It was 2006, and I was playing Need for Speed Underground 2 on the PS2 with my brother. Adding different colors, putting under glow to make the car pop, and changing the rims to spice it up. When I revved the car you can hear the turbo fluttering. Need for Speed Underground was always a competition to see who’s a better street racer. (Martinez)
The theme of identity is something we’ve seen in different movies like Lightning McQueen in Cars 3, Sean in Tokyo Drift, and Dominic Toretto in the Fast & Furious Movies. Identity in the car world can not only be found in movies but also in the real world between people.
In her article, “ (Re)civilizing the Young Driver: Technization and Emotive Automobility,” Karen Lumsden Assistant Professor in Criminology, Faculty of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, says that various measures were taken to “re civilize” young drivers. Authorities have placed CCTV cameras in Aberdeen’s Beach Boulevard to catch them doing illegal things. But Lumsden also studied the car community and their perspective of the car world. They touched on how their cars are a representation of who they are. The drivers don’t appreciate people who buy modified cars or high-end sports cars because there was no time being spent with the car to make it different from others.
Karen Lumsden wrote this from 2 different perspectives. She interviewed certain people in the car community and the officers who tend to stop them. She is very convincing in her argument of how modded cars are ways to express themselves. “When I bought it, it looked really shitty. So I did as many modifications as I could to it. People would take note when I was down the beach and I got lots of admiration for the work I’d put into it. It definitely made heads turn once it was finished” (Lumsden 44) She is also convincing on how dangerous certain activities should be held accountable for. For example, drivers have been stopped for doing doughnuts on the streets and have been caught by CCTV cameras placed by officers. “These examples demonstrate the way in which the modified car, as a symbol within the subculture ‘, is built up out of personal identities and narratives,” she writes (Lumsden 46) how the drivers express themselves to others based on their car. I agree with the drivers because cars are more than just 4 wheels, they’re a representation of who you are. Different builds mean different things. Just like different colors represent different meanings.
Need For Speed is a game where you can build your car to what you envision. The car community is about people using cars to express themselves to others. But sometimes they tend to have a bad relationship with the authorities as argued by Karen Lumsden in her article, “(re)civilizing the Young Driver: Technization and Emotive Automobility.”
Works Cited
Martinez, Erick “Autocon.” Unpublished Paper 23 September 2020
Lumsden, Karen. “(Re)Civilizing the Young Driver: Technization and Emotive Automobility.” Mobilities, vol. 10, no. 1, Feb. 2015, pp. 36–54. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/17450101.2013.823716.
Reflection
Writing this Summary and Analysis essay, The only part that I found difficult was finding a peer reviewed journal article about the car community. I see that this is something that gets studied a lot. But I’m glad I found one that was exactly what I was looking for. Especially one with the perspective of the authorities. I learned how to break down an article, especially a long one. I was able to pull out the overall message from the article so People will understand what is going on even without reading everything.
