Learning Day: Learn at Every Turn with Chrysler

In 1992, Chrysler put out a VHS tape about learning. Not learning about the rugged and affordable Chrysler Grand Caravan, but learning about the idea of learning. They called it Learn at Every Turn.

It looks like nothing, right? I have to assume years of looking for insane and broken movies have trained my browsing instincts in an unusual direction, but my brain can't even focus on it. It instantly reads so much like a boring travel documentary or Christian youth thing that I could walk past it five hundred times and never know it was there. This is something you'd find next to your motel TV if you were staying minutes from New Mexico's largest rocking chair. But fuck it. Let's put it in and see…

Yeah, this is what I expected. The Chrysler Learning Connection Program presents families learning and loving with… was that a naked Indian? No, that's… I'm sure it's nothing.

A woman named Pat Randall tries to explain learning and how learning is helpful for learning skills. It sort of sounds like they filmed her getting her skull hollowed out by spiders, and then played the footage backwards. She tells us to keep an eye out for education, and then leaves. The rest of the tape is footage of an Earth family going on a human road trip, and it's up to us to find meaning in it. The video is maybe teaching us education the way Mr. Miyagi used dull chores to trick Karate Kid into learning Karate, but I can't be sure. I'll only know if I learned education if the video suddenly attacks me with ignorance. Something like a surprise naked Indian might work, but I'm positive that was a one time deal.

We are thrown into a family meeting where Mom, Dad, Danny, Diana, and their neighbor Rueben are deciding where to go camping. It's apparently shot on location in their actual living room, so most of this is footage of lamps while a hidden child recites the encyclopedia entry for Yosemite National Park. And I hate to break it to the Chrysler Corporation, but we already knew all this. Anyone who went to public school in America knows "learning" is cramming too many kids into a room and listening to the dumbest one read. And I can tell this video is making me cranky because where did that come from? Anyway, speaking of the dumbest kid, Danny leaves to get a book about Indians and we get to see his bedroom:

This family's eldest child lives in a lean-to made out of trash under the stairs, and that's fine. Not everyone has bed sheet-on-a-string money. But it does mean Chrysler saw this claustrophobic little home and said, "No place to set up lights or microphones, nobody over 5' 6" can stand up? What a great spot to shoot a video!" There also doesn't seem to be a script. As far as I can tell, they let the actors talk about whatever then went back in later to shoehorn in nonsensical title cards. Like when Reuben asks his little sister to help him pronounce a word. "R-rocks?" she says. As soon as she's done, Reuben reads the next word, "petroglyphs," right in her face. It's nerd bullying. She isn't quite sure how or why, but she knows she's been humiliated. Then the stupid, irrelevant words "kids helping kids" appear under the two of them.

I'm doing a bad job of explaining it, but I blame the lack of anything to explain. Adding irrelevant text to cinema verite is all the video does. There's no narrator. No little cartoon professor pops in to say, "Rueben's a dick, but helping people read can be a form of learning!" These titles seem like a pivot from an abandoned, much different project and each of them may as well have an "...I guess?" added to the end of it. Again, this could all be a Miyagi situation and we are learning about learning without knowing it. Or it's a pointless endeavor made by confused van salesmen. The boy actor in this scene grew up to make alcoholic ice cream, which is so perfectly brilliant and dumb I could use it as evidence for either theory.

The other children are also dicks, by the way. In the middle of this camping trip planning meeting, Diana pulls out a mean note her brother gave her and reads it. "Diana is nerdy, Diana is weird, Diana is a jerk, Diana is mental." You'd think Danny would be worried. This is hard evidence of naughtiness, and he's almost certain to be sent to his debris hovel under the stairs without supper. But no. The camera pans over to him, and he is beaming.

"Yes, yes, it's even better than I remember. And now everyone knows, dear sister! Everyone knows you are a jerk! Wa ha ha ha ha ha!!!"

At this point the frustrating mystery of WHY WOULD ANYONE MAKE THIS is too much. This is Nothing Brought to You by Chrysler: Maybe It's Educational, That's Up to You. So I tried to find out more, and as you can imagine there was not a huge Learn at Every Turn promotional campaign. It was announced in an American Federation of Teachers newsletter, and as far as I can tell, it was a sincere effort by Chrysler and teachers to promote learning. It was, not as I first guessed, something a court ordered Chrysler to make after their airbags decapitated 700 drivers. But they didn't know how, or maybe didn't want to tell the world about it. After the video's initial announcement, I couldn't find a trace of it anywhere else.

Except in an ad in the June 1993 issue of Black Enterprise magazine.

