This movie is so packed with classist ideology and logical fallacies that it’s a wonder our parents ever allowed us to watch it. I mean, this is what’s wrong with today’s America — we’re spoon-feeding our children nonsense when we should be teaching them about real-life problems and politics. Thanks, Obama.
From the very beginning, the premise is laughable. A world of sentient cars? I mean, come on. It’s so ridiculous that I can’t even cite any peer-reviewed sources proving its falsehood, because everyone already knows it: Cars aren’t sentient, and they don’t speak English.
Furthermore — if we suspend reality and assume that these cars are sentient — are new cars born? Manufactured?
If the former, I only have one question: how? And if they do have some sort of organ or appendage with which to procreate, why aren’t they wearing any clothes? If it’s simply that they hide these parts on the bottom of their chassis, then was the King flashing everyone while he flipped through the air in the final race?
If they’re manufactured, who works in the factories? Are cars assembling their brethren? Is there car child labor? At what point do they gain sentience? These are the questions the writers don’t want you to ask.
Don’t even get me started on the classist ideologies. Just because Mater is a rusty tow truck, he has to have a country hick accent. While all the other cars have personal names, Mack is called such because it’s his brand. Bessie, the tar machine, is inexplicably not sentient. At every pass, blue-collar workers and their culture are slighted in this film.
Then there’s the snowball questions — the existence of an American flag in the movie suggests that the U.S. exists in the “Cars” universe. So, what, now I’m supposed to believe there was an Abraham Lincoln Towncar that abolished car slavery? A PocaHondas who served as a liaison between Indigenous cars and English car settlers? A Susan BMW Anthony that fought for the women cars’ suffragist movement, all while never using her turn signals? Be so real.
A PSA: Do not allow your children to watch “Cars,” lest you want them to internalize the preposterous ideals purported in the film and grow up believing in nude, sentient, English-speaking automobiles.
Charis Adkins is an English senior and opinion editor for The Battalion.
