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Thursday, June 15, 2006

The Automobile

Posted by on June 15 at 14:50 PM

This is the world of cars:

31.png

In 2002 there were 590 million cars in the world. That is one for every ten people: 140 million cars in the United States, 55 million in Japan. This contrasts with just nine million cars in China and 6 million in India.

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yes, but the US and Japan are wealthy nations, while china and india are destitute. it's not entirely that they don't want them, it's that people can't afford cars in india and china

This makes me start to think about the role of the car in Bollywood films. Convertibles are popular for scenes in which the playboy lover drives along singing about love but about no lover in particular. Of course once romance blooms the song will be reprised on foot. Police drive cars quite a bit. So do those they chase. Limousines often figure in a standard set-piece: daddy tells his beti that she will marry Vijay as they are pulling up to a party (of course she loves Raj).
Only the first and last instance use the car as space, and when they do it's a space that is somehow sinister or immature. More importantly it's a space of frustrated desire, of the playboy's desire for freedom and the father's desire for control.
In Bollywood, when real romance or mature emotions need a vehicular space, it's always on or in a train.
This is the reverse of the vehicular semiotic in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, where the romantic but immature and ultimately untenable love of Act One culminates in the greatest of all cinematic train departures, while the culmination of the realistic but prosaic love of Act Two cluminates in a gas station and sedan.

China will have more cars than the US in a decade unless their economic bubble bursts.

where did that map come from?

I really shouldn't be spending this much time trying to think of an acceptable cartogram pun.

FARNF Wrote:
"China will have more cars than the US in a decade unless their economic bubble bursts."

Correct, FARNF. Something for everyone
to ponder.....

--Jensen

I find it funny how bloated Japan is.

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