Hybrid format: in-person and virtual presentations welcome

“Men will literally drive 200km/h through a neon-drenched cityscape instead of going to therapy.”

This roundtable explores the aesthetics and affect of car-centric cinema through the lens of toxic, white, and alienated masculinity. From Travis Bickle’s late-night prowls in Taxi Driver to Ryan Gosling’s chrome-faced detachment in Drive, the automobile becomes more than transport: it is a techno-fetish, an affective cocoon, and a prosthetic for control. These films offer a cinematic terrain where masculinity speeds toward rupture—emotional, political, psychic.

We invite contributions that interrogate the car as symbolic architecture: a site where violence, repression, autonomy, and failure play out under the hood of white, masculine self-stylization. What fantasies of freedom are enacted through motion, and what forms of detachment or destruction are embedded in that drive? When is acceleration just another form of emotional evasion?

Drawing on frameworks such as Lauren Berlant’s slow death, Richard Dyer’s whiteness, and bell hooks’ critiques of patriarchy, this roundtable welcomes interdisciplinary insights from film studies, gender studies, affect theory, race and class critique, and media theory.

Possible case studies include:
Drive, Nightcrawler, Taxi Driver, American Psycho, The Batman, The Place Beyond the Pines, Collateral, The Fast and the Furious, Christine, Death Proof, and more.

Discussion topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Speed, masculinity, and cruel optimism

• The car as emotional exoskeleton or techno-fetish

• Acceleration as affect: motion, repression, and death drive

• The racialization of space, mobility, and white autonomy

• Cinematic interiors: loneliness behind the wheel

• Violence, style, and the seduction of detachment

• Class, urban alienation, and fantasies of control

• Queering the car or subverting the masculine vehicle narrative

This roundtable centers the car as more than a cinematic trope—it is a site of emotional, racial, and ideological projection. What does it mean to rev the engine while burning out inside?

Proposals of 300–500 words and a short bio should be submitted through the NeMLA portal by September 30, 2025:
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21651
Questions? Contact chair Mara Mbele at marambele.docx@gmail.com