Cars: Successfully Rich vs. Successfully Happy

Brucciamonti Vena, Natalia Paula

What does “success” imply for you? Having the latest things available in the market? Belonging to a specific social class? Producing large sums of money? Having economical power? For Lightening McQueen, the main character from the movie “Cars”, success means all this and much more.

Since the last two or three decades, a capitalist thinking has been introducing deeper and deeper in people’s minds. That’s the reason why probably, nowadays, you don’t consider things as you did in past years. The previously mentioned animated movie reflects the way in which capitalism provoked a change in the value assigned to success. 

According to the foundations of capitalism, the more money you produce, the more success you have. One of the factors that affect production is time. For any business to be profitable, it’s necessary to produce the largest amount possible in the shortest time. The movie shows this relation between time and money in different scenes. An example of this is Route 66. The route was disregarded by the cars when the highway was built. They preferred to shorten the travelling time in order to get faster to their homes, works, etc, than to simply enjoy the trip.

In a capitalist society, being famous is a synonym of being successful. This is shown in the movie through the character of Hudson Hornet. He was a famous racing car in the 50’s. Everybody loved him and he was surrounded by people who were in a high economical position. Because of this, he was considered a successful car. When Hudson had a crash in 1954, he had to be absent from the piston cup. Little by little, people stopped supporting him and they finally forgot him. He was no longer famous, in consequence he wasn’t able to produce big amounts of money, so he was considered unsuccessful.

The previous paragraphs are only two examples taken from the movie, about the way capitalism became the dominant ideology that surrounds the value of success. If you’ve seen “Cars”, probably you could think about many more instances where the main character reflects his capitalist conception of success.  However, in the final minutes of the film, there is a change in Lightening McQueen’s ideas. The final message of the movie is that, to be successful, it isn’t necessary to have a lot of money, to be famous or to relate with people who have economical power. The most important thing that we need to have success in life is enjoying the little things that life gifts us with. In simpler words, if you are happy without the need of money, just by enjoying every moment and person present in your life, you can be considered successful. 

Let me ask you a question: are you happy?