Roadside Media: Roadside Crash Shrines as Platforms for Communicating Across Time, Space, and Mortality in the Early 2000s United States

ABSTRACT

This article argues that since the 1990s, roadside shrines in the United States have become place-bound forms of media that provide multiple publics with platforms for communicating with the dead and for communicating with other platform users about the dead. Evidence that roadside shrines function as media today is accessible even to strangers who witness roadside shrines because people leave visual, material, and spatial traces of these communications at shrine sites themselves. There, you can see that people interact with shrines as if they are platforms for communication – demonstrating elaborately performed ‘continuing bonds’ between mourners and the site, and thus victims, as well as among mourners. Moreover, roadside shrines are today intertwined with the larger convergent media environment, where a shrine site often becomes a material manifestation of other representations of ‘the pervasive dead’ across the media environment. To trace the history of how roadside shrines came to work this way, I relate them to the larger cultural history of media and memorialisation in which they are entangled and then analyse three specific case studies from New Mexico and Texas at the crucial transitional moment in the first two decades of the 2000s when roadside shrines became established as media.

KEYWORDS:

• Roadside shrines
• roadside memorials
• continuing bonds
• the pervasive dead
• third-wave media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Holly Everett, Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2002); Charles Collins and Charles Rhine, ‘Roadside Memorials’, Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying, 47:3 (2003), pp. 221–244. This practice has been a feature of shrines in multiple historical and cultural contexts. See Nancy T. Ammerman, Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices (New York: New York University Press, 2021).

2. Everett, Roadside Crosses; Robert M. Bednar, Road Scars: Place, Automobility, and Road Trauma (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).

3. José van Dijck, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007); Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

4. Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 76–79.

5. Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory, and Material Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2001), p. 205.

6. Jack Santino, ed, Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death (New York: Palgrave, 2006).

7. Peter Jan Margry and Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, eds, Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011).

8. Avril Maddrell, ‘Online Memorials: The Virtual as the New Vernacular’, Bereavement Care 31/2 (2012), pp.46–54: 47. See also Robert Dobler, ‘Ghosts in the Machine: Mourning the MySpace Dead’, in Trevor J. Blank, ed, Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009), pp. 175–193; and Candi Cann, Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2014).

9. Béatrice Fraenkel, ‘Street Shrines and the Writing of Disaster: 9/11, New York, 2001’ in Peter Jan Margry and Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, eds, Grassroots Memorials, pp. 229–243: 231.

10. Tony Walter, ‘The Pervasive Dead’, Mortality, 24: 4 (2019), pp. 389–404.

11. Ibid., 393.

12. Ibid., 394.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 398.

15. Dennis Klass, Phyllis R., Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman, eds, Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (London: Taylor & Francis, 1996).

16. Leonie Kellaher and Ken Worpole, ‘Bringing the Dead Back Home: Urban Public Spaces as Sites for New Patterns of Mourning and Memorialization’, in Avril Maddrell and James D. Sidaway, eds, Deathscapes: Spaces for Death, Dying, Mourning, and Remembrance (Lanham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 161–180.

17. Candi Cann, Virtual Afterlives.

18. Hallam & Hockey, Death, Memory, and Material Culture, p. 151.

19. Kristin Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). See also Doss, Memorial Mania.

20. Hallam & Hockey, Death, Memory, and Material Culture, p. 211.

21. Ibid., p. 169, 147, 152. See also Doris Francis, Leonie Kellaher, and Georgina Neophytou, The Secret Cemetery (London: Routledge, 2005); Anna Petersson and Carola Wingren, ‘Designing a Memorial Place: Continuing Care, Passage Landscapes, and Future Memories’ Mortality 16:1 (2011), pp. 54–69; and Robert M. Bednar, ‘Materialising Memory: The Public Lives of Roadside Crash Shrines’, Memory Connection, 1:1 (2011), pp.18–33.

22. Terry Jordan, Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Beverly Kremenak-Pecotte, ‘At Rest: Folk Art in Texas Cemeteries’ in Francis E. Abernathy, ed, Folk Art in Texas (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985), pp. 52–63; and Grey Gundaker, ‘Tradition and Innovation in African-American Yards’, African Arts, 26/2 (1993), pp. 58–96.

23. Jack Santino, ed, Spontaneous Shrines.

24. C. Allen Haney, Christina Leimer, and Juliann Lowery, ‘Spontaneous Memorialization: Violent Death and Emerging Mourning Ritual’, Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying, 35:2 (1997), pp. 159–171: 161.

25. See also Fraenkel, ‘Street Shrines’.

26. Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: William Morrow, 1980).

27. Frances Cairncross, The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1997); Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964).

28. Tony Walter, ‘Communication Media and the Dead: From the Stone Age to Facebook’, Mortality, 20:3 (2015), pp. 215–232: 215, 217.

29. Estevan Arellano, ‘Descansos’, New Mexico Magazine February 1986, pp. 42–44; Alberto Barrera, ‘Mexican-American Roadside Crosses in Starr County’, in Joe S. Graham, ed, Hecho en Tejas: Texas-Mexican Folk Arts and Crafts (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1997), pp. 278–292; Cynthia Henzel, ‘Cruces in the Roadside Landscape of Northeastern New Mexico’, Journal of Cultural Geography, 11 (1991), pp. 93–106; David Kozak and Camillus Lopez, ‘The Tohono O’odham Shrine Complex: Memorializing the Location of Violent Death’, New York Folklore, 17:1–2 (1991), pp. 10–20; Rudolfo Anaya, Denise Chavez, and Juan Estevan Arellano, Descansos: An Interrupted Journey (Albuquerque: El Norte Publications, 1995).

