Crash... thus far

The world that J.G. Ballard depicts in Crash is not necessarily a world too unfamiliar. While the characters all seem a bit more morbid than the average individual, they are definitely reminiscent of peoples’ dark fantasies. Most people, whether they admit it to it or not, often have thoughts that are inappropriate, and therefore not said aloud. In the world that Ballard has created, these thoughts are possessed and often practiced by nearly everyone, creating a dark cast of characters.  Not only does Vaughan fantasize and obsess over car crashes, he actually goes through with them. Catherine and James wish to have extramarital affairs and they both do. Vaughan is extremely masochistic and sadistic as he gains pleasure from the pain and destruction caused by a crash. Even Catherine, who is outside of the men’s car crash fantasies, is jealous of the fact that James was able to “legally” kill a person. Although crashing cars is an extreme method of achieving arousal through pain, sadomasochism is a fairly common fetish. Vaughan also sees crashes as romantic, like when he imagines dying with Elizabeth Taylor. James and Vaughan both have very perverse minds and associate everything with sex. Every topic that James touches upon somehow incorporates genitalia and intercourse. Ballard’s descriptions are extremely graphic and as a reader, I can fully picture his bizarre imagery, whether I want to or not. James’ mind is completely exposed and the reader can know every thought he is having, no matter how distasteful it may be. It is quite possible that Ballard has an actively sexual mind and James is a vessel for Ballard to express his thoughts without seeming like a sick person in the “real world”. In the 1970’s, with the influx of new technologies, Ballard is possibly mocking individuals who have become obsessed with machines. He is comparing the dependency on technology to the absurd preposition that people will begin to abuse them and obsess over them so much that they will gain arousal and harm themselves simultaneously.