|
January 1, 2009
In a post entitled Public art strategy at Iron Curtain Call we find this comment:
Like home ownership, the ownership of a car is held to be something like an inalienable human right in Australia. More than this, though, the car is a key mythological symbol in contemporary Australia. The road, even more so. This supremacy of the vehicle and highway recalls the situation in the US, except Australia has its own versions of this modernist frontier narrative. See Mad Max. Listen to The Triffids. Read Meaghan Morris. Skim Graeme Davison.
Davison says that the car is the car as an aspirational, freedom-giving object. He shows how the car led to the redesign of the spaces in which Melburnians live, undermining social intercourse by eroding the pedestrian orientation of residential and High streets in favour of car-managing curving streets and the plethora of drive-in services from service stations to shopping malls. He demonstrates how cars were mobilised in class conflict, aligning Labor with public transportation and the regulation of cars and drivers and Liberals with the car lobby, with its emphasis on the rights of the individual.
|
