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CHASED WOMEN, NASCAR DADS, AND SOUTHERN INHOSPITALITY: HOW NASCAR EXPORTS SOUTHERN CULTURE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN STUDIES OCTOBER 2020 By Ava H.K. LAdner DissertAtion Committee: DAvid StAnnard, Chairperson Robert Perkinson Joseph StAnton Njoroge Njoroge MArk Howell Keywords: NASCAR, South, Race, Gender, Religion, Tradition, Technology, RAcing DEDICATION To My Girls, who wAlked, oversAw, and comforted me through the entire process ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of All, I woulD like to thank my committee for Accepting my proposAl. DAvid StAnnard sAw promise in this project eArly on And guided me in seeing how this reseArch could be more substAntiAl than I had originally envisioneD. Joseph StAnton reAd some of the eArly pieces that I wrote About the sport And offered valuable feedback. Robert Perkinson AlwAys provideD a perspective that I had yet to consider And encouraged different wAys of thinking. Njoroge Njoroge sAw wAys to delve deeper into the mAteriAl And find new meAns of expression. MArk Howell never missed a chance to correct my NASCAR blunders or to offer encouragement when I needed it. I owe the University of HAwAiʻi A debt of gratitude for Allowing me to become the best version of myself over these past yeArs. I thank the Travel Industry MAnagement program for granting me An AssistAntship that Allowed me to continue my reseArch during the eArly stAges of my studies. I thank KAth SAnds for encouraging, pushing, And chiding me when needed. I deeply AppreciAte her energy and cAre as I encountered new challenges along this journey. I AppreciAte the support from the UH libraries for constAntly sending books my wAy. And then for helping me to cleAr my name when some of them never found their wAy back. I would like to thank Barry LAdner, the only family member who consistently Asked About my progress and Agreed to be the sounding board to much of my NASCAR-relAted thinking. Most importAntly, I woulD like to thank my friends, without whom I would have never mAde it: Ky Kim, for their willingness to chat life And scholArship whenever possible; Christina Ayson, for being such A positive And wonderful force; PAhole Sookkasikon, for being like A brother to me; Tyler Greenhill, for being A sweet giving soul; AiDA Arik, with whom I have shared so, so much; Jeffrey Tripp, for letting me into his life And for being A steAdy presence throughout my iii journey; And Kevin Kelly, for Asking the needed questions, providing me with A plAce when needed, and for being a friend all these yeArs. MAhalo nui loa. And finally, my thanks go to EunBin Suk, who sAw the best, the worst, And the middle-of- the-night-writing me And provided the cheer needed to get through these final stAges. IU. iv ABSTRACT This work explores the relAtionship between southern culture and NASCAR. The sport began in 1948 in DAytona BeAch, FloriDA, though its history cAn be traced back to moonshine running in the Blue Ridge MountAins. NASCAR’s innate sense of southern culture meAns that the sport employs and exports the region's behaviors and attitudes. These messAges mAnifest themselves through patriArchy, violence, racism, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, religiosity, and the traditions that accompany these elements. As NASCAR reAches between 3 And 5 million fans 36 weeks a yeAr, the sport cAn consistently proffer these messAges to its audience. This project Argues that NASCAR is a conduit for problemAtic messAges that are continually digested and regurgitAted Across the US. This relAtionship furthers the cycle of the South, both being apart and A part of the country, demonstrating how the South reflects the US and acts as its own culture. The goal of this dissertAtion is to better understAnd the pathologies that the sport delivers to the country and how they are derived from the South’s historicAl conventions. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract v List of Tables vii List of Figures viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. 7 The Roots of NASCAR: The Confluence of Southern, Moonshine, and Automobile Culture Chapter 2. 50 White Lightning, White NASCAR: The South, NASCAR, and the Practices of Exclusion Chapter 3. 104 PAnic and Disruption: NASCAR’s FeAr of Queerness and the Troubling Presence of Women Chapter 4. 159 MediA and NASCAR: Film and Music as Accompaniment Chapter 5. 