30. For a brief overview of these related practices, see Everett, pp. 15–37.

31. Kozak & Lopez; Arellano: Barrera; John O. West, Mexican-American Folklore (Little Rock: August House Press, 1988).

32. Robert Frank, The Americans (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 107.

33. Arellano, ‘Descansos’.

34. Everett, Roadside Crosses.

35. Collins & Rhine, ‘Roadside Memorials’.

36. Cann, Virtual Afterlives, pp. 128–9.

37. Walter, ‘The Pervasive Dead’, pp. 395–6. See also Jocelyn De Groot, ‘Maintaining Relational Continuity with the Deceased on Facebook’, Omega, 65:3 (2012), pp. 195–212; Avril Maddrell, ‘Online Memorials’; and Molly Hales, ‘Animating Relations, Digitally Mediated Intimacies Between the Living and the Dead’, Cultural Anthropology, 34: 2 (2019), pp. 187–212.

38. Fraenkel, ‘Street Shrines’, 237.

39. James Barragan, ‘Two Teens Dead, Three Others Injured in Rollover Crash Near Elgin’, Austin American-Statesman, 1 March 2015. Located at URL: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2016/09/24/two-teens-dead-three-others-injured-in-rollover-crash-near-elgin/9825053007/.

40. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2^nd Ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.

41. @katiecarranza_, 1 March 2015, https://twitter.com/katiecarranza_/status/572199105419718656.

42. @Bianca4Ruiz, 3 March 2015, https://twitter.com/Bianca4Ruiz/status/572932997646708738.

43. @Bianca4Ruiz, 8 March 2015, https://twitter.com/Bianca4Ruiz/status/574746577396310016.

44. @Bianca4Ruiz, 9 March 2015, https://twitter.com/Bianca4Ruiz/status/575066887031164930.

45. @betzyrdgz, 1 March 2015, https://twitter.com/betzyrdgz/status/572200240813608960.

46. See Funeral Guide, ‘To Those Whom I Love & Those Who Love Me’. Located at URL: https://www.funeralguide.co.uk/help-resources/arranging-a-funeral/planning-the-service/funeral-poems/to-those-whom-i-love-those-who-love-me.

47. Marcia Pointon, ‘Materialized Mourning: Hair, Jewellery, and the Body’, in Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward, and Jeremy Aynsley, eds, Material Memories: Design and Evocation (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp, 39–57.

48. Robert M. Bednar, ‘Killing Memory: Roadside Memorials and the Necropolitics of Affect’, Cultural Politics, 9:3 (2013), pp. 337–356; Robert Thomas Dobler, ‘Ghost Bikes: Memorialization and Protest on City Streets’, in Peter Jan Margry and Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, Grassroots Memorials, pp. 169–87.

49. Quentin Jodie, ‘In Remembrance: Peshlakai family, Rehoboth Christian team up for sisters’ tribute’, Navajo Times 14 April 2022. Located at URL: https://navajotimes.com/rezsports/basketball/in-remembrance-peshlakai-family-rehoboth-christian-team-up-for-sisters-tribute/.

50. Donovan Quintero, ‘Impact of Peshlakai sisters continues’, Navajo Times, 25 May 2017. Located at URL:

https://navajotimes.com/ae/community/impact-peshlakai-sisters-continues/.

51. Located at URL: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/daily-times/name/deshauna-peshlakai-obituary?id=25013456. For a recent image of Darlene Peshlakai and the shrine, see Donovan Quintero, ‘Pain of loss persists: Mom’s fight against drunk driving continues’, Navajo Times, 21 April 2022. Located at URL: https://navajotimes.com/reznews/pain-of-loss-persists-moms-fight-against-drunk-driving-continues/.

52. Donovan Quintero, ‘Impact’.

53. Jodie, ‘In Remembrance’.

54. Donovan Quintero, ‘Daddy’s Girls: Checkpoint marks commemoration of Peshlakai sisters’ Navajo Times, 7 March 2019. Located at URL: https://navajotimes.com/reznews/daddys-girls/.

Donovan Quintero, ‘Daughters’ smiles still shine in mom’s heart’, Navajo Times, 4 Mar 2022. Located at URL:

https://navajotimes.com/reznews/daughters-smiles-still-shine-in-moms-heart/.

55. Quintero, ‘Impact’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Matej Bednar

Robert Matej Bednar is Professor of Communication Studies at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, USA, where he teaches courses in media studies, visual/material communication, critical/cultural studies, memory studies, and automobility, and is Director of the Placing Memory Project. His work as an analyst, photographer, and theorist focuses on the performative dimensions of everyday communicative behavior, particularly the ways that people negotiate shared public spaces and on the ways that objects, pictures, and spaces communicate beyond representation. He has published a number of scholarly and popular articles on roadside shrines, U. S. National Park snapshot photography practices, and the built environment of college campuses. He has published a book on roadside shrines titled Road Scars: Place, Automobility, and Road Trauma (Rowan & Littlefield, 2020).