The ads in a 1993 Black Enterprise magazine tell an unexplainable story of madness, the perfect place to promote a free giveaway for Learn at Every Turn. One second, I'll try to find it…

Let's see… no, those are ads for Philip Morris, Magic Johnson's leisure wear, Alabama!, alluring volumizer, Philip Morris again, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, 7-11 careers, and beloved black community supporter, the Central Intelligence Agency. Oh, here's the one I was looking for:

So there it is. Wow. Which means according to my googling, the only way to get this tape was to be a black entrepreneur in 1993 who read the least interesting grain of sand in a desert of insane advertisements and sent away for a free educational video and booklet. Keep in mind Google also told me "a child of 7.8 meters should eat 3 feet of VHS tape each day to Learn at Every Turn, breast feet" so it's possible all facts are unknowable forevermore. And anyway, this is no help. Let's just watch the rest of this shitty fucking video.

In a way Chrysler claims is educational, the family is deciding between driving to Valley of Fire State Park or Yosemite. Reuben says…

And Mom says…

Everyone in the family starts sharing what they know about indigenous people. Reuben heard one of them was named Mouse. Educationally, Dad adds, "You know, you know Indians were named after animals. Like buffalo, running buffalo." And Danny remembers a guy from the movie Dances with Wolves who was named Ten Bears, "probably because he's as strong as ten bears." It's five idiots telling each other about the movie they saw together like it made each of them a different kind of Indian name expert, and a title card declares "ENCOURAGING DECISION-MAKING." Without warning, an eagle cries. Native drums sound and I receive a vision of a Native American's muscular haunches as he climbs the Rock of Destiny. That's not related to the Chrysler video, though. That would be an insane thing to put right here in the Chrysler video.

So now we watch the family pack for a bit. Mom and Diana go over what they should bring and you'll never believe me, but Mom says, "Bring some games, play sexy games when we're out there." This could not be, obviously, so I rewound it twenty times. "Play sexy games when we're out there," she kept saying. "Don't put this in the article," my notes say.

Reuben and Danny have collected information about Indians from around the house, and I hear the call of the nighthawk as a mighty Havasupai brave races past the setting sun. I assume this is another thing only I can see because, again, there's obviously no goddamn way that is what's happening in this Chrysler educational video.

I don't know how much time has passed, or even how long I took the form of coyote, but here in Learn at Every Turn, the family and Reuben are leaving in their van. I think it's a wood panel Chrysler Town and Country, though no one turns to the camera to say they love the reliable engineering of it. I'm not saying they should have, but at least if this was a commercial I'd understand why it existed. A title card says "EXPLORING THE ARTS," which made me say, "oh, no" out loud. And I was right.

Reuben brought a recorder, which he cannot play. He says "Why don't we try playing some music?"

Mom says, "Oh, right. Reuben. You brought your flute." Only I'm making it sound too cheerful. Try to imagine how you might say, "Oh, right. Elon Musk. You brought your syringes of your sperm."

Reuben plays the recorder like a robot dying of fart cancer, but the other children are less talented. Diana suggests, "I could play drums on the seat?" And Danny suggests, "What do I do!?!"

They decide on singing for Danny, so to the sound of a suffocating slide whistle and vinyl interior slaps, Danny says, "TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR WHATEVER, I FORGOT THAT SONG." In my new standard for maximum racism, they call what they're doing "Indian music." If Dad chose this moment to drive into the grill of a truck, his last words would be, "I'm a hero." And he'd be right.

They stop for gas and snacks, and we get the closest thing to education we've seen when Reuben asks Danny what's in a Ho Ho and he snaps, "cream [,you stupid fuck]!" And believe it or not, the kid who breaks out his recorder on a road trip is an insufferable bitch. He makes Danny read the ingredients on a pack of gas station snack cakes and lectures him about how they don't sound very healthy. Yeah, Reuben, it says "sodium benzoate" rather than "sorry, we wrapped non-chemicals around a wad of cream and if you're reading this it's absolutely not food by now." Fucking asshole.

With the joy gone from snacks, they decide to look at the newstand instead. I notice there's a pretty sweet looking magazine called ARIZONA next to the kids before a warbird's cry summons a very nude warrior only I can see. I don't know what it means or why this is happening to me; I only know I'm ready for it. Anyway, here's what the Chrysler educational video, Learn at Every Turn, looks like to everyone else:

Back on the road, they run into construction and have to get directions to the state park from a woman with a stop sign. She draws a dirt map that reminds me of ancient petroglyphs carved by the natives who once hunted on these plains. For everyone else the video continues as normal, but for me, and the vision quest I'm on, CAWWWWW! Sudden Indian!

I have no goddamn idea where she sent this family and the shitty flute player they know, but it is a very long drive. "I hope many shots of the open road with no information or dialog is educational," said at least one fucking psychopath at Chrysler.

They drive and drive, forever. It's like the producer snuck over and told the construction worker, "Send them seven states away. I have no idea what we are filming, or what we are going to use it for, but I know if we keep them and that flute in there long enough, we're going to witness a murder."

"Honk, screech," Reuben plays ceaselessly. None of it could possibly be part of a song. These are the sounds of Elon Musk's sperm left to grow in a dog kennel.

Dozens, maybe hundreds of times, the cameraman gets out and films the van driving along lonely desert roads. To the sound of a boy who will not, will never learn a note on his flute.

