ABSTRACT
Forty bright blurs dashing around an oval track inches apart, speed punctuated by brief and frenzied pit stop action, and concluding victory lane celebrations filled with happy racers, race queens, and adoring fans present powerful images of masculine daring combined with skill and speedy machines in a dangerous setting. These symbols and rituals, as components of the growing stock car entertainment spectacle managed by NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing) are both cause and consequence of powerful notions of masculine work environments. As a cause, auto racing brings these traditional views of masculinity, machinery, production, and danger to millions as mass spectacle. As consequence, racing bears the imprint of traditional attitudes about dangerous machinery and masculine productivity. As negotiated by racers, NASCAR officials, fans and sponsors, the rules that create race events celebrate and encourage an exclusively masculine, distinctly stratified, labor-intensive relationship between man and machine. Furthermore, the rituals in which stock car racers engage feed on and are nourished by a regional flair for competitive masculine behavior in potentially violent circumstances. This essay is an attempt to untangle the relationships among the ritual, technology, and governance of events at stock car racing's highest level. It is an attempt to understand how the vehicles, drivers, rule makers, mechanics, officials, and pit crews of NASCAR combine weekly to create a popular masculine allegory.
