1 Who's Afraid of the Virgin WolfMan? Or, the Other Meaning of Auto-Eroticism

Eric Mark Kramer

Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius. -Nietzsche

Pretext literature and documentary text is appear­ ing as a manifest ersatz nostalgia for the Web sites, books and articles dedi­ old "ozoners." Boomers miss them but cated to the accounting of the drive-in they were precisely the people who aban­ industry are readily available. They duti­ doned them in the first place and for rea­ fully record how the number of drive-ins sons selective memory censors. exploded during the optimistic 1950s and Since several chapters in this volume declined in the 1960s and '70s, nearly have set out to recount the technological dying-out altogether in the 1980s with the and political-economic history of the advent of home video machines, cable drive-in theater form along with its television and the like. They reveal how retroactively glorified "B-grade" contents, audience demographics changed over this chapter seeks to take a different path. these decades. How World War II with its In this chapter, I attempt a very cursory rationing of rubber, gasoline and other survey of the phenomenology of the drive­ essentials to auto-mobility forced many in theater experience, the necessary con­ drive-ins to close for the good of the col­ ditions for its birth and the romantic lective. Other articles describe the efforts memories it has spawned in the wake of of some loyalists to the form trying to its decline. In this chapter, I focus on the "keep hope alive" with a pseudo-revival at folk phenomenon and its essentially local the turn of the millennium. Optimists form, for in the instance of the drive-in anxiously chart progress with about 11 DIs theater the form competes with the con­ reopening and fully four new ones built tent for significance, asserting locale as a since 1995! They mark the rebirth with meaningful part of personal geography. special showings featuring "classic cars" With the continual individuation of the carrying equally, though not so classically, American psyche, the great "people's aging "Baby Boomers." More and more palaces" that showcased the Depression

