I was particularly struck by the Graves-Brown discussion in “Always Crashing the Same Car” of the privatisation of experience. As I understand it: Graves-Brown believes that privatisation of experience (a type of perception of the world around us) is the main reason why we (“humans”) believe that technology, through attributed personhood and agency, marks a progression towards freedom and democracy. However, this is an illusion; we are in fact bound by a system of material culture which does not have its own agency (self-control or will). Instead, it is directly linked to those (“humans”; “us”) who create the material culture (cars) in the first place (“humans” in the industrial car companies).
This made me think about all the materialistic means by which a teenager rebels against his/her parents: generally known examples include drugs, piercings, tattoos, and “inappropriate” clothing. Though these are all objects created by large organized systems (most often factories), teenagers utilize them and become a part of its consumer culture anyway because the appeal lies in the objects’ potency to represent rebellion against parents. Perhaps, contra Graves-Brown, consumers are not allured by the prospect of democracy and freedom (a concept which has been discarded in postmodern thinking). Rather, privatisation of experience and consumer culture are invested in something similar to Levi-Strauss’ concept of binary opposition, a means of identification through difference and rebellion.
I couldn't quite put my finger on what was bothering me about this business of the social networking of subjects and objects and subjects through objects until reading Graves-Brown's essay. By now I'm easily convinced by new variations on the old theme (that 'human' is not limited to skin-tight qualities) but certain tics in the past few have lost me completely. Now I know why.
For all there is a concern with the social engine, the social dynamic that draws us in and assimilates us, even if we are operationally unaware of how we've been suckered into obeying mass-culture norms. It is in particular this striving for independent significance (which the novel is apparently about? - had a very hard time getting around the brutality of the execution to find any relevant points, so thank god for the essay or I just would have been angry) that seems to be the root of my disconcertion. How are we defining this individual, if not as a cog in the machine? What defines the person beneath the exoskeleton, where do these desires for individuality actually stem from? Because it seems now that all these supposedly alternative-seeking actions of the individual are inspired by larger workings within the social structure. Rather I'm confounded by a paradox between engine of the person and engine of the world, which one stood on the cliff and pushed the boulder that became the snowball effect of all the things we do. Who has the autonomy - or is the idea of autonomy period just another shell of old thinking I'm supposed to shed?
I worry that trying to answer this is pointless, but it continues to bother me, lurking under the veneer of all the other things we question. The closest I can come to shooing away this nagging issue is addressing the embodiment of meat and the embodiment of car. In this regard I'm mostly stuck wondering on the subject of detachment hand in hand with empowerment and re-realization of the self in the flesh. Freedom from the body as a cyborg ideal is confounded by the control one feels behind the wheel. Stranger, that the body's experiences with, through, the object are a marker not of the passage of the object but as the passage of the body.
No, I can't fool myself, this continues to boggle me and I'm interested but unsure of where to step without being further distressed by the text.
Oh WOW Crash is out of control. I'm not gonna lie- I only read seven chapters of it. That was enough to help me understand the many references in Mark Dery's and Paul Graves-Brown's pieces. An incredibly provocative work and directly relevant to what we are talking about, even with its violently pornographic elements. Indeed, according to Graves-Brown, "To be pornographic, rather than simply erotic, a work must in some way degrade and dehumanise the person." (161) This is exactly what makes it relevant to us and exactly what makes it so upsetting. Although Sev's email was very apologetic for the work, I think that it achieved a lot as far as extending my understanding (even if it was through a real pyschopathic and unexpected crash into my brain) The crash metaphor in general is incredibly helpful in understanding these human-object hybrids- for one of the easiest ways to notice an invisible system is to witness its destruction. Graves-Brown notes that the car is a "mobile personal space that is not to be challenged or invaded." (157) When it becomes our exoskeleton, it acts as our skin. We feel that we are completely enclosed and often that we are invincible in our fast, sexy cars. These cars that can take us wherever we want to go and hide as many sex acts as we want hidden. When it fails us, when we lose control and crash is the moment that we notice our dependency on it for our safety, our mode of transportation, our expression of style and status. At the same time we see our skin as the shell of our humanity, enclosing whatever it is that makes us unique, human individuals. Is the body just another exoskeleton? Another invisible system that can be destroyed and discarded? One thing that I keep thinking about is the assertion that Perri made last Monday- that one day we won't need bodies. I kept thinking about simple pleasures- food... sex... warmth... tactile physical sensations that bring pleasure that cannot be achieved through intellectual pursuit. Its interesting that Ballard touched upon this. He asserts that "organic sex, body against body, skin area against skin area, is becoming no longer possible, simply because if anything is to have meaning for us it must take place in terms of the values and experiences of the media landscape." (235) But.... I don't know how much I agree. Like Graves-Brown points out- has anything ever existed not in terms of the landscape or built environment? Why is it so different now? "The car culture, like the Internet, has been but one phase in the relationship between humans as flesh and their material cutlure- this 'hybrid' state is not new" (164
I really enjoyed Graves-Brown's discussion of the connection between body-modification and car crashes. Body modification as an attempt at "becoming artefacts" made a lot of sense to me. If we look at cars as a second skin, this desire to become an artifact rather than stay an animal can be seen in the way we treat our cars, both in appearance (washing and waxing cars) and in what we do with them (revving the engine, speeding, crashing). There is also a sense in which "body modification in ethnography is often a matter of control" and sense when trying to be a safe driver we can never be totally in control of our safety, purposefully crashing our cars is one way we do have control. In both cases (body modification and crashes) there is a form of destruction, which might be seen as sort of an "if I can't be 100% sure my body (or my car) will stay perfect, I'm going to be the one to alter or destroy it" mentality.
