August 10, 2006
talladega nights: the ballad of ricky bobby
Though dating from the 1940s, NASCAR's modern era begins in the early 1970s. Here "modern era" means, among other things, its ascendence first over the immediate competition of Formula 1 racing, and then its indirect competition until it becomes America's second most popular spectator sport — as well as a category of politics: confluence not just inevitable but structural.
Talladega Nights, without going out of its way to periodize itself, takes the triumph over Formula 1 as one of its central plot points, via Ricky Bobby's combat with Frenchman Jean Girard (conjured immaculately by Sacha Baron Cohen, surely the film's big winner in the industrial sense). NASCAR vs. Formula 1 is played, in a series of telling diagnoses, as straight vs. gay, dumb vs. smart, faith. vs. existentalism (yes Jim, they use the word), blind will vs. ironic self-awareness, spirit vs. technique and...have we left anything out?...oh yes, America vs. Europe.
It's the last confrontation that stacks the deck — after all, the other sporto-political category of late, "soccer moms" is implicitly ur-European. It's particularly telling given NASCAR's rise right around 1973 — the peak of what historians of the longue durée refer to as the "secular trend" of the United States' primitive accumulation, and the beginning of the slow decline we are currently enjoying. Of course the Europe that America had bested in the only true international competition must be called up to be redefeated again and again in the cultural sphere; this is what Talladega Nights goes out of its way to celebrate. And of course it must be NASCAR, as opposed to some other spectacular form, that rises at the moment of the first international oil crisis and becomes the triumph of the decline: as a sport it is, after all, a hecatomb to the gods of OPEC disguised as a white pride rally. As an analysis of the cultural imaginary of an empire beginning to run dry, the film is peerless.
Will Ferrell also reasonably funny. Runs around in underwear. "That happened."
Posted by jane at August 10, 2006 11:42 AM | TrackBack