common, though, is the celebration of the SUV’svirtues via its engagement with a wilderness that appears frightening anddangerous, an uncompromising and hostile place that can only be mas-tered by sufficiently aggressive technology. The comparative merits of onemodel over another are dramatized by the speed and ferocity with whichnature can be subdued. The executive vice-president of PentaMark, Jeep’sadvertising firm, puts it this way: “No matter what nature throws at youunexpectedly, you’re still protected. It takes care of you. Once you’re in aJeep, you’re safe and secure and you can get out of it. We try to hit onthose emotional connections.”27 And based upon the dominant tropeswithin SUV ads, one of the most effective (and acceptable) means of gener-ating ‘those emotional connections’ is to cast nature as enemy.

Print advertising, for example, almost always highlights a vehicle’sability to ‘conquer’ or ‘master’ the roughest terrain. Suzuki will “conquerjust about anything the landscape throws at you,”28 Isuzu “puts the worldat the mercy of your whims,”29 and Jeep invites you to “get out there andshow Mother Nature who’s boss.”30 An extensive 2002 campaign for Toyotaused images of the 4Runner SUV driving through the forbidding land-scape at the foot of Mt. Everest to show its capacity to take on the mostdangerous and inhospitable locations. With inset photos of struggling climb-ers, one ad reads: “Everest at 4,347 metres. Nerves fray. Muscles twitch.Engine roars”31 while another states “Everest at –24 degrees. Jawbonechatters. Spine shivers. Engine roars. Bitter cold and uncharted terrain witheragainst the 4Runner’s available i-Force V8 engine.”32 Television commer-cials feature images of goggled figures fighting through a blizzard and afrayed tent being whipped about by a fierce wind, powerful visual testimo-nial to the mountain’s harsh environment. As an SUV bounces over rocksand splashes through rivers with Everest’s profile in the background, asomber Edmund Hillary warns that “Everest can be a ferocious moun-tain.”33 Toyota also teamed up with the Outdoor Life Network to produce


a reality-TV show entitled ‘Global Extremes’ in which contestants engagedin various wilderness challenges in competing for the chance to climb Mt.Everest in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Hillary’s ascent.In ads such as these, nature takes the form of an inscrutable, unpredict-able, and often nasty place. On the one hand, it offers an invigoratingalternative to the mundane routine of everyday life, a proving ground onwhich individuals can test their mental and physical endurance en route tothe revitalization of human experience. On the other, it demands a tough,hard ‘ready for anything’ disposition as a means of surviving the countlessdangers the world throws your way.

The most striking manifestation of this theme appears in ads whichliterally enact a struggle between the SUV and nature in the form of aggres-sive contests of strength, speed, agility and power with a variety of wildpredators. Recent television spots have featured a miniaturized Saturn VUEdeftly evading being caught by a pursuing cougar,34 a Nissan Pathfinderplaying the role of matador as it nimbly darts around an enraged bull in anempty arena,35 and great white sharks encircling and attacking a water-bound Ford expedition.36 Beyond fending off feral aggression, the SUVitself often appears as a predatory creature. A new spot for Cadillac openswith an enactment of the ‘Running of the Bulls’ in Pamplona; as the open-ing strain of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock and Roll’ builds, the camera pulls backto reveal that the bulls are themselves fleeing three black SUVs.37 Featuringa Chevrolet Tahoe on a rocky mountain slope under stormy skies, a recentad explicitly offers readers the chance to turn the tables on nature: “You’veheard of mountain lions running loose through subdivisions. This is theopposite.”38 “Power changes everything,” advises yet another commer-cial, showing a pack of lions fleeing from a Nissan Pathfinder that weeventually discover is driven by an enterprising antelope.39 A pack of croco-diles shrink in fear from a Lexus LX470: “Let nature worry about you fora change.”40

At one level, ads like these merely reenact conventional Enlightenmentnarratives about technology: as an ad for Jeep puts it, “It’s your classicman vs. nature struggle.”41 In survey after survey, consumers consistentlyidentify the perceived safety of four-wheel drive (4WD) as the main reasonfor choosing SUVs.42 Obviously, the best way to represent 4WD as a safetyfeature is the symbolic relocation of these vehicles from paved roads wherethis technology is largely irrelevant (and actually decreases maneuverabil-ity and braking efficiency given added weight) to an environment in which


it can more plausibly be shown to enhance driver control. Beyond thesimplistic division between nature and technology sponsored by these typesof images, however, fantasies in which these vehicles literally become wildcreatures envisions a far more fluid boundary between social and naturalworlds. They offer the SUV as a mimetic form of technology which en-ables an adaptation to the natural world by imitating and perfecting thephysical attributes (e.g., speed, power, agility, inscrutability) and simplisticpatterns of interaction (e.g., flight, conflict) of the animals one finds there(in the idealized images of advertising). The Dodge Durango, for example,was intentionally designed to resemble the features of a jungle cat, withthe grille representing teeth and the large fenders the bulging muscles in asnarling jaw. “A strong animal has a big jaw, that’s why we put big fend-ers,” explains one of the designers.43 Seductive phantasmagoria arise inwhich stylized depictions of nature organize desire for social forms of tech-nology, thereby revisioning social life itself through a natural prism. Manyof the SUV’s most potent pleasures, as defined through its promotionalfield, come to depend upon the active investment of consumers in simplis-tic natural motifs as a means of thinking through the essence of socialinteraction.

While wilderness spectacles furnish ideal venues for the graphic depic-tion of aggression, violence, and conflict, these themes also spill over intothe portrayal of social relations with other vehicles and drivers, affirmingthat the rugged individualism which governs the ‘natural’ world is equallydominant in the ‘urban jungle.’ Campaigns for full-size SUVs, for example,commonly boast about their ability to dominate the road and intimidateother drivers. Cadillac advertising, for example, regularly focuses uponthe Escalade’s aggressive profile. “Yield” advises a 1999 newspaper ad,featuring a sinister close-up of the Escalade’s front end bearing down uponthe reader.44 “Mere measurements to you,” notes a 2002 ad describing theSUV’s massive height and weight, “But persuasion to those in front ofyou.”45 Yet another series portrays it as a boxer or street fighter: “And inthis corner in all black . . .”46 and “Let’s take this outside.”47 Other brandssimilarly stage a menacing disposition as an index of the SUV’s appeal.Lincoln Navigator promises to “Kick derriere.”48 Tracks atop a transporttruck fantasize about the Jeep Liberty’s ability to literally drive over thingsthat obstruct its passage: “Jeep Liberty Benefit #12: The power to masterall things, on and off the road.”49 A pair of ads for the Dodge Durangoadvise the reader to “Tread lightly, and carry a big V-8”50 and labels the