Yes, I agree, Ballard’s Crash was a bit surprising to read for a course book. I did have difficult time applying this book to the theoretical framework of human bodies meshing with technology because the story was so graphic and distracting. Anyway, once I engaged with the articles everything started to make sense. In particular this idea of control that Graves-Brown points out, he writes, “The car as habitat insulates the driver from the world the, whereas the car as skin extends the physical control we have over motion, space, time, and location. However, it is clear, the sense of control which technology gives is largely illusory and merely masks the necessary underlying risk inherent in being” (162). This immediately made me think of the book Railway Journey by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, as he points to the added comfort on trains allowed for humans to repress the notion that in any moment technology could fail and thus causing an accident. My point is, this is analogous to the many features that car makers relentlessly inundate the motorists with. It is as if to say, you the driver are in control, it does not matter about the environment that surrounds you and the car. As such, when accidents happen the shock is more extreme because the conscious mind has repressed the possibility of a crash by the consistent feeling of being in control. But as Graves-Brown clearly illuminates, this is a farce, it is a giant illusion that we humans live by.
Lyrics from some of my favorite songs about cars and some commentary:
“Mercedes Benz” - Janis Joplin Oh lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends, So lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
Thoughts: As technology progresses further towards a state in which it can “sense the emotional” (Dervy) and act as an actual “extension of the body” (Graves-Brown), it seems that religion is becoming, and will become increasingly obsolete. Here, Janis Joplin asks God for a Mercedes Benz to symbolize and therefore embody her individuality.
“Pink Cadillac” - Bruce Springsteen Some folks say it's too old And that it goes too fast But my love is bigger than a Honda It's bigger than a Subaru Hey man there's only one thing And one car that will do Anyway we don't have to drive it Honey we can park it out in back And have a party in your pink Cadillac
Thoughts: For Bruce, this pink Cadillac isn’t valuable just for its capacity to transport. It provides the arena for “a party,” a place to socialize relative only to the car. Then again, this trait comes hand in hand that the car has the ability to break the rules of normalcy, that is, it “goes too fast.”
“Fast Car” - Tracy Chapman I remember we were driving driving in your car The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk City lights lay out before us And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder And I had a feeling that I belonged And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone
Thoughts: Is it the arm that provides the comfort or is it the car? The sensuality and the inherent sexuality of the people riding in the car described by Tracy Chapman are intertwined and inseparable. Simultaneously, however, it is the loss of control, the “drunkenness” which provides the comfort.
“Car Crash” - Matt Nathanson I wanna feel the car crash 'Cause I'm dyin' on the inside I wanna let go and know That I'll be alright, alright Just push me 'til I have to fly I've shed my skin, my scars Take me deep out past the lights
Thoughts: In Matt Nathanson’s terms, it seems that the cyborgian nature of car and driver is inherent; that is, it is natural in a rather fatalistic sense. To feel the crash is to feel the moment in which man and machine are physically reduced to the same experience. Shedding the skin is breaking past the boundary of humanity into a hybrid world which we manipulate constantly. Dery explains that “the car is a nagging reminder that we still haven’t figured out how to zap our Darwinian luggage - the body - from here to there…” However the fact that this is not yet possible does not keep it from existing in a fantasy/fetish world, where the future of the car can become a focus for further destruction of the fleshy body, both in actual and physical ways.
“One Piece at a Time” - Johnny Cash The first year they had me puttin' wheels on Cadillacs Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry 'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black. One day I devised myself a plan That should be the envy of most any man I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand. I'd get it one piece at a time And it wouldn't cost me a dime You'll know it's me when I come through your town I'm gonna ride around in style I'm gonna drive everybody wild 'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round. So the very next day when I punched in With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends I left that day with a lunch box full of gears Now, I never considered myself a thief GM wouldn't miss just one little piece Especially if I strung it out over several years.
Thoughts: Taking pieces from all different cars and making them fit together gives the car its own personality; it is not just another car bumped off the assembly line, but one that seems somehow more artistic, closer to the individualistic life of the human being. Risk comes into play here; the risk of stealing, the risk of being found out, and the risk of driving a car with pieces not set to match. For Cash, the only driver that is significant is himself; it becomes an egocentric tool, to find pride and respect among other people. Therefore, the song doesn’t mention a driver of the “beauties” rolling by; rather, they roll by themselves, it seems. The agent is the car, until, of course, Johnny gets his car.
As happens with most readings, my mind tends to retrieve anecdotal evidence for practically every new concept. Thus, the following.
The idea of “mixing without meeting” (157) from Graves-Brown struck a chord with me. Having grown up in Los Angeles, an extremely car-based environment, Manhattan’s emphasis on walking and public transportation was extremely jolting. Even seeing parents walking (rather than driving) their children to school was an odd experience. The argument could be made that the subway supports this concept of mixing without meeting, but the feeling of isolation is certainly decreased when a mariachi band suddenly starts to play in the middle of the subway car. The individualized car is an absolute separator, a physical divide between the driver and passengers, and the rest of the world.
The car as a habitat came up in both articles, and could not be more true. When cup holders first came out, it was a revolutionary idea. Now, especially with innovative utilization of the cigarette lighter, one can do almost anything within a car—from watching a movie to shaving. My car at home is certainly a habitat and reflects a messy room: CDs on the seats, a tissue box, pens and pencils, perhaps even an extra pair of shoes—and that’s before we even get to the trunk.
