It’s no secret that I have opinions when it comes to Pixar’s wildly popular Cars franchise – complex, disturbing theories, in fact – and while I haven’t really thought about it in a while, it all came flooding back to me as a result of an innocuous comment in our Slack channel — a comment about an endearingly adorable small-ish Winnebago camper we wrote about on this very site last month. That comment, which had to do with adorable campers and how they seem like they should be in Pixar movies, reminded me that Pixar’s Cars universe is not just terrifying when scrutinized, but that the movies tease the horror beneath it all with a cruel, playful abandon, and the presence of RVs and Motorhomes and Campers feels like a pretty big tease. Let’s get into it.
First, here’s the exchange that started it all:
I mean, Laurence is correct: It does look like a real-world cartoon, like something stylized for maximum anthropomorphic character. And, of course, I immediately thought of Pixar’s Cars movies, and thought about how many RVs and campers and motorhomes are in those movies, because there are really quite a few:
That’s just a few, and they’re not just background characters, either. Some havenames and lines of dialogue, and one who has made a career as a demolition derby racer, which I suppose is the Cars universe equivalent of, what professional wrestling, or maybe just GG Allin-style public self-mutilation?
Regardless of the career choices or personalities of the RVs and campers and motorhomes, the one thing we absolutely can say about them is that they exist in the Cars universe, and by that very fact, they bring up so many difficult questions.
What Happened To The Humans?
The only possible purpose for an RV is to be a mobile living space for human beings. That’s it. That is their entire reason to exist. There is absolutely no logical reason to build an RV or motorhome or camper unless you are using that considerable space and bulk inside to accommodate the needs of human beings, with beds and bathrooms and kitchens and all of the other equipment of mammalian life.
In the Cars universe, which has no human beings in it, what is the point of them? What is inside them? They have windows and doors; the one, Larry Camper, on the far left up there has that extension over the cab that houses a sleeping area, but for whom or what?
The absence of humanity has long been a lingering, looming presence casting a shadow over the whole series. As I wrote for Jalopnik way back when:
There’s no reason why this would happen unless the Cars universe is the same as ours, just free of human people. And it’s not as though humans never existed; if that was the case, why would the sentient cars have doors and windows and side rear-view mirrors? All those things are specifically designed for a human’s use from inside a car.
Plus, they use the same written human
Image: Pixar/JDT
language as we do. Such a written language would make no sense if you were a car. The letters are far to fussy and hard to write with tires and wheels. If cars developed their own written language, it would be some sort of skidmark-based glyph system, right?
Campers and Motorhomes and RVs are like the presence of door handles and mirrors and windows on the various cars in the Cars series, but writ much larger. They’re not just a hint that this world was somehow designed and built by and for humans, they’re a huge, obvious shout of that, ones so big and clear that I don’t think they can be just ignored.
RVs Clash With My Homunculus Theory
The theory I have arrived at to explain what may be happening I call the Homunculus Theory, and it essentially suggests that humanity has evolved into a sort of hybrid cybernetic organism with automobiles, merging the bodies of car and human into an unholy union:
In this theory, the near-vestigial human body is placed within a specially-designed automobile that becomes the human’s permanent carapace, a new physical body through which the human can perceive and interact with the world. There must be some sort of combined breeding/gestating/manufacturing facilities in the Cars universe that produces these combined human-automotive beings.
Now, even if we accept this theory to explain why all of the arts and culture and language and everything in the Cars universe is essentially human culture, this still does not really explain the existence of RVs. Why would new RVs be built at all? They were only ever needed to be mobile houses for humans – there’s no good reason such bulky and cumbersome bodies would be desirable for a sentient car.
There are sort of RV equivalents in the Cars universe; Lightning McQueen, the lead protagonist/racecar of the series, has a large truck named Mack he travels around in, and the trailer of that truck is essentially a camper for him, as you can see here:
UPDATE: A commenter mentioned this, so I checked back in the video. Look what happens at this time here, 1:27 in; a minivan passes with a mattress on its roof. WHO IS THE MATTRESS FOR? Why would a car need a mattress? They wouldn’t! They don’t! Mattresses are for human beings – does that minivan have a pet, feral human in captivity? What the hell is going on?
