How The Motorhomes And Campers In Pixar’s ‘Cars’ Universe Hint At A Disturbing Reality

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 have names 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

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.

God help us all.

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