I have never been in a car crash, although there are a few times when I have come closer than I would have liked. The only “crash” I can think of that is even remotely related is when I was parking in a spot and misjudged where the wall was in front of the car. It was a slight jolt, but it was terrifying. My car has thick rubber bumpers, so it wasn’t as though I was worried about ruining the car. It was the sudden “fleshiness”, the humanizing of me not as a driver, but as a person, as a mortal. (I feel that this is related to the feeling when the driver “stops short”).
Dery’s point about the human-car hybrid (233) really hit home. My car back home is an old Volvo station-wagon, and I constantly describe the ride as being able to “feel” the car. I talk about how it “responds”. Indeed, driving a newer car like my mother’s Infiniti is a disturbing experience. Unlike the Volvo, where I need to pump the gas continually, the slightest touch on the pedal will jolt the Infiniti head-first. There is hardly any friction when turning the wheel. Although there is perhaps more manual labor, I much prefer my Volvo. And when Dery described the act of parallel parking, with the driver “feeling” the boundaries of the car (237), I couldn’t agree more.
While reading the articles, I couldn’t help but wonder the implications this has on airplanes. Certainly, like the car, there is a sexual element of air travel (who hasn’t heard of the mile-high club?). This seems to derive from similar aspects of the auto—the speed, the danger, the lack of control. And of course, there is a certain fixation on plane crashes, but that does seem to derive more in fear.
Finally, I went back to a favorite childhood game—bumper-cars. For a simple concept, it is extremely telling about what we find exciting and meaningful as a culture. The thrill of sudden impact, the escape from the safe confines of the vehicle—indeed, we recognize this societal fetishism perhaps more than we would like.
perri, your post was ingenious. i have one song to add:
Renaissance, by Mat Kearney
It happened fast in a flash, just this evening As I hit the gas, horn blast, brakes were screaming As the car crashed, broken glass, broke my dreaming I hit the dash, so fast my ears are ringing... The breath in my chest has slipped and I'm sinking Blinking through diamond spider webs of cracked glass I'm trying to remember all the words you said in the past Through the ash, siren screams and red beams I hear you sing softly to me
These lyrics describe both a literal collision and a collision of man and car. The dreaming is broken and the speaker tries to remember words from the past. Dreaming, speaking, remembering and singing are all very human activities in the sense that these capacities are ascribed to humans and humans alone. The car crash disrupts all of that, throwing something off-kilter and providing "a reminder of mortality" (Graves-Brown 160) - biological mortality, and also the mortality of the things that we produce, the dreams and the words past.
I agree with mega(tro)n that Crash was worth reading and helped illustrate the collision of the different spheres of technology (cars, violence, automatization, alienation, inevitability) and "humanness" (flesh, sex, emotion).
The Graves-Brown article made me think about the paradoxical idea of technology as manmade stuff with dehumanising effects. I'll be honest: I read this article while watching tv, and not just tv but tivo-ed tv. Tivo enhances the very worst of tv: you have instant access to whatever show you want to watch, so long as it has aired, and the capacity to skip all the commercials. This on-demand-ness results in a desensitization to instant gratification that in turn contributes to a societal deficiency of attention span. (Crash illustrates this concept by suggesting the boredom that technology leads to, and the subsequent brutal flesh-based fantasies people have resorted to for thrill.) So anyway, I was sitting there watching "Here Come the Newlyweds" and resenting having to engage with this text when it hit me: I realized the power that tivo has over me and the parallel that that provides to Graves-Brown's discussion of dehumanization. Ballard, Graves-Brown writes, "evokes a sense in which the technology of the motor car [or the tivo] is dehumanising, that rather than setting people about their natures, the technical realm actually takes away and degrades humanity" (161). One of the supposed distinguishing features of humans is the ability to think very abstractly, critically and philosophically, to process big ideas and come up with responses. I would have been expressing that human feature had I been reading and focusing and thinking in that human way. The feature that I was, however, exhibiting - sitting on a bed and watching moving images - did not express much that was uniquely human. And yet I preferred the latter option, and in doing so I paused my brain (or whatever that represents) and momentarily gave up some of my human-mindedness. Tivo is an example of "it [being] clear that the freedom offered by technology [such as the freedom to watch American Idol at any time of day] in contemporary society is a purchased at a price" (161).
What is that price? Some degree of agency? Or something else - something more fundamental and broad-reaching, like what Ballard hints at in his novel?
Graves-Brown notes that the viewing of the car as a "mobile personal space that is not to be challenged or invaded" has "odd consequences for the perception of the world around us." One of these odd consequences that relates to a feeling of detachment from the outside world while being in a car is that the experience of a passenger in a car is in many ways parallels to the experience of a viewer watching a movie. The speed of the car and the smoothness of its movement could never be achieved by a person walking, so the way that someone interprets the view out a car window is entirely different from the view of that location outside of a machine. However, the view is very similar to images in movies where the camera pans across a location quickly and smoothly. Listening to music in car (especially wearing headphones), which now is almost a given for the ride, further contributes to the impression of the experience of riding in a car as cinematic. If we think about how the visual and auditory sensory data is so similar for riding in a car and mindlessly watching a movie or tv show, then it's not as surprising that both can cause a similar sensation of detachment.
I was definitely more interested than offended by the readings, mostly because the authors, as well as Duane from Annie Hall, as Dery mentions, are right: there is something undeniably erotic about cars and car crashes. I was left wondering all weekend: why are cars so sexy? Some thoughts.
