Swoosh! There It Is. What's Up with Car Designs?

I wish I had patented the car swoosh.  It is everywhere these days.

"Swoosh" is the name of Nike's logo, perhaps the most successful logo in advertising history.  The sign became so closely associated with the company, its products, and the ideals it wanted to associate with its products that in some Nike advertising campaigns there was no need to include the company's name.

The swoosh said it all.

Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh is a book by Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson that discusses the evolution of Nike's global marketing strategies.  According to that book, the swoosh's creator was a Portland State University art student who was paid $35 for her design, which the company's founder was not enthusiastic about.  He wanted something more closely resembling the stripes on the sides of shoes from Puma and Adidas.

Goldman and Papson state the swoosh was initially "an empty vessel -- a visual marker that lacked any intrinsic meaning" (17).  The swoosh's meanings came only through its repeated use in Nike messages, where it became associated with the ideals of "athletic excellence, a spirit of determination, hip authenticity, and playful self-awareness (1).

I do not know that they are right about the swoosh not having an intrinsic meaning.  First, can any sign have intrinsic meaning?  The meanings for all signs seem created by consensus, convention, and relationship to other signs.  Second, I think the swoosh conveyed some meaning before it was deployed in Nike ad campaigns -- otherwise, why would Carolyn Davidson have created it?  Nike founder Phil Knight told her that he wanted something to suggest "movement" and "speed,"  so she had some meanings in her mind when she created the swoosh.

Hyundai Elantra

One possible way the swoosh suggests movement and speed could be this: It echoes the wings on the shoes and/or hat of Mercury, the speedy messenger of the Olympian gods.

Also, the swoosh looks like a check mark, which is a sign of approval, fulfillment, accomplishment, or success.  And Nike is the Greek goddess of victory.

I think we can see echoes (conscious or not) of the swoosh in the recent designs of many cars -- cars from different classes and from different manufacturers.  Somehow the inverted swoosh found its way into the automotive world's zeitgeist.

Mercedes Benz CLC

Look at new cars and you can see an inverted swoosh in the panels, starting at the front wheel and extending toward the rear wheel.  When I drive on the freeways of Los Angeles, I see them everywhere on all kinds of cars -- Toyota Pruis, Mercedes Benz CLC, Ford Escape, Hyundai Elantra.  The list is long, and I don't have room to show all of the design variations here.

Ford Escape

Since the swoosh is inverted, it no longer resembles a check mark, so I think those associations are not at work when one views (or reads) the automotive designs.  But I think the auto swoosh does suggest movement and speed.  It resembles the side view of an airplane wing, suggesting flight and successful movement.  Also, think of images from cars in wind tunnels and how the smoke makes visible the movement of air over the car body.

Toyota Prius

The auto swoosh seems to be making visible the otherwise invisible movement of air over the car.  The auto designer would also want to suggest that air movement is smooth and free of turbulence, aiding the speed of the car.

But when you are driving the car you cannot see the auto swoosh.  So how does it work to please the driver?  First, the driver was a buyer.  So the auto swoosh was seen on the road or in ads, and it gave the potential buyer positive associations about the car.  Second, the auto swoosh suggests the smooth movement of air even when the car is parked.  The driver can be reassured of the quality of the car when it rests outside of his/her home or work.

Air foil

Just as the Nike swoosh would have created positive associations of speed, movement, and success for its wearer (even though the swoosh is not very visible when you are wearing the shoe), so too the auto swoosh creates positive associations for the car's owner.

I think the auto swoosh can be decoded in this manner, and I have no larger point to make.  I do not think there are hidden contradictions within this sign -- in semiotics we frequently look for such contradictions.  But I do think it is interesting that so many different auto designers came up with this same decorative element.

I call it decorative because I do not see much aerodynamic benefit from this element on the panels (but then I am not an engineer).  In theory, all cars should look exactly alike, in that there should be one ideal aerodynamic design.  And there was a time when cars were all starting to look alike.  Compare images of a Ford Taurus, a Toyota Camry, and a Honda Civic from 1995, for example.  They all resembled each other, I believe, because their designers were all in pursuit of the same thing: aerodynamic design to improve gas mileage.

Since then, advances in engine and transmission technologies have given much larger fuel efficiencies than were being achieved with body shapes.  So the designers became free to give autos more stylish flare.  Interesting that so many have chosen the same flourish.

