By MARCUS BARCELOS*
A walk along the path of the senses where the technology/pleasure binomial is articulated and a second pair of fundamental ideas prevails: modernization and danger
Roland Barthes, in his acclaimed work mythologies, decomposes the signs of bourgeois life through the methodical peeling away of the images that configure the imaginary and dogmas of capitalist civilization: gastronomy, sport, cinema, advertising and other threads of comfort and commerce. In line with its semiotic investigation technique, whose analysis brings to light the values embedded and camouflaged in everyday systems of meaning, this text proposes to reflect on the mesh of meanings that sustains Formula 1. To this end, they are essential reading keys for the interpretation of this conglomerate of senses two basic notions: adrenaline and testosterone.
Adrenaline: fast, furious and luxurious
It was the Italian futurists who first subscribed to the so-called “poetics of speed”, whose most beloved totem, without a doubt, is the automobile designated for sporting competitions. It is no coincidence that the incendiary passion for automotive racing is, at first, even more combustible among them. For them, Italy had become accustomed to the tedious slumber of classical values – balance, constancy, harmony. She ended up drowning in a quagmire of her own glories, lost among the rubble of Antiquity and the Renaissance. Asphyxiated by this majestic past, she vegetated without desire for the future. Marinetti then does an acrobatic jump. He declares war on tradition to satisfy his hunger for tomorrow. Hence the irresistible attraction of the car's impetuosity.
In his manifesto, Felippo Marinetti, shamelessly, announces that “A racing car with its trunk decorated with thick tubes, similar to snakes with explosive breath... a roaring car, which seems to run over grapeshot, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace ”. It is clear, however, that the obsession with the vehicle is a mere derivation of the fetish for modernity. Less well known, perhaps, is his poem “All automobiles for racing”, in which the racing car is less interesting as a metonym for the new than as an item of enjoyment. In full confession of the pleasure of driving, the lyrical self narrates that “under the sky full of stars (…), from time to time, I lift my helmet to gently feel the crazy, velvety fingers of the wind”.
These are, in fact, the two signs whose brilliance stands out amid the constellation of meanings of Formula 1: technology and joy. They complement each other as obverse and reverse. They are justified. From this angle, modernization necessarily implies ergonomics, power, acceleration. Because of this, every year, team engineers set themselves the challenge of surpassing the technical level established by the previous season. We climb the ladder methodically, gradually and infinitely, in a monomaniacal climb towards unattainable perfection. Always in movement. To the ecstasy of the pilots; to satisfy the public's appetites.
Do not think, however, that these are the only driving forces of the values and meanings entangled in this complex semiotic system. If, on the one hand, the technology-pleasure binomial is articulated; on the other hand, a second pair of fundamental ideas prevails: modernization and danger. From this perspective, with each new round of improvements due to new extremes of speed, cars also impose greater risks. This is because, on racing circuits, danger makes up the condition for the existence of intoxicating pleasure – adrenaline – which both athletes and spectators are satisfied with.
As a consequence, motorsport is a unique sporting practice, as it ideally aims for continuous stimulation of the senses. In a football match or even a boxing match, depending on the dynamics between those involved, the audience may feel drowsy. A lukewarm game, without big moves, or a monotonous fight jabs Protocols are not, as we know, exceptions to sport. On the other hand, even the most predictable of Formula 1 competitions is accompanied by perceptual hyperstimulation.
This does not mean, of course, that racing is completely impervious to boredom. However, it is a valuable demonstration of the proposed sensory scandal that, at least initially, distinguished Formula 1 from other sports. Through your ears, you hear the desperate feeling of urgency brought by the whistling of cars. The eyes, too, are served an appropriate feast: shapes, traces, colors and volumes in rapid acceleration, on the verge of being dragged out of curves by the invisible action of centrifugal force.
It is the futurists, once again, who make the best records of the kinetic and synesthetic spectacle of racing. This is the case, for example, of The strength of the curve, by Túlio Crali, whose image of the car draining extensions or residues of itself is the purest portrait of the idea of speed. The visual trail is so suggestive that you can almost hear the hissing sound that follows it closely. Note also how the atmosphere of tension prevails, that is, of imminent risk.
