A smashing time: the Economist‘s punning teaser head on its article about demolition derbies in its 8/24/24 issue:
(#1) [Economist caption:] Art for art’s sake (photo: Getty Images)Frankfort, New York: Where crashing cars is the point
After the formalities are seen to — the national anthem sung, the firemen assembled—the fun starts. The sound brings the first thrill: a dozen engines thundering, each without a silencer, and the crackle-pop of backfire. Then comes the crash and crumple of metal on metal. Tyres go flat, bumpers fall off. Cars catch fire, others get pushed up against the wall. They head-butt like billy goats. They hiss, wheeze, smoke, stall and go kaput. Soon only two are still moving, at which point the announcer might growl: “Finish him!”
Tom Wolfe, a writer*, called demolition derbies “culturally the most important sport ever originated in the United States” — closer to the gladiatorial games of Rome than even boxing. Annihilation is the point. The last car running wins. Sports reporters ignored them, wrote Wolfe, because they thought them puerile and low-class: too many kids with “sideburns, tight Levi’s and winkle-picker boots”.
[* AZ: satirical chronicler of both the counterculture of the 1960s and the elite culture of New York City]
The Economist story goes on to depict the milieu of demolition derbies, and I’ll post the whole thing (it’s not very long, it’s entertaining, and it’s behind a paywall — which I penetrate as a subscriber), but I’ll interrupt this presentation with the beginning of the Wikipedia article, because it introduces an important bit of conceptualization and accompanying terminology that I’ll want to expand on later: the category of sporting events now labeled motorsport(s):
Demolition derby is a type of motorsport, usually presented at county fairs and national events. While rules vary from event to event, the typical demolition derby event consists of five or more drivers competing by deliberately ramming their vehicles into one another. The last driver whose vehicle is still operational is awarded the victory. Demolition derbies originated in the United States and quickly spread to other Western nations.
Hold that thought for the moment, while we return to the Economist‘s account.
Held at county fairs, derbies are a rural, working-class pastime; they grew out of travelling shows of stunt driving in the 1920s. Hardly anyone is in it for the prize money, which tends to be a few hundred dollars. Rather, derbies are a socially acceptable space to engage in anti-social, unacceptable behaviour. At the Herkimer county fair in Frankfort, in upstate New York [just east of Utica], contestants say the sport is the perfect outlet for road rage.
Injuries are less common than you might think: mostly bumps and whiplash, sometimes a broken rib or concussion. One woman, a rarity in this subculture, recalls the time firemen extracted her from her burning car by slicing off the roof with claws they call the jaws of life. Contestants cut holes in their bonnets in case firemen need to hose down a carburettor. Glass windscreens and headlights are removed.
There are a few rules. No crashing directly into a competitor’s driver-side door. No sandbagging, meaning don’t shy away from collisions because, well, what’s the point in participating? Drivers want to protect their engines in the front, and so reverse and ram with their rear. But there is no use in being too strategic. “You don’t get to predict when it’s coming at you,” says Rob, a middle-aged driver at it since he was 13. He pats his ’73 Dodge Dart, “full of rust and crust, rotted to death”.
Derbies are about more than thrill-seeking. Bill Lowenburg, who wrote a book about them, described the cars as American folk art. They are painted in garish colours and inscribed with names of fiancées and children. In Frankfort cars are dedicated to Karlee, Sahlena and Ronnie; others to mom or [Grabpussy]. “I built this car for all of them and I will wreck this car for all of them,” says Michael, at 25 a first-timer.
Almost as entertaining as the derbies are attempts to make sense of them. Sociologists have called them spectacles of anti-capitalism and rituals of social inversion: a place to flout corporate carmakers, to reclaim and transmogrify the machine. Your correspondent put that to a young driver in Frankfort. Was he registering his dissent against an economy predicated on endless consumption and planned obsolescence? He smiled and shook his head. “I just like smashing things.”
The pun. So, a smashing time in the Economist head uses a bit of BrE slang —
adj. smashing: British informal excellent; wonderful: you look smashing! (NOAD)
— to refer to literal smashing, violent breaking into pieces.
Categories of sport(s). Now for a conceptual distinction among types of sports that I believe is widely made, but for which there are no commonly used labels. It starts from the observation that activities in the SPORT category, which we refer to as sports (in AmE, using a plural C(ount) noun, where BrE uses a (singular) M(ass) noun sport), share the feature of competition, but the competition comes in two types, exemplified by boxing and foot racing (to choose two sports activities that go back to ancient times), with my own choice of labels:
conflict sports — both individual sports (boxing, wrestling, martial arts, fencing, tennis, badminton, etc.); and team sports (basketball, football (of all varieties), baseball, etc.)
comparison sports — races of all sorts (foot races, bicycle races, bobsled races, sailing races, steeplechase, etc.); and other demonstrations of performance (diving, figure skating, gymnastics, shot put, high jump, golf, dressage, etc. — paralleled, outside the sports world, by artistic competitions and auditions)
Add a motor. Now, to look at competitions involving motorized vehicles. From my 8/20/24 posting “The NASCAR snail races”:
Motor racing as a sport. NASCAR races are certainly competitions, but is stock car racing, or indeed any sort of motor racing, a sport? It’s all a bit edgy, given a definition of sport like the one in NOAD:
noun sport: 1 [a] an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment: team sports such as baseball and soccer | (as modifier sports): a sports center …
There’s the physical exertion question and, more important, the question of the machine’s place in the competition. One consequence of these reservations is that motor racing (of any sort, even the more elite sports car racing) is not an official Olympic event.
Motor racing enthusiasts, however, took the matter of labels into their own hands by adopting the name motor-sport / motor sport / motorsport for their competitions (I don’t know the history in any detail; the first of two relevant entries in OED3 is from 1936, and neither is particularly informative). In any case, the term was widely adopted. So: there’s a Wikipedia entry [AZ: which you’ve been holding in your thoughts for a while now] that begins:
Motorsport(s) or motor sport(s) are sporting events, competitions and related activities that primarily involve the use of automobiles, motorcycles, motorboats and powered aircraft.
Put it all together. Most familiar motorsports now turn out to be comparison sports — races, or perfomances in time trials. But — ta-da! — demolition derbies are conflict sports. Oh my, yes.
Attenuated demolition derbies: plenty of clashing, but no smashing, in a form of entertainment rather than actual competition. Welcome to the world of bumper cars.
From Wikipedia:
(#2) Bumper cars at Jolly Roger Pier Amusements, Ocean City MDBumper cars or dodgems are the generic names for a type of flat amusement ride consisting of multiple small electrically powered cars which draw power from the floor or ceiling, and which are turned on and off remotely by an operator. They are also known as bumping cars, dodging cars and dashing cars. The first patent for them was filed in 1921
Design: The metal floor is usually set up as a rectangular or oval track, and graphite is sprinkled on the floor to decrease friction. A rubber bumper surrounds each vehicle, and drivers either ram or dodge each other as they travel. The controls are usually an accelerator and a steering wheel. The cars can be made to go backwards by turning the steering wheel far enough in either direction, necessary in the frequent pile-ups that occur.
I’ve never been fond of amusement park rides, but as a kid I truly enjoyed bumper cars. If they could also have done some smashing, that would have been boy’s-life perfection.