A Hula Dancer For A Dashboard You Do Not Have

It is a plastic figure of a woman, sold as a car accessory, whose only function is to move when the car does. It obstructs a small part of your windscreen and it will fade in the sun.

It also has a complicated relationship with the culture it is borrowing from, which is worth being honest about: hula is a serious form, and this is not a representation of it.

Because it belongs to a very specific and now almost entirely extinct visual world — mid-century American road trips, tiki bars, Hawaii as an idea rather than a place — and almost nothing else survives from it as a cheap object you can still buy new.

It also works. The spring is well judged: she moves on a rough surface and stops when you stop, which means the dashboard becomes a small performance that only responds to how you drive.