"Which one of you coward fucks is going to try to kill me first?" Reuben asks with each ẁ̵̤hi̶̯̇stl̴̹̀e.

It continues for days.

Weeks.

A thousand screech h̸̩̿̆o̷̧̹͋n̵̹̒kş̶́̂. Time is a broken flute.

They finally pull into their campsite and warn an innocent family, the Johnsons, "WE'RE YOUR NEIGHBORS; WE'LL COME OVER AND MEET YOU IN A LITTLE BIT!" And what a treat for the Johnsons. Then suddenly an ominous music plays and the Johnsons see they are being stalked by a park ranger. I know I'm not the most reliable narrator given all these hallucinations I'm having, but I swear it happens, and the video does everything it can to communicate the Johnsons are in danger. It's possible I put in the wrong tape and I've been watching a Jordan Peele horror movie the whole time? It's at least a better explanation than "this is educational."

It's sinister. Unexplained, bizarre, and sinister. Anyway, soon both families are around a campfire and things are going surprisingly smoothly for a 1993 video about the squarest white family in Nevada making their first black friends. Then this haunting text popped onto the screen:

VALUING CULTURAL DIVERSITY. "Oh god damn it," I said out loud. And I was right again.

You know what's coming next. Maybe not exactly, but after I tell you, you'll say, "Oh, of course."

It's rap. They all take turns rapping together.

Dad asks if anyone knows any other languages and the Johnson mom says her friend from Jos taught her how to say "I love you" in Hausu. The Johnson dad jumps in to tell an African fable. If I had to guess, it wasn't the first time he's cut his wife off while she's talking about this great guy from Jos who taught her about love. Without question, the lesson here is to ask black strangers how to speak African. Hold on, let me read back that last sentence. Oh no. It says here in my notes to delete that.

Well, it's time to call it a night. The Johnsons get up, and by the light of the half moon, they are being watched by a luscious Indian. Hold on, let me read back that last sentence. Oh yeah, perfect.

I think he was hunting them? Because it's the next day and the Johnsons are nowhere to be found. Oh, good. It looks like the park ranger is pulling up. Maybe he'll have some answers.

Gasp. The Ind–

I-I'm seeing things again, never mind. I'll get back to the video. The family has finally found the petroglyphs and they suck shit. They're a bunch of squiggly lines and Danny and Reuben make wild, stupid guesses about what they say. Rain? Sheep? They don't know. They packed 80 pounds of library books about Native Americans and no one thinks to check them for a Havasupai squiggle decoder. It's two kids screaming definitely wrong words at rocks, and the video calls this "INTERPRETING SYMBOLS."

The fuck it is, Chrysler educational video. At best -at best- this is "REMEDIAL SHRUGGING."

Bored beyond all reason, Danny shouts "hello!" into the canyon.

Nobody hears him, of course. "Don't tell them you're seeing the sexy Indian again," my notes say. "Don't tell them he can somehow hear the echoes of the boy's call."

The park ranger who "took care" of the Johnsons arrives, and before he can ask them to get the fuck off the historic petroglyphs, Reuben asks where they can yell at more cave paintings. I can't explain what happens next because the lightning of Tochopa has once again summoned me to the hunt.

Hold on, this is going to sound crazy, but I think this video really has been cutting to footage of a naked indigenous man. And he's not some hallucination or clumsy metaphor for knowledge. In this fiction, in this Chrysler educational VHS tape, a park ranger He-Man transforms into an Indian before everyone's eyes, and not to give them a quest or a secret. He just starts lumbering around like a bigfoot. Here's the rest of the clip:

Did you spot it? If you look closely, right after the almost entirely nude unfrozen ancient man, right over the words "solving mysteries," you can see the gaping faces of the three kids. It means they can see him too! Whoever he is, whatever he's doing there, they can all see him, and the back of his nuts as he pointlessly bounces into the sun.

That's it, the end.

Pat comes back to thank you for watching and to hope this video sparked ideas. No, we're not done here, Pat! What are you doing? Was it even close to what you intended to do? Someone here went insane, and I think it might be me? Is magic real? Or did a park ranger rip his clothes off in front of a bunch of kids? Any answer you give will be alarming in a different way, Pat!

It's so fucking weird. An educational video with no education and so, so many rippling haunches. My top guess right now, as it is so often, is "someone's sex thing." But there is one more place to look for answers, though. Maybe the pamphlet included with the tape, RECIPES FOR READING SUCCESS, can help.

I think the early '90s photographer thought they were making profound art when they took this picture. There are so many things off about a Mexican-American hunk pretending to be a Havasupai warrior next to the words "Grand Cherokee" in a Chrysler pamphlet, but like a CIA advertisement in an issue of Black Enterprise magazine, I don't think it's my joke to make. However, if you look up and to the right from the shirtless man, I think we've solved the mystery of "Why the hell was the park ranger a wizard!?" The pamphlet guesses it's because maybe he's from there? Learning!

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