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SUV a “Sport Brute.”51 The Chevrolet Blazer ZR2 has a “bold, aggressivestance. (Intimidating, isn’t it?)”52 A Honda CRV emerges from a mistyswamp: “It’s like a monster in a horror movie. It keeps coming back meanerand stronger.”53 “Now let’s see who gets sand kicked in their face at thebeach,” notes a 2002 ad foregrounding the CRV’s increased size. Recentcampaigns for Hummer and Jeep are shot from a position just below thefront bumper: the viewer is literally prostrate before the vehicles, visuallyreinforcing copy such as “It only looks like this because it’s badass”54 or“Pretty much every lane is a passing lane.”55

As many critics have noted, these are more than just empty threats.Heavy vehicles with rigid frames and high ground clearance pose a consid-erable safety risk to the drivers of smaller cars. While car bodies are de-signed to crumple around drivers and thereby absorb the shock of suddenimpacts, the stiff rails used in SUV and pickup construction effectivelytransfers that shock to other vehicles and their occupants. Moreover, theheight of light trucks means that in collisions with smaller vehicles theyoften slide over a car’s hood or trunk and impact the passenger compart-ment with considerable force. In his superb analysis of the ‘crash incom-patibility’ problem, Keith Bradsher notes that the front end of a Ford F-250Super Duty pickup truck, which it shares with the Ford Excursion SUV, is49 inches above ground, close to the height of the roof of the Ford Tauruspassenger sedan. According to U.S. federal regulators, the lethal combina-tion of height and stiffness in light trucks inflicts an extra 2,000 fatalitieseach year.56 Casualties in traffic accidents are effectively rearranged fromlight truck to car as SUV drivers literally purchase a feeling of increasedsecurity at the cost of the safety of other drivers.57 For every Ford Explorerdriver whose life is saved in a multi-vehicle collision because they are in anSUV rather than a large car, for example, an extra five drivers are killed invehicles struck by Explorers.58 In crashes with a second vehicle, full-sizeSUVs kill that vehicle’s occupants at a rate of 205 per 100,000 accidentscompared to 104 for minivans and 85 for cars.59

SOCIETY AND/AS SECOND NATURE:“EARTHQUAKES, FIRES, RIOTS: I’M READY”

In recent years, SUVs and their drivers have increasingly attracted thecontempt of those who argue that in addition to their excessive fuel con-sumption and the danger they pose to cars, these vehicles are emblematicof a narcissistic, avaricious disposition that privileges fantasies of techno-

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logical power at the expense of the natural and social environment. In1998, the Sierra Club kicked off a wave of anti-SUV sentiment with acontest to rename Ford’s mammoth Excursion; “Ford Valdez—Have youdriven a tanker lately?” was the winning slogan, driving home the blatantdiscrepancy between ads for SUVs and their real ecological impact.60 Pub-lished in 2002, Keith Bradsher’s polemic High and Mighty has attractedconsiderable media attention for its thorough and well-researched critiqueof SUVs, ranging from the misguided public policy that inspired their de-velopment to the political economy that sustains their production to theserious dangers they pose to both their own occupants and other drivers.In November 2002, the Evangelical Environmental Network launched awidely reported campaign entitled ‘What Would Jesus Drive?’ to encour-age Christians to reassess their transportation choices.61 Shortly after, acoalition of entertainment professionals led by Arianna Huffington pro-duced a series of controversial ads that linked gas-guzzling SUVs with oilrevenues that may be funneled to terrorist organizations, an ironic com-mentary on the current Bush administration’s campaign to link the casualuse of marijuana with the violence of drug cartels.62 Dozens of anti-SUVwebsites range from the provision of critical information to recommend-ing direct action against these vehicles and those who drive them. Theseand other efforts have stirred an often fierce debate about SUVs that rangeswidely over a variety of issues including their impact on the environment,their safety, their effect upon drivers, their cultivation of U.S. dependenceon foreign oil supplies, and so on.

Nature often plays a starring role in these debates. It has become acliché, for instance, to point out that few SUV drivers ever actually taketheir vehicles off-road in pursuit of the wilderness adventures that figureso heavily in SUV advertising. Similarly, few can claim ignorance of theglaring contrast between pristine natural scenes and a vehicle that wreaksecological havoc because its excessive weight and poor design requireslarge amounts of fuel and produces high levels of toxic emissions. As a firststep in shattering the coherence of the SUV’s promotional field by intensi-fying the contradictions that lie at its core, these tactics have played a keyrole in raising critical popular consciousness. However, they also often endup reproducing the basic ideological separation between society and na-ture that constitutes a cornerstone of the SUV’s promotional field. Natureremains a rugged, spectacular, and sublime paradise, a utopian alternativeto the crowded dystopian banality of urban and suburban life. All that

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changes is the lateral transfer of the SUV from one side of the balancesheet to the other: rather than secure entry into that paradise (as in theads), the SUV assumes a new identity as its most dangerous threat. Failureto move beyond the basic dichotomy which valorizes a hyper-pure naturewhile demonizing urban space perpetuates the timeworn logic throughwhich advertisers exploit fears of industrial technology as an incentive forthe consumption of products that magically restore a harmonious balancebetween nature and society. Writing about the prevalence of these types ofnarratives in advertising from the 1920s and 1930s, Roland Marchandobserves:

By raising the specter of civilization destroying the balance of nature,[ads] gave dramatic and sometimes exaggerated expression to the un-certainties of wider public. After this cathartic airing of anxieties, theyoffered assurances, through the parable of Civilization Redeemed, thatthe apparent costs of progress could be avoided. Civilization and na-ture were not antithetic. No breaks need be applied to the wheels ofprogress.63

Much of the backlash against SUVs similarly incarnates nature as a pureOther, a potent utopian signifier that effectively short-circuits any moresystematic exploration of the complex relation between social, cultural,and natural environments.

