“Working Class Male Fantasies and Spatial Politics in the Fast & Furious Film Saga
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2022
Publication Title
Contemporaries Post45
Abstract
At a time when working- and middle-class individuals and families are faced with decreasing social and economic mobility, the popular Fast and Furious franchise (The Fast Saga) offers audiences an expanding cinematic fantasy of global mobility and newfound wealth. This type of globetrotting movement and wealth accumulation is normally reserved for members of the so-called "transnational capitalist class," who are the owners and executives associated with multinational corporations and private financial institutions. For decades now, consecutive generations of working- and middle-class Americans have found it harder to climb the economic ladder of mobility by earning higher incomes than their parents. The main culprits are stagnating wage growth, and an income distribution that has shifted by twenty percent to the upper class over the last fifty years. African Americans and Native Americans, moreover, experience lower upward mobility than white, Hispanic, or Asian Americans. Zygmunt Bauman argues that one of the defining characteristics of present-day economic inequality is not the domination of the bigger over the smaller, but rather of the quicker over the slower in the workforce. The people who are able to move fast and be flexible in responding to changing market demands tend to dominate over people whose lack of resources precludes such dynamic responsiveness, and so existing inequalities compound.4 The Fast Saga's Dominic "Dom" Toretto (Vin Diesel), a former convict and automotive shop owner, and his "family" of multiracial and multicultural street racers, auto mechanics, and computer geeks are unlikely avatars of economic mobility. But, because of their extraordinary ability to perform high-speed truck and cargo hijacking, along with their relationship with Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), a Los Angeles police officer turned FBI agent turned fugitive, Dom and his crew are fast, flexible, and mobile, capable of executing million-dollar heists and covert international missions for government agencies. The Fast Saga therefore offers audiences a working class male fantasy of global social and economic mobility, as it delves into the spatial politics of urban environments, iconic architecture, and transnational networks.
Recommended Citation
Pierson, David P., "“Working Class Male Fantasies and Spatial Politics in the Fast & Furious Film Saga" (2022). Faculty and Staff Scholarship. 156.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/usm-faculty-and-staff-scholarship/156