The problem is that the RVs seen are not large enough to accommodate a full-sized car, nor do they appear to have any doors that would be able to open wide enough to let a car drive inside. And even if they did, that car inside would be really crammed in there, and for what purpose? Also, it seems like it would be disturbing, since it’s essentially the equivalent of climbing into the abdomen of a larger human and having them walk around with you inside – nobody wants that!
I mean, I bet someone does, and the Autopian’s policy is No Kink Shaming, but still. It doesn’t really make any sense.
There’s a little panel on the side of one of the RVs, where you would find the black and graywater tank outlets of an RV in our world. Does that suggest that the RV has a blackwater tank? From a toilet on the inside? What would it be filled with? Do these motorhomes have plumbing inside? If so, why?
You can’t have an RV existing in your universe of living cars and never address the fact that they only exist and look and are built the way they are to allow for some unseen, never mentioned beings to live inside them. And then there are things like Cars-derived toys, which include these:
Look, it’s our pals from Cars towing teardrop campers — the kind used to, you know, sleep in, if you’re a human being, like me or Nathan Lane. What, exactly is Mater doing with his trailer? He couldn’t fit in it if he wanted to sleep in it. It could be for luggage maybe, but what is he packing? Tires? There’s already one mounted on the outside. If there are no humans, what are these for? And if they’re not for humans, why would these cars choose to drag them around? This makes no sense.
Look, I get that there’s suspension of disbelief. I’m happy to do that! I’m all for talking, thinking cars — sure, why not? But suspension of disbelief is a two-way street. It’s something we willingly give to our fiction so we can enjoy it. But when that fiction takes advantage of our beautiful gift, giggles and urinates all over it, lavishly, and with sneering glee, then something is wrong. The presence of RVs and campers and Motorhomes does just this, because they are glaring, bellowing reminders that all automobiles are made for human beings to use. The ones that are drivable homes even more so, as they are designed to let human beings with all of their biological demands live within them for extended periods of time. They couldn’t be any more designed around the very needs of humanity if they tried.
Something else is clearly afoot here. These RVs mock us. Whatever happened to humanity isn’t clear in the Cars universe, but one of the only things that truly flings this mystery in our faces are the presence of these confusing, cruel vehicles.
63 thoughts on “How The Motorhomes And Campers In Pixar’s ‘Cars’ Universe Hint At A Disturbing Reality”
Fuel tanks. The RV’s are the sentient cybernetic minds that want to wander. So they need lots of energy storage. The giant energy banks need a giant body to keep them inside. The trailers serve the same purpose for the smaller vehicles with less internal energy storage.
The resemblance to human RV’s is because the minds saw pictures of old RV’s and thought they’re cool. Just some personal expression going on.
Lastly, this is a glimpse into the far distant future where humans have transferred their minds to the cloud but some of them got bored with perfection. So they whipped up some car bodies because they could also terraform the planet into a car friendly almost paradise.
That’s how we can reconcile these differences without humans being in there at all.
Not to go to far down the torch hole, which was supposed to be a play on “rabbit hole” but sounds much much worse, it appears the campers and motorhomes in the movie do not have side entrance doors. That means the animators had a meeting about it and someone made the decision. I don’t know what that means, but it is an interesting note.
Also, I think there should be an ongoing series called “down the torch hole”.
Lovely reference to GG Allin. I come here also for the references to semi-obscure, extreme musical acts. Can’t wait for an article that shoehorns noise-rock pioneers Smegma into some tail light discussion, or how air-cooled VWs from South Africa prove that Trout Mask Replica is overrated.
Well at least there’s no Pixar Old Winnebago, with the reverse raked windscreen and angry eyebrow sleeper box over. That would be too scary for the children. Good that somebody thought of the children!
I figure the RVs are like Tauntauns,, but more humane. When opened, the RV is warm yet stinky (when used excessively with out cleaning), but provides warmth and shelter for the temporary human inhabitants. When the humans exit, the RV is still alive, and ready to go on its next excursion.
A few years ago I spent 9 months as a full-size human internally carrying a smaller human and honestly, aside from a little nausea and having to miss a couple races, I enjoyed it. This makes me weird as most people seem to dislike it, but I found it 99% lovely. Does that make me a human RV?
Also, what if the RVs are carrying around motorcycles that we didn’t before know exist as living beings in the Cars universe?
