When it comes to buying into Austin chic, I resist. Actually, I resist with a vengeance. Not that Austin doesn’t have many swell qualities, it’s just that the relentlessness of the “Ain’t Austin grand?” sell makes my eyes roll into the back of my head. It happened again when I was watching Rollergirls, the new A&E reality series based here. Watching the first two episodes took me back to watching the locally produced Austin Stories when, like the New York City of Seinfeld, Mad About You, and even my beloved Sex and the City, Austin came off as a one-note city, a city that looked familiar but was an anemic version of the Austin I knew. This time, that one note is playing the theme to “Keep Austin Weird”: white affluence masked with funkiness; a surface wildness ruled by conventional values; and the most annoying trait of all: plucking cultural symbols, language, or icons from “the other” to accessorize. (Did it ever occur to anyone that monikers like Puta, as in Putas del Fuego, or Chola are as charged with meaning – albeit in a much different way – as the N-word?) If it weren’t for the occasional establishing shot of the Nuevo Leon marquee (Austin Stories did the same with the now defunct Hernandez Cafe), you would never know there were any brown folk in this town.
When the roller derby first appeared in Austin three years ago, I was curious, but not drawn in by what I perceived as the burlesque aspect of the scene that relied on titillation rather than hardcore play. When I was growing up, the men and the women of roller derby were rough and tumble and scary in an exciting way that nearly anything set on four wheels careening around a banked rink can’t help but be. In recalling old-school roller derby, I tapped the memory of a friend who agreed that those roller derby women were tough, but not without style. Their look was not to tease or regurgitate tired male fantasies (the Catholic schoolgirl look, for instance), but as a means to say: This is who I am – you better make way.
Billed as “a new spin on drama,” the drama of Rollergirls is limited to the petty arguments of whiny women having trouble getting along, because, well, you know how women are. I could do with less “drama” and more derby time. And the “We can be tough and sexy” mantra is about as tired as a pair of fishnets after Mardi Gras. I was going to say that you would think in this day and age that a woman wouldn’t have to care how sexy she is, but that’s not true. Ask former Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. I don’t remember anyone lobbing salvos at former FEMA Director Michael Brown’s dowdiness when it was revealed how freakishly underqualified he was for his job.
But I digress.
As with Inked and Dog the Bounty Hunter, A&E leeches the kitsch to the surface in showcasing Rollergirls‘ mildly subversive characters and anoints the finished product alt-chic. After all, as Sister Mary Jane of the Holy Rollers team says amid last-minute preparation for an upcoming bout, “Is it going to get done on time? Eh, probably not. Will it be done enough to where people think it’s still cool? Yeah.”
To attain Austin chic, the reality of cool – no matter how contrived – is all that matters.
As Rollergirls progresses, I hope more time will be spent on the track and that some time will be spent outside Austin. There are several roller derby circuits around the nation. I’d like to see what’s going on with teams in other cities, hopefully without all the hair-twirling drama. Ultimately, for me, roller derby is only fun when the wheels are spinning.
New episodes of Rollergirls air Mondays on A&E at 9pm. Check local listings for additional play-dates. Hate watching Rollergirls alone? The Lake Creek Alamo Drafthouse offers a Rollergirls viewing party every Monday. See www.drafthouse.com for details.
This article appears in January 20 • 2006.