1) I really bought into Dery's discussion of driving being an emotional activity. As someone prone to road rage, and whose admittedly manic moods direct my driving skills, I understand that driving a car is very unlike operating other machines. Something about interacting with other humans from behind a wheel, without actual physical contact, releases emotions in a more liberal way than usual, perhaps.
2) I recall that Rousseau regarded knowledge of death as distinctly human. In this context, car crashes remind us of our own mortality. As this concern or acknowledgment of death is so human that it is almost animalistic, perhaps this is why connect it to sexuality.
3) Graves-Brown mentions personification, and as someone who has carefully named every car I've had, as well as talked it through long drives, I understand the point about making a car a "part of the family." This is another way in which we separate cars from other machines, giving them more agency and aligning them with ourselves as humans. This alignment could definitely be a reason why car crashes are pornographic: cars represent humans. I'm also reminded in this context that after his crash, Ballard ruminates that his car's true nature has been revealed. Can cars have a good or bad nature, and if so can they trick us?
4) It's interesting that Dery points out that not only are we drawn to the sexuality of cars by the human excitement of near-death experiences and the emotional connection we feel while driving, but also ads that sell cars like chocolate mousse cake after sex. Some of the ads linked in the Dery article look like Tom Ford perfume ads (http://www.cashewblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/tom_ford_blog1.jpg). Enough said.
5) Cars as extensions. One thing about Crash that was interesting to me, even in all of its graphic sexuality, was Ballard's understanding of his body as a machine. He gives into its sexual needs, knows its limits and abilities, often feels disconnected from it but uses it to perform, to achieve something.
Obviously cars are extensions of our selves, and in that way sexually mimic us as humans, but how far can we apply this? Can we really replace our own sexuality with that socially embedded into a machine? What agency do we have in our relationship to cars?
McLuhan would argue that the car is an extension of the self, which is certainly an obvious assertion. But how far can a human's connection to the automobile really go?
There's a lot to discuss, so I guess I'll break it into parts:
1.) Overwhelmingly, I think the only way I could interpret/stomach Crash was by viewing it as an extremely extended - albeit perverse - metaphor for the human's relationship with technology. Dery writes: "The crash functions as a bracing blow that re-connects us with our own bodies and other people at a time when our interaction with the world around us consists, increasingly, of headfirst immersion in machines with screens or human contact squeezed through wires..." (234). The car crash is a "real experience" and it revitalizes Ballard's marriage. It is a break through the monotony of modern life, but it also recognizes the way in which our bodies are our machines and how the development of machinery/technology is leading to a future where one will no longer be able to tell the difference between the two.
2.) Is this believable? I don't know. Watching the movie, I was definitely aware of the eroticism that was mimicked via car chases, but it didn't ring true for me. There's no doubt in my mind, though, that cars can be used as the exoskeleton - in Dery's article, it refers to the car serving as the nervous system of the "human" - so is it that much of a stretch to include the sexual system as well? It's called a "sex drive."
3.) I was also interested in the idea of the SUV being the mediator between world issues (from being an oil guzzler, to the Middle East, etc.) - this goes back to the idea of "the politics of things," something I am getting more and more interested in.
4.) On the other hand, the car is still a "nagging reminder that we still haven't figured out how to zap our Darwinian luggage - the body from here to there" (228). We haven't found a way to teleport yet in the same way we've been able to text message, e-mail, and stay connected across online universes without the use of our body. The car is one of the few things that still traps us within our body and serves as an exoskeleton but NOT a replacement. Cars need people to transport and to drive them, no matter what the Chrysler company forsees in the future.
5.) On a slightly lighter note, I wanted to share a book I once reviewed when I worked as a book reviewer awhile back: http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Book-Owners-Manual/dp/0679890289
It's called A Guy Book: An Owner's Manual. With chapters called "Under the Hood," "Yielding the Right of Way: Consent," and "Avoiding Hazardous Conditions: STDs," the book boils down the entire life of a teenage boy using the car as an extended metaphor. I have a copy somewhere, but there's a whole chapter that dissects part of a car to match up with, erm, parts of the male.
Wow. I can't wait to see what we're going to talk about in discussion.
Nietzsche wrote that pleasure makes its pact with cruelty rather than with tenderness, and sexual love becomes "war; and at its basis the mortal hatred of the sexes." Sexual gratification, then, is sadic, and no one can do sadic better than Marquis de Sade, not even J. G. Ballard.
But what is it with the aging, European intellectuals and their preoccupation with pornographic sex, using it as bait-&-switch for a philosophical idea they have their bets hedged on? Losers. It does lead to some great insights, I admit, but also to awesome feats of bad writing. "She put away her breast with a deft hand," writes Ballard.
One of the texts that supplement our reading of Ballard, Graves-Brown and Dery might be Adorno and Horkheimer's "Dialectics of Enlightenment," in which Adorno writes about Marquis de Sade in relation to the end of bourgeois Enlightenment. "Sade demonstrated empirically what Kant grounded transcendentally," Adorno writes, "the affinity between knowledge and planning which has set its stamp of inescapable functionality on a bourgeois existence rationalized even in its breathing spaces" (69). Ballard seems to be dealing with this rationalized bourgeois existence, and like in de Sade's work, "no moment is unused, no body orifice neglected, no function left inactive" (Adorno's description of de Sade's "Juliette").