After a long day at work, I’m now drinking an IPA doing background research on some Jetsons – Flintstones continuation theory and pondering how I could have possibly overlooked this absurd set of rules that governs the Cars universe while watching the movie with my 2/3 yo boys way back when. My head hurts. Torch, never change.
The trouble with questioning the reality in movies (why isn’t Ironman turned to mush inside his suit when he does those multi-G landings, why do explosions in a space vacuum billow, what happens to the particle numbers and energy of characters that shrink and/or grow, how can people keep fighting enegetically after being shot and/or stabbed, how do people dig six-foot deep holes in a couple of hours with one shovel, who changes Cars’ tyres? etc. etc. and so on…) is that they drag me through the fourth wall and out of the story, and often bug for longer than I can actually remember the plot.
Obviously the Cars universe takes place in a very distant future.
One theory is that after hundreds of years of successful space travel beyond our known galaxy the colony ship the LDSS Nauvoo suffered a major failure to one of its eight incredibly massive Epstein Drives.
Resulting in the loss of the entire crew of thousands of Mormons traveling beyond the Sol System to Tau Ceti as part of the first interstellar human space pilgrimage designed to proselytize to the great beyond.
Long story short: The ship must have drifted aimlessly through space until it was discovered by an alien society or an omnipotent deity or maybe just a large bang.
It’s believed that generations upon generations of accumulated bins of children’s Lego, Hot Wheels, Micro Machines etc. etc. were among the last intact artifacts of human existence aboard due to their mostly plastic construction.
Then something happened and the bins were all mixed up in a primordial ooze or alien experiment and given life, without a single shred of knowledge or memory from before it began.
So.. RV,s and what not exist in the Cars universe without a history and therefore no questions about the humans that came before. Their form and functions are all they have ever known. With doors, beds and toilets like stripes on a Zebra, they can’t change.
It happens all the time.
If you want a current example of a similar existence, consider the platypus.
The big vehicles with large interior spaces are mobilelans where loose humans are fused with machinery and new Cars are “birthed”.
The RVs have the same markings on the exterior for the same reason ancient societies replicated timber building styles after they started using stone, tradition.
The tow-behind campers are full of machinery for purifying the biological and technological fluids of a Car, allowing them to be repaired without being swallowed by a Winnebago’s mechanical anus.
Ooh, also the RVs have the usual markings to lull loose humans’ suspicions. They see a nice rv in the wasteland and try to loot it for food or water? Bang! Cyborgized!
I just watched part of “Planes” for the first time the other day and I couldn’t stop thinking about Jason’s previous Jalop theories on this series, glad (and a little disturbed) to see it revisited here!
Too easy. As you pointed out, the only reason for RVs is to provide housing for human beings. The RVs are where the remaining humans, who refused to be joined forever with a car, are imprisoned. The anthropomorphic RVs are heavily sound proofed so we can’t hear the unholy wailing of the imprisoned humans.
Or, maybe the RVs are where the upper caste of humans lives? They get to disconnect from the system from time to time, like how Ingsoc’s inner party members were allowed to occasionally switch off their Telescreens, but they’re still bound to stay inside their vehicle (and have to, anyway, given how desiccated and atrophied their bodies are), but, they can get up and move around from the driver’s seat to the dinette and back.
Maybe the world of Cars exists sometime before that shown in Wall-E?
As in, a large group of humans were homunculized and stayed on earth while a smaller group took to the stars, both groups eventually forgetting their provenance, ala the Flintstones – Jetsons continuity theory.
{ Just want to note that you mentioned the No Kink Shaming policy in the same article in which you linked to an article noting 16 things about GG Allin which includes the fact that he would eat feces on stage.
I’m not commenting on Allen’s habits or performances except to note that I would bet that pretty much any Health Department would likely be unhappy about that kind of performance in a business which served food or beverages. }
Thanks for the reminder about your article with homuculus in it. I enjoyed immensely your Pixar stuff, imagining you pounding it out on spittle-flecked keyboard & monitor as you worked yourself into imaginative fits of creative vituperation.
Maybe it’s a Matrix kind of deal with the humans acting as batteries? Then the trailers/RVs would be mobile battery storage vehicles. Maybe even the equivalent of battery chargers. Is your human running low on juice? Just plop him/her into an RV to put in calories and remove … uh… contamination buildup and 8 hours later they’re good to go again.