9 10 DRlVlNG IN 1. Who's Afraid of the Virgin WolfMan? (Eric Mark Kramer) 11

era cinema have become minimalized British Museum spend hours staring into all representational art, in fact this entire .1 in size and decor. At the center of the glass cases peering at "actual," handwrit­ mortal world, is merdy a shadowy mimic entire shift is the emergence of what ! ten texts by Charles Dickens, Charles of true forms. Of course the post-mod­ Jean Gebser has called hypertrophic Darwin, James Joyce, Winston Churchill ernists protest. I have seen them quiver, egocentrism, perspectivism as an ironic and so forth. despite their self-loathing, with the excite­ ideal} For both the grandiosity of the Once, while at the museum in Lon­ ment of seeing the "real live" Jacques Der­ big outdoor screen and the reduction­ don, I noticed a crowd of people gathered rida enter a conference room. He is not a ism of the palace to the strip mall around one display case in particular, leav­ trace or a graft after all even though some "multiplex" owe everything to the ing hundreds of others practically unno­ consider his work a type of intellectual superabundance of personal motorized . ! ticed. Indeed, it was not the form of fraud (graft of another sort). They rush to transportation in the form of the auto­ display, but the "contents" that were sup­ get his autograph on his books and then mobile, which in turn presupposes an posed to be the point of focus. And so it jealously protect their prizes like religious attitude ofincreasing individualism and was that some content was particularly relics. Maybe it is the trace that authenti­ at the same time neocolonial resource alluring at drawing a crowd. The cases cates the origin. consumption on a scale never before that displayed English manuscripts by Despite logic, watching taped or seen in human history. While one may Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and other filmed performance somehow makes us, argue that all art is a wasteful luxury, "greats" drew no attention except for me the viewers, seem less real too as compared the drive-in is a perfect example of looking at something by .Emily Bronte. with watching a live performance. Passiv­ kitsch art, a moment in time where the What could be in the case that com­ ity, the modus of the couch potato, means mob can afford extravagance, where . i manded such interest? When I finally got to act like a vegetable passively following high production values occasionally close enough to peek over someone's the Sun through phototropic reflexes meet an adulterous medium, where the shoulder, there below were handwritten without really seeing it. We switch on the rubber meets the gravel. poems and cartoons by the pop legend tdevision, not so much to see a specific John Lennon. show but to watch it. The act of being a potato is meaningful in and of itself. We Being Here bask in the glow of the tube, lackadaisi­ Locale as a Particular cally relaxing. We rarely turn it off even Museum space is a special, mod­ Split-Infinity when "nothing's on." We just keep graz­ ern form of sacrality.l It is quintessen­ ing, hunting and gathering. We switch tially modern in that it deploys objects For all our post-60s sophistication away from performers in mid-verse, with in a form of space created primarily for and college-educated abstractionism, do impunity, because they aren't really real display. Rarely can one touch. Modern we not now recognize that as one "pro­ anyway. Maybe we do this more and more space is space for looking. And with the gresses," one progresses away from things in face-to-face interaction too. To appre­ ocular distance comes a cool reverence. as well as toward others? And as we were ciate dissociation, we must return to the Once put in a museum, a thing be­ taught that "movies" were an "art form" to beginning of drama when the ancient comes "culture" sui generis, an object be properly called "cinema," what was left Greeks built lenses, amphitheaters with revered but no longer part of daily life. behind? Look how we have developed into rows of passive observers focusing on a The magic of the museum is the homdess cosmopolitans (global citizens). new kind of staged space with "actors." attempt to get as close to authenticity The old human, that inferior anachro­ Thus we have the birth of the "actor" and as possible even if you can't touch it. nism, just had to die to make room for the the "reactors." When this happened, the But it is also a sort of death sentence as evolved post-human. Superior in every magic and mythic holism of ritual was it reduces a relationship to pure objec­ way, the "New Man" dwdls in the realm fragmented.3 The dance no longer in­ tivity. Despite our idealistic attempts to of scientific abstractions, formulaic truths cluded everyone. Some, in fact most, just flee this fleshy world of unwashed and perfect forms. watch now, even too ashamed to dance horde into the realm of transcendental In the pre-modern (yet extant) world, when asked. Thus we have the modern truths, still presence has magic power. performance happens now. "Live" means individual with her heightened self-con­ For instance, visitors of all ilk to the real. But for Plato (the first true modern), sciousness isolating her from everything 12 DRIVING IN 1. Who's Afraid ifthe Virgin WolfMan? (Eric Mark Kramer) 13 and everyone else. This is why communi­ pokes, which constitute the "actual" places a new Pythagorian religion, the mathesis that the embodied subjective fallible self, cations has taken on a millenarian status. where the artist's personal touch is pre­ universalis. As Plato and Pythagorus had with all its animalistic defilements, be cel­ "Communications," not informatics with served, we are inexplicably excited. The taught, virtue is in the virtual while the ebrated rather than despised. Rather than its high speed data transmission, but talk­ original is worth far more money than the actual is nothing but shadows on cave worshiping death, the pure realm of ing and listening have become "central" reproduction and it's not simply because walls, or across screens. But "act" is the absolute referential perfection, which once only because we sense that we are failing it is rare, the "brightest" or oldest version. root of "actual." With the ascendance of achieved spells the blessed end of pain and at it. The dissociative gaps are expanding Thanks to mass reproduction, the image the virtual as more real than the