RVs and Trailers

A few years I heard a great paper at an American Studies meeting. It's pathetic that I can't remember the name or the author or the paper. The paper was a genealogy of trailers, recreational vehicles, mobile homes. My recollection is that the term changed over time, as did what the RV signified.

Early in its history, the RV was marketed as a luxury item--and associated with luxury, with the freedom and leisure of the open road. Some of the campsites for RVs were quite grand, with elaborate fountains and playgrounds.

Over time, the RV becomes more of a middle class family vehicle, although it is still linked to leisure time. In some ways, this set of meanings for the RV persists--retirees, those who migrate south for the winters, those who choose the mobile life, having worked hard and earned it. But, this group, I think, is dwindling as another set of occupants increases.

More recently, the RV became associated with work, poverty, a kind of seediness, the fragility of life for the working poor (some see this trend already in the aftermath of the second world war as factories employed workers while housing development lagged behind). Trailer parks were less sites of leisure than they were people's permanent (impermanent) dwellings. As transience became a permanent state for the working (for low pay, when they could, sometimes off the books) poor, the trailer park carried the stigma associated with this state. It wasn't about leisure, it was about desperation, the best one could do under the circumstances--the freedom of the road isn't freedom when one has no choice but to migrate, no place to go but a trailer. The term "trailer trash" clicks on this connotation. The most recent film I can think of that visualizes it is "8 Mile." "Independence Day" also features a trailer park that signifies in a similar way, but it twists it by celebrating the mobility and ingenuity of its tenants--they don't sit around getting attacked by aliens, they move.

The turn toward the poor and working class makes clear something presupposed but unacknowledged in the earlier history of the RV--that it wasn't the consumer's primary residence or vehicle. These consumers belonged some place, they had a place to go, a permanent home. They were free because they had an anchor. Those with no other place but their vehicle were dangerous, like gypsies, not really anywhere. Mobile homes were not supposed to indicate immobility.

As the paper I heard specified, this is not the only signifying structure of the trailer--trailers featured heavily in Colin Powell's powerpoint presentation to the UN justifying preemptive war against Iraq. He showed a slide of a satellite photograph of what were allegedly mobile chemical weapons laboratories. I think that these days the first association with trailers most of us have is FEMA and hurricane Katrina. And, the tragedy of the inadequate federal response to the crisis continues to be signified by the permanence of impermanence. The longer people have no choice but to live in the FEMA trailers--and there have been myriad complaints about the parks, their location, and the trailers themselves--the greater the governmental and political failure.

I bring up this little history of trailers because after the fascinating presentation (much richer in historical detail than this post), someone in the audience asks, "how would class complicate your analysis?" I wonder if the questioner had come in late or was just stupid. How could she not have seen that the entire analysis was about the ways that class impacts signification and the way changes in signification are markers of class conflict? I fear that the question was indicative of the distortion of discussions of class in a US academy impacted by identity politics. It was as if the questioner worried that a genealogy of the changing signifying economy of the trailer somehow insulted working class people. Class was an identity category to be respected, a sociological descriptor of a group. It did not indicate a political antagonism in any strong sense. Actually, if the question had been about race, that would have been more interesting. I would have liked to have learned about the racial composition of trailer parks over time. Have trailers been purchased primarily by white people (because of income)? Or, is it possible that segregated vacation spots made trailers a likely purchase among black middle class families?

Comments

[Bob Allen]

I lived in trailer parks both as a kid and an adult, which probably unconsciously enhanced my sense of class--but now I see small, dilapidated trailer parks with Hispanic occupants, and there is one where newer trailers are marketed specifically to Hispanics by my local bank, "even if you have bad credit, you can own your OWN HOME!". Of course this plays into the racial battle under the surface, as whites resent the preferential credit offers. I am interested in who owns these "parks"- and what's in a name ? Not a "park" really , but a "place to park", denoting an impermanence. And I've known people who become more aggressively ambitious in their worklives, to "escape" the trailer park...

[Jodi]

I like your point about regarding 'park' as meaning a 'place to park;' there is an ambiguity between recreation and impermanence, recreation is a temporary respite from work, not a permanent condition; a place to park suggests temporary occupancy, that one will leave, yet it also has less of an association with play, re-creation, rejuvenation and more with concrete, asphalt, the non-living.

[NotOften]

I remember being in South Dakota as a kid in the midst of a giant Airstream conference or convention. It felt like these strange metallic alien vehicles were invading the highways, campgrounds, and tourist spots (such as Reptile Gardens, I think). They were everywhere. I thought it was kind of strange (and still do) that people come together around the type of camper they use.

Sorry for the non-substantive comment. I think your analysis of class and camping is spot on, and is very seasonal. Where I am presently, Alberta Canada, I read it is nearly impossible to find camping spots near the cities because of high commodity and fuel prices! Not to mention the exorbitant rent hikes!! Because people have less 'free' cash, they still try to get away, but just not as far as usual. My partner and I have been trying to find ways to 'travel' within the city because of money constraints this year.

[Craig]

I recall reading something in the newspapers a few years back on RVs and Wal-Mart - the parking lots at Wal-Mart are so huge that roaming bands of RVers would spend the night (after hours, of course) in Wal-Mart parking lots. The moral of the story was that Wal-Mart banned RVs from their parking lots.

Another use of the RV is that mid-sized bands touring large clubs will often use a bus (like a greyhound) or an RV to get around North America. It's halfway between a cargo van and an airplane, I guess.

There's a TV show in Canada called "Trailer Park Boys" - essentially about the white trash, trailer park stereotype and their dream of making "Freedom 35" from the greatest drug deal of all time.

[patrick j. mullins]

There's an old Pat Metheny LP called Airstream, which has a cover much like this photo.