Jack Sparrow and Erin Brockovich Fight the Power

Capt. Jack Sparrow, the
world's favorite underdog

Americans love to root for the underdog.  Despite living in the most powerful nation in the world, many people in the United States still identify most with the nation's humble beginnings -- an upstart set of colonies that managed to defeat Great Britain, which at that time was the most powerful nation in the world.

In this sense, the nation may not be much different from people who typically look to their past, especially their childhood, to understand what most shaped their adult personalities.  Sometimes they do this and ignore their more recent influences.

But underdogs need top dogs, and whom people choose as their top dog, as their bully, as their oppressive force, can possibly tell us something about the audience's values.

Lord Cutler Beckett

This came to mind recently when I watched the second and third installments of The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise on DVD in preparation for seeing the latest installment, On Stranger Tides, in the theater.  Although the British Empire is presented as an oppressive force in Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, powerful and global in its reach, the main top dog, the main villain, is the East India Trading Co., depicted as also powerful and global.  It is trying to destroy pirates around the world because they are bad for business.  Through its chairman, Lord Cutler Beckett (played by Tom Hollander), the East India Trading Co. is represented as greedy, oppressive, arrogant, deceitful, and not much fun.

Toward the end of the third film, Cutler Beckett is killed.  As his flagship is destroyed, he falls into the water.  A ghostly shot captures him sinking into the ocean enveloped in the flag of the East India Tea Co.  The image suggests that he has been brought down by his own plans, his own overreaching and conniving.  The image also suggests that the power of the evil corporation has been destroyed, at least temporarily.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

I thought it was interesting that he sinks in a corporate flag and not a national flag.  That makes sense in that Captain Jack Sparrow is not an American, and the film is set in a time before the American Revolution.  It also makes sense in that the film is intended for a global audience, and everyone around the world does not identify with the British as potential antagonists.  Great Britain is the stern father figure in America's rebellious childhood.  The rest of the world, not so much.

However, interpreting this choice of top dog from an American perspective, we can see it fits with a larger pattern.  Frequently the bad guy/top dog in popular films have been signifiers of corporate excess.

In Aliens, for instance, the company is more concerned about the financial possibilities of the chest-splitting monster than it is about the safety of its employees. 

In Avatar, it is a corporation and not a nation that seeks to destroy the Na'vi's Hometree in order to reach the mineral deposits beneath it.

Similarly, to name just a few films, corporations are the bad guys in Norma Rae, Silkwood, Erin Brockovich, The Insider, and Michael Clayton.

I like to look at the stories we tell as similar to dreams.  Like dreams, stories can provide clues to our deepest desires and fears.  But whereas dreams can provide insight into an individual, popular stories can provide insight into the society that enjoys them, into what we could call a collective unconscious.  This is especially true when we find many stories fitting into particular patterns.

Arthur Asa Berger says something similar to this in his book Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics: "Dreams, Freud tells us, are functional: they have a meaning and they do something for the dreamer.  In the same light, our collective dreams (or is it daydreams) have a meaning and provide people with a number of gratifications" (96).

Sally Field in Norma Rae

In the case of films about corporate bad guys, we could say the "gratification" we get from them is an expression of our anxiety about corporate influence in our lives.  But I find it puzzling that this anxiety gets little expression in our real lives.  That is, as a society we seem to enjoy films about corporate bad guys,  yet we have a political system that seems to cater to corporations.

Someone might say this is a case of the American people accepting fantasies over reality.  Instead of acting effectively upon the anxieties depicted in the films, audiences have their anxieties alleviated in the dark and leave the political system unchanged.

However, other Hollywood bad guys represent real-world anxieties, and these other anxieties do find expression in real-world actions.  At election time, not much traction is gained by discussing the need to counter corporate greed or exploitation.  Yet much traction is found in discussing the threat of foreign nations or causes; Nazis, Russians, Japanese, and Islamic terrorists have all taken their turns as Hollywood bad guys.  Electoral points are scored by talking about the threat of crime; many, many Hollywood bad guys are criminals of the more common type, and often times they are represented by ethnic minorities (in that way they are twofer bad guys -- two anxieties in one villain). 

I have no explanation for this particular disconnect between the stories we enjoy and the world we live in.  I will keep looking.

Note: This was originally published with the title "Arg. America Be a Confusing Nation."