ED’S WORLD: Wile E. Coyote as American as it gets

September 29, 2008 by Ed Kaczynski 

One question from my childhood has never been satisfactorily explained, and bothers me to this day.

Why did Wile E. Coyote continue to purchase all his products from ACME? They obviously never worked, and usually resulted in him falling off some sort of cliff or flying straight into a rock wall. And, if he can get these amazing failures delivered to him – almost at a whim – why couldn’t he just order a pizza? Or Chinese? Thai, maybe?

Moreover, where did he get the money? The ACME corporation, having established themselves as a the dominant player in the portable hole and anvil industry for nearly 70 years, couldn’t have continued to exist if it just gave crap away for free.

It’s weird to think of Looney Tunes as an allegory for American consumerism, but at the same time, once the realization is made, it’s actually more difficult to avoid finding the social commentary present in these early cartoons.

The good people at Warner Brothers were apparently far more clever than I would have given them credit for.

Mark Twain’s initial description aside, the coyote represents the average American – looking out for number one, constantly searching for his big break, and chasing the elusive “American Dream.” Hungry but not starving, greedy but not gluttonous, the coyote is the tenacious American Spirit – good people who just haven’t realized that their dreams are just that: futile and fleeting.

Of course, that would imply that the American Dream was merely elusive. That 1950’s Ma and Pa Kettle outlook, where life is grand, there are two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot, and the only fear we have is nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union – that’s the stereotypical American Dream.

For me, personally, it’s getting paid to do what you love. In that case, the roadrunner as the American Dream is a far more correct metaphor – it’s not elusive, it’s fucking uncatchable. There are times, in fact, that it slows down, stops or shows up next to the coyote. It’s mocking him, as if to say, “I’m right here. Come and get me if you can, loser.” That sadistic bastard takes pleasure in the pain and anguish that the coyote is consistently forced to go through, just trying to get his slice of the promised pie.

So what then? If you’ve gone through and applied all your grit and determination, and you fail to catch your American Dream, what happens next? How do you seek fulfillment?

You buy shit. You purchase products that put you closer to your fantasy.

Enter ACME – a reverse engineered acronym meaning “The American Corporation that Makes Everything.”

They’ll be able to soothe your wants and needs in a manner that always seems logical when you convince yourself to fork out the dough, putting you one step closer between where you are now and true happiness. I’m certain that Wile E. Coyote, a self labeled “supergenius,” took the time to work out how this one last purchase was all he needed to be content – those dehydrated boulders couldn’t have been cheap, and the shipping cost on all those cannons had to have been astronomical.

Of course, much like most ACME products, this never works. It’s all bullshit and marketing, preying on the depressed and the desperate, squeezing every last cent out of the people it knows it can snag. Wile E. Coyote was a victim as much as anyone.

Is it really a wonder, then, that many of us, deep down, secretly rooted for him to finally get the Roadrunner? To see him win? It’s very similar to my view on Charlie Brown – you can only watch someone get beat down so long before it begins to make you ill.

So, if the coyote is the average American, and the Roadrunner is the Dream, and ACME is American consumerism, how do we break the cycle?

The only viable option is to redefine the dream.

The coyote has been chasing the roadrunner for nearly 60 years – he had to have eaten by now. It’s no longer a matter of hunger, but of principle – of tunnel-vision and obsession. He’s so consumed on pursuing an ideal that he cannot accept the reality of the situation – he COULD order a pizza, if he wanted. Hell, if he could get ACME to deliver, he’d probably save on shipping – it’s not like he doesn’t have a massive account with them to begin with.

At the very least, he could sit back and redefine his goals. If, after finishing his chicken fried rice, he still feels the need to chase the roadrunner, maybe it’s the journey and not the destination. At least he’d be able to enjoy the chase with a full stomach.

Of course, this is all supposition – we’ll never know what would happen, because he’ll never catch the roadrunner. And in our own way, we don’t want him to.

We need someone to connect with – someone struggling to achieve as hard as we are.