he erotic history of the car in cinema extends back nearly to the dawn of the medium: there’s Chaplin, in 1914, asserting in his first film that he’s a more enticing view than the soapbox derbies at the (no engines yet). Though the death-drive desires Chaplin glimpsed would go on being worked out by Lloyd and Keaton up through (1996) and (2007), the human-car relationship has generally been more accommodating, less overt in its violence. The car is context, an acutely American site for allowing public and private to mingle in little eddies of erotic energy, a dynamic whose extratextual apotheosis is the mirror-stage kitsch of the mid-century drive-in. The savour of that context, unsurprisingly given the volume of examples, varies wildly. And of course, countless examples abound where it’s just a spot to cuddle, to
