In 1996, Crash (1996, Cronenberg) won The Jury Special Prize at Cannes. However, this proved to be a rare positive response. In other quarters, the picture was almost universally loathed and condemned as perverted and repulsive. Westminster Council in London banned it outright. The Daily Mail and Evening Standard in particular saw the film as threatening to public morals, criticising it regularly, often on their front pages. Christopher Tookey, writing in The Daily Mail, caused outrage amongst the disabled lobby by using the phrase 'sex with cripples'. This seems to have caused more offence than by anything in the film. Alexander Walker described Crash as "a movie beyond the bounds of depravity." So what's really been going on? Crash is David Cronenberg's third masterpiece. However, unlike Videodrome and Naked Lunch there is no confusion between reality and hallucination. The protagonists actually engage in even the more extreme behaviours in Crash. The characters engage in seemingly random acts of dangerous driving, crashing cars and sex but there is more to Crash than "sex and wrecks". The film is also a deeply disturbing analysis of the interplay between these obsessions in the lives of a group of emotionally damaged people.
Crash is a movie about unsatisfying relationships, in particular the flawed relationships between the main characters. The empty relationship between Catherine and James Ballard; the strange relationship between the protagonists and their cars; and the tortured relationships between the characters and their body modifications (crash injuries).
Vaughn's relationship with his car is extremely personal he lives in it and "f**ks" in it. His car is described by Catherine as a "bed on wheels". Ballard tells his wife that it "smells of semen". Crash asks us: what relationship do we have with our vehicles? Is it our mobile office? Or is it perhaps our refuge from reality, a place of safety and seclusion when we want to be alone? Are we relieved when we are able to escape from daily pressures into the safety of that mobile metal womb? With reference to Crash, Cronenberg has remarked: "A car is not the highest of high tech. But it has affected us and changed us more than anything else in the last hundred years. We have incorporated it. The weird privacy in public that it gives us. The sexual freedom which in the '50s wasn't even subtle! So we have already incorporated the car into our understanding of time, space, distance and sexuality. To want to merge with it literally in a more physical way seems a good metaphor. There is a desire to fuse with techno-ness." The sex in Crash is mundane and boring, a joyless experience for all involved ("Did you come?" asks James of his wife as she tells him about her latest conquest. "No", she replies.) The participants seem distracted, cold and distant. They rarely even face one another during sex, with the action being mostly from behind. The characters seem distracted, looking off into the distance, their eyes dead and empty, such as when James and Catherine have sex and discuss Vaughn. There is a third person involved in their actions.
The cars end up as twisted and damaged as the people involved. The wreckage that Vaughn and company leave behind symbolises the wrecked and soulless relationships they have with each other. After a crash, the driver and passengers are removed, effectively removing the car's beating heart. Vaughn and his companions inject temporary new life into the wrecks by reclaiming them, either as drivers or as a place to have sex in. Conversely, the broken and smashed vehicles seem to give life to their new inhabitants, who only seem to be really alive and able to connect with their feelings when they are either behind a wheel or having sex in the back.
As an uncompromising comment upon how our lives and behaviour have been affected and altered by modern technology, Crash is exceptional in its bravery and honesty. The film's characters find their bodies being altered and twisted by modern science in the form of cars. Advancing technology, Cronenberg tells us, alters us, and will continue to do so as it becomes more integrated into our lives and our personal and collective consciousnesses. Our world, our behaviour and our bodies will continue to change as technology invades our flesh and our minds.
These themes of metamorphosis, mutation and 'treacherous flesh' have been explored by Cronenberg in practically every one of his previous movies, perhaps most successfully in Videodrome (1982) and The Fly (1986). Videodrome considers the impact and influence of broadcast media on human behaviour and sexuality and implies that "you can actually change what it means to be a human being in a physical way" (Cronenberg, 1997). The Fly studies these same themes, but replaces technology with disease. The potential of illness to transform the physical shell is contrasted with the changes forced on our bodies by the aging process. "We're used to our bodies changing. First we grow up, then we grow down. There's only a moment where there are a few years of the illusion of stability. It doesn't last long" (Cronenberg, 1997) This singularity of vision confirms Cronenberg as an auteur with imagination, single-mindedness and power, as well as a disturbing new vision of the world. Indeed, 'Cronenberg-esque' has become a term describing a specific and unique genre, one that is unlike any other associated with typical horror cinema.
Crash is a movie about unsatisfying relationships, in particular the flawed relationships between the main characters. The empty relationship between Catherine and James Ballard; the strange relationship between the protagonists and their cars; and the tortured relationships between the characters and their body modifications (crash injuries).
Vaughn's relationship with his car is extremely personal he lives in it and "f**ks" in it. His car is described by Catherine as a "bed on wheels". Ballard tells his wife that it "smells of semen". Crash asks us: what relationship do we have with our vehicles? Is it our mobile office? Or is it perhaps our refuge from reality, a place of safety and seclusion when we want to be alone? Are we relieved when we are able to escape from daily pressures into the safety of that mobile metal womb? With reference to Crash, Cronenberg has remarked: "A car is not the highest of high tech. But it has affected us and changed us more than anything else in the last hundred years. We have incorporated it. The weird privacy in public that it gives us. The sexual freedom which in the '50s wasn't even subtle! So we have already incorporated the car into our understanding of time, space, distance and sexuality. To want to merge with it literally in a more physical way seems a good metaphor. There is a desire to fuse with techno-ness." The sex in Crash is mundane and boring, a joyless experience for all involved ("Did you come?" asks James of his wife as she tells him about her latest conquest. "No", she replies.) The participants seem distracted, cold and distant. They rarely even face one another during sex, with the action being mostly from behind. The characters seem distracted, looking off into the distance, their eyes dead and empty, such as when James and Catherine have sex and discuss Vaughn. There is a third person involved in their actions.
The cars end up as twisted and damaged as the people involved. The wreckage that Vaughn and company leave behind symbolises the wrecked and soulless relationships they have with each other. After a crash, the driver and passengers are removed, effectively removing the car's beating heart. Vaughn and his companions inject temporary new life into the wrecks by reclaiming them, either as drivers or as a place to have sex in. Conversely, the broken and smashed vehicles seem to give life to their new inhabitants, who only seem to be really alive and able to connect with their feelings when they are either behind a wheel or having sex in the back.
As an uncompromising comment upon how our lives and behaviour have been affected and altered by modern technology, Crash is exceptional in its bravery and honesty. The film's characters find their bodies being altered and twisted by modern science in the form of cars. Advancing technology, Cronenberg tells us, alters us, and will continue to do so as it becomes more integrated into our lives and our personal and collective consciousnesses. Our world, our behaviour and our bodies will continue to change as technology invades our flesh and our minds.
These themes of metamorphosis, mutation and 'treacherous flesh' have been explored by Cronenberg in practically every one of his previous movies, perhaps most successfully in Videodrome (1982) and The Fly (1986). Videodrome considers the impact and influence of broadcast media on human behaviour and sexuality and implies that "you can actually change what it means to be a human being in a physical way" (Cronenberg, 1997). The Fly studies these same themes, but replaces technology with disease. The potential of illness to transform the physical shell is contrasted with the changes forced on our bodies by the aging process. "We're used to our bodies changing. First we grow up, then we grow down. There's only a moment where there are a few years of the illusion of stability. It doesn't last long" (Cronenberg, 1997) This singularity of vision confirms Cronenberg as an auteur with imagination, single-mindedness and power, as well as a disturbing new vision of the world. Indeed, 'Cronenberg-esque' has become a term describing a specific and unique genre, one that is unlike any other associated with typical horror cinema.