actual, striving, of living, many rebel in favor of everywhere. In part, this is because of the is available in various media sizes, and first in religion and then in mathematics, this world of mere mortal failings and modern sense of chronic urgency and qualities. For instance, one can wear a this world of real men and women endless heterogeneity that defies general­ hyper-individualism: In the drive-in, you Dali on a t-shirt or open a Cezanne on an becomes a "shame."8 The virtually derived izability. They note how the light con­ have to wait until it's dark. umbrella. What is missing is the object as average is more "significant," more pow­ stantly changes and the mood with it. We Why do we like the new solipsism? more than just an image, but as a thing­ erful (exhibiting more "epistemic force") find meaning in those who champion this For one thing, we can hide while we watch in-itself with a unique history. Locale is than a single actual "subject." The ideal world that is unabashedly "mine," rather and so the oft-mentioned sense of voyeur­ not merely a spatio-temporal coordinate. world is the self-reinforced world "gener­ than the pure world of forms and formu­ ism in the modern technotronic gaze. Par­ It is a place that is constituted of a unique alized" globally, the realm of transcen­ lations. They include from painting artists ticipants cannot be voyeurs. Removal, set of relationships. To touch the canvas dental law. It is truth for the "positive" yet such as Vincent Van Gogh, Gustave distanciation is a necessary condition for that Picasso touched is something special. "objective" man of "disinterested knowl­ Clillebotte, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, voyeurism to exist. This is so not just for To hold and read a marked-up script that edge." According to this ideology mas­ Pierre-Auguste Renoir; in philosophy the disinterested gaze but also for the Orson Welles held and scribbled on is querading as absolute truth (or is it the Soren Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; and in momentary identification that can myth­ special. We revel in the imperfection, the other way around?), the good human, the literature the troubadours, Wolfgang ically and magically work. Moving from contingency, the uniqueness of a conver­ best human: Goethe, Marie Rainer Rilke, Dickens, being a participant to an observer involves gence of human relationships. While the Mark Twain, etc. Actually, already with a shift from magic idolic communication new "constant," space, has no semantic Is only an instrument let us say Pieter Bruegel and Rembrandt we find a a mirror-he is not an "end in to perspectival signalic communication, a dimension, place is thick with mood. But shift into mood and the intimate lives of himself." And the objective man process manifesting an increase in dimen­ now an air of perfect cynicism, what is in fact a mirror: accustomed the "common man." sional accrual and dissociation.5 Friedrich Nietzsche calls the "gloomy to submitting to whatever wants Already gone are the idealized neo­ In the taped version, the performer vapors" that surround universal "positive to be known, by "mirroring"­ classicisms and the obsession with reli­ can't look back at us or hear our meager systems," a fragrance that inspires the he waits until something comes gious and royal forms. The paint thickens responses, our jeers, coughs and applause, sophisticated sniff that announces cos­ along and then gently spreads and the brush strokes become more pro­ and see us dozing and laughing and mopolitan sensibility, have spread and himself out, so that not even the nounced. Style emerges as a content all its weeping. By contrast, in the case of live gained the status of expert knowledge.6 All lightest footsteps and the own. Light and shading become unreally performance, even taking into account places are the same for I am a "world cit­ fluttering of ghostly beings shall real in diaphaneity. They represent noth­ theatrical distance, the audience is yet an izen" who transcends all parochiallimita­ be lost on his surface and skin. ing but themselves in their own immedi­ essential part of the happening. The actor tions.1 Whatever still remains to him of ate givenness, which can be no more true his "own person" seems to him can modifY her presentation to fit the The perfection of the modern illu­ or false than saying a cloud in the sky is accidental, often capricious, mood of the audience. But in a film, the sion that distanced us from the world true or false. Their indubitability, their more often disturbing: so com­ actors go about their efforts oblivious to occurred with the invention of photogra­ pletely has he become a passage self-evidentness, is in their being. While the fact that the seats are empty. phy. That most modern of all inventions, and reflection of forms and Rene Descartes became so abstractly con­ There is a profound difference be­ chemical picture processing and the events not his own.9 fused as to doubt his own senses and his tween being at a live performance to which fruition of optics marks the culmination of god, the mundane lifeworld paid his grand one is embodied, physically present and the modern Enlightenment philosophes In his pure transcendental world of philosophical angst little heed. He pre­ watching a memorial device (film, tape, and their Neo-Platonic utopianism. We ideal (positive) objectivism, the self, with supposed its existence even while doubt­ hard disk, silicon chip, etc.). It's like com­ can now watch wars and famine from the its disgraceful perspective and interpretive ing it. So too, in its new confidence to paring a painting reproduced in a book to comfort of our living rooms switching ambiguity is rightly reduced to nothing stand alone from the tyranny of the refer­ standing in the presence of the "original." away to a game show or music video if the but a self-polishing mirror. But wait­ ent as defined by the dominant culture, In the presence of the "real thing," the visage proves disturbing to our precious there are blasphemers like the impres­ painting became an object in its own right, brush strokes, hacks, smudges, scrapes and "equilibrium." Mathematics blossoms into sionists who keep roaring back demanding on its own terms, here and now, neither 14 DRIVING IN ,f. 1. Who's Afraid of the Virgin WoifMan? (Eric Mark Kramer) 15 true nor false but yet undeniable. Causing suffering. If you eliminate one, you've greatest myth of all.IS