"The West shall shake the East awake"

Saw the third and perhaps final installment of The Fast and the Furious movie franchise tonight, this one subtitled: Tokyo Drift. The movie had the usual spectacular, intense, and awe-some mythical stunts and a well-developed, modern human plot to keep apace. Even elements of the movie seemed, symbolic-wise, to rise above the mundane to a poetic, if not mythical level, and for me were quite reminiscent of things Marshall McLuhan had written in Understanding Media.

Associated with this transformation of the real world into science fiction is the reversal now proceeding apace, by which the Western world is going Eastern, even as the East goes Western.

The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete.

The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.