SRL ESSAY

Keenan Jones

4-17-11

Wash Lecture

Kelly

Dark Fantasy

            There are many types of fantasies out there. You have the ones that end in pink clouds and big blue smiles, and the deep dark ones. The Survival Research Laboratories are way beyond these. These people are wild. They fulfill the fantasy of destructive pyromaniacs. While watching their videos, all I heard was, BOOM, BANG, and CHEERS. Now I’m all for watching things blow up, but their shows don’t seem safe enough for me to be in attendance. My fantasy is to make things explode from a safe distance away. The audience that attends their events feels like they just hit the lottery. Some live for Survival Research Laboratories, while others would die to get away from it.

               Survival Research Laboratories reminds me of Monster Jam. Monster Jam is the event with the huge monster trucks that will crush a building flat in 4.2 seconds. The trucks race each other to see which monster is the fastest, and then they have freestyle round where they obliterate everything in sight. Cars, buses, and vans are all victims during this event. Survival Research Laboratories and Monster Jam are similar because during the whole show it’s pure 100% destruction that takes place. The only main difference between the two is that the Monster Jam seats are located so high that audience members are less likely to get hurt. With Survival Research Laboratories, the seats are so close to the action that anything is liable to happen at anytime and that is not my type of fantasy.

            “Yanks with tanks” is the perfect term used to describe the people that run Survival Research Laboratories. All of their work promote mechanized violence because they make it ok for others to go out and create and destroy. Many people across the world attend their show and or watch them on YouTube. Out of that crowd, I know that at least half of them came up with a bright idea to create a monster. Out of that few; I know that at least half that actually blew something up.

            Just like I stated in the beginning, Survival Research Laboratories main audience members are destructive pyromaniacs. These people feed off of these events. This isn’t a hobby for them; it’s a way of life. I believe that they choose to host their events in Amsterdam because their rules are less strict than other places and much safer. The other places are war torn countries. That wouldn’t be a very smart idea to host the type of work that they do in those countries for the simple fact that a lot of people can be harmed at their event. SRL wake up to blow up, and go to sleep to do it all over again.