Only silence follows there, off to the side of the road, next to disturbance and disequilibrium is the goal eliminated the other. this utterance. the railroad tracks. Didn't you see it too, of art. It strives to de-familiarize the "nor­ Such fear and trembling toward life bolt off into the gully? And 50 the local mative" view, to create difference and thus is the origin of priestly penance and ressen­ Friends in Low Places (not urban) suburban legend is suggested meaning from scratch performing the mir­ timent; revenge against vitality and action. into my world, this local world. Maybe he acle of giving sight, helping us all to see It marks a "disease of the will" manifested There is something of the power of was a Communist WolfMan, or a Negro again. as a weariness at living and its inherent touch that is 50 strong that in the case of WolfMan (aren't they all?). Or maybe his 13 The modern world remains a place struggles. The ideal mirror-man can, and the stenciled hands painted on ancient name was "Jack." Sophomoric will 0' the of tension between the degenerate -beast believes he should only react to what hap­ cave walls, it is disturbing. Of course we wisps conflate with screen imagic and a and the heavenly spirit: the body and the pens by. He should because that is his want to lay our hands there too, to see if whole pop industry just for teens. But then mind. This is a false dichotomy created by ideal, the destruction of himself as the they "fit," to touch and identify with those the late '60s-early'70s happened with the one who worshipped purity, pure mathe­ source of all distortion, all possible inter­ Others across millennia. But in fact, we civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, matics: perfect circles. The realm of the pretive creation. He must embrace fidelity cannot escape the now ... or can we? In popular pornography, environmental con­ contingent and distorted subject remains and eliminate the "noise" of living. He an eternal universe, there are an infinite cerns, the Pill, and everyone "got edu­ "low." It is the realm of the base motive should "adapt," which is purely a reac­ number ofyesterdays and an infinite num­ cated." Suddenly the Wolf Man just and instinct where passion threatens order tionary attitude. He should only react but ber of tomorrows. Two infinities split by wasn't scary any more because people and reason, de-coherence threatens the even then, only enough to reflect. "me." I am not only the center of all the started "thinking globally." Sex wasn't myth ofidentical things (for no two things What is this? It is the "Ressentiment space I perceive but also of time. The now, innocently terrifying any more; it was are actually identical, a metaphysical faith of creatures to whom the real reaction, which is where I always am, is a "stand­ "safe," and "free." necessary for the existence of numbers, the that of the deed, is denied and who can ing streaming" moment caught between Because the darkness is real night, we redundancy of 1, 2, 3 .... ) Worldly sin indemnify themselves only through an the past and the future.16 But because we are not metaphysically jarred like Plato's defiles timeless paradise. imaginary revenge. "14 And this revenge is cannot escape the now the past is now too, hapless hero, "awakened" when we open Thus we have the St. Simonians and "conscience"; loathing turned against the as is the future, as such. I am touching the the exit door at midday into the reality of N eo-Hegelians engineering a perfect self. Guilt and self-hate are the sources of cave painting now. Similarly, while stand­ the blazing sun. This is the point. Being irony, the "positive" order dictated by what the ascetic ideal. The dissociated, unen­ ing amongst the overgrown ruins of a at an "ozoner" is more than watching a Nietzsche calls "pessimistic philoso­ gaged vision forms platitudes of reven­ drive-in theater, I wonder what scenes movie,- It was an attitude in an America phers."l0 These "positivists" who fear all gence, wasting life imagining all the bad have flickered across the empty screen, before it lost its virginity and became suffering, promise the "New Man" that things she would do to her enemies, espe­ what contortions of vitality have parked "worldly." It was the Working Man's escapes antique thinking, becoming the ne cially herself if only she dared. The imag­ there in the musk of dusk, all pointing monumentalism to match the Soviet plus ultra of human development. II For inal that forms the core of conscience, toward the secular gods of Hollywood. I Sputnik that winked as it tumbled over­ them, life is a disease. Perfection is to be however, is a dishonest hate for it never cannot escape my embodied world, my head. The drive-in does not constitute found in the transcendental system and its discharges itself. It never dares to pro­ unique perspective. I imagine what I the best venue for appreciating filmic art. final solution, the end of the line, the end nounce its true beliefs but instead curls know. And 50, I am the center of space! It is not so sanitary and sophisticated a of time. With the final epiphany comes itself into the obsequious smile for super­ time, the axis mundi. sanctuary. It doesn't have such pretenses. "equilibrium," zero movement: nihilism. ordinates while displacing natural aggres­ Live performance is a happening. It Instead, the poor fidelity of message, the Pure continuity spells the end of differ­ sion onto the weak. Imagined vengeance is now. In a drive-in "theater," the real wired speaker box that garbles the sound ence. Finally we have the ambiguous consumes her life. action is with the audience. Theatrical dis­ track, the screen in need of a paint job-it accomplishment of self-denial, what In the play Waiting for Godot, tance is 50 great that the open sky does all suggests the wilderness a traveler must Nietzsche calls a "Buddhism for Euro­ Vladimir and Estragon find themselves not allow us to forget whom, when or traverse. It is the background to the real peans," the nirvanic end of suffering, the at a crossroads. To pass the time, they where we are. The cinema, no matter the . ~ foreground. It offers the suggestion of a end of (life) rebirth; the glory of"no mind" decide to call each other names. The size of the screen, is overwhelmed by the tale for the road, on the road worthy of a going beyond the illusion of this world of game goes from bad to worse, from "great outdoors." The darkness is neither