Slow Derby Rocks: Blood on the Flat Track Review

Often you'll hear the slogan, "Slow derby sucks." I'm not especially attached to the idea, especially given how exciting strategies and positional blocking sometimes necessitate slower play. And if you do agree with the above, Blood on the Flat Track: The Rise of the Rat City Rollergirls may not be for you.

A 2007 documentary on Rat City, Seattle's premier roller derby league, Blood on the Flat Track is a thoughtful, relatively slow-paced film. It takes the time to depict in-depth stories about intra-league romances, interviews regarding how the teams feel about each other, and how the league came into its own. It's a wonderfully detailed film, but it doesn't have an over-arching narrative that some viewers might need to maintain their interest. When I saw it for the first time at a derby buddy's house, we ended up turning it off and watching Arrested Development instead.

But after returning to the film, I really enjoyed it. The detail and intimacy of the stories presented are incredibly charming if you take the time to let them sink in. You really go home with these players: you learn how they got married, you learn how they got into the sport, you learn about a family derby dynasty. My particular favourite was seeing how the teams interact on and off the track. Also, the Derby Liberation Front is my new favourite team.

If you're looking for a plot-driven derby doc, check out Hell on Wheels (reviewed by me here). But if you want to get cozy with a great league and get to know its players, Blood on the Flat Track is for you. It's also a wonderfully inclusive and super queer film.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is how it catches Rat City at a pivotal moment, when derby in the city was still more in touch with its theatrical roots - we see out and out brawling and creative penalties that you just don't see in today's derby. It's remarkable seeing how fast the sport has professionalized and Blood on the Flat Track nicely catches the tipping point.

In that sense, it might be a good idea, if you're doing a derby double-feature, to watch Hell on Wheels first and Blood on the Flat-Track second. Together, they chart a great deal of the sport's progress.

The bottom line here is that Blood on the Flat Track is a detailed, emotionally engaging look into a healthy league. Folks looking for derby action will find it and those in need of a plot will find an arc later in the film regarding Rat City playing against the big girls of derby. Watch it with your league and I think you'll find yourselves seeing some familiar stories and I mean that in the best way possible.

Four skates out of five. 

Whip It Review and Derby in Popular Film

Whip It is a 2009 Ellen Page vehicle directed by Drew Barrymore and based on Shauna Cross' novel Derby Girl. In the film, Bliss (Page) discovers roller derby, despite the limitations of living in a small Texas town under the watchful eye of her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), who makes her compete in local beauty pageants. Supporting characters include her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat), intriguing musician Oliver (Landon Pigg) and roller derby ladies such as Smashley Simpson (Barrymore), Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), and Rosa Sparks (Eve).

Let's be frank: if you're reading this blog, you've probably already seen Whip It. Some of you might have come to derby specifically because seeing Whip It sparked or finally confirmed your interest in derby. Personally, I received a DVD copy of the film as a birthday present around the same time I started playing and planned a special showing with my partner, only to get impatient and watch it in secret. If you haven't seen the film, do so.

Whip It is good but not stellar. It's funny but impaired by a lot of sport movie and coming of age cliches. (My partner did give it points for having an actual sport tactic matter to the film's climax, however.) Its representation of derby culture, ranging from the physical challenges, to female rivalries and friendships to the often male coaches and implied male spectatorship is mostly spot-on. The game itself is misrepresented, as derby often is in television and film, as a no-boundaries contact sport, rather than a full-contact sport with checking but, say, no elbows to the face. For those who do want roller derby without penalties, this is what you're looking for.

The film's relationship with women is a mixed bag – it can be rightly commended as a feminist film, but one still perpetuating some tired stereotypes about women's bodies and (spoilers! Highlight to read) sex and what its relationship is to a woman's value. Bliss' mother misses a chance to correct this and it's sad to watch. As a fun film for derby enthusiasts and a fairly solid introduction to what roller derby can mean to a woman who feels frustrated by social or cultural limits on what she can do, Whip It does the job.

More broadly, Whip It is a good sign of the proliferation of roller derby culture. It's a derby film, penned and directed by women, largely driven by a female cast. The actors were extensively trained to skate and even in London, ON, our local Forest City Derby Girls partnered with a cinema to promote the sport at the film's premiere. That is astoundingly cool. At the same time, Whip It was a middling critical success and a definite commercial flop. And we need more roller derby films, more successful examples of the sport being depicted in entertainment. (Fun Fact: Zoe Bell, who played Bloody Holly in the film also played a roller derby player in the CSI: Miami episode, “Wheels Up” in 2011, which I'll review next week. Zoe was also Xena's stunt double.)