The ultimately anemic quality of this critical strategy reveals itself inthe ease with which it has been appropriated by auto advertisers them-selves. Subaru, for example, reinvented its all-wheel drive Outback stationwagon as a kinder, gentler SUV in a series of 2002 television commercialsthat present its drivers as the real nature lovers compared to the blunder-ing insensitivity of those with larger vehicles. Describing its ‘when you getit, you get it’ campaign, Subaru notes that

in ‘Deer Spotting,’ a couple quietly observes a group of deer in thewoods from the comfort of the Subaru Outback. All is well until thetranquility is shattered by a lead-footed SUV driver racing through theforest to catch a glimpse for himself—one who clearly doesn’t ‘get it’.In ‘Outside the Box,’ a Forester owner covertly picks her daughter upfrom school to help release the class bunny back into the wild wherehe belongs.64

The failure to deconstruct nature or, more precisely, to deconstruct theidealized status of natural signifiers within mass culture, leaves intact thebasic cultural premise of SUV advertising, namely, that the flight to nature


is a normal, indeed inevitable, human response to urban civilization.65

Consequently, we fail to see how the ideological ‘work’ performed by naturalsignifiers is far more complex than simply caricaturing nature as a utopianalternative to urban space. However unwittingly, this type of criticism re-inforces the logic that has helped establish cross-over vehicles as the fastestgrowing segment of the auto industry. Smaller SUVs are now marketed asa commodity through which people can express their distaste for large,truck-based models as despoilers of the natural environment while simul-taneously preserving the fantasy of periodically sampling nature’s plea-sures. Simply because they are not full-size models, smaller vehicles can berepresented as existing in harmony with the natural environment. Con-versely, this trend is also exploited to portray full-size SUVs and pick-upsas ‘genuine’ off-road vehicles to a (masculine) demographic that has theopportunity of defining itself in opposition to the ‘soft,’ ‘feminine’ charac-ter of luxury SUVs.

Less common but equally significant, natural tropes assume the bur-den of explaining the psychological appeal of the SUV. Recent debate overthese vehicles often moves beyond their social and ecological implicationsto the ‘natural’ characteristics of their drivers. In a much discussed part ofHigh and Mighty, for instance, Bradsher explores the attributes of SUVowners through the atavistic consumer psychology of Clotaire Rapaille,a French anthropologist who has played an important consulting role inthe design and marketing of SUVs. People’s reactions to commodities, ar-gues Rapaille, can be divided according to a crude schematic of brain ac-tivity: intellect, emotion, and a primitive desire for survival and reproductionhe terms ‘reptilian.’ SUVs are “the most reptilian vehicles of all becausetheir imposing, even menacing appearance appeals to people’s deep-seateddesires for ‘survival and reproduction.’”66 As the fear of crime, howeverirrational, has risen in lockstep with the intensification of violence in themass media, the SUV offers itself as an ideal technology for armoring theself against the perceived dangers that lurk outside. “I think we’re goingback to medieval times,” Rapaille observes, “and you can see that in thatwe live in ghettos with gates and private armies. SUVs are exactly that,they are armored cars for the battlefield.”67 At one level, this testimony isfascinating and offers key insights into how nature is deliberately mobi-lized in advertising as a barely veiled metaphor for perceived dangers withinsociety. Yet Rapaille’s simplistic description of aggressive technology as a‘natural’ response of the ‘reptilian’ component of the brain to the percep-

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tion of increasing social danger participates in a mythic naturalization (andmystification) of social and historical phenomena.

Bradsher recognizes the “slick but extremely cynical” manipulationperformed by expensive advertising campaigns in this regard, but neverchallenges the basic premise that the SUV’s appeal is, at some level, en-tirely ‘natural.’68 Instead, he confirms this sentiment by citing extensiveconsumer research that defines SUV drivers as “people who are insecureand vain. . . . frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortableabout parenthood. . . . Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors or communities.”69 SUVvehicle designs, he claims, “appeal to the darkest shadows of human na-ture.”70 Much ink has subsequently been spilled in newspaper editorialsattacking or defending the personal character of drivers, producing a highlyindividualized explanation of the SUV.71 And once again, it confirms acore element of many SUV ads: these vehicles activate something primitivedeep within us, offering a shortcut to dimensions of experience normallyrepressed, for better or worse, by the conventions of everyday life. A 1995ad for the Isuzu Rodeo calls it “the psychological equivalent of a three daybeard . . . a welcome departure from this buttoned-up, starched-collaredworld of ours”;72 three years later the Rodeo becomes a “205 horsepowerprimal scream,” a form of ‘therapy’ that “encourages you to scream longand hard and loud.”73 A pair of mid-1990s pieces in Forbes and Fortuneserve up equivalent rhetoric as they rhapsodize about the experience ofdriving the Hummer H1: “One can’t help but hear the faint call of the wildwhen performing the most mundane chores in a Hummer”74 or “Deepinside the brain of every male is the Godzilla Gland, a tiny organ thatmakes men obnoxious, aggressive, and loud. It can be tamed with darksuits and neckties, but it won’t go away. And in a massive truck that can goalmost anywhere, the gland goes haywire.”75 A great deal of contempo-rary anti-SUV criticism does little more than switch the valence of thesesentiments from good to bad, leaving untouched the idea that the SUVallows or encourages people to tap deeply into their inner ‘nature’ andrelease—for better or worse—emotions that are normally kept tightly un-der control.

As an alternative framework of explanation, I think much of the ap-peal (and significance) of nature in SUV advertising can and must be tracedto the resonance these images have with how people experience a world inwhich abstract institutions, structures, and processes beyond democratic

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regulation govern more and more spheres of social life. Natural imageryfurnishes an ideal set of signifiers through which to express and conceptu-alize in mythic form the erosion of human autonomy at the hands of forcesthat seemingly lie beyond human regulation or control. In his brilliantanalysis of nineteenth-century Paris, Walter Benjamin identifies naturalmetaphors as a preeminent strategy of popular French authors for expressingthe way in which commodification and industrialization was affectingpeople’s perception and experience of urban space. Alexandre Dumas, Vic-tor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Honoré Balzac all relied heavily upon‘primitive’ imagery to describe the dominant ‘structure of feeling.’ “Thepoetry of terror,” wrote Balzac, “that pervades the American woods, withtheir clashes between tribes on the warpath—this poetry which stood[Fenimore] Cooper in such good stead attaches in the same way to thesmallest details of Parisian life.”76 The most successful and popular liter-ary styles were those that expressed the experience of urban capitalismthrough the metaphors of an untamed wilderness. Nature appeared as afertile allegory for locating oneself within a set of social processes that hadgrown inscrutable, unpredictable, and dangerous as they became reified,acquiring a life and logic seemingly independent of collective human regu-lation.77

Society, in other words, takes on the form of a ‘second nature’ as peopleconceptualize and interact with it as a fixed and unchanging entity, beyondour understanding and control. In the Economic and Philosophical Manu-scripts, Marx argues that one of the defining qualities of life under capital-ism is the alienation of workers from their activities and the products oftheir activity. “The alienation of the worker in his [sic] product means notonly that his labour becomes an object, assumes an external existence, butthat it exists independently, outside himself, and alien to him, and that itstands opposed to him as an autonomous power. The life which he hasgiven to the object sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force.”78

