There is something beyond human
about Evel. When I say this I am not putting him on the deity pedestal just
yet; the man certainly has his human flaws. What I’m more so addressing is that
this is not just a bare man doing stunts we’re talking about, but more so of a
cyborg doing stunts.
Evel’s
motorcycle is like his super power. They do it all together. He wasn’t just
riding it off ramps in whatever he happened to be wearing that day either; he
wore armor. Evel depended on that gear for his entire repertoire as a stunt man
and for his life and survival. In that way he became somewhat physically connected
to it and defined by it: His skin becoming leather; his skull developing a
metallic shell; his legs replaced by burning rubber.
When I
think of all the crashes he’s been through, and all the crashes he might go
through in the future, I realize he has achieved a bionic state of
invincibility. Not to mention the majority of the blood in his body isn’t even
his any more!
My question
stemming from this is, who is he when it’s gone? For someone whose physical and
societal identity is so subject to technology, what happens to the personal
identity? Is the bionic part of his existence an add-on? Or is he naked and
disarmed of his identity without it? Which side of Evel will I see, the
machine, the human, or the cyborg?
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