Dubious American license: The first in flight

摘要

The symbols, colours and slogans on vehicle registration plates are part and parcel of the UnitedStates iconography. While not everybody relates readily to Ohio’s license plate motto “Birthplaceof Aviation”, everybody seems to know North Carolina’s motto “First in Flight”. (Although theWright brothers came from Ohio they chose North Carolina as the site for their 1903 groundbreakingexperiment.) With the open horizon as the obligatory conceit of the U.S. landscape,North Carolina’s license plate projects a homonymic mis-association with the dominant motif ofAmerican popular cultural discourse recognized emblematically by Leslie Fiedler (1960: 318) asthe razzle-dazzle of escape.