Low Angles, Wide Lenses: The Heroine Takes the Bus!

There's this show that's been getting me through Mondays.  It's called (eek) Jane the Virgin.

Now, ignore the title.  The first time I saw a subway ad for this show, I thought "Seriously?  That's a real show?!?  Please, The CW..."

Ignore the premise, please.  Just, get past it--you'll thank me.

There is much--much--that I love about this show.

It's silly.  It's earnest.  It's tearing through ridiculous amounts of telenovela-level plot ridiculousness at a rate I'm nervous it can't sustain and yet the characters often just say what they want or feel in a way that is highly refreshing.

But one thing that struck me in particular is that Jane rides the bus. This really hit me at the end of the last episode when she storms out of *redacted*'s house.  She reached for her bags, I realized I was almost mentally inserting her pulling out her car keys.

That's when I remembered that she takes the bus.  I'm so acculturated to seeing characters get in a car and drive, even when it makes no sense (why are so many Seinfeld episodes about driving?) that I just assumed she would.

Now, surely this is done as a marker of her working-class status.  I'm sure Rafael, Petra, et al are taking the bus nowhere.  But at least it's not presented as miserable. There's no "weirdos on the bus" moments.  There's no "you know why they make the windows so big" speeches.  In fact, they mostly use her bus time as time she thinks about what's going on.  Or maybe has text conversations with other characters.  That's kind of how I use my public transit time.  And isn't the freedom to do those two things one of the great things about transit?

I don't kid myself that this is done as some sort of statement.  But it's nice to see realism in how it's presented.  This character--a very practical, mature 20-something working in a hotel restaurant while attending college to become a teacher--is someone who very well might take transit rather than spend her precious money on a car, insurance, gas, etc.  And realism in that it's not miserable--sometimes she runs to catch it, sometimes she has to stand because it's full, but it's just part of her day.

It's progress.

Low angle, wide lens: the "safer" minivan.

You have to give it to the people behind this ad: they're brilliant.  They get right up to the edge of acknowledging the burden of road traffic injuries, but in a way that makes a car seem like the hero.

Is this not the perfect example of “if you don't like what's being said, change the conversation"? (I don't mean to make this entire post Mad Men reference, but the shoe fits....)  The conversation should be cars vs. other safer, more sustainable forms of transportation.  But for years, they've made it about cars versus "safer" cars.  


"They survived" but if they hadn't been in the car, or hadn't had to spend so much of their time in the car, they never would have been at risk of a crash in the first place.  And that's assuming those dents were made by other cars, not cyclists or pedestrians because I assure you, they didn't survive.

Can you imagine if we advertised "safer" cigarettes by showing pictures of resected lung tumors?  Or "safer" asbestos by...I'm getting stuck on lung tumors here.  How about safer guns by showing pictures of spent, bloodied bullets?

This is every bit as ridiculous.  The question should be cars versus better forms of transit, instead they've successfully kept it cars vs. other cars.  

So they spoon-feed us some sentimental junk food like this:

And our society is so auto-normative that we don't even ask questions.

The safest exposure is the one you never have--or the one you have only rarely, for long trips out to the country.  The safest driving is less driving.  That's the conversation we should be having.

A real "lucky man"?  One who took the subway.