What is Ballard criticizing in "Crash"? Again Adorno: "what seems to matter in such events, more than pleasure itself, is the busy pursuit of pleasure, its organization... the established bourgeois order entirely functionalized reason... a purposiveness without purpose." Exactly the pursuit of Helen, James, et al. I believe it is a mistake on Graves-Brown's part to believe that such a pursuit is a means of breaking out of a dehumanized rational order. It's true that these characters try to escape "functionalized reason" with their dis-order and disregard for decorum. Yet this kind of a sexual drive is only a reified drive indistinguishable from self-destruction, hence cannot be a humanizing movement, as Graves-Brown claims... I guess more on this in class.
Sorry for posting so late--my password was defective and I ended up having to open a new account and subsequently create a new identity!
Agreeing with Morgan, I’m glad to have read the book and hope we are able to discuss why exactly, it is so disturbing to so many of us. I definitely blushed many times throughout, self-conscious, and kept thinking, if the person sitting next to me only knew...
Graves-Brown offered fabulous insights about the accident and our new sense of embodiement: “the self of its corporeality and hence of reawakening the deadened self and sexuality.” However, it was hard for me to reconcile his interpretation of Crash as a kind of ‘cautionary tale’ with the way the novel was framed by Ballard. If within the novel, the accident was meant to be a kind of ‘wake-up call,’ from our sexually and mentally numbed urban lives, I didn’t feel that Catherine and Ballard woke up (at least in the sense of being mentally liberated). At the end of the novel, there certainly is a different sense of caring between Catherine and James, but it seems more solely a reawakened perversity focused towards the body. Ballard (the protagonist) still seemed ambivalent towards Catherine’s potential death at the hands of Vaughn, presumably because it excited him sexually. Because James dwells and relishes in his reawakened sexual self Ballard seems to be leaving it wholly to readers to contextualize as morally lacking (which I think Dery suggests).
Lolita, for example, felt less morally ambiguous—either because of its dark humor or Humbert Humbert’s downfall at the end of the novel. Ballard himself also seems to have second thoughts. On a site called ‘the Ballardian” I read that Ballard (in author mode) added explanatory forwards for later editions. In 1974 French edition for example, Ballard writes '...the ultimate role of Crash is a warning against the brutal, erotic and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape.” I wonder why Ballard felt the need to add this.
As Dery suggests, Crash might be seen as “a metaphor for our current psychological (and increasingly physiological) symbiosis with our machines.” Is Dery then suggesting that the characters enactments of this new world reflect our repressed inner mental worlds? What then, does this imply for females who appear as objects of technology rather than initiators of action? I had trouble making the connection between sex and technology, and I wonder if this connection has relevance only for males. I kept wanting to laugh every time Ballard described the erotic instrument panel.
Lastly, as Marilla suggested and we are to see the book itself as a kind of 'crash,' and our disrupted mental states as traumatic aftermath, then perhaps it would be helpful to think of our class discussion as a beneficiary support group.
Remaining random questions: Can the car crash be extended to thinking about non-car crash accidents? Do they have the same implications?
I spend so much of my time during the week thinking about issues raised in this class. Two things that I've been thinking about...
- In class on Monday, I was thinking about the relationship between cars and bodies. While I don't want to reinforce gender stereotypes, I do think there's a parallel between the relationships some men have with their cars and the relationships some women have with their bodies. Both the car and the female body are locations that are controlled and primped in order to attract romantic partners or impress or compete with others. The man with the hot car and the woman with the hot body are using different means toward the same ends. This parallel reinforces the sexual power that cars are invested with, and the way that cars become, as Graves-Brown argues, both a skin and an extension of self.
- As an addendum to that postulation, I heard a very applicable anecdote about cars and sexwas on This American Life yesterday. A female-to-male transgender individual, Griffin, was describing the effects of his first testosterone injections for an episode called, sensibly, "Testosterone." His first injection contained an amount of testosterone approximately equal to the testosterone content of two linebackers. One of the effects that Griffin experienced right away was an erotic attraction to cars. He remembered walking down Fifth Avenue and seeing a red Cadillac and suddenly, out of no where, getting aroused. It makes sense to me that cars can be sexy, but how bizarre that an increase in a hormone level can attune someone to that. Why wasn't Griffin attracted to cars before? Was he subconsciously expecting that effect, having probably been socialized to associate cars with sex? Did the testosterone highlight something visual that he had missed before?
Just some things to think about instead of german homework... Over and out.
Sorry this is so late; I had a crazy two weeks trying to sort out a sore tooth. But thankfully with my root canal almost finished I finally have no more pain. So now I am making up for the posts that I got behind on!
Unfortunately I missed last Monday (damn tooth) because from what I gathered from the emails about Crash it seemed as though many people were taken aback by the book and instead focused on the essays. I really wanted to be in class that day to hear the discussion (perhaps one day I will as Cyborg be able to send my brain to focus on a lecture while by body is still in the dental chair….). While reading the essays (Graves-Brown in particular) definitely helped me to take the book a step further, I found the book engaging from the beginning and felt that it was greatly related to what we have been talking about. The eroticism was unexpected at first because it was a course book, but it worked in the story and was necessary, I feel, for what Ballard wanted to get across.
The inability for the characters to feel aroused outside of mechanics of the car and the stimulation of the road represented so well the inability to touch and be connected that can occur with all of the growing multiplicities of mediated relationships. The points between one thing and another are crossed with machines and intermediaries, where things shift their orientation and distinctions break down. Sexuality is something seen as so human (not reproduction, but sexuality and eroticism) yet the characters can’t access it through the relationships of husband and wife because they have become shallow. Instead new horizons open and the mediator of machine and technology becomes necessary for stimulation of one person by another. Hence it is the car that brings together not only the life and death of all the characters, but their innermost feelings of connection and arousal.
