Bumper Bites

By Tina Bennett-Kastor


At least a decade or two before the sound bite became such a popular tool in American political conversation, ordinary citizens began an equally condensed dialogue on the backs of their cars. Like graffiti, short and pithy, bumper stickers are a literary genre ideally suited to hurried Americans who may nevertheless feel morally obligated to express opinions. If we don't have an opinion, at least we can display our affiliation or our sense of humor or a few words of folksy advice during the fleeting seconds that others have to size us up before the light turns green. Because they make reference to various extended public discourses, bumper bites are intertextual in nature. They allow us to state the thesis without the supporting paragraphs, or to run up our flag even when we don't have time to defend the ground.

I don't know when the first bumper sticker was manufactured, but some of the first ones I recall were displayed during the 1960s. The most common theme was the Vietnam War. War is not healthy for children and other living things declared one of the more popular stickers, which came to represent an international movement. The slogan appeared on posters, buttons, and greeting cards, translated into multiple languages, the John 3:16 of the peace movement: "la guerra non e salubre per bambini ed altre cosi viventi...."

But this internationalization is the exception. Despite their gradually increasing appearance in some other countries, bumper stickers were, and still are, a primarily American form of communication. No sooner had people begun to affix them to their bumpers, than sticker debates originated, abbreviated and mobile representations of the larger cultural disputes that shattered our post World War II complacency. America: Love It or Leave It! shouted one sticker menacingly, usually on cars driven by older men with crew cuts and hard-set jaws, veterans of previous wars. America: Change It or Lose It! shouted back another from the bumpers of brightly painted Volkswagen mini-buses.

After the war ended, bumper conversations moved on to the other political and cultural issues of the day, and one sticker slogan transmuted another like a game of telephone. Save the Baby Whales! echoes as Save the Baby Humans! and I'm Pro-Choice and I Vote! is answered I'm Pro-Life and I Vote!. Some have taken allusion to a parodic level, and are mocking in a good-natured way. Visualize World Peace dreams one sticker. Visualize Whirled Peas teases another. Then we are admonished, Visualize Using Your Turn Signal. Others are mean-spirited and reveal our shameful side. My Child is an Honor Student bumps up against My Child Can Beat Up Your Honor Student.

Occasionally, bumper stickers take the form of a religious call and response ritual. To the label Pro-Choice comes the rejoinder, Pro-Choice BEFORE Conception, Pro-Life AFTER. Drivers proclaiming God is My Co-Pilot are advised If God Is Your Co-Pilot, Switch Seats. Sometimes, opinions are offered in the form of puns such as The Media Isn't Right or Rush is Right. Responses may be poetically flip: Flush Rush! Warnings may be hostile: Back Off! or gentle: I Brake for Animals. Some folks aren't afraid to admit to their weaknesses: I Brake for Garage Sales.

Gabby individuals with no regard for the resale value of their vehicles soon outgrow their bumpers, and slather so many slogans on the back window that one wonders if they can see anything else in their rear view mirrors. One small car in my neighborhood looks like a moving book of proverbs: She Who Laughs, Lasts; Oh, Evolve!; God is Coming, and She is Angry; and Pro-Choice. On another car frequently parked beside the parish church, gilded bowling pins are glued around the top of the roof to form a crown like the Virgin Mary's, and a half dozen anti-abortion sentiments are pasted on every available space Abortion is Murder; Adoption not Abortion; How Much Does an Abortion Cost? One Human Life; and Abortion Stops a Beating Heart suggesting the imprimatur of the Blessed Virgin herself. Some drivers layer their stickers into palimpsests of protestations as yesterday's issue or presidential candidate gets snuffed under the latest word, while on other cars the former owner's opinion never gets completely peeled off despite hours of scraping with a razor blade. At the other extreme are those whose single brave foray into sticker land still proudly announces ReaganBush support.

Other delivery system for our bons mots, such as public structures and tee shirts, are also available, but seem to have become functionally differentiated from bumper stickers. Bathroom walls tell us Rocky loves Adrienne, or to call Jane for great sex, while the larger spaces proclaim the superiority of some gang or the next graduating high school class. Perhaps the privacy of the former restricts itself to more personal sentiments, while the boldness required to clamber up on the concrete of freeway overpasses limits the range of possibilities. The cotton knit billboards we regularly wear may occasionally make political, social, or moral assertions, but these are unfortunately losing ground to product endorsement. One can hardly buy a shirt these days that doesn't say Nike or Adidas or Tommy Hilfiger on it, and Americans are remarkably willing to pay outrageous prices to companies and then offer them free roving advertisement. Even the slogans they may sport originated in the commercial world: just do it; no fear; eat, sleep, play soccer. As facile as the wisdom of bumper stickers may be, it is nevertheless heartening to think that they haven't yet been taken over by capitalist interests Ask me about Mary Kay! notwithstanding.

Bumper stickers may be shallow, they may be amusing or satirical or irritating or inflammatory, but at least they're still relatively pure, and at least they keep us talking to one another about what matters most.


Tina Bennett-Kastor




Tina Bennett-Kastor is professor of English and linguistics at Wichita State University, a writer, an editor, and a language consultant. She is the author of Analyzing Children's Language (Basil Blackwell) and the co-editor of Discourse Across Time and Space. On the popular front, she has been a linguistics consultant on the award-winning children's radio program "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," hosted by John Lithgow, and has published an essay, "A Mother Tongue," in The Shocker magazine in January. She also writes a monthly column on Irish language called "An Cu'pla Focal" ("the few words") for an Irish-American newspaper, Heart of America Irish Life.

"Bumper Bites" was originally published in The Vocabula Review: www.vocabula.com

The Vocabula Review