At this juncture, it is not surprising that the imagery that haunts sports races is extremely violent. In Marinetti's poems, the adjectivation of machines is always aggressive, if not belligerent: “Vehetent god of a race of steel / a car thirsty for space / that throbs and trembles with anguish / gnawing and biting with its shrill teeth / a formidable Japanese monster / with eyes of forge / nourished by flames and mineral oils”. Therefore, no traces of peaceful beauty can be seen in the automobile spectacle. It is an aesthetic of war, tumultuous and combative, in which fragments of men and vehicles can emerge, explosively, at any moment. This miscellany of flesh and metal, when spread across the asphalt, gives rise to the so-called locus horrendus – in Portuguese, “horrible place” –, an artistic conception that had a powerful attraction for Caravaggio and other 17th century Baroque aesthetes, accustomed to the fascinating representation of violence and carnage.
One of the most impressive illustrations of this phenomenon in the sport's recent history occurred in 2012, when Haas driver Grosjean made a disastrous error of judgment regarding the space available for maneuver shortly after the start of the Belgian Grand Prix. With him, the cars of Fernando Alonso – Ferrari –, Sérgio Perez – Sauber – and Lewis Hamilton – McLaren – clashed, confusedly. In an impetuous collision, with cars thrown into the air, bulging bodywork and debris that rained on the track, the four runners had to withdraw from the GP due to the damage received by their cars.
In 2020, the same Grosjean starred in another cinematic episode. After coming into contact with Daniil Kvyat's car, immediately after the start, the French driver suddenly crashed into the wall. His vehicle broke in two and, in moments, became an incendiary pyre with tongues of fire raging under the night sky of Bahrain. Grossjean, miraculously, emerged almost intact from the furnace flames, with only bruises and burns on his face and hands. The appeal of an event like this, with mythical combinations of blood and fire, is extremely powerful on the public's imagination.
It is not necessary, however, for a true massacre to be carried out to satisfy the audience's instincts for wild emotions. In reality, it is the instability of the system that impresses the public. In front of the stands, twenty pilots compete riding on killing machines designed to test human reaction time to danger. In the blink of an eye, everything can change. In this sense, Formula 1 is an ecosystem governed by a chaotic magnitude, entropy. With each turn, the tendency to increase the degree of disorder increases. Since leaving the grid, with the cars precisely arranged in pre-fixed positions, until the checkered flag, which will end the dispute through the validation of a new ranking, there is an incessant back and forth of overtaking. A team that is in seventh place on the circuit can suddenly be lifted into first place. It all depends on the situation, after all the participants are parts of an intensely dynamic system.
As proof of this, the occasions of interference from the safety car on the track imply a lack of explosive emotions associated with unpredictability. It turns out that the mesh of signs intertwined with the ideas of danger, speed and collision is, disappointingly, relaxed by the arrival of an instrument that imposes a baton of order. This is because, while on the track, the safety car will force all drivers to slow down, in addition to almost completely restricting overtaking possibilities. From this perspective, there is the dissipation of speed and adrenaline, resulting in the semiotic extermination of the race itself, transformed into a serene and predictable merry-go-round.
It is, therefore, the highly volatile scenario that excites imaginations and enthusiasm. This fact does not, of course, constitute an exclusive feature of Formula 1, but rather makes up a more comprehensive fetish, linked to the exaltation of uncertainty, which is unfurled over the vast horizons of late capitalism, in whose landscape “everything that is solid falls apart. up in the air". In a similar way to the computers on which automakers' teams are crammed into their paddocks, The screens on Wall Street's trading floors are dotted with lines that chart the rise or fall of various assets, which can suddenly change their behavior and take the biggest companies from paradise to bankruptcy. In other words, stock market operators also know, in their own way, the adrenaline of racing. Both universes are, in short, demonstrations of the world of variability and turbulence that Bauman discussed in detail in his emblematic “Liquid Modernity”.