I guess my stance on the intense imagery was to go with it because it was the reality. It may seem perverse but it encompassed the same feelings, the same basal instinct, it just couldn’t occur in the “normal” way anymore for the characters. So I chose to embrace the eroticism of the car because to do otherwise was to remain within the false consciousness (I don’t like that phrase but I can’t think of a better one) of the pervious ages.
Anyway, I could probably go on for a while about the different parts of the book that I felt highlighted areas of interest regarding our dissection of humanism and human/nonhuman relations, but since I missed the discussion I’ll leave it at that, and I guess be happy that I didn’t have to be the one person in class defending Ballard (maybe there were others?)…….
Latour’s discussion of time was perhaps the most confusing for me. It seems like his sense of the word ‘time’ often shifts in meaning without prior alert. For example, he says (73) The notion of an irreversible arrow—progress or decadence—stems from an ordering of quasi-objects, whose proliferation the moderns cannot explain.” Then he says, “The connections among beings alone make time." (77). Is his discussion of reversibility/irreversibility in terms of moderns who impose their sense of time (progress)?
17 comments:
I was particularly struck by the Graves-Brown discussion in “Always Crashing the Same Car” of the privatisation of experience. As I understand it: Graves-Brown believes that privatisation of experience (a type of perception of the world around us) is the main reason why we (“humans”) believe that technology, through attributed personhood and agency, marks a progression towards freedom and democracy. However, this is an illusion; we are in fact bound by a system of material culture which does not have its own agency (self-control or will). Instead, it is directly linked to those (“humans”; “us”) who create the material culture (cars) in the first place (“humans” in the industrial car companies).
This made me think about all the materialistic means by which a teenager rebels against his/her parents: generally known examples include drugs, piercings, tattoos, and “inappropriate” clothing. Though these are all objects created by large organized systems (most often factories), teenagers utilize them and become a part of its consumer culture anyway because the appeal lies in the objects’ potency to represent rebellion against parents. Perhaps, contra Graves-Brown, consumers are not allured by the prospect of democracy and freedom (a concept which has been discarded in postmodern thinking). Rather, privatisation of experience and consumer culture are invested in something similar to Levi-Strauss’ concept of binary opposition, a means of identification through difference and rebellion.
I couldn't quite put my finger on what was bothering me about this business of the social networking of subjects and objects and subjects through objects until reading Graves-Brown's essay. By now I'm easily convinced by new variations on the old theme (that 'human' is not limited to skin-tight qualities) but certain tics in the past few have lost me completely. Now I know why.
For all there is a concern with the social engine, the social dynamic that draws us in and assimilates us, even if we are operationally unaware of how we've been suckered into obeying mass-culture norms. It is in particular this striving for independent significance (which the novel is apparently about? - had a very hard time getting around the brutality of the execution to find any relevant points, so thank god for the essay or I just would have been angry) that seems to be the root of my disconcertion. How are we defining this individual, if not as a cog in the machine? What defines the person beneath the exoskeleton, where do these desires for individuality actually stem from? Because it seems now that all these supposedly alternative-seeking actions of the individual are inspired by larger workings within the social structure. Rather I'm confounded by a paradox between engine of the person and engine of the world, which one stood on the cliff and pushed the boulder that became the snowball effect of all the things we do. Who has the autonomy - or is the idea of autonomy period just another shell of old thinking I'm supposed to shed?
I worry that trying to answer this is pointless, but it continues to bother me, lurking under the veneer of all the other things we question. The closest I can come to shooing away this nagging issue is addressing the embodiment of meat and the embodiment of car. In this regard I'm mostly stuck wondering on the subject of detachment hand in hand with empowerment and re-realization of the self in the flesh. Freedom from the body as a cyborg ideal is confounded by the control one feels behind the wheel. Stranger, that the body's experiences with, through, the object are a marker not of the passage of the object but as the passage of the body.
No, I can't fool myself, this continues to boggle me and I'm interested but unsure of where to step without being further distressed by the text.
Oh WOW Crash is out of control. I'm not gonna lie- I only read seven chapters of it. That was enough to help me understand the many references in Mark Dery's and Paul Graves-Brown's pieces. An incredibly provocative work and directly relevant to what we are talking about, even with its violently pornographic elements. Indeed, according to Graves-Brown, "To be pornographic, rather than simply erotic, a work must in some way degrade and dehumanise the person." (161) This is exactly what makes it relevant to us and exactly what makes it so upsetting. Although Sev's email was very apologetic for the work, I think that it achieved a lot as far as extending my understanding (even if it was through a real pyschopathic and unexpected crash into my brain)
The crash metaphor in general is incredibly helpful in understanding these human-object hybrids- for one of the easiest ways to notice an invisible system is to witness its destruction. Graves-Brown notes that the car is a "mobile personal space that is not to be challenged or invaded." (157) When it becomes our exoskeleton, it acts as our skin. We feel that we are completely enclosed and often that we are invincible in our fast, sexy cars. These cars that can take us wherever we want to go and hide as many sex acts as we want hidden. When it fails us, when we lose control and crash is the moment that we notice our dependency on it for our safety, our mode of transportation, our expression of style and status.
At the same time we see our skin as the shell of our humanity, enclosing whatever it is that makes us unique, human individuals. Is the body just another exoskeleton? Another invisible system that can be destroyed and discarded?