Twenty-First Century Canterbury charac­ 12 opposites. Instead of calling this body, "Cretin" to "Abortion." But the final insult total nor artificial. It is real. And 50, when ter. What does it matter if the retelling of this world an illusion and those who that is 50 heinous as to end the game driving home after the late-night double­ the filmic narrative mixes with the night's embrace it "ignorant," Nietzsche says a is "critic." Objective analysis, the ~inno­ feature, tired, deep in mental rhythms adventures and misadventures? "tender yes" to this world of taste and cent speech" of pure reflection tuins rarely experienced, with June bugs hitting This is not a discourse that lends odor, contingency and folly, ecstasy and OUt to be what Roland Barthes calls the the windshield, I think I saw a WolfMan, itself to referential authentification. It 16 DRIVING IN 1. Who~ Afraid ojthe Virgin Woif Man? (Eric Mark Kramer) 17 does not merely repeat in a disinterested of the locations of drive-ins along famous manner, sheer facts (things already done). by-ways like Route 66 and visit them for Rather the telling and retelling is created themselves, regardless of what's showing. and is creative "as it goes." Stories of the Afficionados form clubs and websites nos~ drive-in theater are themselves worthy of talgically noting the flimsy association a movie. Rudolf Otto might appreciate the between America's most famous road, mystery of the adolescent deus machina, Route 66 with its Beat Generation halo the back comer, Ulysses in a deuce and a and the fact that last year marked the quarter with glass packs and some care­ sixty-sixth anniversary of the first "official" fully concealed body putty for pimples and drive-in theater at Camden, New Jersey, other blemishes; for the contingent is June 6, 1933. the cosmic blemish. The intrigue is not The drive-in is lowly technology with explained away, demythologized and lowly patrons and lowly content and lowly understood by the telling and retelling. food. They have lowly intentions on their Quite the opposite, it is the telling that minds. They even deface their suspensions conjures the identification with the mys­ to lower their cars not for the sake of engi­ terious, the fascinating, and the scary. neering, not for a "lower center of grav­ "How far did you go last night at the ity," but for tantric purposes; the kundalini drive-in?" is the talk at the school lunch (mojo by another name) is raised when the table for both girls and boys in the midst car is lowered. It is comfortable and com­ of their own sexual adventures. forting, close to the earth and the com­ The action is local. The action and post heap of unofficial culture. It is for the actors are in the cars, not just on the many home, the place where America, screen. The screen is an excuse and an with its obsession with Hollywood and opportunity to hide. In the dark, in the cars, can convergendy go, thus answering steel cocoon of the automobile, privacy is a Nietzschean anthropologist's (Carlo nearly complete because it is small and Mane's) question, "Whither goest thou, on wheels, "whiffling through the tulgey "voyages" that others share with us. They mobilized. It is mine! And intimately so. America, in thy shiny car in the night?"17 wOOd."19 share everything with us. Peer pressure No others eat, sit, sleep, make love, live, The car is the destination, it is what we It is the acceptable risk of the auto­ comes from the inside out. We are one, a in this seat. It's better than trying to hide aspire to and work for. Beyond that we mobile that soothes his dissonant mind. gang of co-conspirators. Unlike driving in the back of a theater on a rental chair. don't know. The smoldering heap is a After all he is a used car salesman, a mod­ alone to work or the market, the drive-in The drive-in is not a place for appre­ mobius mass with endless twists and turns, em pretender to reasoning, a grungy trip is a "road trip," a mobile party so that ciating art in its most transcendent emi­ a long and winding road indeed, snaky sophist. The car has locks and windows we escape together. Thus we have the best nence. It lacks the purity of fidelity. It is even. Like Harry Angstrom ("Rabbit") that can be closed tight, and it can be used of both worlds, our "homeboys" leave grungy. It is a place of monetary economy who "wants to go south, down, down the to flee as well as explore. When the get­ home with us to make up new rules, new but a surplus of passion. It is a landmark map into orange groves and smoking away car starts, a sigh of "Praise be" invol­ games. And what is home to the young in its own right, unlike the multiplex mall rivers and barefoot women. "18 He heads untarily escapes from deep inside.2O Like wealthy American? The paternal source of cinema, which effaces itself in the process desperately down. Down for the tropics, the man who says he drove down to the domestic constraint. The road trip not of mediating the filmic text. Ifyou've been for the Gulf of Mexico only to be turned local convenience shop for cigarettes one only leaves place behind, but mores too. to one mall cinema, you've been to them back by his domestication in the middle banal evening after supper, but for some The parents' house where "my room" is, all. Interaction is minimized. You can't of the night to look for his old basketball impulse lurking so deeply within that it is the moral place of nues and regulations. even control the volume. And that is good coach in the hopes of some expert guid­ could not come up to the threshold of The car is the space/time machine that can because the film is the star there. But the ance, a road map of arrows and pivots to rationality for a gulp of sun burnt air (a get one away from the gaze of authority drive-in is local. It is not universal. What his disheveled life. But it, he, the world "reason"), on the way "home" he turned to "mess around: "down in." The car, happens there is utterly unpredictable, only unravels. The road map turns ~nto a right instead of left and never stopped. being the epitome of individualism, stands risky, daring. It is ironically, absolutely Kandinsky-like set of scares. And Lewis The car is the real "American Beauty." for freedom. specific, always different. People plot maps Carroll's Rabbit turns into a jabberwocky Drive-ins are acceptable momentary The drive-in is like going to the art 18 DRIVING IN 1. Who'sAfraid riflhe Virgin WolfMan? (Eric Mark Kramer) 19

