BY STEVE JANKOWIAK
The term "cult" as it refers
to film today has become little more than a marketing cliché. So very few films
truly merit the designation. The defining attribute of any true cult film is
the quality of transgression: visions and/or portrayals that defy established
modes of discourse and/or codes of conduct. Crash (David Cronenberg,
1996) achieves multiple transgressions in its 100-minute running time.
Cronenberg's Crash is a faithful adaptation of the psychosexual novel by
"New Wave" science-fiction author J. G. Ballard (1930-2009). It
involves a cult whose members seek sexual gratification from being in car
crashes. The transgressive subject matter of the source novel was leveraged by
Cronenberg, who was philosophically predisposed to undertake the adaptation to
film. In a subsequent introduction to his novel Ballard wrote that the modern world
is ruled by fiction, a sentiment expressed by Cronenberg through the medium of
Professor Brian O'Blivion and his prognostication on the "battle for the
mind of North America" in Videodrome (1983). Cronenberg's first
full-length feature film Shivers (1975) advanced the proposition that "even
dying is an act of eroticism", a motif central to Crash.
The transgressive effect of Crash
is immediate since the film opens with three sex scenes in succession.
Cronenberg observed the effect first hand at test screenings:
There are moments when audiences burst out laughing, either in
disbelief or exasperation. They can't believe that they're going to have to
look at another sex scene . . . In one of my little test screenings
someone said, "A series of sex scenes is not a plot." And I said,
"Why not? Who says?" . . . And the answer is that it can be,
but not when the sex scenes are the normal kind of sex scenes . . . Those can
be cut out and not change the plot or characters one iota. In Crash,
very often the sex scenes are absolutely the plot and character
development.[i]
The aberrant sex depicted in those many
scenes that drive the narrative, adultery, cuckoldry and other such instances
of polymorphous perversity, is inherently transgressive. To achieve the
transgressive kinetics of those scenes Cronenberg relied on an exceptional troupe
of intellectually engaged actors, among them Deborah Kara Unger, who admitted to
her own transgressive experience with the film in her role as Catherine
Ballard, “When David Cronenberg sent me his script . . . I was shocked, taken
aback, absolutely altered by it – and unprepared for that alteration . . .undeniably
the script impacted me and changed me.â€[ii]
Perhaps the best way to conceptualize Cronenberg's cinematic coups de main
is as a cult rite of passage the viewer must pass through to earn one's
"ticket to ride" in the vehicle known as Crash.
Crash is set in what appears to be the late
20th century North American urban center of magnificent high-rise
enclaves and overstimulated existence. Catherine and James Ballard (James
Spader) are the upper-middle class thirty-something couple of the not too
distant future who delight in sharing the intimate details of their
extramarital exploits. However even this arrangement does not fully satisfy
them since neither Catherine nor James climax during their encounters; "Maybe
the next one . . . " is their household refrain. On one late night commute
down a rain-swept road James loses control of his car and collides head-on with
a vehicle driven by Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter). Their crash effects an
intellectual awakening in both of them to the potential of enhanced erotic
experience. She puts him in contact with Vaughan (Elias Koteas), former
specialist in international computerized traffic systems, now the creative
intelligence behind a car crash cult. Other cult members include Colin Seagrave
(Peter MacNeill) active in the staging of celebrity car crash reenactments and Gabrielle
(Rosanna Arquette) a permanently debilitated car crash survivor in
steel-reinforced leg and hip braces. Crash becomes the journey of James
down the road of discovery in search of a new form of ecstasy that may provide
some vitality to his otherwise disconnected and passionless existence.