One thing that I keep thinking about is the assertion that Perri made last Monday- that one day we won't need bodies. I kept thinking about simple pleasures- food... sex... warmth... tactile physical sensations that bring pleasure that cannot be achieved through intellectual pursuit. Its interesting that Ballard touched upon this. He asserts that "organic sex, body against body, skin area against skin area, is becoming no longer possible, simply because if anything is to have meaning for us it must take place in terms of the values and experiences of the media landscape." (235) But.... I don't know how much I agree. Like Graves-Brown points out- has anything ever existed not in terms of the landscape or built environment? Why is it so different now? "The car culture, like the Internet, has been but one phase in the relationship between humans as flesh and their material cutlure- this 'hybrid' state is not new" (164
I really enjoyed Graves-Brown's discussion of the connection between body-modification and car crashes. Body modification as an attempt at "becoming artefacts" made a lot of sense to me. If we look at cars as a second skin, this desire to become an artifact rather than stay an animal can be seen in the way we treat our cars, both in appearance (washing and waxing cars) and in what we do with them (revving the engine, speeding, crashing). There is also a sense in which "body modification in ethnography is often a matter of control" and sense when trying to be a safe driver we can never be totally in control of our safety, purposefully crashing our cars is one way we do have control. In both cases (body modification and crashes) there is a form of destruction, which might be seen as sort of an "if I can't be 100% sure my body (or my car) will stay perfect, I'm going to be the one to alter or destroy it" mentality.
I just finished watching the movie.
Oh my god.
Thoughts coming soon...
Sadia
Yes, I agree, Ballard’s Crash was a bit surprising to read for a course book. I did have difficult time applying this book to the theoretical framework of human bodies meshing with technology because the story was so graphic and distracting. Anyway, once I engaged with the articles everything started to make sense. In particular this idea of control that Graves-Brown points out, he writes, “The car as habitat insulates the driver from the world the, whereas the car as skin extends the physical control we have over motion, space, time, and location. However, it is clear, the sense of control which technology gives is largely illusory and merely masks the necessary underlying risk inherent in being” (162). This immediately made me think of the book Railway Journey by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, as he points to the added comfort on trains allowed for humans to repress the notion that in any moment technology could fail and thus causing an accident. My point is, this is analogous to the many features that car makers relentlessly inundate the motorists with. It is as if to say, you the driver are in control, it does not matter about the environment that surrounds you and the car. As such, when accidents happen the shock is more extreme because the conscious mind has repressed the possibility of a crash by the consistent feeling of being in control. But as Graves-Brown clearly illuminates, this is a farce, it is a giant illusion that we humans live by.
Lyrics from some of my favorite songs about cars and some commentary:
“Mercedes Benz” - Janis Joplin
Oh lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
Thoughts: As technology progresses further towards a state in which it can “sense the emotional” (Dervy) and act as an actual “extension of the body” (Graves-Brown), it seems that religion is becoming, and will become increasingly obsolete. Here, Janis Joplin asks God for a Mercedes Benz to symbolize and therefore embody her individuality.
“Pink Cadillac” - Bruce Springsteen
Some folks say it's too old
And that it goes too fast
But my love is bigger than a Honda
It's bigger than a Subaru
Hey man there's only one thing
And one car that will do
Anyway we don't have to drive it
Honey we can park it out in back
And have a party in your pink Cadillac
Thoughts: For Bruce, this pink Cadillac isn’t valuable just for its capacity to transport. It provides the arena for “a party,” a place to socialize relative only to the car. Then again, this trait comes hand in hand that the car has the ability to break the rules of normalcy, that is, it “goes too fast.”
“Fast Car” - Tracy Chapman
I remember we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone
Thoughts: Is it the arm that provides the comfort or is it the car? The sensuality and the inherent sexuality of the people riding in the car described by Tracy Chapman are intertwined and inseparable. Simultaneously, however, it is the loss of control, the “drunkenness” which provides the comfort.
“Car Crash” - Matt Nathanson
I wanna feel the car crash
'Cause I'm dyin' on the inside
I wanna let go and know
That I'll be alright, alright
Just push me 'til I have to fly
I've shed my skin, my scars
Take me deep out past the lights
Thoughts: In Matt Nathanson’s terms, it seems that the cyborgian nature of car and driver is inherent; that is, it is natural in a rather fatalistic sense. To feel the crash is to feel the moment in which man and machine are physically reduced to the same experience. Shedding the skin is breaking past the boundary of humanity into a hybrid world which we manipulate constantly. Dery explains that “the car is a nagging reminder that we still haven’t figured out how to zap our Darwinian luggage - the body - from here to there…” However the fact that this is not yet possible does not keep it from existing in a fantasy/fetish world, where the future of the car can become a focus for further destruction of the fleshy body, both in actual and physical ways.
“One Piece at a Time” - Johnny Cash
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on Cadillacs
Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.
One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.
I'd get it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round.
So the very next day when I punched in
With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends
I left that day with a lunch box full of gears
Now, I never considered myself a thief
GM wouldn't miss just one little piece
Especially if I strung it out over several years.
Thoughts: Taking pieces from all different cars and making them fit together gives the car its own personality; it is not just another car bumped off the assembly line, but one that seems somehow more artistic, closer to the individualistic life of the human being. Risk comes into play here; the risk of stealing, the risk of being found out, and the risk of driving a car with pieces not set to match. For Cash, the only driver that is significant is himself; it becomes an egocentric tool, to find pride and respect among other people. Therefore, the song doesn’t mention a driver of the “beauties” rolling by; rather, they roll by themselves, it seems. The agent is the car, until, of course, Johnny gets his car.
