Documentary notes

Here are some of my notes from my viewing of Hell on Wheels:

The original name of the roller derby company - it started out as a for-profit - was "Bad Girl, Good Woman" - I thought that was a neat name

Roller derby is Austin definitely started out much more campy and raunchy - fights were encouraged and there were a few choreographed hits. Elbowing, pulling, pushing, shoving, etc. were all included. Some of the founders talked about how, in the beginning, marketing and profits were really important. Sex sold for roller derby and girls "behaving badly" definitely drew in a crowd. However, many of the skaters voiced concerns or addendums to that statement- saying that they also wanted it to be about the skating and the superior athleticism. "We want them to say 'damn they skate good, not just damn, they look good'" - paraphrase

They talked about the fine line between sexy and slutty - another skater also talked about the problematic dichotomy that is often made between expressing sexuality/sex appeal and being a feminist.

Texas rollergirls have come a long way since their inception - the rules are now WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association) sanctioned and fights are a thing of the past. Usually. They don't have the "penalty wheel" anymore - This foul system was a fun idea but it had some interesting options such as:

"Sold to the highest bidder" - the skater has to go on a date with whatever audience member bids the highest
"Spank alley" - she bends over and skates past the audience while they spank her - sometimes that got reversed however, and the skater got to spank the audience...
"Jackass" - this one was neat - the skater had to wear a set of donkey ears over her helmet for the next jam

Bibliography sample

Hey everybody - here's the rough draft of my bibliography that I've come up with - these are just a few of the sources so far:

Hell on Wheels. Dir. Bob Ray. IndiePix, 2009. DVD.
This is a pretty great documentary by an Austin filmmaker - I think it's a really good introduction to how women's roller derby was revitalized and reinvented in Austin. It was only released last year but the filming took place over about five years. I skate with/am trained by several of the women interviewed in this documentary - I'm really hoping to get to record some of their current thoughts and opinions.

Rollergirls - The Complete Season One. Dir. Dan Brown. Sunset Home Visual Entertainment (SHE) / A&E Home Video, 2006. DVD.
The series focuses on players from the Texas-based TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls - I haven't seen this yet but I'm interested to see how roller derby is presented in this series. I'm expecting it to be useful to compare and contrast the two Austin roller derby leagues where I can. They play a pretty different game than we do however - bank track derby is intense..

Coppage, Keith. Roller Derby to RollerJam: The Authorized Story of an Unauthorized Sport. Square, 1999. Print.
I found this book at the library - it looks like it might have some good history, visuals, and personal accounts in it.

Joulwan, Melissa. Rollergirl Totally True Tales from the Track. New York: Touchstone, 2007. Print.
This is a book written by Melicious - a retired Texas rollergirl. She was one of the founding members of the new league and it looks like it could have some useful information in it - "complete with photos and suggestions on how to develop a Rollergirl name and persona, this unprecedented tell-all comes from the woman who's watched the sport evolve from an underground Friday-night event to a bona fide national phenomenon."

I'm also looking into articles on feminist theory - I have some suggestions and leads that I'm still going through as of now. Hope you're all doing well!

Frustration

I have been trying to get a hold of Zelinda Richards and the director of Project SARAH and I have been unsuccessful. I think I am going to have to switch my project to working with the Georgetown project. I feel pretty behind because I won’t be able to turn in my IRB until the next review date.

However I am trying to stay on track by doing a lot of background research. I found a book called Out of Sight, Out of Mind which is about homelessness in small town America. This book will be very helpful in my research.

I found an interesting article today on JSTOR titled, Language and Space, which considers language as an "'everyday' spatial concept" and its relation to cognition. I found it interesting because it relates the way our mind works and how we frame "our" world through the everyday use of language and frames of references in our culture. The following paragraph further describes the concept:

It was suggested...that cognition is the intermediate variable between
language and other aspects of culture. Thus we would expect specializations in cognitive style-correlated with spatial language to surface in other cultural manifestations (Levinson 376).

One's use of language is the result of the prominent frame of references our language makes prominent. I think that it is safe to say that when learning a new language, adapting to a different frame of reference can be a bit difficult. Maybe this is where native speakers have a cultural advantage? I hope this makes sense!