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.
(Above: David Cronenberg in publicity still for the film.)
While he ingratiates himself with the
cult James becomes especially intrigued by Vaughan's mention of his new "project".
Vaughan's project seems to be the ritualized reenactment of celebrity car
crashes. James is witness to the reenactment of James Dean's fateful run down
that stretch of southern California blacktop in the famed Porsche 550 Spyder
known as "Little Bastard" as well as the aftermath of Seagrave's
fatal reenactment of the Jayne Mansfield crash in a 1966 Buick Electra 225. Other
celebrity car crashes are hinted at and the case is made that the Kennedy
assassination was a special kind of car crash by Vaughan as he cruises around
in a dusty black 1963 Lincoln Continental convertible. Vaughan entices James with
talk of his project as a "benevolent psychopathology" in which "the
car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event – a liberation of
sexual energy that mediates the sexuality of those who have died with an
intensity impossible in any other form". The "reshaping of the human body
by modern technology" alluded to by Vaughan is revealed to be a "crude
sci-fi concept that floats on the surface and doesn't threaten anybody", a
gauge to test the resilience of his potential partners in psychopathology.
Complications arise once James
introduces Vaughan to his wife and a rivalrous love triangle develops. At first
Vaughan is preoccupied with Catherine but James increasingly becomes the focus
of his attention. James bonds with Vaughan on the basis of their subscription
to the same ragged and dirty personal prophecy: the image of a Lincoln hood
ornament tattooed on human flesh. Ultimately James succumbs to the attentions
of Vaughan and submits to his erotic advance. After that the lovers’ triangle
reunites briefly and for the last time on a busy flyover freeway, the Ballards
driving in Catherine's sports car and Vaughan in his Lincoln Continental. In a
frenzied attempt to broadside the Ballards while in heavy traffic Vaughan loses
control of his car, skidding into and over the guard rails and crashing down
into the traffic of the roadway below to a fiery death. In so doing he realized
his project, the liberation of sexual energy successfully mediating the
sexuality of those who have died.
(Above: James Spader and Holly Hunter)
The remaining members of the cult
reclaim Vaughan ritualistically. They travel to the junk yard where his crashed
Lincoln is impounded. Gabrielle and Helen make love in the back seat of the
junker car as if they were on hallowed ground. The Ballards register a claim
for the vehicle, have it released and restored to driveable condition. Driving down the highway in a crashed car with
a history that he played a hand in making himself James rams his wife off the
road. Her sports car fishtails down onto a utility access road where James
finds her, ejected from her vehicle, on the ground and relatively uninjured. Having
failed to mediate the sexuality of those who have died with an intensity
impossible in any other form, James consoles his wife with their familiar
refrain, "Maybe the next one, darling . . . maybe the next one".
The transgressive tour de force that is Crash premiered at the 49th
Cannes Film Festival. That year the famed Palme d'Or was given to the
very mainstream drama Secrets & Lies. Despite the vehement abstention
of some members of the ten-person jury Crash was awarded the Prix
spécial du Jury in the words of Francis Ford Coppola "for originality,
for daring and for audacity". Since then no other film has received that
award.
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[i] Cronenberg
on Cronenberg, revised edition, ed. Chris Rodley (Faber & Faber, 1997)
p. 199
[ii] Alan
Jones, "Crash: David Cronenberg Turns S&M Injury to S.F.
Metaphor", Cinefantastique 28.3 (October 1996) p. 8