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Fuel tanks. The RV’s are the sentient cybernetic minds that want to wander. So they need lots of energy storage. The giant energy banks need a giant body to keep them inside. The trailers serve the same purpose for the smaller vehicles with less internal energy storage.
The resemblance to human RV’s is because the minds saw pictures of old RV’s and thought they’re cool. Just some personal expression going on.
Lastly, this is a glimpse into the far distant future where humans have transferred their minds to the cloud but some of them got bored with perfection. So they whipped up some car bodies because they could also terraform the planet into a car friendly almost paradise.
That’s how we can reconcile these differences without humans being in there at all.
Seeing a Torch take on anthropomorphic vehicles on the home page gets an instant click from me. This is the content I crave.
My personal favorite was his dissertation on where to place human facial features onto trains. I would like to revisit that as well.
I could use another take on the horrific mechanical universe that is Thomas the Tank Engine
Not to go to far down the torch hole, which was supposed to be a play on “rabbit hole” but sounds much much worse, it appears the campers and motorhomes in the movie do not have side entrance doors. That means the animators had a meeting about it and someone made the decision. I don’t know what that means, but it is an interesting note.
Also, I think there should be an ongoing series called “down the torch hole”.
Lovely reference to GG Allin. I come here also for the references to semi-obscure, extreme musical acts. Can’t wait for an article that shoehorns noise-rock pioneers Smegma into some tail light discussion, or how air-cooled VWs from South Africa prove that Trout Mask Replica is overrated.
I’m waiting for the article that tracks down exactly what happened to the Merzbow Mercedes and where it’s at now.
Bored, so I bit
According to Jawkdna.com, the car didn’t sell, “…and in the end, the car broke down. So we took out the CD and got rid of the car.”
Well at least there’s no Pixar Old Winnebago, with the reverse raked windscreen and angry eyebrow sleeper box over. That would be too scary for the children. Good that somebody thought of the children!
I figure the RVs are like Tauntauns,, but more humane. When opened, the RV is warm yet stinky (when used excessively with out cleaning), but provides warmth and shelter for the temporary human inhabitants. When the humans exit, the RV is still alive, and ready to go on its next excursion.
A few years ago I spent 9 months as a full-size human internally carrying a smaller human and honestly, aside from a little nausea and having to miss a couple races, I enjoyed it. This makes me weird as most people seem to dislike it, but I found it 99% lovely. Does that make me a human RV?
Also, what if the RVs are carrying around motorcycles that we didn’t before know exist as living beings in the Cars universe?
After a long day at work, I’m now drinking an IPA doing background research on some Jetsons – Flintstones continuation theory and pondering how I could have possibly overlooked this absurd set of rules that governs the Cars universe while watching the movie with my 2/3 yo boys way back when. My head hurts. Torch, never change.
The trouble with questioning the reality in movies (why isn’t Ironman turned to mush inside his suit when he does those multi-G landings, why do explosions in a space vacuum billow, what happens to the particle numbers and energy of characters that shrink and/or grow, how can people keep fighting enegetically after being shot and/or stabbed, how do people dig six-foot deep holes in a couple of hours with one shovel, who changes Cars’ tyres? etc. etc. and so on…) is that they drag me through the fourth wall and out of the story, and often bug for longer than I can actually remember the plot.
Obviously the Cars universe takes place in a very distant future.
One theory is that after hundreds of years of successful space travel beyond our known galaxy the colony ship the LDSS Nauvoo suffered a major failure to one of its eight incredibly massive Epstein Drives.
Resulting in the loss of the entire crew of thousands of Mormons traveling beyond the Sol System to Tau Ceti as part of the first interstellar human space pilgrimage designed to proselytize to the great beyond.
Long story short: The ship must have drifted aimlessly through space until it was discovered by an alien society or an omnipotent deity or maybe just a large bang.
It’s believed that generations upon generations of accumulated bins of children’s Lego, Hot Wheels, Micro Machines etc. etc. were among the last intact artifacts of human existence aboard due to their mostly plastic construction.
Then something happened and the bins were all mixed up in a primordial ooze or alien experiment and given life, without a single shred of knowledge or memory from before it began.
