JG Ballard’s novels “Crash” and “Super Cannes” depict a world of technological luxury and extreme discomfort, a dystopia of extraordinary accuracy. The British novelist JG Ballard, a lifelong enemy of satisfying desires, predicted our predicament with eerily prescient anticipation. He foresees self-driving cars, Uber-style ride-sharing and lavish corporate campuses where life and work blend. But perhaps his shrewdest prediction was that comfort would feel very uncomfortable. “The suburbs,”
A car accident is like a scenic highway, any section of which seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It recyles images and words, favoring words like “stylized” and “metallized,” emphasizing the repetition of sexual behavior that encompasses a predictable array of permutations. The human body is a familiar bore for the Crash cast. Sexual intercourse is as cold and mechanical as a painful abrasion is intimate.
The problem with violence being glamorized and hollowed out as an image is that the stakes are too low. A Crash is a record of a collision that has no repercussions. Appearances glance at each other, and even death turns out to be decorative. True intimacy requires a deeper cut. Without conflict, there is no opportunity for engagement. Crash and Super Cannes present a dilemma. It is only when they have real consequences — when they are destructive — that barbarism satisfies our desire for excitement. Accidents without injuries only reaffirm our boredom. But when we subjugate others, we become implicated in real wrongdoing.