Collapsing Bulkheads: the Covers of Crash

Ballardian | Collapsing Bulkheads: the Covers of Crash:

The cautious handling of Crash, even now, is all the more surprising when one considers the prevalence of pornographic imagery in contemporary culture. As a work of bizarre prophecy, the book was far enough ahead of its time to be truly shocking, though only a fool would imagine that Ballard thought we should crash our cars for sexual thrills. The phenomenon and meaning of the collision has become the subject of cultural criticism in essay collections such as Car Crash Culture (2001) and Crash Cultures (2003), and the spectre of Ballard’s narrative invariably haunts their pages. Crash’s explosive collisions of flesh and metal are, as Ballard says, a metaphor, taking social tendencies and following their trajectories to discover where they might lead.

Via MeFi