Car/Care : Transit and Technicity in American Cinema

ISBN-13: 9783659976537 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 80 str.

Alex F. Brown

Opis

The figure of the automobile stands at a unique junction of forces operating at both personal and global scales. In order to underscore the macroeconomic importance of cars it should suffice to recall the dimensions of the 2008 automotive industry crisis which often implied that the car industry was the necessary base of economic activity as such. On the other hand, our individual relationships with our cars display many characteristics of organic prostheses or virtual extensions of our bodies-just look at the multitude of ways to "pimp your ride". The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the role of the car as a site of mediation between libidinal and political economy. While remaining within a general Lacanian psychoanalytic framework, my argument draws heavily upon Bernard Stiegler's conception of technicity as the privileged site of subjectivization, or the coemergence of individual and social bodies. I proceed through a close reading of several explicitly car-oriented films produced during the 1970s (Vanishing Point, Two-Lane Blacktop) and historicize them through an analysis of films drawn from the last decade (Transformers, Drive, The Fast and the Furious).

O autorze

Alex F. Brown earned his MA in Aesthetics and Politics from the California Institute of the Arts. He a graduate of the Liberal Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He does some of his best writing with a Montblanc Carrera but he would rather drive the Porsche.