The mediation of human activity through the commodity form produces astrange, phantasmagorical world which its authors can no longer controlor even recognize as their own creation. “Our emancipated technology,”writes Benjamin, “stands beside contemporary society as a second natureand indeed, as economic crises and wars show, as a no less elemental na-ture than that confronted by primitive societies.”79 Instrumental reasonand associated forms of capitalist industrialization predicated upon themastery of nature generate a profound alienation of human beings from

Maxwell Loeb


both the natural and social world. “As its final result,” note Theodor Adornoand Max Horkheimer, “civilization leads back to the terrors of nature.”80

Both appear and are experienced as hostile, threatening environments and,in an endless tautology, each is taken as evidence for the normality andinevitability of the other. On the one hand, narrow visions of rugged indi-vidualism and hyper-competitive Darwinism are projected upon an an-thropomorphized nature; on the other, these virtues feature prominentlyin cultural representations of nature: ‘discovering’ them there is subse-quently used to justify their presence within human societies as an inescap-able fact of ‘human nature.’

Over the last three decades, the globalization of corporate power, thedominance of neo-liberal politics, and the extension of capitalist socialrelations have created a cultural, political, and economic environment inwhich people are regularly assailed with the message (and the prevailingexperience of helplessness to back it up) that they have no choice but tosubmit and adapt to the dictates of transnational markets, the unpredict-able chaos of global politics or, more recently, the bureaucratic fascism ofthe ‘war on terror.’ In this context, nature provides an ideal marketingsignifier because it expresses the utopian desire to escape this environmentinto an Edenic paradise but simultaneously gives voice to the dystopianfear that retreat into a defensive shell is the only option left for comfort-able survival. Desire and fear, utopia and dystopia: natural imagery spon-sors the blending of these disparate emotions and ideals into a fluid, ifschizophrenic, promotional field that accommodates the affective mobil-ity of consumers as they shift back and forth from one pole to the other.This conceptual blurring of the natural and the social is itself routinelyinscribed within the metaphor laden discourse of SUV advertising. Acuracrowns its MDX “lord of the jungle (concrete or otherwise)”81 and Subarulauds the Outback as perfect “for all those perilous journeys through thewilds of the asphalt jungle.”82 Phantasmagoric animal spirits arise out ofthe mist on city streets as a Ford Escape passes by, constructing a magicalvision of the wild that lies hidden in the heart of the city.83 At one level,such ads provide a kind of ironic commentary on the absurdity of usingSUVs for urban transport; but at another, they legitimate and enforce theanalogy between social and natural dangers. Using metaphor to blend im-ages of urban space and wilderness, ads such as these explicitly invite read-ers to use nature as a concept to express, reflect upon, and engage with keydimensions of social experience.


As noted above, violence is the preeminent trope through which theconflation of nature and society is engineered and, without question, thisstrategy has achieved its highest profile in the evolving promotional fieldaround the Hummer brand. Introduced in 1979, the HumVee is a militarytransport and assault vehicle used by the U.S. military that has featuredprominently in news coverage of wars in the Middle East, especially the‘Desert Storm’ operation of 1991. Fearful of declining military demandfollowing the end of the Cold War (and motivated by the incessant lobby-ing of Arnold Schwarzenegger), AM General started producing the $100,000Hummer for the civilian market in 1992. As Leigh Glover explains, earlyprint advertising emphasized the vehicle’s violent mastery of the naturalenvironment: “premeditated and deliberate aggression, violence, and thedeployment of weaponry against nature are endorsed by the manufacturer.. . . Nature has become an assault course, its geomorphology reduced tomeasured contours and gradients of technological challenge.”84 The truckquickly acquired a sizable media profile, however the company failed tosell enough units to generate much profit. In 1999, GM acquired the rightsto the Hummer, hoping to transform it into an aspirational flagship sym-bol for the corporation given the brand’s enormous popularity with youngerAmericans.85 The casual brutalization of nature deployed in the earlier adswas displaced by a more sinister articulation of nature and society in whichthe truck’s off-road prowess implicitly figured as a means of protectingoneself against social dangers. In a shameless yet highly instructive capi-talization upon public fear, GM used Schwarzenegger to unveil the newH2 in downtown Manhattan on the three-month anniversary of the Sep-tember 11th attacks. Print advertising for the H2 reproduces the aestheticof Desert Storm with the vehicles featured under a scorching sun in anempty desert landscape with taglines such as “when the asteroid hits andcivilization crumbles, you’ll be ready.”86 The New York Times reports that“dealers will be required to build new showrooms that resemble militarybarracks with plenty of brushed steel and exposed bolts inside.”87 For theirpart, automotive journalists have eagerly celebrated the truck’s militarypedigree with gushing reviews: an early Toronto Star piece, for example,opened by asking readers if they were “Tired of getting pushed around onthe Don Valley Parkway?”88 while a later review in the National Post re-view half-seriously opened, “We thought we were Navy SEALs. The Floridarain beat down like a sonuvabitch and we were perched on the Hummer’struck bed, ready to leap out and help citizens in need.”89 Most telling is the


response of a Los Angeles Hummer driver when asked why he bought thetruck: “I call this my urban escape vehicle,” he answered. “Fires, earth-quakes, riots. I’m ready.”90

Fires, earthquakes, and riots: natural disaster effortlessly flows intosocial chaos, constructing a fierce tableau in which one has little choice butto brace oneself against the perils of a hostile world. As Mike Davis bril-liantly chronicles in Ecology of Fear, these events have become one and thesame in a city in which upper- and middle-class fear of a largely nonwhiteunderclass is so often articulated via the motif of natural catastrophe. It issurely no coincidence that Hummer sales are strongest in Los Angeles,Miami, and Texas, urban locations in which steady immigration has vis-ibly changed the racial complexion of city streets.91 The unpredictabilityand ferocity of natural forces, whose impact upon human societies is ac-centuated by a consistent failure to integrate ecological awareness intourban planning and development, is invoked as emblematic of an increas-ingly harsh social environment. Not only is it a jungle out there, it’s also awar: in the promotional field of the SUV the two flow into one anotherand become one and the same. Writing about the fear of cougars thatepisodically grips suburban Los Angeles, Davis observes:

Too often, wildness is equated with urban disorder, and wild animalsend up as the symbolic equivalents of street criminals; or conversely,they acquire all the psychopathic connotations of sentimentalized petsor surrogate people. The Otherness of wild animals is the gestalt whichwe are constantly refashioning in the image of our own urban confu-sion and alienation. Where nature is most opaquely unknowable, asin the “character” of animals, we intensely crave the comfort of an-thropomorphic definition and categorization. And where it is the hu-man world that threatens, this impulse is mirrored in our desire togive our fears shape: as beasts.92

The use of nature in SUV ads and elsewhere creates a cultural space inwhich social anxieties are at once expressed and mystified as the represen-tation and resolution of social contradictions takes on an imaginary natu-ral form. Multi-million dollar advertising campaigns do not invent thedesire for these vehicles out of thin air; rather, they offer (wealthy) con-sumers a potent ideological framework with which to (mis)recognize and(mis)conceptualize ‘urban confusion and alienation’ via a mythical, poly-semic, natural landscape that nourishes escapist fantasy of an Arcadianparadise while invoking the challenges of an untamed frontier and sum-moning the fear of unknown dangers.