Such an allegation, which traces an underground connection between phenomena, in principle, so disparate from each other – the market and motorsport – is not unreasonable. Formula 1, like everything else in the capitalist system, is a product. This means that its existential success is linked to the viability of commercial practices derived from the imaginary created by both the races and the drivers. In this context, it is curious that, once again, significant differences emerge between motor sport and other types of competition. In football, for example, shirts, boots and clothing accessories are mainly sold, as well as tickets for matches. In motorsport, however, it is possible to go much further.
From this perspective, it is worth remembering that Formula 1 not only ranks the drivers, but also organizes the hierarchy of the manufacturers. In other words, athletes' performance is not the only important fact. The performance of the vehicle itself is also of interest. It is common, therefore, for the championship's detractors to consider it, not without reason, a catwalk of grease and bitumen where “big people's toys” parade. Indeed, the collectible appeal of cars is obvious. Formula 1 is the only tournament whose sporting object, that is, the automobile, is intensely invested in commodity fetishism. There is no possible parallel. Think, for example, about how the ball is, in football, not an item of designer worship, as is the case, on the other hand, with Ferrari and Mercedes cars.
In this context, a large market supply is revealed, structured around a paraphernalia of collectible items, such as miniatures of iconic editions of victorious cars, auto-racing articles or even stylized tracks with almost unfeasible routes, such as the amazing circuits of Hot Wheels. To purchase any of these products, a financial outlay is imposed on the consumer, the burden of which is known to be greater than that of purchasing a ball. It's no secret that Formula 1 is an elitist sport. It is expected, therefore, that your toys are too.
This reinforces the conception of the automotive experience as a luxury experience, a fact that supports the imaginary of exclusivity that participates in the universe of racing values. In other words, adrenaline is expensive. It involves not only expenditure on the athlete's spirit, but also a significant material commitment on the part of the teams and the public who finance the sport.
Testosterone: wheels and balls?
However, in parallel to economic attractiveness, it is essential to dissect another attribute of the recreational territory that borders Formula 1: the influence established by motorsport on the male imagination since early childhood. Under this tuning fork, there is no better sample for analysis than the canonical cartoon Speed Racer 1967. In the plot that drives the narrative, Speed is a recently qualified young man, just eighteen years old, who drives the Mach 5, designed by Pops Racer, who, in addition to being a talented mechanic, is, as his name suggests, a father of Speed.
The female characters fulfill purely ornamental functions and are entities of quite lateral importance. Her mother, Moms Racer, rarely appears in the episodes and, when she does, she has very limited lines. Trixie, Speed's girlfriend, is evidently a supporter of her beloved. However, her contribution to the narrative scheme often reduces her to the position of a mere pretext for some heroic deed by the protagonist, who needs to engage in a courageous rescue activity.
It is between the male figures that the action takes place. On the track, all racers are men – no matter whether they are upright and honorable, like Speed, or inclined to villainy, like Captain Terror. It is in the curves of the road that each person's strength of character will be measured, which will be rewarded, after overcoming the trials, with a place on the podium. Between the start and the final check, the fraternal rivalry between Speed and the mysterious Racer X is the guiding thread of most episodes. Therefore, in many ways, the narrative ingredients coincide with those of other epic subgenres especially loved by male audiences, such as western or military action stories, which are built around an iconography of proofs of virility.
From this perspective, testosterone is the hormone, which, alongside adrenaline, underpins the repository of symbols that give life to Formula 1. Allusions to signs of masculinity, as a result, infest the discourse of drivers, mechanics and teams . For analysis, we take a reasonably recent sample, from 2019. In the first episode of the second season of the Netflix documentary series drive to survive, which follows the twists and turns of the world motorsport championship, Red Bull Racing leader Christian Horner responds about expectations of favoritism for that year: “Only when you arrive in Melbourne do you know where you stand. That’s when everyone drops their pants and you see how big the competition is.”
Similarly, the insults that athletes hurl at each other are usually insults of emasculation. In 2018, after being removed from the race after a collision caused by Esteban Ocon, Max Vertstappen condensed his anger into a single word spoken against his opponent during the press conference that followed the Grand Prix: “pussy”. In a translation with a good sense of pragmatism, the term proposes the adjective of “coward”. It is significant, however, that the female genitalia is the metonymic representation of cowering. In contrast, the displays of courage that some pilots are capable of are praised with the word “balls”. In 2020, Alain Prost, a retired French racing driver, praises the performance of young talent Charles Leclerc with this lexical selection: “That kid has guts!”.
