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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 1980)
Life at the drive-in A car and a hot date Rising against the moonlit sky, the sacrificial altar of the silver screen pulses with images of sex, violence and wantonness. It's the monolithic testimony to American culture, the glowing roadside sign, the last remain ing temple to hedonism. The drive-in movie: It's the White Man’s version of the Vision Quest. There’s something about the drive in. Wherever its strangling roots have been laid in the American soil it has taken hold. Among its many permuta tions are theaters, restaurants, banks and churches. Given free reign and an unlimited supply of gasoline, we would undoubtedly have dreamed up drive-in brothels, beauty parlors and voting booths. The drive-in has provided us with some uniquely beautiful architecture and its appearance in any form has never been benign. It contributes about as much to community as does televi sion It fractures the audience into tiny groups and wastes a precious re source. Not to mention the libertinism which accompanies the drive-in wher ever it springs up. With the possible exception of drive in churches, drive-ins are cradles of corruption. It’s the car, that imagined cocoon of independence. The integrity of the American Home — look at the mass of magazines we publish to tell people just how to make their home their own — extends to the automobile Securely encased in the womb of steel, we have the right to do anything we would do in our home. And more. There might be enough of God in the services rendered by the drive-in church to keep such amorality from the parking lot, but at the movies, lecherous Lucifer him self delivers the sermon. "You know what they call this place?” the ticket taker asks. “Passion Pit.” He chuckles, shaking his head, "Come here on the weekend That's when things turn wild. It doesn't matter what’s going on up on the screen. The show's in the cars. I sometimes just walk around so I can watch. "Clean up’s pretty foul, though. Last week there was this bum here. We had to call the cops to get rid of him. He was sleeping in the middle of the lot. Yeah, that night we found this huge bong with a half an ounce of dope. And every night dozens of used prophylactics. That’s life at the drive-in.” Passion Pit. Kids on Friday and Sa turday nights with daddy's car and a hot date. Or their own wheels they work all weekend to support and anyone who’ll go along with them. Or young marrieds living on the fantasy of what they used to be like. The movie bumps and grinds across the screen like an untuned Rambler. Boy reaches for girl. Girl paws boy's leg. In a moment, a kiss, a pant, an obstacle race around belts, bras, steering wheel and gearshift. But there is a focus to all this passion: The big screen. People can, and do, take a ride up a hill and breathe as heavily as they want. They can, in warmer weather, walk to a secluded park. And these passion pits are free. But people pay money, up to $3.50 a person, to be where the movies are. Sometimes they even watch them. lOtO The movies which play the open-air screen have a particular character. They are, invariably, popular movies. Not popular in the sense that a large number of people see them, but rather in the same sense the Harlequin novels are popular novels, regardless of how many people read them. The two most regularly shown kinds of drive-in movies are adventure films and horror films. Horror movies are like horror stories. Sharon Sherman, a professor and folk lorist at the University, made a documentary on telling tales of the supernatural. One of the functions she ascribed to the telling of these stories under intense, intimate circumstances is that it provides an adequate context for a boy to protect a girl. And protec tion leads to passion. Weird world we live in. Adventure movies offer the same sort of impetus for passion. The macho hero, strutting for two hours, offers a model for appropriate behavior in the albeit limited context of the car. The man postures. The woman swoons. And they’re off. On it goes. Soft porn — the hard stuff can’t be shown where it might be seen by anyone too young to pay for it — gives some drive-ins the aspect of a portable Notel Motel. And romantic comedies, providing they are romantic enough, can move the subtle, the sen timental, or the faint at heart. The movies play but a part in the drive-in experience. A drive-in devotee says, "It isn’t the movies. And it isn’t the stuff you do when you’re watching. It’s the gestalt, the whoie shebang. You know, it’s nighttime, just you and a special friend, the movies playing something dumb or corny, and you know that there are a hundred other people in a hundred other cars doing just what you’re doing.” That’s a big part of the attraction. Fighting with your best friend over who gets the back seat, without thinking for a moment that the front offers the better view of the screen. Photo images of the Continued on Page 5B Cultural Forum "True dance radicals number only a few, George Balanchine, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. To these obvious choices one should add the name ol Erick Hawkins " New York Times "The program will be performed as Hawkins performances always are to live music " "The clarity and < freshness of Hawkins dances make lor delightful and life enhancing experiences " The Washington Post Just Ask! Order any 12" pizza and gat up to 2 free cups of Pepsil If you order a 16" pizza, you can get up to 3 cups of Pepsil No coupons necessary, just ask! Fast, Free Delivery 1609 E. 19th Ave. Telephone: 683-7325 Our drivers carry less than $10.00 lim.ted delivery area 1980 Domino s Pizza. Inc Second item free! Second item free on any 12" or 16" pizza Hours: Sun.-Thurs. 4:30-1:00 Fri. & Sat. 4:30-2:00 Fast, Free Delivery 1609 E. 19th Ave Telephone: 683-7325 Read the Emerald
