Iain Borden. Drive: Journeys through Film, Cities and Landscapes.
Sampaio, Sofia
Iain Borden. Drive: Journeys through Film, Cities and Landscapes.
Reaktion Books, 2012. 230 pages. Paperback.
Driving in film is not exactly an original topic. There is a vast
bibliography on the road movie genre (most recently in European and
Latin American film studies), accompanying the growing interest in
travel, border crossing, tourism, migration and exile films, as well as
in the relationship between film and movement more generally. The
automobile has also been a frequently visited subject, inspiring
approaches that range from material culture and visual studies to social
history. Iain Borden's Drive: Journeys through Film, Cities and
Landscapes acknowledges and, to some extent, is indebted to most of
these studies, sharing with them the "mobility paradigm" that
has dominated the social sciences and humanities over the past two
decades. In the introduction, the author announces a shift of attention
away from the car as an object--the focus of Peter Wollen and Joe
Kerr's Autopia: Cars and Culture (2002), also published by Reaktion
Books--to driving itself, understood as a rich and pleasurable cultural
and social experience that, according to this author, has been largely
neglected in the extant literature.
The book is divided into four parts, each corresponding to a
different car speed. The first part, "Cities," is concerned
with urban driving at speeds of 30 mph; the second,
"Journeys," rises to 55 mph, as driving moves to the
countryside and beyond (i.e., to roads rather than streets); then comes
"Motopia," dedicated to the freeway and motorway (70 mph and
higher), followed by "Altered States," which broaches more
dramatic and extreme sensations (including crashes) taking place at over
100 mph. Though not devoid of inconsistencies (car accidents do occur at
lower speeds), this structure allows the author to organise the variety
of driving experiences considered and to advance the key components of
his argument, which aims to sidestep anti-car sentiments and explore the
"joys of automobility" (10). In fact, such joys are predicated
on the idea that there is a profound affinity between cinema and driving
insofar as movement is valued in the former while vision takes centre
stage in the latter, or as Borden puts it, "driving embodies film,
just as cinema visualizes driving" (13). In spite of this, most of
the author's analytical efforts go into demonstrating the rich
array of sensory experiences and "sensual pleasures" (71)
that, together with vision, are involved in driving, culminating in the
contradictory experiences of the "modern-day sublime," when
high levels of "unruly speed" (168-169) are reached, enabling
complex kinaesthetic (and synesthetic) sensations of eroticism,
disorientation, serenity, frenzy, transgression, excitement, terror and
death--all referred to as "altered states." Following recent
trends in the social sciences (notably, anthropology), no
explanations--psychological, psychoanalytical, sociological or
other--are mobilised to provide a more complete grasp of the
"intoxicating" (9) thrills of driving. Instead, what guides
this study is the notion of "non-representational theory,"
which values "non-theorized everyday practices" rather than
their academic representations (11), and according to which automobility
is conceived, first and foremost, as "an enlivened bodily
experience" (83).
The book is written in a clear yet subtle prose. Aware of the main
theoretical debates, the author does justice to the films' singular
texts and textures, both in individual film analyses and thematic
overviews. It is also beautifully illustrated, presenting us with a
selection of high definition stills (most of them in colour) that add
value to this glossy-papered edition without being merely decorative. In
spite of favouring Hollywood productions and picking out for closer
analysis some well-known titles (Taxi Driver, The Italian Job, Thelma
and Louise, Bonnie and Clyde, Crash), Drive covers a wide range of films
from the silent and interwar period up to the 2000s, including early and
recent experimental films, Westerns (seen as forerunners of the road
movie), film noir, gangster movies, European films and several remakes.
That the author is an architect (Borden teaches at the Bartlett
School of Architecture in London) may account for the book's
special attention to space and "driving-related architectures"
(7), which is particularly rewarding in the "Motopia" chapter.
It may also explain the book's edifying allusions to
extra-cinematic sources such as artworks, video works, exhibitions and
design models. Borden's nuanced analysis of the many
"automobile environments" (130) that have developed along the
freeway and the motorway (petrol stations, service stations, overpasses,
motels and car parks), enabling the appearance of new driving-related
relationships, connotations and (sensory) experiences, results in a
pertinent critique of the concept of "placelessness," with
which the freeway has all too often been associated.
Nevertheless, even if he is committed to rescuing the experiential
side to car driving, the author's alertness to car makes (only a
few of them go unmentioned) suggests that it is just not possible to
separate the experiential from its related material aspects. A Cadillac,
a Rolls Royce, an Aston Martin and an Austin Mini Cooper are likely to
offer very different driving experiences, as each appeals to particular
identities and consumption practices based on gender, sexuality, class
and the like. This relationship between driving and a given consumer
object remains, however, largely unexplored.
The range of experiences considered is also skewed: the book
foregrounds extreme experiences like car races, chases and crashes, but
offers little about more routinized and less dramatic driving that would
involve, for instance, excessive noise and vibration, car sickness,
engine break-down and a flat tyre. Cars here are apparently conceived as
aesthetic rather than mechanical objects. Without overlooking the
potential of films to convey social criticism through driving images and
motifs--noted and commented upon are the counter-cultural critiques of
conservative America and consumerism, the use of the car interior in
long drives as a site of family and social conflict, the depiction of
ennui to denote existential nihilism and the deployment of the crash as
an indictment of capitalism's violence--the author fails to engage
with his subject in a more critical way. In his discussion of the
freeway and the motorway, what is highlighted are their positive
properties: namely, the way they have enabled the appearance of
unforeseen moments of contemplation, the experience of new sensations
and stimuli, alternative lifestyles and even greater levels of
productivity (153). No wonder, then, that the book should ultimately
read as a straightforward celebration of driving.
From its compelling selection of films to its insightful analyses,
well-written prose and captivating illustrations, Drive has much to
recommend it. At times, it becomes less a critical contribution to a
historically-grounded understanding of driving as a social practice
(though these dimensions are certainly there) than a gripping account of
the pleasures that car-lovers are likely to derive from watching cars
and driving in film. Nevertheless, that driving is a source of pleasure
to several millions on this planet is an undeniable fact--one that must
be acknowledged even by its staunchest critics. One of this study's
greatest merits is that it brings cinema into the equation,
demonstrating that films have been both indebted to and responsible for
the massive success of this major everyday practice.
Sofia Sampaio
University Institute of Lisbon
