Cronenberg’s Crash – eroticism, the automobile, and death.
by Bryn Gatehouse.
Gabrielle and her scar, Crash, 1996, Recorded Picture Company.
When Crash (Cronenberg, 1996) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. , an adaption of a J.G Ballard novel of the same name, was released in 1996, it immediately became the subject of controversy, with attempts to ban the film spanning the globe and numerous walkouts and boos during its screenings. The reasoning for this was simple. The film portrayed graphic violence in an erotic manner. It presented an image of people aroused by violence, turned on by the thought of being mangled, and excited by death. However, what is likely the most important reason for the upset is the film’s complete lack of moral standpoint on the matter. As in Ballard’s book, Cronenberg simply stands back and watches through the camera, surveying the pack of paraphiliacs as they try desperately to die, and to orgasm. In fact, one may even go as far as to say that Cronenberg seeks to distance both himself and the audience on purpose in order to avoid intuitive judgement against the characters, allowing for desensitization towards the numerous moments of violence, which are often followed by similar acts of violent, animalistic sex. It is clear that romance is not an aspect that Cronenberg wants the audience to focus on, despite the numerous relationships throughout the film. Instead, the focus must purely be on the orgasm, on desire, and on primal urges carried out in the technological age.
The key concept for understanding the actions of the characters in Crash, who follow the project of the mysterious Vaughan in their erotically charged automobile accidents, is the death drive, or Thanatos, a concept developed by Sigmund Freud in his later period (Freud, 1924) Freud, S., Hubback, C. J. M. tr and Herman Finkelstein Collection. (1924). Beyond the pleasure principle / by Sigmund Freud ... Authorized translation from the 2d German ed. by C.J.M. Hubback. New York: Boni and Liveright. . This drive, or manifestation of primal energy that is transmitted to psychological apparatuses thus affecting action, is described as a biological method in which organisms, such as humans, seek to return to a prior state. This prior state is a state of zero intensity where energy does not flow, or in other words, death. What is particularly distinctive about this drive, beyond the simple explanation that this is evidence of some inherent conservatism, is the fact that this drive reacts to corresponding life drives, or eros, resulting in a process in which the organism, in our case the human, seeks to die in its particular way. One must also recognise the masochistic tendencies of sexual drives, and from this a picture can be painted of humans as unconsciously desiring to feel both pain and eventual death, from this gaining a form of pleasure that exists outside of the restrictive ‘pleasure principle’, a product of the ego, or the rational area of the psyche, which aims to ensure that whilst we strive for pleasure, we do not ever receive too much pleasure.
With an understanding of the death drive, we may now see the actions of the characters in Crash as natural, if an extreme realisation of these drives. The most fitting character for analysis using the death drive is Robert Vaughan, masterfully played by Elias Koteas, who makes every scene with him in it feel cramped and uncomfortable, his hands and scars leading to numerous instances of goosebumps, sweating, and moving around in one’s seat as if desperately needing to piss. Out of all the characters ‘intimately involved’ (Crash, 1996) Crash. 1996. David Cronenberg. dir. Britain and Canada. Recorded Picture Company, Alliance Communications Corporation,The Movie Network, and Telefilm Canada. in the project of crashing cars for pleasure, Vaughan seems more intimately involved than the others. He preaches, stalks, and persuades until the others join him in his mission to die. Notably, despite member Colin also dying in a crash earlier in the film, Vaughan’s death in a collision with a bus in the climax of the film, perhaps representative of the climax finally reached by Vaughan in his death, seems to be the most significant death in the film. His drives have been fulfilled, and both James and Catherine are so aroused and enthralled by his taking of his own life that they decide to attempt to recreate it, envious of the man who has returned to non-existence. From this we see how all the characters are affected by death drive, and how this seemingly motivates them, along with the erotic pleasure of breaking taboos, to engage in Vaughan’s car crash movement.
Yet there is one issue here which might be brought up. Why cars? The death drive could be fulfilled just as easily in different acts of violent sadomasochism. Suicide, self-harm, necrophilia, all could unite one with pain and death in a simultaneous erotic fashion. Perhaps a stylistic choice by Ballard, and then continued by Cronenberg, a man known for his interest in the weird and strange, an area where those massively aroused by car crashes would (we can all agree) fall.