INSIDE-OUT: NATURE AND THENEO-LIBERAL SUBJECT

At its core, the imaginary resolution of social contradictions proceedsvia the material and semiotic reinscription of the binary divisions betweeninside and outside, self and other, known and unknown in a fluid, mobilefashion that matches the nomadic sensibilities of post-modernity. After all,the explosive growth in the popularity of these vehicles was not based onthe sudden invention of the off-road capabilities of four-wheel drive. In-stead, it was the combination of these capabilities with a quiet, comfort-able, expansive, and well-appointed interior. As the market for luxury SUVshas grown—Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, and Lexus all have sport-utilitymodels—the promotion of opulent driving environments has reached afever pitch. Range Rover, for instance, claims that “the special alchemyof its luxurious waterfall-lit wood and leather interior . . . indulges thesoul.”93 Lexus boasts of the “cavernous interior” of its LX470, “there tograce you and seven other pampered occupants with yards of hand-fittedleather, burled walnut trim, and the auditory pleasures of a Mark Levinsonpremium sound system.”94 Indeed, its designers seek

true luxury in the most amazing places imaginable. They fly first classto the Côte d’Azur. They immerse themselves in that oasis of opu-lence, the sovereign state of Monaco. And they stay in the presidentialsuite of the finest five-star hotels. By experiencing all the best that theworld has to offer, our designers can see, feel, touch and even smellthose elusive elements of true luxury.95

Although few ads can match this calculated hyperbole, most foregroundthe disjuncture between the ample comforts of a well-equipped cabin andthe harsh, unforgiving environment that lies outside. Auto advertising hasa long history of fixating upon interior luxury and many car ads embracesimilar themes. Yet the SUV is unique in how it combines, in the words ofone ad, a “sophisticated balance of personalized luxury and rugged util-ity.”96

In addition to the comfort of heated, powered, leather seats and thehandcrafted aesthetic of exotic tropical woods, SUV interiors now bristlewith an exhaustive array of information technology. Global positioningsystems, voice-activated navigation consoles, DVD screens, MP3 players,and push button executive assistance telecommunications networks arethe latest luxury features to feature prominently in SUV ads. John Urryand Mimi Sheller speculate that the integration of these technologies into


automobiles might shift the political economy of auto production towardsmaller vehicles: technological sophistication could replace size as a pri-mary determinant of profit.97 While this logic may hold true for Europeanand Japanese consumers who have largely resisted the lure of SUVs andpickups, luxury and technology have largely been positioned as comple-mentary to size within the North American market. While SUVs have at-tracted a very high media profile, the market share of full-size pick-uptrucks—even more dangerous to other drivers than SUVs—has quietlyexploded, in large part because of how this technology has been used tooutfit spacious ‘crew-cabs’ as family vehicles.98 More to the point, navi-gation systems and digital assistance networks are ideal technologies tosupplement mercenary fantasies of armored nomads roaming a dangerousenvironment. While information technologies have assumed increasingsignificance in the promotional field around vehicles, their representationtends to confirm urban experience as fundamentally reified in ways thatmimic the role of nature. “The alienated city,” observes Frederic Jameson,“is above all space in which people are unable to map (in their minds)either their own position or the urban totality.”99 In contrast to broadersocial or political projects of ‘cognitive mapping,’ information technolo-gies are marketed as a privatized, commodified ‘solution’ to this crisis bydrawing upon the same kind of emotional sentiments used to sell 4WD asa safety feature: the world out there is hazardous and difficult to negotiateand one’s security requires specialized technology. An Infiniti QX4 ad inwhich the SUV emerges from a massive concrete maze expresses this senti-ment beautifully: “A network of 24 highly calibrated global-positioningsatellites to guide you. 3 million miles of US roadways to explore. Thisway to the future.”100 Owning the vehicle provides one with privileged(and necessary) access to networks of global expertise and power. A profu-sion of entertainment technologies similarly enhance the vehicle’s aura as asecure, self-sufficient place, replicating the comforts of home, minimizingthe need for even visual interaction with what lies outside.

Since the seventeenth century, modern notions and practices of sover-eignty have established the role of the state as guaranteeing civil orderwithin its borders and protecting its citizens from the chaos that suppos-edly lies outside them. But as this system has slowly been broken down bythe flows and mobilities enabled by globalization processes of all kinds,the state has grown both less willing and less able to impose and secure apredictable and homogeneous social landscape. Instead, many of these func-


tions, especially within North America, have either disappeared or beenprivatized. Fragmented microcosms of control—‘gated communities’ be-ing but the most obvious example—have emerged to reproduce securityand order by reconstituting the division between those on the inside andthose on the outside.101 The HumVee, like its predecessor the Jeep, wasoriginally produced to protect the American empire from those who threat-ened it from afar. But in a world that now has, as Ford uncannily puts it,no boundaries, the misery, violence, and disorder that was once so success-fully contained to other places now appears in the First World. Large citiesin the U.S., notes Davis, “have become the domestic equivalent of an insol-vent, criminalized Third World country whose only road to redemption isa combination of militarization and privatization.”102 In this ‘climate,’marketing a civilian Hummer to a wealthy, urban, upper-class is but onefacet of the ongoing privatization and commodification of military, sur-veillance, and security technology. As this technology and its aesthetic be-come pervasive, it creates spiraling cycles of fear and consumption thatultimately serve only to reinforce each other. Criticizing ‘Fortress L.A.,’Davis explains how “the neo-military syntax of contemporary architec-ture insinuates violence and conjures imaginary dangers.”103 The designand marketing of SUVs as ‘armored cars for the battlefield’ is perfectlyadapted to the hostile semiotics of these kinds of urban topographies. “Alittle bit of security,” assures a Chevrolet Blazer campaign, “in an insecureworld.”104 Yet this is hardly a return to the primeval reptilian psychologythat Rapaille sees lying at the core of human nature. Instead, it involves avery particular response to a social environment (or more precisely to thecultural representation of that environment) that is deeply mediated by theideological structures of neo-liberalism and the consumptive practices ofconsumer capitalism.

