I'm an American who has never attended a demolition derby, never dreamed of doing so, but this piece has given me new respect for the sport. Certainly I have experienced the patriotism, as you so beautifully expressed: "I felt the power of that place and that crowd and the spirit of American patriotism. Damn right this is the land of the free. Long may it remain so." Yes, the goosebump-lump-in-the-throat reaction to our national anthem included. I'm setting aside the political era, trusting it will pass...I hope you don't mind me saying that I found this essay frankly adorable. I mean it, and thank you.
My small town has a low budget version of your Derby.
It’s old school bleachers, with sun damaged planks that’ll splinter your butt…flecks of paints of the days gone by school colors placed in location with the same care as though the crew were installing a bridge. These short bleachers are lined up on the shoulder of the road, yes, a shoulder. The road where the beloved “burn outs event” takes place parallels the freeway. No special arena, because we don’t have one. Just a road that gets blocked off so the more discerning citizens can avoid the redneck day of danger. Burnouts, like your derby, is wild energy, souls liquid with alcohol and their contribution to society is that they recycle and reuse old tires. First, a hot rod parade of preschoolers. And then the event. Spectators are practically eating exhaust. It’s hot, air is dense with surrounding wild fires. The objective is to spin out tires until they mark the street with black stripes…and if they can make them pop the crowd goes wild. It’s a mining town and here we get miners lung but not from the mines.
Yes, demolition derbies are great fun. I drove in one in the Napa County fair in 1986. A friend, who had so many parking tickets she was afraid to re-register it, donated the car. It was a Plymouth Valiant. Any kind of car was acceptable except for Chrysler Imperials which were apparently built like tanks. You weren't allowed to drive a truck of course. My friends and I did the modifications; removing the glass, chaining the doors shut, the hood and the trunk, moving the gas tank and battery inside the car where the back seat used to be, etc. Our paint job mimicked a Yellow Cab since I was a cab driver in those days. We had a dummy made up like a fashionable lady belted into the passenger's seat. She was tossed around with every hit. My rear end was quickly bent upwards so I couldn't really see my targets. (You attack by backing into to your opponents so as not to wreck your engine. It was a trip. I was top three (or five, I forget) in round one so I got to the finals where my radiator was smashed in seconds. I sat in the middle of the field still getting knocked around while we waited for the winner (the last car that moved under its own power). I felt pretty good about my performance and driving in the demolition derby enhanced my reputation and sex appeal enormously I think. Ha.
Your point about the crowd cheering only for the genuinely well executed collision seems to me to carry the argument, since discrimination rather than restraint is what marks an educated audience. Roland Barthes made a related case in Mythologies when he wrote about catch wrestling as a spectacle with its own rigorous grammar of gesture, wholly intelligible inside the hall and opaque outside it. What he called the intelligibility of the spectacle sits very close to your decency accompanying the danger.
I'm an American who has never attended a demolition derby, never dreamed of doing so, but this piece has given me new respect for the sport. Certainly I have experienced the patriotism, as you so beautifully expressed: "I felt the power of that place and that crowd and the spirit of American patriotism. Damn right this is the land of the free. Long may it remain so." Yes, the goosebump-lump-in-the-throat reaction to our national anthem included. I'm setting aside the political era, trusting it will pass...I hope you don't mind me saying that I found this essay frankly adorable. I mean it, and thank you.
Hahaha. You’re a real Yank, now
My small town has a low budget version of your Derby.
It’s old school bleachers, with sun damaged planks that’ll splinter your butt…flecks of paints of the days gone by school colors placed in location with the same care as though the crew were installing a bridge. These short bleachers are lined up on the shoulder of the road, yes, a shoulder. The road where the beloved “burn outs event” takes place parallels the freeway. No special arena, because we don’t have one. Just a road that gets blocked off so the more discerning citizens can avoid the redneck day of danger. Burnouts, like your derby, is wild energy, souls liquid with alcohol and their contribution to society is that they recycle and reuse old tires. First, a hot rod parade of preschoolers. And then the event. Spectators are practically eating exhaust. It’s hot, air is dense with surrounding wild fires. The objective is to spin out tires until they mark the street with black stripes…and if they can make them pop the crowd goes wild. It’s a mining town and here we get miners lung but not from the mines.
Yes, demolition derbies are great fun. I drove in one in the Napa County fair in 1986. A friend, who had so many parking tickets she was afraid to re-register it, donated the car. It was a Plymouth Valiant. Any kind of car was acceptable except for Chrysler Imperials which were apparently built like tanks. You weren't allowed to drive a truck of course. My friends and I did the modifications; removing the glass, chaining the doors shut, the hood and the trunk, moving the gas tank and battery inside the car where the back seat used to be, etc. Our paint job mimicked a Yellow Cab since I was a cab driver in those days. We had a dummy made up like a fashionable lady belted into the passenger's seat. She was tossed around with every hit. My rear end was quickly bent upwards so I couldn't really see my targets. (You attack by backing into to your opponents so as not to wreck your engine. It was a trip. I was top three (or five, I forget) in round one so I got to the finals where my radiator was smashed in seconds. I sat in the middle of the field still getting knocked around while we waited for the winner (the last car that moved under its own power). I felt pretty good about my performance and driving in the demolition derby enhanced my reputation and sex appeal enormously I think. Ha.
"The smell of the gasoline and the roar of the crowd." A demolition derby as theater! Hahaha, love it.
You should try figure 8 racing.
Your point about the crowd cheering only for the genuinely well executed collision seems to me to carry the argument, since discrimination rather than restraint is what marks an educated audience. Roland Barthes made a related case in Mythologies when he wrote about catch wrestling as a spectacle with its own rigorous grammar of gesture, wholly intelligible inside the hall and opaque outside it. What he called the intelligibility of the spectacle sits very close to your decency accompanying the danger.
The crowd is doing the safety work. An audience that only cheers the well-timed hit keeps the arena honest as much as the red flags do.
Feeds removed that filter, a crash gets applause no matter how cheap. What happens to a spectacle when its audience stops grading?