Though perhaps convincing at first, this argument falls flat when the film is analysed and certain scenes are noted. In Crash, the destruction of the car is the destruction of the body, just as the arousal of the car correlates to the arousal of the body. Note the view of Jean Baudrillard on the original book by Ballard, who sees the car not as a representation but a deconstruction of the human body, and the crash as the exchange of bodily signs in the destruction of erogenous zones in favour of scars, gashes, and scratches (Baudrillard, 1981) Baudrillard, J. 1981 (English edition 1994). Simulacra and Simulation. USA. University of Michigan Press. . Many areas of Baudrillard’s analysis seem to clash with the one portrayed in this article, notably his view that there is no desire in crash, no death drive, and that technology leaves us neutered. Though I disagree with this view to a large extent, I do believe that Baudrillard’s linking of the body and the car in a deconstructive manner rings true in the film. The pornographic manner of the film allows us to trace holes, view the mutilation of both the pure body and the pure, shined exterior of the car. The car, the phallic beast that is the purest object of the mechanical age (Baudrillard, 1968) Baudrillard, J. 1968 (English edition 1996). The System of Objects . London. Verso Books. is the key to the message of Crash. It opens us up, binds itself to us, and allows us to receive pleasure that basic interhuman sex can no longer achieve. The pleasure principle does not apply to the car, and thus we flock to it in an attempt to open ourselves up in complete pleasure. The scars, the new vaginas, allow for this. Vaughan himself notes the car’s capacity to reshape the human body, citing it as one of the reasons for starting the crash project.
Two scenes most heavily hint at the new pleasure, the great joy in the drive towards death, that the automobile as the representation of technology allows for. I will discuss these in turn. The first of these is the carwash scene, in which Vaughan has violent sex with Catherine, the wife of main character James Ballard. Note that at the start of the film Catherine is failing to orgasm. She seems emotionally detached from the action of sex itself. Now contrast this to the car wash scene, in which her and Vaughan, to put it simply, go at it like animals, with clear pleasure from both parties being acted out in an almost disturbing manner by Koteas and Deborah Kara Unger. At first you might think that this is simply as a result of the violent, practically manic nature of the sex. I think this is reductive. Does the carwash itself not play a role in this act? The constant wet and touch nature of the brushes, as the car moves slowly through it, seem for Cronenberg to be just as erotic as the sexual act itself. The outside of the automobile is not simple metal sheets, it is skin, a hyperreal erogenous zone that semiotically links with Catherine and Vaughan, allowing for this new form of pleasure to flow freely in the car, made almost tangible by the sound design, in which sex is obscured by the machinery of the car wash. This is not sex as we know it, this is something new, something that seems so dangerous and yet so massively libidinally fulfilling.
The next scene hinting at the effect of the automobile on erotic pleasure follows even closer to Baudrillard’s view on the ‘opening-up’ nature of the automobile (ibid). This is the scene in which James has sex with Gabrielle, a character fully immersed in the crash culture, and who has a scar on the back of her thigh which is incredibly distinctive in that it resembles a vagina. Though the sex itself is largely kept away from the prying eyes of the viewer, Cronenberg has commented that it is clear that in this scene, James penetrates not Gabrielle’s structural vagina, an orifice that has existed for all time that humans have dwelled on this planet, but her scar, a symbolic wound that can only exist as a result of her semiotic attachment to the automobile, likely realised in the simultaneous destruction of both an area of the car and an area of her leg. Classic sexual analysis is destroyed in this symbolic act of destruction, and all sexual structures collapse as artificial orifices bid one towards greater and greater pleasure, along with greater and greater pain, all brought about by the introduction of the car into the flows of desire, flows in which pleasure and death are simultaneously strived for. Cronenberg was forced to cover up this act in order to avoid the film being labelled pornography (it still was, tough luck!), but it must be viewed as an important, if largely hidden, scene. Through it Cronenberg, and Ballard in turn, seek to present the nature of pleasure and pain in the age of technology, with both becoming more intrinsically linked and all previous sexual metanarratives falling apart in nihilistic acts of artificial sex, all instigated by technology, in this case being the car.