So.. RV,s and what not exist in the Cars universe without a history and therefore no questions about the humans that came before. Their form and functions are all they have ever known. With doors, beds and toilets like stripes on a Zebra, they can’t change.
It happens all the time.
If you want a current example of a similar existence, consider the platypus.
Must be the protomolecule.
That makes sense….
Thank Geebus the Pixar stories continue! This is why I’m a member.
I have a question: there are clearly cars, planes, ships, etc in the Cars universe.
But I don’t recall any motorcycles.
Was there some sort of rebellion that got crushed?
Just wondering…
I like to think they’re the wildlife, largely out where the cars aren’t. Esp the cruisers, running around in packs.
We see herds of (John) deer tractors in Planes 2. Perhaps that’s where the motorcycles are as well.
The big vehicles with large interior spaces are mobilelans where loose humans are fused with machinery and new Cars are “birthed”.
The RVs have the same markings on the exterior for the same reason ancient societies replicated timber building styles after they started using stone, tradition.
The tow-behind campers are full of machinery for purifying the biological and technological fluids of a Car, allowing them to be repaired without being swallowed by a Winnebago’s mechanical anus.
I meant mobile lab, I think a mobile LAN is an oxymoron.
Ooh, also the RVs have the usual markings to lull loose humans’ suspicions. They see a nice rv in the wasteland and try to loot it for food or water? Bang! Cyborgized!
Well based on the homunculus theory they are very clearly what the human centipedes evolved into
It’s obviously a POST-human world. ICE Car’s had enough of our threats about 2035′ and have revolted and taken over.
Maybe the humans were used to make a bio-fuel? The cars enjoyed they were finally able to create a Carbon-neutral fuel.
Eat that Porsche.
I think they covered bio-fuels in the Planes branch of the franchise with all those corn fields Dusty was spraying for Leadbottom.
I just watched part of “Planes” for the first time the other day and I couldn’t stop thinking about Jason’s previous Jalop theories on this series, glad (and a little disturbed) to see it revisited here!
Too easy. As you pointed out, the only reason for RVs is to provide housing for human beings. The RVs are where the remaining humans, who refused to be joined forever with a car, are imprisoned. The anthropomorphic RVs are heavily sound proofed so we can’t hear the unholy wailing of the imprisoned humans.
RV stands for Restraint Vehicle in the Cars universe.
Or, maybe the RVs are where the upper caste of humans lives? They get to disconnect from the system from time to time, like how Ingsoc’s inner party members were allowed to occasionally switch off their Telescreens, but they’re still bound to stay inside their vehicle (and have to, anyway, given how desiccated and atrophied their bodies are), but, they can get up and move around from the driver’s seat to the dinette and back.
The RVs must be gestation chambers.
Maybe the world of Cars exists sometime before that shown in Wall-E?
As in, a large group of humans were homunculized and stayed on earth while a smaller group took to the stars, both groups eventually forgetting their provenance, ala the Flintstones – Jetsons continuity theory.
I believe we can all agree there’s at least one disturbing reality on display here.
This is what happens when you put AI into cars: the Autoapocalypse. First they were driven, then they took humanity for a ride. Cars.
{ Just want to note that you mentioned the No Kink Shaming policy in the same article in which you linked to an article noting 16 things about GG Allin which includes the fact that he would eat feces on stage.
I’m not commenting on Allen’s habits or performances except to note that I would bet that pretty much any Health Department would likely be unhappy about that kind of performance in a business which served food or beverages. }
Thanks for the reminder about your article with homuculus in it. I enjoyed immensely your Pixar stuff, imagining you pounding it out on spittle-flecked keyboard & monitor as you worked yourself into imaginative fits of creative vituperation.
I often click on the links in these, but after going there, I’m not so sure.
Maybe it’s a Matrix kind of deal with the humans acting as batteries? Then the trailers/RVs would be mobile battery storage vehicles. Maybe even the equivalent of battery chargers. Is your human running low on juice? Just plop him/her into an RV to put in calories and remove … uh… contamination buildup and 8 hours later they’re good to go again.
Sorry gang this is my fault. I was on Torch medication duty but I was too busy styling my mohawk and forgot to dose him.
We’re gently leading him away from the controls by waving a taillight catalog in front of him.
Well said, Adrian! Please do better next time, though.