Posted by aogSunday, 08 December 2002 at 07:39 TrackBack Ping URL

I watched an episode of Monster Garage, a show on the Discovery Channel. The conceit is that a group of people modify an ordinary vehicle into something ... extreme. The episode that I saw involved a team upgrading a delivery truck into an extreme delivery machine. The team put a couple of air cannons on the top to fire newspapers and small packages. They also installed a ballista that fired medium sized packages out the side and a trebuchet to fling large packages. For the last one they cut a flap in the roof that could be raised by a switch on the dashboard. The show follows the efforts of the team to perform the upgrade, and if they're successful they get a big set of top quality tools.

The whole thing reprises Samuel Johnson - "I refute it thus VROOOOOOM!". It's completely against the grain of post modernism. The team starts with an ordinary truck and various parts and must transform it into the target vehicle. There's not much deconstructing or recontextualizing - it's welding and fastening. If the package doesn't go flying out the side when the ballista fires then it doesn't work. No "redefining the operational mode". You can put a package on a doorstep from the street or you can't. The judgements of an unforgiving reality is always there. In contrast, we have the EU deciding to declare that their rapid reaction force is "operational" even if it missing key elements. You couldn't get away with that kind of fudging on Monster Garage.

There is also the attitude of the team. One of the devices is a four-barreled newspaper air cannon (I quiver just typing that). They put it together and then do a test. The whooping joy when it actually fires the test objects across the garage really captures the joy of building, of doing. The failure to ever feel that joy, of watching something you built yourself perform, is likely a root cause of the psychological disorder that gave rise to post modernism. One often sees this kind of welding or "shop" type stuff derided as mindless grunt work, but just one episode is enough to show how wrong that is. The team demonstrates real intelligence and cleverness in constructing the various devices out of chunks of metal.

These are of course the same themes that run through a number of recent shows, like Junkyard Wars or Robotica. It's interesting that both of these came out of the UK - perhaps there's still hope for the Brits.