Incessant celebrations of a luxurious interior defended by an armoredshell champion the mobile and aggressive privatization of public space inwhich those with wealth and resources can use and enjoy the commonswhile maintaining complete control over their own personal environment.In political terms, it both inspires and complements a neo-liberal subjectthat grounds its well-being, security, and happiness in access to personal-ized technologies of power that create enclosed spaces of work, leisure,and transportation that are relatively protected from the broader socialenvironment. Social space becomes something one moves through—a spec-tacular environment to be loved or feared, enjoyed or ignored—but rarely


(if ever) something to be created or changed by collective design. The faceone turns to the outside world is powerful and menacing in order to secureand protect the comfort and civility of the interior. A new television spotfor the Mitsubishi Endeavor, for example, opens with a rapid montage ofa black SUV racing through various urban scenes accompanied by an ag-gressive, hard rock soundtrack. As the camera passes through the tintedwindows, the music abruptly dissolves into the theme song for SpongeBobSquarepants, a cartoon playing on the Endeavor’s built-in DVD. Parentssmile contentedly at the happy children in the back seat. “It’s perfect forfamilies,” notes the narrator, “but who needs to know,” as the camerapasses back through the windshield and the rock soundtrack returns.105

Characteristically, Rapaille relies upon a crude biological conception ofpatriarchy to explain these sorts of divisions: “Men are for outside andwomen are for inside, that’s just life; to reproduce men have to take some-thing outside and the women take something inside.”106 The menacingexterior fits the (male) reptilian instinct for survival while the soft ‘womb-like’ interior matches the (female) reptilian instinct for reproduction. Again,nature is offered as both an explanation and a justification for the local-ized inscription of an ideological form of sovereignty, that is, a relation ofpower between self and other that has its origins in specific social andhistorical conditions.

Enacting nomadic allegories that pit individuals against a rugged, beau-tiful, and often dangerous natural environment glorifies the ‘survivalistchic’ of entrepreneurial self-reliance that constitutes one of the cornerstonesof neo-liberal ideology. “You are. It is.” announces an ad for the InfinitiFX 45, dissolving the borders between individual and car into a stylishcyborg identity by listing the attributes common to both: “renegade fear-less unexpected bold true spontaneous curious intriguing unwavering rarebrash provocative intuitive genuine daring uncommon irreverent brazendynamic dreamer.”107 Conversely, a companion ad articulates precisely whatthe FX 45 and its drivers are not: “sign up go with the flow join the com-mittee be one of us be one of the guys be a team player be a company manget on board keep in step follow the crowd run with the pack conformfollow the leader settle down settle in blend in get comfortable adjust weneed a consensus join the club fit in adapt.”108 Ads such as these interpel-late SUV drivers as neo-liberal subjects, summoning fantasies of autonomyand independence predicated upon the reduction and even elimination ofrelations with larger communities and social networks. Globalization, for


example, figures strongly in SUV advertising that uses stylized portraits ofexotic locations and cultures to hail potential buyers as savvy, cosmopoli-tan, and ready for anything, members of a transnational elite for whomworld travel has become a requisite element of both business and leisure.National boundaries wither before dreams of capitalist deterritorializationin which expanding networks of communication and transportation re-constitute the alien geographies and cultures of all people as privilegedsites for an experiential tourism that offers welcome relief (for a lucky few)from the boredom and routine of everyday life. “From the grand avenuesof Monaco to the deserts of Dubai, it’s never out of place” notes a recentLand Rover ad.109 Recent television spots position the Land Rover in abustling Asian market, being ferried across a South American river on aprimitive wooden raft, and racing down sand dunes past appreciativeBedouin nomads. As these narratives of rugged individualism unfold inmagazines, newspapers, film and television screens, there is little place fornotions of the public good or recognition of the cooperative social rela-tions that actually make life possible. Instead, self-sufficiency and tough-ness take center stage as the celebrated virtues of human existence. Andnatural signifiers are the privileged cultural strategy in this regard, regu-larly pressed into service to reframe exile from a shrinking public com-mons and the accompanying retreat into the safety of privatized enclavesnot merely as natural and inevitable, but as an exciting and invigoratingopportunity for adventure.

CONCLUSION

In recent years, critics have made considerable progress in raising con-sciousness about the contradictions between the images of nature used topromote SUVs and the devastating impact these vehicles actually have onthe natural environment. However, very little attention has been directedto the impact these advertising campaigns have upon how people under-stand and conceptualize the urban environment. Beyond nurturing uto-pian fantasies of a pristine frontier, natural imagery offers a powerful setof cultural tools through which one’s relationship with urban and subur-ban space can be envisaged as an encounter with a hostile and inscrutableotherness. In the first place, this ideological process offers a seductive (ifsimplistic) means of thinking about a world in which abstract structuresand processes increasingly govern all spheres of social life. More impor-tantly, though, it gives individuals the opportunity to actively embrace this


fate by inserting themselves into dreamworlds of nature in which the (tech-nological) cultivation of independence, adaptability, self-sufficiency, andtoughness is routinely romanticized and glorified. As armored nomads,one confronts urban alienation, crumbling infrastructure, and the erosionof community as the incarnation of a new ‘uncivilized’ frontier in whichone (seemingly) has little choice but to carve out mobile zones of comfortand security. De facto, using natural imagery to express these types ofnarratives marginalizes democratic political responses to these kinds ofsocial issues. Cities, argues Davis, have an incredible capacity to managethe relationship between human beings and their physical environment ininnovative and efficient ways. “Above all, they have the potential tocounterpose public affluence (great libraries, parks, museums, and so on)as a real alternative to privatized consumerism, and thus cut through theapparent contradiction between improving standards of living and accept-ing the limits imposed by ecosystems and finite natural resources.”110 Fro-zen into a second nature, though, urban space loses this flexibility andradical potential: it becomes something to protect oneself against ratherthan something to participate within and actively construct.