unto death. Everything Under these rules, to say can happen only one first "I love you" is deemed to time. be a string of completely What is localism in nonsensical noises. But a an age when globalism is kiss is still a kiss and a roaring across the planet sigh is still a sigh. In exterminating all sense of England dogs say "bow place? Localism is the wow," in France "oua­ lowly, the backward, the oua," in Japan "wan­ unsophisticated. It is wan" and in Bantu "pyee" where things get wet and {but only after being sloppy, like a swamp. kicked).22 Accent is local. It is the source of life. Interest mutates into Localism is the sense intrigue there. By mini­ that a thing is cheap and mizing communication accessible even to the itself to a string of zeros gallery to admire the frames. The drive-. poorest of the poor. Privacy is mostly and ones, the message is so simplified that still beacons. The next circle for the in is more real for its lack of pretense. It afforded to the wealthy who hide them­ fidelity is made complete. Anything that adolescent/young adult is not so well makes less effort at upholding the illusions selves in that other, "different," "gated" disrupts the syntax elicits an "error mes­ defined. It is an overlap of allegiances that that feed realism, insisting by its very world, as F ..Scott Fitzgerald made 01' sage." Deviance, local heterogeneity, marks the move toward greater indepen­ structure, that realism after all is only Sport say of Gatsby. However, privacy, difference is criminalized. Interpretation dence. The usually conflicting forces at another genre of fiction. Even the "true" access and control exist even for the lowly is outlawed verging on madness. Each this level range from the ego to the fam­ drive-in movie content, like the films of in the realm of the local. It is in the local message has only one possible correct ily and the sub-tribe of contemporaries Ed Wood and Roger Corman, is more that "every man is a king and every woman meaning, and each problem has only made up of best friends, friends, worst approachable. They are more local ... more a queen,· where. everyone "counts," where one best solution. But in the organic enemies and the supporting cast of mar­ like "home movies." When the effort that community happens with all its thick world, where things are taken seriously ginal Others who continually move in and sustains realism is abandoned, we say, "get molasses of relationships. and people "get personal," everyone rubs out of focus. real." There is no mythic innocence in a Here, genuine talk, the talk that has off on everyone else and they tend to be The most significant is the love inter­ drive-in. There is little pretense or tran­ sustained the species for millennia, is para­ irrational and to stick together when an est. This is as local as local gets. As per­ scendental standards to uphold. The kids mount. Gossip is organic. It is relevant. It outside threat appears. This is why real sonal as personal gets. As serious as serious get into their pajamas and wrestle with the is about people I know and me. In today's communication is a form of intercourse. In gets. Local is where personal concern and pillows in the back seat while the next car world of global corporatism, where only a conversation that shares us, it is impos­ care dwell, where identity blurs and emo­ over steams up, and one more over exudes one value, "efficiency," exists any more sible to say where I stop and you begin. tions blend. The self is a consequence of the combative odors of pot and pizza {and it too can be quantified)-in this Risk is a constant and accommodation a group membership. Friendship and ani­ struggling for atmospheric supremacy. world, gossip is a bane, a waste of time. dance. mosity are most palpable. Beyond this, for The drive-in is the quintessential Instead, the ideal is to merely download The human mind is a geography of the young adult, is a vast uncharted realm modem American answer to the Renais­ information without distortion, not to concentric spheres. The first sphere is the "where there be dragons" and conquests, sance plaza. It is pseudo-public space. It converse about "personal,· relevant things. realm of the private self, which concerns endless potential. Exploration for the is shared to be sure. Flipping on one's Instrumental communication has come to itself with the embodied self, its itches, young adult means doing many things for lights quickly draws not only moths but dominate the world of administration. wounds, daily anomalies, changes and the first time, which usually makes for an honking horns of irritated neighbors. But Even language is drained of all inherent feels. Each day teenagers across cultures especially intense and meaningful period it is also private. This is my car, my steer­ power and reduced to a purely arbitrary survey the map of their acne, the build of of life. It is the time of life before "the ing wheel, my stuff. And you are "my girl" tool, a system of signals. The magic di­ their physiques and the shape of their hair, thrill of livin' is gone," as John Mellen­ (or boy). We are not just going to see a mension of language, its "spelling," has pruning and primping, for despite the camp sings. This time oflife is a time that movie. We are making history here, biog­ been bled to death. Only statements that modem ideology that wants to postpone is so intimate that it challenges attempts raphy of the unspeakable sort. These are are logically coherent andlor empirically everything for work preparedness, for cap­ at intergenerational understanding. It is a unforgettable moments to be cherished falsifiable are said to have any meaning.21 italist demands, the ancient mating call magical time when reputation is every- 20 DRIVING IN 1. Who's Afraid '!flhe Virgin WolfMan? (Eric Mark Kramer) 21