Modern roller derby has seemed to find more lasting success thus far when depicted in documentary style. The recent Hell on Wheels (reviewed by me here) and the A&E-tastic Rollergirls and the myriad of short derby docs making the rounds on Youtube (Brutiful is one) have received more consistent attention. Whip It is one of a very small number of feature films that attempt to portray roller derby as part of a story (the Rollerball remake with Chris Klein and LL Cool J does not count). And as I said, Whip It isn't perfect.

But it's pretty cool to have a solid roller derby film that isn't old enough to have featured a young Mickey Rooney. 

Hell on Wheels - Some Thoughts

Hell on Wheels is a 2007 documentary on the roller derby revival in Austin Texas, directed by Bob Ray. Originally spear-headed by "Roller Derby Dan" Policarpo, the movement quickly became appropriated by the players, an enterprising group of captains in particular. Forming Bad Girl Good Woman Productions in 2001, in the name of athletic, theatrical derby (complete with a penalty wheel with penalties such as "Reverse Spank Alley"), these captains' struggle to maintain control over the league seems to foment a later schism that leaves Austin Texas with BGGW (later TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls) and the Texas Rollergirls, a flat-track, player-operated league .

As a documentary, it's solid, certainly and gives the impression of setting forth a balanced perspective on the revival of roller derby in Texas. It feels familiar, certainly, though it doesn't labour to explain the rules of the game the way that derby movies and docs often do.

What really got me while watching the film was the sheer feeling of relief of being a member of a player-focused league that also happens to be a non-profit organization. Concerns regarding ownership and feelings of being an employee rather than a member seem to have been what really tore Texas' first derby league in two. Today, player-run flat-track leagues (with that sweet blessing, skater insurance) are basically the norm. The lack of consistent insurance is certainly one of the dangers portrayed in the film, which manages to be both a paeon to the sheer guts needed to form and successfully run a derby league and an extensive catalogue of the mistakes made in BBGW's early days. Ultimately, the film is a pretty solid endorsement of standardized organizations like WFTDA and CWRDA.

Happily, the film doesn't gloss over inter-league and extra-league conflict. This is no amazonian paradise. With that said, the film does have to tread a difficult line between not giving in to stereotypes about how women interact in groups (read: bitchily) and that aforementioned glossing over.

Similarly, the film neither revels in nor shies away from the relationship between exploitation and derby. BGGW's early days feature a lot of focus on the sexualized parts of derby and a promoter the league brings in focuses firmly on the sexiness of girl-on-girl (on-rink) action. Perhaps BBGW's lowest moment depicted in the film, aside from the loss of 65 of its 80 players, is a fundraising (lube?) oil-wrestling segment at a bar. Shown just after a meeting composed of the financially-strapped executive and players that are clearly exhausted and unhappy about fundraising downtown so close to Halloween, the sequence is off-putting rather than titillating. Players wrestle in bikinis and I have to admit that as a feminist derby player watching the sequence, I had my head in my hands.

Though I support sex workers and adult entertainers, the depiction of derby girls working for a corporation fundraising by wrestling and spanking each other for a largely male audience bothered me pretty intensely. Earlier, in what is a sadly unsurprising bit of double-think, the BGGW league had openly embraced slut-shaming, emphasizing that players should be "sexy, not slutty". Accusations of sexism and exploitation are still leveled at derby and I really value that this aspect of derby isn't a part of my derby.

Texas Rollergirls gets a lighter touch than BGGW, perhaps in my eyes because the former looks so much more like the derby I play and watch today. Egalitarian voting, emphasis on fun and athleticism rather than theatrics and long-running discussions mean a lot to a solitary player and it's what I've come to expect from my league. BGGW, in contrast, comes off a bit poorly. Unsafe skating conditions and decisions come off mostly as the mistakes of a nascent league doing something for the first time, but the film-makers clearly show the frustrations of disenfranchised players and the costs players face when skating without insurance. Even during the schism, BGGW execs tell players they need to leave the costumes and names they created (sewed, built, you name it) behind if they want out. Another sequence shows BBGW skaters showing up openly drunk to harass Texas Rollergirls players before being escorting away from security. At the same time, BGGW's remaining and new players' feelings aren't brushed aside: they feel ambushed and imitated. All of the women involved love derby; they just can't quite agree about the best way to do so.

Ultimately, Hell on Wheels is a good look at the early days of the derby revival. It's a testament to how much damn work it is to get something like this up and running. Whatever the wisdom of some of the decisions of the BGGW organizers, they certainly worked their asses off. The film wisely rests on the continuing strength of the revival, showing a derby map of the world with skaters littering the States and ranging as far as New Zealand. HoW is a great start to derby-viewing, showing the complexities of the sport-culture and how much it has changed since 2001, let alone from its previous incarnations. If you've seen derby films like Whip It! and want a little more of the sport's recent human history, certainly give it a watch.