J.G. Ballard - Crash: the car as an extreme metaphor
On the highways there is all the speed and violence of the twentieth century. "The guide condenses many of the experiences that characterize man in the seventies, the marriage between the physical aspects of ourselves and the imaginative and technological aspects of our lives. I believe the twentieth century reaches its highest expression on highways. There is everything there, the speed and violence of our era, the love of stylization, the charm, the organized side of things. "
In 1970, three years before the novel Crash was released , James G. Ballard cannot yet discern all the implications of his vision. A vision that will evolve over three decades leading up to the conclusions expressed in Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes, the Kingdom to come and in the other conclusive works of his career.
In the Sixties, Ballard begins a path of analysis of contemporary society (but it could also be said of the human species), which passes through the intuition of the existence of a new logic that can explain the obsessions of the present, generated from living within a landscape, no longer natural, but technological and mass-media. After having left behind the fantastic scenes of the first trilogy of novels dedicated to “disasters to the contrary” ( read article ), we have seen that, starting from The exhibition of the atrocities ( read the article ) Ballard, delete every element of the natural and the fantastic to explore the symbolism inherent in the Sixties . With the following novels continue to broaden the range of his exploration, starting with the Crash , continuing with The concrete island, and concluding with The condo . These three titles form a real trilogy of parables radicals, especially when read today, with the world-famous hindsight. Today we look at Crash ; the other two will be discussed in the following.
Aggression, eroticism, freedom, and style: the car is the status symbol par excellence. Crash (first published in 1973) brings attention to one of the objects most representative of the whole of the TWENTIETH century: the car and, with it, the road. If you do not know the intentions of the author will not be easy to understand this novel. Chapter after chapter we follow James, the narrator-protagonist (of the same name of the writer), which is put on by a bad car accident on the streets of London and meets Vaughan, a sort of mentor with which it shares some of the extreme ideas. Together they pass through cars, roads, accidents, human bodies: everything that you are attracted to, haunts them and makes them alive. Each observation comes from James, everything is filtered through his vision with a cadence almost cathartic.
in The era in which Ballard writes, the car is the status symbol par excellence : it carries in itself the fundamental elements of aggression and eroticism, the desire for freedom and a display of style. Is one of the major symbols of the techno-sexual's of the XX century, representative also of the progress of technology “available to all” (as it is today are the high-tech products of consumption). The image of the car and the street, often associated with America, is iconic of the american dream and the counterculture, in all of their contradictions (think of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and the Beat Generation, of which James and Vaughan Crash seem to be an extreme reincarnation of the post-modern). The deaths of the celebrities in car accidents (James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, the most recent princess Diana) are events that are repeated with a certain regularity, and, above all, in the age to which it refers Ballard, leave a strong mark in popular culture and in our collective imagination. Because our imagination is fixed in particular on these images and on this type of accidents), more than all the others? This is the question that Ballard puts it in the Crash and The exhibition of the atrocities .
What happens if a car became the means with which to satisfy the impulses, the most primitive? An obsession that has nothing to do with technology, since the car is a sophisticated machine. So what happens when a car becomes the extension of the impulses of primitive human and fundamental – libido, violence and freedom – and a means with which to fulfil them? According to Ballard, the presence and use of new technologies in our daily lives has as consequence a range of new psychopathologies , especially sexual fantasies, which change the “design” of our lives. As explained by the author himself in the interviews collected in the volume Extreme Metaphors , edited by S. Sellars
“I'm trying to show the emergence of new logics. A lot of people make the mistake of believing that people buy cars because of the large advertising and social pressure. Nothing is more far from the truth. Since the years 30 in the United States, when the style has imposed itself as an important part of the design, the automotive industry has become a perfect example of how a large technological system, dating important psychological needs. The car is forty years, a complex network of personal achievements of various kinds. On a superficial level it satisfies the need of a fascinating object, wonderfully sculpted in stainless steel, with integrated any sort of conceptual designs. At a deeper level, it represents [...] the extension of their own personality in various directions, from the sexuality repressed aggression , the full range. Similarly, represents all types of positive freedom, and I do not speak of the obvious freedom to go from one place to another, but the freedom that we can take normally, or which do not admit even the interest. The freedom to kill, for example.”