thing and the public realm resides in the projected onto the drive-in screen, that terest in accurate reproduction. Pickup therefore thoroughly political cinema, halls and bleachers of one's mind. Care, or rural spectacle arising majestically from trucks are parked backwards with folding starring Doris Day and that paragon of sorge as Martin Heidegger would say,23 is the midst of corn, soybean and wheat lawn chairs in the beds. Children swarm heterosexual manhood Rock Hudson, intense. It has not yet evaporated with the fields across the land of the automobile: a in the twilight over teeter-totters and proving that he really was a good actor dissociation, boredom and distanciation North American, mostly U.S. phenome­ swing sets of dubious construction down after all. that marks "maturity." The world of the non like no other. Drive-ins constitute the in the pit of the screen where for other But the drive-in is the theater of teenager is an emotional churning. And real "field of dreams." Storms rage in the classes a symphony would accompany an a reversal of priorities, and an honesty being "in" is absolutely vital. cars while lightning hits the screen. As opera or stage play. Because the cost may that presents itself with confidence. The The local is the place where the noted above, fidelity is not the goal. be one price per car, gangs arrive to see common discourse makes a "heavy" date struggle for status and control is taken Rather the goal is to break new ground, the double feature bargain with comrades the truly serious one. When a "sit down" seriously, where we think we can make a to rupture limits passing into whole new stuffed in the trunk: local espionage and date, though expensive, just can't com­ difference and we guard our self-interests. worlds. Everything is a gamble and with intrigue. pare with a "lay down" date that has a It is also the place where the animal needs it comes the rush of discovery. The machine vehicle is my very own seriousness of an entirely different magni­ to be able to relax, to repair to lick and Rain and fog may intercede between declaration of independence, chamber of tude. share its wounds with others who are sup­ the eye and the world "out there" that dreams and exploratory spaceship rolled When the families disappeared, the posed to care and dress them without comes "in here" to the intimate space into one. It is probably not fancy, but drive-in screen was taken over by the question. The local is thick with sym­ of my car. The sound system may be that is because it is my first car. Like­ new and cheap sex and gore. Titillating pathy, hatred, joy, fear. Magic is at the barely audible. Mosquitoes may force a wise the movies at the drive-in are not the "women convicts in chains" movies and surface of the skin. And by mutual im­ Solomon-like choice between a mid­ fancy expensive ones that stay pure in the blood-spurting amputees jiggled and lum­ plication the world and I share the same summer night's heat and open windows. showrooms of sheltered space where bered across our retinas. Drive-ins were boundary, like two adjacent rooms shar­ Fresh air that cools with the deepening proper society (a race of critics) takes its like drive-through fast food. If one wanted ing a common wall. The boundary of the evening may turn into "country air" if the cushy seat. Instead, the drive-in weathers a nice "sit down" movie or meal, one had world is my skin. We continually adjust cows come home next door or a skunk the storms happening in and out of the to get out of the car. But the drive-in audi­ to a common contour. Magic works as happens into the theater. The steering vehicles. The drive-in is intimate, local, ence didn't particularly expect or care to a fetish. Magic is not logical but power­ wheel, center console, sun visors, tinting down to earth, "Grade B." And whoever see "real cinema" anyway. The lowly tech­ ful. It is touch, and it works best in the accent the information coming from the goes there is automatically transformed nology would only spoil Lawrence ofAra­ dark. screen, fusing with it to create a unique into a Grade B person. There are no new bia and Doctor Zhivago, and dull the "full film experience. Mercedes-Benzes or Cadillacs here. So, effect" of movies like Star Wars and 2001: The Spirit in the Machine But the viewing experience is not while Leslie Caron, and Maurice Cheva­ A Space Odyssey. The sound systems ren­ evaluated by these measures of fidelity. lier were singing their way through Liti dered films like West Side Story, Oliver, My At the drive-in, all movies have a Instead it is the infidelity that is at the core (1953) and Gigi (1958), depictions of the Fair Lady and The Sound of Music into green tint that gets stronger toward the of the experience and the desire. For in veiled wonders of coming-of-age mixed something like dog whistles. We sus­ top of the picture. The car, for an Amer­ my car, I am both free and encapsulated. with sanitized high class prostitution pected that there was more there but just ican teenager in the mid- and late twen­ Hidden in my metal nest where I can turn where the Parisian bon vivant stalks his couldn't hear it. tieth century, is a magic machine that is to my most intimate interests with only an courtesan, such movies remained the Many didn't need romance on the mighty in its powers to confer status and occasional, semi-public and furtive glance fodder for a different kind of "serious" screen because the real action was in the independence. Its size is just right for the from the car "next door" that may intrude. date, a "sit up" date with a proper "sit car itsel£ As Freud would no doubt have most local of stories to unfold within. Two This is suburbia on wheels. Individualism, down" dinner and an ambiance that was predicted, the combination of screams is a crowd and three or more intimates with all its empowering promise and all foreign to the real life of teen America. with zippers would sell. So we had mon­ makes a riot. It is a movable feast. The its fragmenting isolation, revels here. Throughout this era, sexuality was veiled sters with sex appeal like Christopher first car is rarely fancy, or expensive, yet Perpectivism marks the landscape with beyond the double entendre. Was not Lee's Dracula, and busty victims snagging never forgettable. Its power resides in its crisscrossing roads, and marks the mind­ Sheriff Matt Dillon's "lady friend" Kitty their negligees on branches while running ability to whisk the child away from the scape of orientation toward a fantasy actually an aging prostitute turned from very male fiends. Were these actu­ nest, even if it must be borrowed from a world, row upon row facing the Mecca of pimp? And was not the patriarch on ally, or virtually thinly veiled rape scenes? parent or older sibling. yearning. Bonanza a serial polygamist? In the end, In the drive-in, everything is reversible. The fancy movies limp into the Lack of "class," which is a sur~ sign the McCarthy era romantic comedies sig­ No matter the metaphysical implications, drive-in worn and tattered if at all, to be of class, and informality express the disin- nifying the epitome of apolitical, and such images combined into low-level S&M, 22 DRIVING IN 1. Who's Afraid of the Virgin Woif Man? (Eric Mark Kramer) 23 acting as detonators for the powder keg of 3. See Eric Kramer's Modern/Postmodern: Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. 22. Hardison, Jr., O. B. Disappearing teenage hormones. In the cars, reality and Off the Beaten Path of Antimodernism. West­ Grosset and Dunlap: London, 1946. Through the Skylight. New York: Penguin, fantasy intermingled. port CT: Praeger, 1997. 20. Updike, p. 21. 1989: 164. 4. See Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin; 21. See Karl Popper'" Popper Selections. 23. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. also see Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civi­ Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, London: Robinson, 1962. lization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and 1985. Postscript World, 1934; and Paul Virilio's Speed and Pol­ itics: An Essay on Dromology. London: Auto­ media, 1986. As suburbia expanded and land val­ 5. See Kramer's ModernIPostmodern. ues continued to rise, and the audience 6. See Book 5, Section 347 of Friedrich became more and more sophisticated, the Nietzsche's The Gay Science. New York: Vin­ drive-in passed out of vogue, replaced by tage, 1974. Also, see Eric Kramer's "Cultural the multi-screened, "surround sound" Fusion and the Defense of Difference" in mega-movie theaters offering expensive Socio-Cultural Conflict Between African and flavored coffees in malls. Gory video games Korean Americans. Ed. by Asante and Min. Landham MD: University Press of America, and Internet porno belie the tame nature 2000: 181-227. of the wild streak of the 1950s and 1960s. 7. Gudykunst, William and Young Yun The ornery grin of James Dean and the Kim. Communicating with Strangers. New sexual power of Marilyn Monroe seem York: McGraw Hill, 1997: 364. light years removed from the angst of Kurt 8. See BookS, Section 359 of Nietzsche's Cobain and the Goth movement. But in The Gay Science. fact their tragic real lives inform today's 9. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good youth identity. Today, many high school­ and Evil. New York: Penguin, 1972: Section ers follow a cultural trend introduced by 207. 10 See Book One, Section 48 and Book the stylish horror pies produced by Ham­ Five, Section 347 of Nietzsche's The Gay Sci­ mer Films. Today, high schoolers need ence. not go to the drive-in to see a pierced 11 See Jean Gebser's The Ever-Present vampire because "there are three in my Origin. second period English class." They have 12. See Nietzsche's Preface to On the found an ersatz identification with images Genealogy ofMortals. New York: Vintage, 1967; from the ozone, like putting one's hand the first essay, Section 5 of On the Genealogy of Mortals; Book 2, Sections 99 and 134 of The up to the cave wall or peering at a Lennon Gay Scienc!!", Postscript to Nietzsche's The Case cartoon. Somewhere in the immediacy of of Wagner. New York: Vintage, 1967. the moment, the split infinity, throbs a 13. See the Third Essay in Nietzsche's On shared humanity, a very personal connec­ the Genealogy of Mortals and Book 5, Section tion. 347 of The Gay Science. 14. Nietzsche's On the Genealogy ofMortals, Section 10. 15. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New NOTES York: Hill and Wang, 1982. 16. Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of Euro­ 1. See Jean Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin. pean Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenol­ Translation by Noel Barstad, with Alis Micku­ ogy. Evanston IL: Northwestern University nas. Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 1985. Press, 1970. 2. See Richiko Ikeda and Eric Kramer's 17. Kerouac,Jack. On the Road. New York: "Enola Gay: The Transformation of an Air­ Penguin, 1955. plane into an Icon and the Ownership of His­ 18. Updike, John. Rabbit Run. New York: tory. n Keio Communication Review. Issue 20, Fawcett, 1960: 23. . 1998: 49-73. 19. Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in ALSO BY GARY D. RHODES AND FROM MCFARLAND

