The United States seriously needs to reconsider its relationship with the automobile. While the car has been a revolutionary invention which has changed personal transportation greatly, it has also been detrimental to American city development. As such, we need to begin to explore alternatives to the car, especially as the topic of climate change becomes ever prominent. 

One of the many reasons as to why the United States needs to reconsider and reshape its relationship with the car is the fact that in most cities across the country, besides probably New York or D.C., you need a car in order to commute or get just about anywhere. The problems here are obvious. For one, it creates more traffic. When you require everyone to have a car to get anywhere, it results in needless traffic, which is terrible especially for literally everyone. Imagine how much of that could be alleviated by getting some people out of cars and onto buses or trains? That way the people who either need to drive or want to drive for their own enjoyment can do so without being bogged down by people that would have no business being in a car in any other developed nation. Another problem with this is that it contradicts the fundamental American ideology of freedom. True freedom should mean that everyone has the liberty to pick whichever means of transportation is best for them, with each of them being equally viable. But when you make your cities car dependent, you force people into your way of doing things, which just isn’t very free. 

A core argument which I wanted to convey was that even for people who are enthusiastic about cars and enjoy driving, there is nothing fun about being forced to commute, especially in rush hour traffic, in your car, and one of the ways I went about demonstrating my argument was through the use of a meme involving the television show Breaking Bad (2008-2013). More specifically, I selected a scene from Season 4 Episode 11 of the show, where the main character, Walter White, finds himself in a crawlspace in his home, and screams out loudly. I captioned the video “so-called ‘car enthusiasts’ when they’re forced to spend hours with their car in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic.” The context of the scene of the show makes the meme a little easier to understand. In the show, Walter, who is a cancer patient turned meth cook, fears for the life and wellbeing of himself and his family, following a threat made by Gus Fring to kill them should Walter continue to interfere with his business. As such, Walter plans to use the money he has made through making meth to disappear with him and his family. When he goes to the crawl space in his home where he stashed the money, he is unable to locate it. Following a confrontation with his wife, Skyler, he discovers that she gave the money to her employer, Ted Beneke, in order to help pay off his company’s debts. It is at this point when Walter White, in a moment of sheer desperation and fear, lets out an agonizing scream.

I selected this scene to use for a meme because 1) I thought it would be kind of funny and 2) the agony and desperation in Bryan Cranston’s performance as Walter White conveys the frustration many people might feel when they’re driving. At this moment, Walter truly fears for the safety of him and his family, and that kind of fear and desperation can be hyperbolically likened to the high level of frustration and agony that could be associated with sitting in traffic. The use of the phrase “bumper-to-bumper” demonstrates that I am referring to a dense urban environment, and gives the audience an idea of the type of traffic scenarios one might be faced with. The use of the phrase “car enthusiasts” in quotation marks serves as a bit of sarcasm – essentially, I am poking fun at the situation, and jokingly implying that a true car enthusiast would be glad to spend any amount of time in their car. However, the reality is that this is not the case, and that a vast majority of people, both in and out of the car community, hate being forced to sit in traffic. I decided to combine some tongue-in-cheek humor with a clip from Breaking Bad with the intent of conveying just how frustrating American city design can be – while also getting people to think a little more. I aimed to highlight how nobody, even actual car enthusiasts, likes being forced to sit in traffic to get to work or run errands. In doing so, I wanted to get the audience to consider how alternatives, such as public transit, could help alleviate these issues and these frustrations for all of us. 

As far as my op-ed is concerned, one of the key strategies which I used was pathos mixed with some logos. For instance, I tried to appeal to the emotions of those who might be opposed to public transit, or those who might be pro-car dependency. I did this by suggesting that it is “un-American” to force everyone into cars. The use of strong language is an example of pathos, because it gets people who might think car ownership is the definition of freedom to kind of do a double-take. A lot of people who are advocates of private means of transportation often cite the idea that because you are in control of your own personal vehicle, you can do whatever you want and go wherever you want. However, my use of language serves to directly contradict that. Despite this, I ultimately support it with logic and reason by suggesting that true freedom means everybody gets to pick whatever form of transportation they want, and people aren’t forced into cars if they do not want to be. As a whole, I tried to use extremely direct and blunt language with my op-ed, using words such as “force” to really drive home the idea that people who drive cars are not doing so because they legitimately want to, but because it is the only viable option. 

The above 3-second video is the multimodal element which I made for this assignment, and is the basis of my analysis in the text above.