there is No space for the feeling in the area of pleasure defined by the technology. There is a zone of pleasure defined by technologies. They allow you to vent and at the same time keep under control a new range of fantasies purely sexual. In Crash , therefore, Ballard assumed a new psychopathology emerging, inscribed at the collective level, and therefore accepted (or acceptable), that leads people to give vent to their impulses. Sex organic provided by nature for reproductive purposes, in fact, is becoming less and less significant because it is not tied to the values and experiences that the person experiences in the media landscape and the technology in which it is immersed, the more violent, and that encourages the pleasures of strong, rapid, and recurrent.
of course in all this there is no room for feeling, but only for the sexuality physical. According to Ballard, the first effect (or goal) of technology, it is this: affectivity and emotions are no longer necessary, and indeed would be an obstacle. In the “new order psychic” as theorized in the Crash no longer need to be without the interference of emotions. This is why things seem so simple for the characters, but so strange and illogical to us (still bound to the filter, and emotional). Here is where the charm of Vaughan, in the eyes of James, which is closer to the reader in his path of initiation towards the logic of this “new world”.
Crash is a novel radical: only if badly interpreted, seems to legitimize unhealthy behaviors or criminal, is the sexual road. In reality, Ballard follows the trends that he sees to exist around him, in his time (but also today), and the follow up to their extreme, to the point of breaking.
“To put it crudely, I am saying, then you believe that violence is sexy? Well, here's where this takes you. But if you ask me: we should go out and schiantarci with our cars?, I'll answer you: no, of course not! It is a very important distinction.”
If in the early novels derived from science fiction, such as The underwater world , the symbolism of Ballard, in reference to nature, but only the chaotic urban landscape and can describe the desolation and alienation of the individual, no longer to return to any of the natural size. Is no longer a natural agent outside the person responsible for the “disaster”: in the Crash is the human being himself to trigger the process of change. The scenery, the city of London, the role of “organic”: the city is described as a living organism, the eternal flow of traffic is the blood that flows in the veins (streets) of the urban fabric.
A linear best expresses the ideas of unexpected, complex, radicals. From the stylistic point of view, Crash has a writing “traditional”, while focusing on issues that, in a sense, are a continuation and a deepening of the experimental exhibition of the atrocities . As can be seen in Ballard
“In the Crash using what I consider to be the appropriate technique, a linear narrative, simply because of the unexpected ideas that it offers, without doubt is challenging. The best way to express them is the linear mode.”
The narrator is in first person and it really is called James Ballard, a cunning trick helps to make the whole thing more real and direct as possible . James is the mediator between Vaughan, who has understood and embraced the change without reserve, and as the reader, totally unconnected and unaware. James is located half-way: fascinated by this new formula for an existence that is trying to understand the rules, trying to break free from the old constraints. Represents in practice the effort of the reader towards the vision of Ballard. With the expedient of a real name, Ballard places both outside and inside the novel, narrowing even further the line between fiction and reality.
In conclusion, why read Crash. The reading of the Crash is not difficult in spite of the issues the author fails to accompany us in the ice age and sweet at the same time to the discovery of something shocking, but also acceptable and plausible. However, there is one aspect that can be confusing. Rather than clarify his position (moral, political or philosophical) in each of the scenes that describes, in Crash, Ballard gives the reader a spectrum of possibilities from which to choose, and avoid taking any position. “ The operation of the book depends on the reader's reaction, ” she says.
Crash is not science fiction in the classic sense, but in fact it constitutes a powerful reflection of the sociological and political that is part of a fiction of the present which is now called speculative fiction , and that we know well, thanks to many works of literature or film of undoubted value. Says Ballard: “I don't expect the world to end up in a sort of apocalypse automotive based on sex and violence; my vision is a hypothesis that extreme, that I believe is inscribed in the present.”
you Can buy a Crash at this link or in your bookstore.
