I have to admit, despite having seen that episode of "King of the Hill" where Peggy joins a roller derby team, a roller derby focused episode of "Cheap Seats", and carefully going over the Wikipedia page I am still not one hundred percent sure how the whole thing works. I have a basic idea of scoring, the offensive players from each team ("jammers") score points by lapping members of the opposing team while the defensive "blockers" obviously try to prevent it. However, anything beyond that, actual game play strategy like the starting and ending of "jams" and the role of the "pivot" which is a "blocker" that can suddenly become a "jammer", is still fairly unclear to me. I don't think I'll fully comprehend the sport until I actually sit through a real game or maybe rent "Whip It".
Aside from the physical play itself, I also have questions about the whole aesthetics of the sport. Modern roller derby has a pretty well established sensibility to it: the whole third wave feminist, punk ethos. It's an interesting evolution from all those early black and white images of ladies falling over each other from the 40s or even the organized televised cheese of the 70s and 80s (once again "Cheap Seats"). How did we end up today with all these legions of often hot pink attired, tattooed, mean looking, mostly white girls? Where's the team of Midwestern housewives? The squad of Jamaican nannies? A vicious lot of Asian tiger moms? Or even guys for that matter? Is this one of those rare sports that are biased against men like field hockey or synchronized swimming?
Irregardless of my general ignorance and confusion, I randomly thought a good name for an improbable Alfred Hitchcock themed roller derby team would be "Hitch's Bitches". I think between the recent HBO film about Hitchcock "The Girl" and the star studded Oscar bait feature "Hitchcock" I've just had a lot of Hitchcock on the brain (random aside, once again poor Toby Jones finds himself in the lesser of two biopics released around the same time). In keeping with the whole "derby name" tradition of the sport, all the players would be variations on famous Hitchcock leading ladies:
Tippi Headlock
Janet Laid
Disgrace Kelly
Joan Fontpain
Ingrate Bergman
Kim Novakaine
Evil Marie Saint
Given Hitchcock's notorious approach to directing actors and complicated relationship with women, it would be a fascinating scenario to see him manage a female roller derby team. Hmm...do I smell an alternate history comedy?
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