In the field of imagery, the emblems of some teams are notorious signs of virile power. On the Ferrari Scuderia emblem, a skittish horse rears its front legs towards the heights. In the prints of the Red Bull and former Toro Rosso teams, the impression of strength comes from the robust appearance of relentless bulls. Now, both the horse and the ox are, in the symbolic cauldron of Western culture, identified with attributes of reproductive activity, apparent musculature and indomitable attitude. In other words, they are animals linked to predicates of masculinity.
However, testosterone does not just infiltrate the subtle cracks of the imagination: it manifests itself, clearly, in the bodies that stage the show. Just watch one pit stop to see that the avalanche of feet and hands is masculine, which, with coordinated precision, operates, surgically, around the car. Inside the cars, only men hold the steering wheels. It is obvious, therefore, the male protagonism in sport, whether on the track itself or in its surroundings, made up of boxes e paddocks.
At the conclusion of the event, when the victors ascend the podium, the symbolic outcome of the display of virility is consummated with an apotheotic eruption of champagne. It goes without saying that jets of white foam, thrown from bottles shaken with masturbatory repetition by men lost in pleasure, are, of course, the invitation to an intellectual exercise of semen-optics which this text dispenses with. It is enough to point out that the ritual that ends the spectacle of testosterone's continuous excitement is the transition to the serene and relaxing pleasures of alcohol.
By way of conclusion: crossing the finish line
Formula 1, therefore, is a semiological system based on two core notions, which maintain close relationships with each other, adrenaline and testosterone. Therefore, the image, that is, the collection of mental references that give stamp, figure and value to the automobile universe, is made up of signs of danger and virility. This passion for risk as a proof of masculinity goes back, to a large extent, to the avant-garde origins of certain XNUMXth century aesthetics, especially Futurism. Since then, there has been a fetishization of technology as an instrument for accelerating the pace of competition for the execution of more intoxicating maneuvers.
In fact, the fascination with speed and instability is a more general symptom of late capitalism and is not restricted to the niche of motor sports. However, with regard to racetracks, this imaginary is fostered, whether by the toys and collectible objects that make up the playful universe of Formula 1, or by cartoons and other narratives. Finally, the codes representing the pleasure of driving are affixed to a plane of sexual connotations, as emblematically revealed by the ritual of popping champagne on the podium.
*Marcus Barcelos He has a master's degree in Literature Theory and Comparative Literature from UFMG.
References
BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Liquid modernity. Translated by Plínio Dentzien. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2001.
CRALI, Tulio. The strength of the curve. 1930. Oil on canvas, 70 cm x 50 cm. Private Collection. Available at: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/le-forze-della-curva-tullio-crali/WQGFeAO89tYVpQ. Accessed on: 18 Jul. 2024.
drive to survive. Director: James Gay-Rees, Paul Martin. Production: James Gay-Rees, Paul Martin, Sophie Todd. [SL]: Netflix, 2019. 1 series (6 seasons). Available at: https://www.netflix.com/title/80204890. Accessed on: 18 Jul. 2024.
MARINETTI, Filippo Tommaso. Futurist Manifesto. Translated by Gilberto Mendonça Teles. In: Brazilian modernism and European avant-gardes. Location: Petropolos. Editora Vozes Ltda, year. 2009 p. 115-116.
___________________________. All'automobile di corsa. Available at: https://www.filastrocche.it/contenuti/automobile-da-corsa/. Accessed on: 18 Jul. 2024.
MITCHELL, Gemma. Alain Prost on Charles Leclerc: “That kid has guts!”. The Checkered Flag, 07 Jan. 2020. Available using this link. Accessed on: 18 Jul. 2024.
Speed Racer. Director: Peter Fernandez. Production: Tatsuo Yoshida. [SL]: Tatsunoko Production, 1967. 1 series (52 episodes). Available at: https://www.exemplo.com.
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