White Zombie: Contents Anatomy ofa Horror Film (2001)

Lugosi: His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers (1997) Introduction ...... 1

DRIVING IN 1. Who's Mraid of the Virgin WolfMan? Or, the Other Meaning of Auto-Eroticism ...... 9 - Eric Mark Kramer 2. Drive-In Horror Across the Outback: Surf, Sand and Sisters in 1970s Australia ...... 25 - Graeme Harper

SITUATING THE HORROR 3. Naked! Screaming! Terror! The Rhetoric of Hype and Drive-In Libnuy of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Movie Trailers ...... 41 Horror at the drive-in: essays in popular Americana I edited by - J Rocky Colavito Gary D. Rhodes. p. em. 4. A Drive-In Horror by Default, or, The Premiere of The Hideous Includes bibliographical references and index. Sun Demon ...... 53 ISBN 0-7864-1342-5 (illustrated case binding: 50# alkaline paper) § - Gary D. Rhodes

1. Horror films-United States-History and criticism. 5. Ideology and Style in the Double Feature I Married a Monster from 2. Drive-in theaters-United States-History. 3. Drive-in Outer Space and Curse of the Demon ...... 67 theaters-Austraila-History. I. Rhodes, Gary Don, 1972- -Michael Lee PNI995.9.H6H66 2003 791.43'6164-dc21 2002011643 6. The Legacy of Last House on the Left ...... 79 British Library cataloguing data are available -StevenJay Schneider

©2003 Gary D. Rhodes. All rights reserved BOILING HOT AND COLD: THE PRESSURES OF WAR No part ofthis book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying 7. Apocalypse Here and Now: Making Sense of The Texas Chain Saw or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writingfrom the publisher. Massacre ...... 97 -Mark Bould Cover photograph ©2002 Index Stock Screen image from poster art of the 1958 film Monster on the Campus. 8. In the Science Fiction Name of National Security: Cat Women of the Moon ...... 113 Manufactured in the United States of America - Tony Williams McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com v Horror at For Robert Clarke and David Durston the Drive-In

Essays in Popular Americana

Edited by GARY D. RHODES

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London