Dubious American license: The first in flight

Abstract

The symbols, colours and slogans on vehicle registration plates are part and parcel of the United States iconography. While not everybody relates readily to Ohio’s license plate motto “Birthplace of Aviation”, everybody seems to know North Carolina’s motto “First in Flight”. (Although the Wright brothers came from Ohio they chose North Carolina as the site for their 1903 groundbreaking experiment.) 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 of American popular cultural discourse recognized emblematically by Leslie Fiedler (1960: 318) as the razzle-dazzle of escape.