11Story

22 January 2010

Boxed model

 

Boxed model ensemble of Basil Fawlty about to strike his car with the branch of a tree. Corgi Classics / Corgi USA. China, 2005 Painted metal, plastic, rubber; packaging. 20.5 x 14.5 x 5.7 cm. ©2005 Corgi Classics Limited Private lender

As Alfred Gell recognised (read here the accompanying extract from his book Art and Agency [1998] at the back of the display case), there is nothing unusual about people treating their cars as if they were persons. In his terms, this ‘vehicular animism’ is just one example of attributing agency to objects more generally. In modernist societies, most animistic behaviour is not quite respectable, above all when practised by one quintessential modernist (a white, middle-class, middle-aged man) on another (a car). In Fawlty Towers, the BBC TV comedy series starring John Cleese as incompetent hotel manager Basil Fawlty, one episode has become famous for a scene in which, after it ‘dies on him’, Basil thrashes his car with a tree-branch.

 
 
 

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