Death Race 2000
1. In Westworld we discussed the Delos resort as a fantasy world, a place where what is not normally possible in everyday life can be experienced without danger. How does Death Race 2000 represent the relationship between everyday life and fantasy? How is violence represented?
2. What do you think about the relationships between the racers and the navigators? How does sexuality play into the race?
3. In the society portrayed in this film, the world is very different in terms of politics. Even though this difference is not the focus of the film, we get glimpses of what may be going on. How does the film present the United States, Europe and the rest of the world? What does this have to do with the race?
4. A lot of our contemporary theoretical understanding of spectacle has been influenced by the scholarship of Guy Debord, and his book The Society of the Spectacle. Here are some selections from this book. How do you think they relate to the way racing in portrayed in Death Race 2000? Can you think of specific scenes from the film that exemplify the tensions Debord describes?
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation." (The Society of the Spectacle, paragraph 1)
"The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of
generalized separation." (2)
"The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images."(4)
"The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one sees: the world one sees is its world. Modern economic production extends its dictatorship extensively and intensively." (43) Memorable quote, from Harold the TV reporter:
"As the cars roar into Pennsylvania, the cradle of liberty, it seems apparent that our citizens are staying off the streets, which may make scoring particularly difficult, even with this year's rule changes. To recap those revisions: women are still worth 10 points more than men in all age brackets, but teenagers now rack up 40 points, and toddlers under 12 now rate a big 70 points. The big score: anyone, any sex, over 75 years old
has been upped to 100 points."
Many of the customized cars we see in the film were later sold to museums. Ib Melchior worked on a number of other films, as a writer and director, including
When Hell Broke Loose (1958), Live Fast, Die Young(1958), The Angry Red Planet (dir. 1959), Reptilicus (1961), Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962), Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), The Time Travelers (dir. 1964), Demon Planet (1965), and Ambush Bay (1966). More recently, he was a special advisor to Mark Koch for the film Lost in Space (1998). Frankenstein: David Carradine
Click here to see the complete text of Debord's The Society of the Spectacle online.
Annie: Simone Griffeth
Machine-Gun Joe Viterbo: Sylvester Stallone
Calamity Jane: Mary Woronov
Matilda the Hun: Roberta Collins
Nero the Hero: Martin Kove
Myra: Louisa Moritz
Junior: Don Steele (I)
Grace Pander: Joyce Jameson
Harold: Carle Bensen
Mr. President: Sandy McCallum (I)
Special Agent: Paul Laurence (I)
Thomasina Paine: Harriet Medin
Lieutenant Fury: Vince Trankina
Deacon: Bill Morey
Contact the instructor: dk2244@yahoo.com