206 The PAradox of Southern Tradition and NASCAR Technology Conclusion 233 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 – NASCAR Ratings on Fox, 2007-2014 39 Table 1.2 – NASCAR Cup Series: US Nielsen Ratings, 1996-2014 40 Table 4.1 – Stroker Ace soundtrack 195 Table 4.2 – Days of Thunder soundtrack 196 Table 4.3 – Bristol Introductions as selected by fans 199-200 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 NASCAR DAd’s For Bush Button 32 Figure 2.1 NASCAR Demographic Profile 52 Figure 2.2 EdwArd “Fireball” Roberts 54 Figure 2.3 LeeRoy YArbrough 54 Figure 2.4 Richard Petty 54 Figure 2.5 Tweet from President Donald Trump 69 Figure 3.1 DAnicA PAtrick 146 Figure 5.1 Tweet from DAvid Ragan 219 viii 9 INTRODUCTION The sport of NASCAR has been a fascination of mine for a long time. The curiosity began while living in Athens, GeorgiA, surrounded by friends who expressed passion that I had seen only for football. For a sport built upon the fundamentAl premise of racing in circles, I struggled to see the allure and fully comprehend the beer-drenched spectAcle that I sAw on mAny Sundays. Still, NASCAR cAptivated me, touching upon something I had yet to reAlize while becoming prevalent in my world. My fascination began to evolve becAuse of two moments. The first cAme on February 18, 2001, when Ralph DAle EArnhardt crashed and died on the lAst lAp of the DAytona 500. This event reverberated throughout the South, and whether you were a fan or not, you found yourself in a conversAtion discussing his passing at some point over the ensuing weeks. His deAth resonated beyond the region, becoming a national tragedy that stretched beyond US borders, mAking the event even more significAnt. The fact that U2, a mAssively successful band from Dublin, IrelAnd, paid tribute to EArnhardt, with guitArist The Edge weAring a #3 shirt in memoriAm at their Grammys performAnce on the day of EArnhardt’s funeral provided further evidence as to his impact.1 At the time, however, I neither knew the sport well enough nor recognized how to reconcile how meAningful the moment wAs And how it profoundly affected people. While that first instAnce could be found on a mAcro-worldly event, the second arrived in A smAller wAy. The next occurrence that inspired me to consider NASCAR differently wAs when I discovered one of my peers at the University of GeorgiA wAs considering the sport as the topic for her mAster’s thesis. As At the time I focused on the NAtional Football LeAgue and antitrust 1 collusion, the ideA of concentrating on NASCAR seemed to be peculiAr, though seeing it as potentiAlly worthwhile. To see the sport deserving further investigation required understAnding, not just NASCAR but the South in wAys that I had yet to develop. To assist in this educAtion, I benefited from my brother’s extensive knowledge of the sport. He had been following the sport since the miD-1980s And seemed to have an encyclopedic recAll of races, cArs, and drivers. His childhood love of all things automobile meAnt that the sport had ensnared him eArly, and for his knowledge, he becAme an integral resource. While the ability to tAp into a comprehensive source on the sport At will mAy have been AdvantAgeous, I had yet to construct what it wAs that piqueD my intellectual curiosity About the sport. While living in Mississippi and conducting a bibliometric datA study, my reseArch ideA cAme to fruition. The project examined the trends in reseArch associAted with auto racing. The DAtA showed an increAsing scholArship on NASCAR in the eArly 2000s, which reflected the sport’s growing populArity. However, when checked against the terms “society” or “culture,” the results showed a surprising lAck of scholArship. While the populArity of the sport peAked during the first decAde of the 2000s, the scholArship still abstAined from discussing the culture that constituted the sport’s foundation. MAny works looked at trends in the sport, its structure, or just seemed to celebrate NASCAR. MArk Howell’s From Moonshine to Madison Avenue (1997) appeAred to be the eArliest study examining culture and depicted the sport’s rise from an overlooked enterprise to a big-money affair. When NewmAn and GiArdina published Neoliberalism’s Last Lap? NASCAR Nation and the Cultural Politics of Sport in 2010, it seemed as if the topic had been fully covered, and further examinations would be redundant. Still, their book used the neoliberal 2 cApitAlist framework as their lens, which excluded vitAl discussions on the sport’s history and the racism and misogyny that accompany it. This dissertAtion attempts to fill in the gaps between Howell’s understAnding of the sport and NewmAn and GiArdina’s observations. Using southern culture as the lens and foundation for the sport, the goal is to recognize how this influence mAnifests itself in all facets of NASCAR. This study relies on a myriAd of different approaches, from scholArly works to sociAl mediA, from film, television, and mAgazines to posted comments. The analysis uses A similAr combination of historicAl, cultural, and theoreticAl frameworks applied in concomitAnce with close textual reAdings.