directed by David Cronenberg, 1996, 100 minutes

As James Ballard (James Spader) recovers from a road accident he begins a relationship with co-survivor Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) whose husband died in the same crash. Ballard, together with his wife Catherine (Deborah Unger) share a developing fascination with Vaughan (Elias Koteas) and his coterie who are fascinated by the erotic possibilities of car accidents.

It was one of those uncanny moments of cultural synchronicity that only becomes visible with hindsight. British life seemed uncharacteristically optimistic in the summer of 1997. Tony Blair’s centre-left ‘New Labour’ government was basking in a honeymoon glow after eighteen years of moribund Tory rule: Unemployment was low and the economy was buoyant, Britain had even won Eurovision for the first time since 1981. The controversy that preceded the cinema release of David Cronenberg’s adaptation of J G Ballard’s novel ‘Crash’ was a sharp reminder that, although governments may change the underlying cant and conservatism that drive British culture remain a constant. Cronenberg’s concise screenplay may have shifted Ballard’s fascination with celebrity car accidents into the background but the crash which killed Diana, Princess of Wales in August that year seemed to echo Ballard’s fiction. The ensuing outburst of hysterical public mourning and jingoistic sentimentality demonstrated how far the spectacle of celebrity and violent death can bypass rationality and stimulate widespread emotional response. In retrospect Diana’s immolation and apotheosis read like one of Ballard’s short stories.  Ballard conceived ‘Crash’ after staging an exhibition of wrecked cars at a London gallery in 1969. Intrigued by the extreme emotional response of visitors to these hulks of deformed metal, he included a chapter called ‘Crash!’ in his controversial collection of ‘condensed novels’ published as ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ in 1970. Ballard developed his thesis about the relationship between sex, death, and technology in a short film for the BBC (directed by Harley Cokeliss) where he appears like a seventies TV pundit, illustrating his theories with shots of brutalist architecture, crash tests and Gabrielle Drake. ‘Crash’ emerged as a complete novel in 1973. Although ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ had been the subject of obscenity proceedings, critical response to both the BBC film and Ballard’s novel ‘Crash’ was muted and confined to the review columns. British tastes had clearly changed by the time Cronenberg’s film was released. The violent response to ‘Crash’ that began in 1996 and continued until the late summer of 1997 was front-page news. Journalist’s doorstepped members of the British Board of Film Classification that they ban the film and outraged politicians of every persuasion queued up denounce it. Such hysteria was unusual, although international critical reviews were mixed there was little moral outrage, Cronenberg had clearly touched a sore point in the British psyche. Some local authorities banned the film and its performance at the box office suggests that cinema programmers and audiences were scared off by the controversy.

Viewing Cronenberg’s ‘Crash’ remains an unsettling experience. Howard Shore’s fine score and apposite opening credits by John Furniotis set the tone: Chiming electric guitar mimics the harmonised doppler of traffic sounds or passing sirens, simultaneously sensual and mechanical. As chromed titles ‘drive’ towards and past us we notice that some of the letters are dented, as if from a glancing collision. Starting up, ‘Crash’ feels like a deliberate attempt to break cinematic convention as we are confronted by three exquisitely shot and perfectly framed sex scenes with minimal, functional dialogue. British viewers forewarned about unprecedented displays of screen depravity may have concluded that they were watching glossy porn for jaded executives, perhaps Zalman King’s ‘Red Shoe Diaries’ (1992-1997) and wondered what all the fuss was about. The British Board of Film Classification was exasperated by the tabloid campaign to ban Cronenberg’s film, there was nothing tangible to cut. The dialogue is explicit but clinical rather than prurient; although there is some nudity, nothing contravened accepted guidelines for mainstream cinema. When the film was shown to a focus group of viewers with disabilities, they found nothing to offend, in fact ‘Crash’ confronts the awkward taboos that surround sex and disability with refreshing honesty. Regular Cronenberg collaborator Peter Suschitzky’s camera keeps us at arms-length, even in close-up. He contrasts the velocity of the gritty traffic sequences with beautifully composed, sedate interiors. The long, steady tracking shot as Vaughan and the Ballards observe a pile-up recalls Godard’s ‘Weekend’ (1967) but feels less immediate, more stagy, akin to Peter Greenaway’s cinematic tableaux or installation art. Cronenberg makes us constantly aware of our voyeurism. We are all, to some extent symphorophiliacs, but although we may slow down to rubberneck at road accidents, we do not like being forced to admit it, even to ourselves. Cronenberg is an unashamed autophile, his obscure 1979 film ‘Fast Company’, like George Lucas’ ‘American Graffiti’ (1973) is a love song to the erotic potential of car ownership and the thrill of speed. Like Ballard, Cronenberg simply acknowledges that the car has become an integral part of our fantasy lives: A “bed on wheels” as Catherine Ballard describes Vaughan’s battered Lincoln. ‘Crash’ is, in part, a study of modern marriage; particularly the relevance of monogamy in a consumer-driven society which promotes the endless pursuit of new forms of sensual gratification.

