[16] The mysterious man and the dreaming woman end the film by driving onto
the highway of tomorrow. Sitting in their futuristic car ("designed
for the electronic highway of the future, the fabulous, turbine-powered,
Firebird II!"), they prepare to head out, the man reporting to
the "control tower" reminiscent of Bel Geddes' 1939 radio towers:
"Firebird II to control tower, we are about to take off on the
highway of tomorrow, stand by." As they speed onto the highway
we see a starlit Jetsons-style scene showing model cars driving
on a series of curved highways, and music swells as the woman
sings:
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Tomorrow, tomorrow, our dreams will come true.
Together, together, we'll make the world new.
Strange shapes will rise out of the night,
but our love will not change, dear.
It will be like a star burning bright,
lighting our way, when tomorrow meets today.
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The film suggests a fissure already forming in the 1950s
with the saturation of mass consumerism: how to get women, an untapped
market, to buy expensive products? The answer was to suggest that technology
and automation would free them from drudgery -- but ironically this "freedom"
meant freedom to continue being viewed as beautiful but useless ornamental
objects. The car, in this case, was merely another consumer item, while
the highways of the future suggested not the freedom of the road but the
fulfillment of the sugary romance women were taught to desire.
[17] The darker side of highway construction was well hidden. The Interstate
was backed by the powerful members of the highway lobby, including not
only car manufacturers and oil companies but also a vast number of smaller
business organizations, such as "the Association of General Contractors
ƒ the National Asphalt Pavement Association; the National Ready Mixed
Concrete Association; the American Concrete Paving Association; and the
American Road Builders Association" (Lewis 110). The 1952 movie "Key to
Our Horizons" suggested that "any picture of America without automobiles
is hopelessly out of date," and went on to show how two out of seven Americans
owed their employment to the burgeoning automobile and road surfacing
industries.
[18] As the lobby gained power, it began releasing pro-highway films
which seemed to address public concerns about the impact of the
proposed Interstate system. "Highway Hearing," commissioned in
1956 by the Dow Chemical Company, featured a dramatized version
of a town meeting between concerned citizens and highway officials.
The film began with the opening of a new stretch of highway and
flashed back to the meeting, which included irate citizens (mollified
by officials' answers) and a "movie-within-a-movie", shown to
the town citizens and featuring classic pro-automobile rhetoric.
The citizens in the end agreed to vote for the highway and it
was duly built; the last scenes returned to the grand opening
with now-satisfied townspeople come along to celebrate.