Content

You can see an interactive copy of this map on Google Maps, using this link: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1GtnL74Q87TfvFJ6q1reMpzW4vhsgze0&usp=sharing

The beginning

• The initial shots focus on
  • partial views of cars (the back of the car, the license plates, rear corner shots of the cars)
    • prominence of the vehicles over the humans
  • the asphalt, dirt roads or the ground (soil, leaves)
  • legs, shoes, or headless body shots
  • mountain ranges in the background, or roads in the woods, no urban landscapes, no agricultural land
• The outcome is an emphasis on the theme of disaggregation, loss of organized sense, constant danger (loss of safety)
• The use of music for amplification or anticipation of dramatic effects

Automobility

• Auto-mobility as a threat to social cohesion
• Vehicle users may be tempted to escape from the normative contexts of community and family
  • emphasis on aerial or roadside surveillance and social control, institutional limitation of freedom
  • self-imposed social models make average individuals captive to their roles and routines
  • going to Mexicali (instead of Arizona), San Felipe
    • a “detour”
    • no subtitles for lines in Spanish
    • representation of rural Mexico as a completely premodern society
• The road, the moving vehicle as a alternative places
• The speeding car as a form of seclusion and mobile social disruption
  • escape (details discussed while in the car)
    • first time away from wife and kids, after the war (WWII or Korean War?)
    • not having much fun
  • falling into a trap
  • submissive average citizens, law-abiding and now submitting to the weapon held by the hitchhiker
• The car as a symbolic coffin

From the war to the restrictions of civil society

• Being equipped for social war (competition inside society, not outside of the rules of social games)
  • Roy and Gilbert have lost their natural instincts and skills
  • tamed by their constant, voluntary conformity to social norms
• The role of technology (the gun, the car, the radio) in a society momentarily descending into chaos
• Film noir as a parable
  • a crime drama as well
• Diabolical presence in the back (in the back of our mind), emerging from the darkness

Angles of the shots