Against the backdrop of a spectacular yet foreboding natural environ-ment, the revisioning of human social relations as fierce, competitive, andatavistic proceeds as a compelling and seductive exploration of the primaldepths of human nature. As city streets and suburban neighborhoods giveway to the rugged, epic, and timeless beauty of a wilderness untouched byhumanity, the social conventions and values of everyday life are similarlydisplaced. “Leave the city behind. Leave everything behind,” an InfinitiQX4 ad breathlessly intones.111 Again and again, we are invited to partakein the mythic fantasy of (re)discovering who we ‘really’ are by strippingaway the veneer of civilization. Fleeing the city in response to an ancient‘call of the wild,’ the journey from urban to natural space symbolicallyenacts an escape from ideology into the territory of the real, a ‘state ofnature’ in which we are called upon to confirm certain eternal truths aboutthe essence of human interaction. The tough, rugged individual—a seduc-tive combination of self-sufficiency, competitive acumen, and hard-headedrealism—appears not only as an idealized subject-position in which tomaximize one’s chances for fun and survival in the post-industrial land-scape of the ‘New World Order,’ but also as emblematic of a social Dar-winism championed by many as serving up certain indisputable if unpleasant‘facts’ about human nature. Yet if, as I have argued, nature does not dis-


place the social so much as provide a metaphor through which reified so-cial relations may be at once affirmed and denied, then a similar logic is atwork in the vision of subjectivity offered by SUV advertising. The retreatto the wild enacts an intensely ideological vision of social reality in whichthe alienation, boredom, and fear produced by capitalist urban space canbe both expressed and resolved in a mystified form, sanctifying the prin-ciples of privatized, individualistic consumption as the only possible re-sponse we can imagine to contemporary crises in our social environment.Attending to the manipulative use of natural imagery to promote an eco-logically disastrous form of technology has been and remains a pressingtask. Equally important, though, is an investigation into how the promo-tional images of nature function as a cultural strategy for (mis)understandingthe petrified urban environments of postmodern capital. For a simplisticdivision between a pure, real nature on the one hand, and a decadent, arti-ficial city on the other—a semiotic tactic mobilized in both the glorificationand the demonization of the SUV—lays the conceptual and affective foun-dations for embracing a frontier individualism that fits perfectly into theweltanschaung of neoliberal politics, an individualism that makes it virtu-ally impossible to assemble the democratic inertia necessary to constructnew urban imaginaries along the lines suggested by critics like Davis.

NOTES

I would like to thank Adrienne Cossom and Christine Harold for their helpfulcomments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am grateful to the librarians at theMetro Toronto Reference Library for providing valuable assistance in my re-view of print advertising in various magazines. Finally, I would like to ac-knowledge the generous support provided by the Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearch Council of Canada.

1. For this study, print advertisements were systematically gathered from severalpublications: Canadian Geographic (January 1990 to August 2003); Gentle-men’s Quarterly (January 1998 to August 2003); Wired (October 1999 toAugust 2003); Motor Trend (every March, November and December between1990 and 1996; every March, October and November between 1997 and 1999;January, February, April, March, October, November and December 2000;March, April, October and November 2001; every issue between January 2002and August 2003) and Maclean’s (every issue in March and November be-tween 1998 and 2001; every issue between January 2002 and August 2003).This yielded a collection of 583 original ads (i.e., this figure does not includethe substantive duplication of ads across periodicals). Television ads were gath-ered from a periodic survey of Canadian network and cable television between


2001 and 2003, as well as a 2001 review of the ads contained in Adcritic.com(which has been subsequently closed to the public), producing roughly 100original television spots. Instead of using traditional methods of qualitativeresearch to code and categorize these ads, I adopt a more flexible hermeneuticapproach that explores the core themes which emerge when they are analyzedas a more or less coherent ‘promotional field’ around the SUV.

2. Cited in James Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), p.139.

3. Wernick, Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expres-sion (Newbury Park: Sage 1991), pp. 77–79.

4. Martin Green, “Some Versions of the Pastoral: Myth in Advertising; Advertis-ing as Myth,” Advertising and Culture: Theoretical Perspectives, Ed. MaryCross (Westport: Prager, 1996).

5. See the discussion in Keith Bradsher, High and Mighty: SUVs—The World’sMost Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), ch. 4.

6. Ad from Canadian Geographic, August 1990.7. Ad from Canadian Geographic, July 1998.8. Ford press release, 19 August 1999. From http://media.ford.com/, accessed on

30 September 2003.9. See http://media.ford.com/ for an archived version of the ad in addition to a

press release describing the associated campaign.10. Jeff Green, “Ford Dealers Take ‘Outfitters’ to Next Level, via Sponsorships

Freebies,” Brandweek 41 (3 January 2000), p. 9.11. Ford press release, 2 April 2001. Accessed on http://media.ford.com, 30 Sep-

tember 2003.12. Ford Press Release, 23 July 2001. Accessed on http://media.ford.com website,

30 September 2003.13. Ad from Motor Trend, December 1996.14. Jean Halliday, “Of Hummers and Zen: ‘Rugged Individualists’ are Target of

Campaign for GM Luxury SUV,” Advertising Age 72.32 (6 August 2001), p. 29.15. Ad from Wired, October 2001.16. Ad from Motor Trend, October 1998.17. Robin Andersen, “Road to Ruin: the Cultural Mythology of SUVs,” Critical

Studies in Media Commercialism, Eds. Robin Andersen and Lance Strate (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 160.

18. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 112.19. “Endeavor joins glut of SUVs,” Advertising Age 74.10 (10 March 2003), p. 6.20. Keith Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 41; Anil Ananthaswamy, “Crunch Time

for the SUV,” New Scientist (8 March 2003) 177.2385, p. 12.21. Michael Flynn, Director of the University of Michigan Office for the Study of

Automotive Transportation, cited in John Cloud et al., “Why the SUV is all theRage,” Time (24 February 2003) 161.8, p. 40.


22. Peter Brieger, “Porsche, Luxury Peers Flood into SUV Market: New modelsMaking Debut Next Week,” National Post (4 January 2002); “Endeavor JoinsGlut of SUVs,” Advertising Age (10 March 2003) 74.10, p. 6.

23. From 50,000 units in 1997, luxury SUV sales increased by six fold in 2002 to300,000 and this figure could double by 2005. See “Endeavor Joins Glut ofSUVs,” Advertising Age 74.10 (10 March 2003), p. 6.

24. See Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, Sign Wars: The Cluttered Land-scape of Advertising (New York: Guildord Press, 1996).

25. Ad from Motor Trend, January 2002.26. Ad from Gentlemen’s Quarterly, August 2000.27. Cited in Bill Dunlap, “Going For A Drive,” Shoot 42.37 (14 September 2001),

p. 19.28. Ad from Motor Trend, November 1995.29. Ad from Gentlemen’s Quarterly, April 1998.30. Ad from Canadian Geographic, September 1998.31. Ad from Maclean’s, 12 September 2002.32. Ad from Maclean’s, 25 November 2002.33. Personal ad capture. Created by Saatchi and Saatchi, Los Angeles, for Toyota.34. Personal ad capture. Created by Publicis Groupe’s Publicis and Hal Riney for

General Motors.35. Personal ad capture. Created by TBWA/Chiat Day.36. Ann-Christine Diaz, “How’d they do that spot?” Creativity 10.6 (July/August

2002), p. 51.37. Ad from http://www.cadillac.com/cadillacjsp/models/video.jsp?model=escalade.

