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Monday, December 01, 2003

"Crash" by J.G. Ballard



"The car crash occupies a huge place in the public imagination,
particularly among filmgoers and television viewers;
it's almost impossible to see a film these days without a car crash.
Now why? What is it about the car crash that so touches
a vital part of human experience?"
--- J.G. Ballard, author of Crash

"Crash" was rejected by a publishing house reader who wrote, "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!"

In my opinion Ballard’s ‘Crash’ is principally concerned with the relationship between sex and death. The experience of being involved in a car crash, or flirting with the possibility of having one, makes the characters confront the act of dying literally head on and so necessitates their urge to engage in the reproductive act in order to ensure the survival of the species. The largely non-reproductive nature of the sex which the characters enjoy, indicates the disjunction between their instincts and the peculiar emotional states aroused by the unnatural experience of the phenomena of the car and its power to crash. Hence, the car's power to kill is held responsible for fetishising the sexuality of the book's car crash victims.

Posted by Nick @ 20:00 GMT

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