I've been a fan of J.G. Ballard's ever since I read The Drowned World and The Wind from Nowhere, both dramatic and imposing mood pieces about the end of the world. Ballard's prose has a heavy, sensual languidness to it suited to these dark themes, some of which derives from his unhurried rhythm and pacing. In fact, his prose seems to have an almost oxymoronic, somnolent muscularity and strength--a quality that certain Buddhist statues, which are said to represent "the spirit of strength in repose"--are also said to possess, interestingly enough. (I suspect Ballard himself would be amused by such a recondite association). And as another reviewer here remarked, perhaps his prose is something of an acquired taste.
But getting back to the book, this story about a strange and disturbing subculture that has evolved a sexual obsession and fetish for crashing automobiles is no doubt one of the more bizarre ideas for a novel ever created. The members even go so far as to create and re-enact fatal "classic" car crashes from the past--such as the one that killed James Dean or Jane Mansfield. Its theme also reminded me of the recent movie, the Fight Club, in its idea of a repressed and narcissistic culture of violence that lies just beneath the surface of our otherwise highly polished, technologically advanced society.
Since I also saw the movie, I thought I would comment on it here. I didn't think I was going to like the book or the film originally, even though I'm a fan of Ballard's, but I found I actually liked it a lot despite my initial misgivings. Partly, this was because I happened to hear an interview on the radio where Ballard discussed how he got the idea for the book, and which helped to explain it at least somewhat. Well, maybe. It's still pretty weird. Anyway, I'll recount the story here for those who missed the interview. It was on National Public Radio.
Ballard said he got the idea from passing a fatal traffic accident where a beautiful women had been killed, and you could see everything from the road as you drove by. The woman's body had ended up mostly nude on the rear deck of the passenger compartment, and he said people were driving by gawking at the scene and rubbernecking, and he suddenly got the idea that the whole thing was very erotic for them despite the obviously tragic circumstances and the woman's untimely death. At that point the link between eroticism, car crashes, and death was made, and he was off and running with his bizzare new story idea.
I thought Spader, Koteas, Unger, and Hunter were excellent in their roles, and that also helped to make an otherwise implausible film more realistic. Of course, it's a David Cronenberg film, so what was I expecting? Well, I was probably expecting lots of weird sex and violence--such as the scene in his Naked Lunch, based on the Burroughs book, where the guy is getting anally raped by an 8-foot high half-human, half-centipede creature (Ballard, take note). Well, I like his movies usually, but this one was pretty weird even for someone with Cronenberg's predilection for darkly disturbing themes, and it certainly stands out as one of the more bizarre films on the theme of sex and violence, or on the relationship between sex and violence.
*Irreverent scientific footnote:
And if humans think their sex has an element of violence in it--they should see how marine flatworms do it. It's called "penis fencing." The flatworms duel it out with their gigantic penises (eat your heart out, John "H." Holmes) and the first one to stab his big sharp dork through the skin of the other implants his sperm, causing the other flatworm to become pregnant and give birth whether he wants to or not. Biologists also think that these flatworms were the first multicellular animals to have sexual reproduction as we know it, which means that sex and violence have been linked ever since its earliest evolutionary origins.
*Irrevent literary footnote:
I was in a bookstore recently, and I opened up a book of Greek plays at random, and this was the first line I saw in a play by Euripides: "We are a group of men with large erections; we roam around the city, we take what we want."
It just goes to show you that those old flatworms and Greeks were on the right track, after all. (Ballard and Cronenberg, take note).
It makes me wonder..
