Mayhem Is Good?
Shiny, mayhem-capable codpiece. Image by Mike Roberts. Some rights reserved.
This Times of London article troubling on a couple levels. The first is the headline. The second is the car itself. But the interesting part is what it says about people who are part of the car culture.
Dial M for mayhem -power surge at the touch of a button
Vaughan Freeman
If you know that mayhem means crippling or mutilating another, you might find this a frightening headline.
Does the reviewer (or headline writer) really think that a car capable of crippling or mutilating another person is good? I doubt it, but the writer is definitely tapping (or channeling) that large part of car culture that is about power, dominance, and violence.
Of course, that's not the only part of car culture the writer is tapping:
As you accelerate harder and the revs rise, the colours brighten, then flash. . . Pretty.
Sound a bit like a spam message from an on-line drugstore? Or one of the passages that once led to the U.S. banning Joyce's Ulysses?
. . . breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and . . . . then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! . . . and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads . . . . O so lively!
There's a reason for that. Car culture (like other things that involve power and dominance) relies on the belief that a car can compensate for inadequacy.
Maybe it's just the reviewer who has some "unmet needs" that he thinks an absurdly fast car can fix. (Amusingly, the common law definition of mayhem includes the act of depriving another of the use of "his members" or "of those parts the loss of which abates his courage.") More likely, the writer knows his audience.
From The Times:
LATE October in Britain, with the roof down in BMW's astonishing M6 Convertible, squinting into the sun and getting a tan. Global warming can't be all bad.
. . .
The best aspect of the car by far is a small button on the steering wheel, marked M . . . The M6 in lope-along, get-you-to-work mode is potent enough, the V10 five-litre engine good for 400bhp.But touch the magic button and instantly another 107bhp is unleashed. . . .
. . . with the M button pushed, a lovely rainbow of yellow, green and red hovers around the magically projected speed. As you accelerate harder and the revs rise, the colours brighten, then flash to tell you that it is time to change up. Pretty.
. . .
The M6 is seriously fast. You can pootle along with the M button unpushed, driving the car as a full automatic. Or go for manual using the paddle-shifts on the steering wheel, which enable you to whip through the electronic seven-speed gearbox from 0-60mph in less than five seconds, and on to an electronically limited top speed of 155mph, where conditions allow. . . .
