Luka’s Viper and other fast cars

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
You leave tonight or live and die this way

Tracy Chapman


 

 

 

VIPER JOCKEY
VIPER


“Mali seronja je popizdija!” is a line given to Dr Luka Kovac. To a TV illiterate—an identity that so many academics ostentatiously claim as they own, as if not watching TV is the guarantor of intellectual seriousness—“Dr Kovac” may sound like the name of one of Slavoj Zizek's Llubljana colleagues, but of course he is, instead, staff physician at ER's County General Hospital. Doctoral student Jyoti Mangat tells me that Kovac, or at least Goran Visnjic, the actor who plays him, is the "Croatian Sensation," just as others have assured me that he is "babe-alicious" enough to put an end to their pining over George Clooney's departure.

 

Never, ever trust the open-minded.
By definition, they’re closed to what they’re closed to.

I like Luka, not because he makes me feel homely, but because he drives a Viper. To really start to understand someone, you need to find out what group of people s/he openly loathes—and there's such a group for almost everyone. Certainly race widely functions this way. Is there anyone that doesn't find some "visible difference" sufficiently different to be risible? And academics who deny their racism regularly sneer at bodybuilders, men with trophy wives and men in sports cars. Most common put-downs of the latter can't seem to settle on the appropriate temporality, though, since they oscillate between deriding those men as arrested adolescents and mocking them for their mid-life crises. Likewise, critics who have no time for phallocentric discourse are nonetheless convinced that sports cars are obvious phallic substitutes. Needed balance is provided by Flannery O'Connor (Bruce Springsteen's favorite novelist), who says, "A man with a good car needs no justification."

 

 
Well, you're built like a car
You got a hubcap diamond star halo
You're built like a car
Oh yeah
                                                  Marc Bolan

Julian Barnes' favorite childhood book was Speed Six. He says it was "about a Le Mans 24-hour race in 1950 in which a plucky pre-war Bentley in British racing-green livery valiantly overcame scarlet Maseratis and some other lurid foreign motors. I think the reason I liked it is embarrassingly obvious." He also notes that one of his recent books sports a new picture of the "author" on its cover: "A car in France in 1959. I'm thinking of having photos of cars from now on"—an excellent example of a master signifier.

So if you were a car, what would you be?

I have a friend who claims that his partner would be a Pinto, because if you hit one from behind, it explodes.

 

The image, the image

In 1985, when I was wrestling pigs and breaking the necks of mice for a living, I took delivery of a brand-new pewter-grey Corvette and the finest radar detector money could buy. One reason was that everyone hates Corvettes, although often for very different reasons. An appalled grad student demanded, "Do you know how many medical supplies that would have bought for the Sandinistas?" (this being before Daniel Ortega took power and got himself into a world of trouble). On the other hand, a different woman, who was rather like Adolf Hitler, only meaner, was no less disgusted, not because the Corvette was so expensive, but because it was so déclassé compared to the Porsches and Bimmers she coveted. "The image!", she exclaimed, "The image!" She thought I was even worse than the Jews she scorned for "their Cadillacs and fat cigars." She was right, thank God.

A note for idiots: when I write, "She was right," I'm referring to the bigot's declaration that I am "even worse"; I am not affirming her ridiculous anti-Semitism.

I really didn't think I'd have to add this explanation, but, to my chagrin, I had once more overestimated the intelligence of professors, one of whom complained that I was committing a hate crime. At the risk of recapitulating my misjudgment at a different level, maybe that professor was right, in a way. I was staging an opportunity for someone to prove her/his despicable idiocy.

F40
ENZO

These days, I don't even own a car, although I watch ER on a really big TV. My boy and I walk to get his Happy Meals. But I read Car and Driver, Road & Track and Automobile every month, which is why I still know that (1) the Ferrari F40 was a greater work of art than any painting or sculpture produced in the same year, (2) the Ferrari Enzo is an abomination, regardles of its glorious namesake, and (3) driving an SUV is equivalent to walking around with IMBECILE in neon letters on your forehead.

Oh, yeah—“Mali seronja je popizdija!” is Serbo-Croatian for “The little asshole went nuts!”, which was Luka's description of Carter.

For the Serbo-Croatian, I am indebted to Bojan Korenic.

I’m driving a stolen car
Down on Eldridge Avenue
Each night I wait to get caught
But I never do

Bruce Springsteen


MAIN LUKA'S VIPER PSYCHOANALYSIS OF CULTURE LINKS TEACHING THEORY CONTACT ALEX SOCWEB

© 2002 Douglas Sadao Aoki