Viewed on 1 October 2003.38. Ad from Motor Trend, March 2003.39. “Nissan-pathfinder-lion-chase” from Adcritic.com. Produced by TBWA/Chiat

Day, Toronto.40. Cited by Keith Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 111.41. Cited by Keith Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 127.42. Jerry Edgerton, “I Want My SUV,” Money 28.10 (October 1999).43. Cited by Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 99.44. Cited by Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. xix.45. Ad from Maclean’s, 23 September 2002.46. Ad from Wired, December 2002.47. Ad from Gentlemen’s Quarterly, July 2003.48. Ad from Gentlemen’s Quarterly, January 1999.49. Ad from Motor Trend, March 2002.50. Ad from Motor Trend, March 1998.51. Ad from Maclean’s, 9 March 1998.52. Ad from Motor Trend, October 1997.53. Ad from Motor Trend, December 2001.54. Ad from Motor Trend, September 2002.


55. Ad from Globe and Mail, 2 December 2003.56. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 170.57. Given the heightened susceptibility of SUVs to rollovers—the type of accident

with the highest proportion of fatalities—this ‘feeling’ of security is ultimatelyillusory.

58. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 198.59. Danny Hakim, “Big and Fancy, More Pickups Displace Cars,” New York

Times.com (31 July 2003). Accessed on 6 October 2003.60. Not surprisingly, the Sierra Club’s latest target is the Hummer. See www.

hummerdinger.com.61. See www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org. On this website, the Evangelical Environ-

mental Network estimates that its campaign has been featured prominently inover 4,000 media stories.

62. See www.detroitproject.com.63. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Moder-

nity, 1920–1940, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 226.64. The ‘When You Get It, You Get It’ campaign was produced by Temerlin McClain,

Dallas. See http://www.autointell-news.com/News-2002/June-2002/June-2002-1/June-05-02-p4.htm. Viewed October 3, 2003.

65. For a cogent analysis of this tendency in social criticism based upon an ecologi-cal or conservationist sensibility, see Andrew Ross, The Chicago GangsterTheory of Life: Nature’s Debt to Society (New York: Verso, 1994).

66. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 95.67. Cited in Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 97.68. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 101.69. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 101.70. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 426.71. See, for example, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which David Brooks

(falsely) argues that the main charge against SUVs boils down to the claim thattheir drivers are “moral savages.” Brooks goes on to criticize the attack onSUVs as “a classic geek assault on jock culture.” See David Brooks, “The Scar-let SUV,” Wall Street Journal (21 January 2003), p. A18. While Brooks clearlymisrepresents the nature of Bradsher’s critique, the latter’s discussion of the‘innate’ characteristics of SUV drivers enables these kinds of simplistic yet highlyeffective forms of rebuttal.

72. Ad from Motor Trend, March 1995.73. Ad from Motor Trend, November 1998.74. Daniel Wattenberg, “Humvee!,” Forbes 153.10 (9 May 1994), p. 116.75. Brian O’Reilly and Nathan Muhrvold, “What in the World is That Thing?

Why it’s a Hummer,” Fortune 132.7 (October 1995), p. 146.76. Cited in Benjamin, “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire,” Selected

Writings: Volume 4: 1938–1940, Eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings,


Trans. Edmund Jephcott and Others (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press, 2003), p. 22.

77. For a more thorough exploration of these ideas in the context of critical theory,see my Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultural Studies (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 2004), especially chapter two.

78. Karl Marx, “Alienated Labour,” Karl Marx: Early Writings, Trans. and Ed.T.B. Bottomore (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 122–23.

79. Cited by Michael Jennings in Dialectical Images: Walter Benjamin’s Theory ofLiterary Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 75.

80. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philo-sophical Fragments, Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Trans. Edmund Jephcott(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 89.

81. Ad from Maclean’s, 5 March 2001.82. Ad from Canadian Geographic, September 1996.83. Personal ad capture. Created by J. Walter Thompson for Ford Motor Com-

pany.84. Leigh Glover, “Driving Under the Influence: The Nature of Selling Sport Utility

Vehicles,” Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 20.5 (October 2000), p.364.

85. In a 1999 marketing survey of teenagers, the Hummer was the most popularautomotive brand among both boys and girls. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p.367.

86. Ad from Wired, November 2002.87. Danny Hakim, “Detroit’s Hottest Item Is Its Biggest Gas Guzzler,” New York

Times (2 November 2002), p. C1.88. Jim Kenzie, “The Baddest 4x4 Behaves in Polite Company,” Toronto Star (26

November 1994), p. L9.89. Neil Dunlop, “Nothing Ho-hum about a Hummer: King of the Road,” Na-

tional Post (20 January 2001), p. E8.90. Cited in Brian O’Reilly et al., “What in the World is That Thing?”91. Hakim, “Detroit’s Hottest Item Is Its Biggest Gas Guzzler.”92. Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

(New York: Vintage Books, 1998), p. 267.93. Ad from Wired, February 2003.94. Ad from Canadian Geographic, September 1999.95. Ad from Canadian Business, 25 November 2002.96. Ad from Canadian Geographic, September 2000.97. Mimi Sheller and John Urry, “The City and the Car,” International Journal of

Urban and Regional Research 24.4 (December 2000), pp. 752–754.98. Danny Hakim, “Big and Fancy, More Pickups Displace Cars.”99. Cited in Peter Freund and George Martin, The Ecology of the Automobile

(Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1993), p. 107.


100. Ad from Motor Trend, December 2001.101. For an interesting discussion of these phenomena, see Elizabeth Seaton, “The

Commodification of Fear,” Topia 5 (2001).102. Mike Davis, Dead Cities and Other Tales (New York: The New Press, 2002),

p. 245.103. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New

York: Verso, 1990), p. 226.104. Ad from Canadian Geographic, July 1997.105. Personal ad capture. Created by Deutsch LA for Mitsubishi Motors North

America.106. Bradsher, High and Mighty, p. 100.107. Ad from Gentlemen’s Quarterly, April 2003.108. Ad from Motor Trend, May 2003.109. Ad from Maclean’s, 10 June 2002.110. Davis, Cities and Other Tales, p. 101.111. Personal ad capture. Created by TBWA/Chiat Day for Nissan.

'You Belong Outside'- Advertising, Nature, And the SUV

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