Journeys Through Film, Cities and Landscapes

001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 3 DRIVE JOURNEYS THROUGH FILM, CITIES AND LANDSCAPES IAIN BORDEN !"#$%&'( )''$* 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 4 For Claire Published by Reaktion Books Ltd ++ Great Sutton Street London ,-./ 012 www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 30.3 Copyright © Iain Borden 30.3 The publishers gratefully acknowledge support for the publication of this book by the Architecture Research Fund of the Bartlett School of Architecture, 456 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in/by British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Borden, Iain. Drive : automobile journeys through 7lm, cities and landscapes. .. Automobile travel – Social aspects. 3. Automobiles in motion pictures. +. Travel in motion pictures. 8. Automobile travel in literature. 9. Automobile driving – History. I. Title +0:.8';.<-dc3+ &*)(: <=; . =;03+ 03: < 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 5 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 7 1 CITIES 17 2 JOURNEYS 67 3 MOTOPIA 119 4 ALTERED STATES 167 CONCLUSION 227 REFERENCES 237 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 256 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 270 INDEX 273 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 6 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 7 INTRODUCTION It is no longer the car’s forms and functions that call forth human dreams but, rather, its handling, and before long, perhaps, we shall be writing not a mythology of the automobile but a mythology of driving.> Roland Barthes ?e sheer quantitative presence of the automobile is astounding. Some . billion cars were manufactured in the twentieth century, and currently over =00 million are still operating, while some . billion may be in use in 30+0. Global car travel – the number of journeys and miles undertaken – is estimated to triple between .<<0 and 3090. And geographically, massive new economies and developing countries – notably China – are now developing a new car culture.@ But as Roland Barthes’ prediction above suggests, to understand the history of the car and its role in our culture and cities is not simply a question of the quantitative expansion of cars and journeys. Driving is more than the car and the road, incorporating also all manner of driving-related architectures, from petrol stations to billboards, and, even more importantly, of people as drivers: the thoughts we have, the actions we make, the images we consume 0. and imagine, the meanings we derive, the codes we observe and Kalifornia (Dominic Sena, the regulations we encounter. And driving is also the speeds we .<<+). move at, the spatial conditions we meet, the ways we look at and 7 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 8 D R I V E listen to the landscape, and the very emotions and attitudes we have towards this pursuit. Furthermore, this immense assemblage is made even more complex when we realize that there are diAerences of people, cars, speeds, roads, landscapes, historical periods and countries – all of which creates yet more variation.B With this context 7rmly in mind, Drive is an exploration of cultural meanings, as visible and expressed through the real place of the car: on the road, being driven and operating as a dynamic machine. As one early motorist, A. B. Filson Young, whose Complete Motorist provides many illuminating insights into driving and to which I return many times in this study, stated, ‘the true home of the motor-car is not in garage or workshop, showroom or factory, but on the open road. ?ere it comes into its own, there it justi7es itself, there it ful7ls its true and appointed destiny’.C In this age of urgent environmental concerns, it is also worth noting that some might be somewhat aghast at a study of car-driving cultures. Indeed, much of the most recent academic literature on car driving has tended to focus on the negative qualities and connotations of this practice, and to identify the various ways in which non-automotive living might be encouraged. For example, Against Automobility and several other publications all make substantial contributions to this necessary and important critique of automotive society.D By contrast, Drive, while certainly being aware of many of the negative qualities of car driving – alienation and placelessness, accidents and death, traEc jams and environmental impact all make an appearance – nonetheless explores just why it is that so many people choose to drive, seem to enjoy driving and even revel in doing so. In this sense I am following Ruth Brandon’s salient remark in her excellent 8 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 9 I N T R O D U C T I O N social history of the car, Auto Mobile: How the Car Changed Life, that we must recognize ‘the intoxicating pleasures of automobility’ because ‘we are all addicts now’.F In this context, a consideration of the cultural and experiential richness of driving seems a worthwhile trajectory to follow. Indeed, underlying Drive is an implicit engage- ment with current debates about car-usage – that is, it argues that the role of the private car cannot be simply replaced by improved forms of public transport without 7rst understanding, and respond- ing to, the various pleasures and experiences oAered by automobile driving. In other words, why do people oGen seem to prefer their own car to the number =+ bus? In this sense, this book is an exploration of the undeniable delight which many people – not all but many, not always but oGen – derive from driving. A primary concern here is the pleasures of driving, with such qualities, whether they be perceived and/or real, as liberation, fun, adventure, encounter, intimacy, visual stimulation, self-understanding, contemplation, pure speed, risk and danger. Such pleasures are not simple inventions of our most recent society. Even by the early .<00s, Filson Young foresaw that the automobile would not just be ‘the rich man’s toy, the idle man’s excuses, the brutish man’s weapon’ but rather should be seen as ‘good genius’ that ‘will make of poor men’s wishes wings to carry them out of themselves and their surroundings, out of darkness into sunlight and the pure air’.H ?ere is, therefore, a history to be told of how such driving-related perceptions have been borne, and how they have been carried through for over a century and into all corners of the world. We need to understand how we have come to love driving quite so much, while, conversely, it would be at our peril to simply 9 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 10 D R I V E dismiss out of hand all automobile pleasures as being pure delusion, fantasy or sel7shness. Given how much many people undoubtedly enjoy driving, the enormous number of cars and road miles covered over the last century and more, and the vast literature available on cars, it is remarkable how relatively little thought has been given to the pleasures of driving. There is a plethora of studies of car design, car production, advertising and marketing, racing, maintenance, economics, highway and road design, traEc management and so forth, but very little on the actual experience of driving itself. Of those publications that do address the experience and pleasures of driving in some way, of particular note are Moran’s On Roads, Seiler’s Republic of Drivers and Vanderbilt’s Tra!c, all of which give valuable insights into driving experiences while framing these within much larger studies of social, cultural, political and techno- logical contexts. Similar clues to driving experiences are frequently provided by the many social and other contextual histories of the automobile.I Two edited collections – "e Car and the City by Wachs and Crawford, and Autopia by Wollen and Kerr – similarly provide clues within their wide-ranging collections of essays to various aspects of automobile culture, as do a number of anthropology-, psychology- and culture-oriented studies .J We can also 7nd other fragmentary indications of the joys of automobility in accounts of particular roads, places and journeys.>K Of particular note here is Merriman’s Driving Spaces, which provides an exemplary and comprehensive account of the 4$’s L. motorway in all of its economic, historical, geographic and aesthetic aspects, while the wide-ranging essays contained in the 10 001_016_Drive_intro__ 07/08/2012 11:13 Page 11 I N T R O D U C T I O N excellent Auto mobilities edited by Featherstone, ?riG and Urry provide another exceptional overview of automobile driving through intersections of critical and cultural theory, urban geography and empirical data. Further indications of road visuality are provided by a diverse spectrum of anthropologists, architects, urban planners, philosophers, art theorists and critical commentators whose observations range from precise observations of driving to more speculative interpretations and theorizations.>> None of these studies, however, provides an overview of driving experiences in the last hundred years, and even when taken together they assemble, as might be expected, a somewhat patchy history and rather disparate methodological account of how people have engaged with and enjoyed automobile driving. ?is is a notable de7ciency in our understanding of automobility, and instead we need here the kind of exploration proposed by Nigel ?riG through the notion of ‘non- representational theory’, that is an investigation of non-theorized, everyday practices, where people encounter, imagine

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