Marketeers may have become more subtle in their portrayal of the sensuality of motoring since the sixties and seventies, but they continue to shamelessly sell the physical pleasure of driving. The allure of speed and power is nothing new. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a sickly Oxbridge student became entranced with mail coach travel. Seated up top, alongside the driver and dosed with laudanum he revelled in the exhilaration of horsepower and the passing countryside. For Thomas De Quincey, the great grandfather of hallucinogenic literature, the sensations of motion and the risk of sudden death induced a heady fugue state. The mail coach revealed a world of erotic promise and a vision of England unlike anything he had experienced before. Ballard and Cronenberg would recognise his description of the tension between control and carnage, the slowing of time as collision approaches. ‘Crash’ confronts fundamental human urges and responses, this partly explains the discomfort that it causes for some viewers, as does Cronenberg’s steadfast refusal to judge his characters. As in life, moral ambiguity prevails: The Ballard’s relationship is tender as well and transgressive; all the sexual acts depicted are consensual, but the violence of collision maims and kills unwilling victims. In the year that Ballard wrote ‘Crash’ there were over 7000 deaths on British roads. Explosions of shattered glass, twisted metal and flying limbs that left many maimed and disfigured. ‘Crash anticipated twenty-first century preoccupations with bodily modification, Vaughan and his followers seek to remodel their flesh in the image of the vehicles that they worship. For them, the collision is a “fertilising event” that creates a world of new sexual possibilities. The somatic apocalypse envisioned by Ballard’s novel remains a revolutionary concept even though cosmetic surgery has become more commonplace in wealthy twenty-first century culture. By 1997, when Cronenberg’s ‘Crash’ was released improvements in car engineering, seat belt laws and road safety education had halved the number of traffic fatalities. At the time of writing road deaths are down to less than 2000 each year. The marriage of flesh and machine is now considered in more cerebral, less visceral terms in the form of artificial intelligence and cybernetic implants. The violent fusion of metal and flesh which fascinated Ballard may have receded from view, but the fact remains that our passion for the car has reconfigured our landscape, reshaped global politics and threatens environmental cataclysm.

Cronenberg’s ‘Crash’ validates and expands Ballard’s novel for the twenty-first century viewer. The car, like the mobile phone or social media is so alluring because it offers us the comforts of sociability whilst isolating us from threatening physical and emotional contact. Car ownership retains a strong philosophical synergy with free-market individualism and successive British governments have dogmatically favoured personal over public transport whilst ignoring the environmental costs. ‘Crash’ retains its power to shock because it dispassionately charts a dangerous addiction: The illusion of control offered by car ownership has a terrible cost for future generations. As the film ends James and Catherine Ballard are still doggedly pursuing their fantasies of pleasure and freedom, unconcerned that their next crash invites catastrophe.

Quotes:

“Is the traffic heavier now? There seem to be three times as many cars as there were before the accident.”

James Ballard (James Spader)

“Maybe the the next one, darling… Maybe the next one…”

James Ballard (James Spader)

Connections

Film

‘Weekend’ directed by Jean Luc Godard (1967)

‘Crash!’ directed by Harley Cokeliss (1970) (available on Youtube)

‘The Cars that Ate Paris’ directed by Peter Weir (1974)

‘Long Weekend’ directed by Colin Eggleston (1978)

‘Dream Demon’ directed by Harley Cokeliss (1988)

‘Eyes Wide Shut’ directed by Stanley Kubrick (1999)

‘High Rise’ directed by Ben Wheatley (2015)

‘Titane’ directed by Julia Ducournau (2021)

Reading

Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings, Penguin, ISBN 9780140439014, 2003 (contains ‘The English Mail Coach’, 1849)

J G Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition, Fourth Estate, ISBN 9780007116867, 2014 (originally published 1970)

J G Ballard, Crash, Harper Perennial, ISBN 9780007287024, 2008 (originally published 1973)

J G Ballard, Concrete Island, Fourth Estate, ISBN 9780007287048, 2014 (originally published 1974)

Adrian Kear, Mourning Diana: Nature, Culture and the Performance of Grief, Routledge, ISBN 9780415193931, 1999

Martin Barker, Jane Arthurs and Ramaswami Harindranath, The Crash Controversy: Censorship Campaigns and Film Reception, Wallflower Press, ISBN 1903364159, 2001

Jon Shaw and Iain Docherty, The Transport Debate, Policy Press, ISBN 9781847428561, 2014

David Cronenberg, Consumed, Fourth Estate, ISBN 9780007299157, 2014

Music

David Bowie, ‘Low’, RCA, 1977

The Normal, ‘T.V.O.D.’ and ‘Warm Leatherette’, Mute, 1978

Howard Shore, ‘Crash’ Original Soundtrack Recording, Milan, 1996