There is another key element of the actions by the Crash group. Whilst not key to the group identity, both Vaughan and Colin Seagrave are introduced to the audience, or in Vaughan’s case his true obsession and character is revealed, in the re-enactment of celebrity deaths in car crashes. The two recreated are the death of James Dean, Hollywood icon known for his portrayal of disillusioned youth, and Jayne Mansfield, American model and sex symbol. It is the latter of these which results in the death of Colin, the sight of his corpse and the mangled automobile instigating the desire in the rest of the group that leads them to the carwash. These choice of celebrities may hint at part of the film’s message, as with the celebrity obsession itself.
First, I’ll quickly analyse the choices. More than just picking out of a hat of famous car crash victims, I believe there to be greater importance to the choices of Dean and Mansfield, both controversial figures. Dean, in his iconic portrayal of middle-class teenage angst and pushback against societal norms in
Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)
View on:
IMDb.
Lettrboxd.
Wikipedia.
seems to fit well when mirrored against the erotic revolt against the human sexual structure towards greater pleasure and death taken by the characters in Crash. In a similar sense Jayne Mansfield, a controversial figure deemed a more erotic and less ‘classy’ Marilyn Monroe, practically scalped in a car accident seems an apt choice for the themes of Crash. Both ooze sexuality in a manner that is deemed perhaps ‘too much’ by those at the time, involve transgression, and have a particularly dystopian nature, with Mansfield being one of the first ‘celeb’ celebrities, a sign of a declining culture in which reality begins to fade into the backdrop against a system of pervasive semio-inflation.
Second, the obsession itself. Baudrillard notes the basis of American culture as one of fiction
(Baudrillard, 1988)
Finally, back to Freud. Freud notes that the death drive may commonly be seen in the compulsion to repeat, as the child throws the toy to the far corner of the room over and over. Is this not, at least partially, noted in the symbolic cyclical nature of the story in Crash? The same line is used at the beginning, in which Catherine replies “maybe the next one” to James’ retelling of his lack of ability to orgasm in sex with a co-worker, and at the end in which James says “maybe the next one” after Catherine admits that she is largely unharmed from the crash. This repeated line summarises the film’s message, in that it presents a vision in which desire flows through a positive feedback loop, allowing for no end to the search for greater pleasure. This is not the vision of an alienated society rebelling against the norm, this is where Marx failed. What we see here is a society reeling from greater connection, or what Baudrillard would call the ecstasy of communication (Baudrillard, 2012) Baudrillard, J. 2012.The ecstasy of communication. Los Angeles, CA, Semiotext(e). . New links are made as desire searches to penetrate more holes, open up more wounds, and embrace the artificiality of the technosphere, a system which serves to replace the modern system of the biosphere (Land, 2017) and, N. 2017.Fanged Noumena: collected writings, 1987-2007. United Kingdom. Urbanomic. . What greater pleasurable drive than that towards our own demise. After all, the French do call the orgasm ‘la petite mort’, or the little death. Bataille understands the human urge for continuity, or connection, as discontinuous beings in ourselves (Bataille, 2001) Bataille, G. Eroticism. 2001. London. Penguin. , and with the car we become closer to that pleasurable condition, one which is only found temporarily in sex, and which the technosphere, and with it the body-morphing, pleasure-principle-destroying fetishized automobile, give us more of. To hell with Ballard’s moral stance cries followers of Barthes, and we must follow. Cronenberg certainly leans into this, directing not with a moral stance but with an aim to shock, something which he does in all his films. The body itself as a pure sexual substance is rejected, the culture of celebrity is derided, and the progression of the human towards greater dystopic societies in the search for pleasure is slowly revealed to us. Nihlism pervades the final scene, and the film ends on the question of what we can do but “accelerate the process” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2009) Deleuze, G and Guattari, F. 2009. Anti Oedipus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia. USA. Penguin. , cast the chains of all structure aside and embrace the new morphing of the body that technology brings about. We may use the car now, but as the camera zooms out on James and Catherine having sex in a car wreck, we move our thoughts to what artificial pleasure/death machine we use next.
by Bryn Gatehouse.
The couple next to a wrecked car, Crash, 1996, Recorded Picture Company.