As happens with most readings, my mind tends to retrieve anecdotal evidence for practically every new concept. Thus, the following.
The idea of “mixing without meeting” (157) from Graves-Brown struck a chord with me. Having grown up in Los Angeles, an extremely car-based environment, Manhattan’s emphasis on walking and public transportation was extremely jolting. Even seeing parents walking (rather than driving) their children to school was an odd experience. The argument could be made that the subway supports this concept of mixing without meeting, but the feeling of isolation is certainly decreased when a mariachi band suddenly starts to play in the middle of the subway car. The individualized car is an absolute separator, a physical divide between the driver and passengers, and the rest of the world.
The car as a habitat came up in both articles, and could not be more true. When cup holders first came out, it was a revolutionary idea. Now, especially with innovative utilization of the cigarette lighter, one can do almost anything within a car—from watching a movie to shaving. My car at home is certainly a habitat and reflects a messy room: CDs on the seats, a tissue box, pens and pencils, perhaps even an extra pair of shoes—and that’s before we even get to the trunk.
I have never been in a car crash, although there are a few times when I have come closer than I would have liked. The only “crash” I can think of that is even remotely related is when I was parking in a spot and misjudged where the wall was in front of the car. It was a slight jolt, but it was terrifying. My car has thick rubber bumpers, so it wasn’t as though I was worried about ruining the car. It was the sudden “fleshiness”, the humanizing of me not as a driver, but as a person, as a mortal. (I feel that this is related to the feeling when the driver “stops short”).
Dery’s point about the human-car hybrid (233) really hit home. My car back home is an old Volvo station-wagon, and I constantly describe the ride as being able to “feel” the car. I talk about how it “responds”. Indeed, driving a newer car like my mother’s Infiniti is a disturbing experience. Unlike the Volvo, where I need to pump the gas continually, the slightest touch on the pedal will jolt the Infiniti head-first. There is hardly any friction when turning the wheel. Although there is perhaps more manual labor, I much prefer my Volvo. And when Dery described the act of parallel parking, with the driver “feeling” the boundaries of the car (237), I couldn’t agree more.
While reading the articles, I couldn’t help but wonder the implications this has on airplanes. Certainly, like the car, there is a sexual element of air travel (who hasn’t heard of the mile-high club?). This seems to derive from similar aspects of the auto—the speed, the danger, the lack of control. And of course, there is a certain fixation on plane crashes, but that does seem to derive more in fear.
Finally, I went back to a favorite childhood game—bumper-cars. For a simple concept, it is extremely telling about what we find exciting and meaningful as a culture. The thrill of sudden impact, the escape from the safe confines of the vehicle—indeed, we recognize this societal fetishism perhaps more than we would like.
~Samantha
perri, your post was ingenious. i have one song to add:
Renaissance, by Mat Kearney
It happened fast in a flash, just this evening
As I hit the gas, horn blast, brakes were screaming
As the car crashed, broken glass, broke my dreaming
I hit the dash, so fast my ears are ringing...
The breath in my chest has slipped and I'm sinking
Blinking through diamond spider webs of cracked glass
I'm trying to remember all the words you said in the past
Through the ash, siren screams and red beams
I hear you sing softly to me
These lyrics describe both a literal collision and a collision of man and car. The dreaming is broken and the speaker tries to remember words from the past. Dreaming, speaking, remembering and singing are all very human activities in the sense that these capacities are ascribed to humans and humans alone. The car crash disrupts all of that, throwing something off-kilter and providing "a reminder of mortality" (Graves-Brown 160) - biological mortality, and also the mortality of the things that we produce, the dreams and the words past.
I agree with mega(tro)n that Crash was worth reading and helped illustrate the collision of the different spheres of technology (cars, violence, automatization, alienation, inevitability) and "humanness" (flesh, sex, emotion).
The Graves-Brown article made me think about the paradoxical idea of technology as manmade stuff with dehumanising effects. I'll be honest: I read this article while watching tv, and not just tv but tivo-ed tv. Tivo enhances the very worst of tv: you have instant access to whatever show you want to watch, so long as it has aired, and the capacity to skip all the commercials. This on-demand-ness results in a desensitization to instant gratification that in turn contributes to a societal deficiency of attention span. (Crash illustrates this concept by suggesting the boredom that technology leads to, and the subsequent brutal flesh-based fantasies people have resorted to for thrill.) So anyway, I was sitting there watching "Here Come the Newlyweds" and resenting having to engage with this text when it hit me: I realized the power that tivo has over me and the parallel that that provides to Graves-Brown's discussion of dehumanization. Ballard, Graves-Brown writes, "evokes a sense in which the technology of the motor car [or the tivo] is dehumanising, that rather than setting people about their natures, the technical realm actually takes away and degrades humanity" (161). One of the supposed distinguishing features of humans is the ability to think very abstractly, critically and philosophically, to process big ideas and come up with responses. I would have been expressing that human feature had I been reading and focusing and thinking in that human way. The feature that I was, however, exhibiting - sitting on a bed and watching moving images - did not express much that was uniquely human. And yet I preferred the latter option, and in doing so I paused my brain (or whatever that represents) and momentarily gave up some of my human-mindedness. Tivo is an example of "it [being] clear that the freedom offered by technology [such as the freedom to watch American Idol at any time of day] in contemporary society is a purchased at a price" (161).
What is that price? Some degree of agency? Or something else - something more fundamental and broad-reaching, like what Ballard hints at in his novel?
Graves-Brown notes that the viewing of the car as a "mobile personal space that is not to be challenged or invaded" has "odd consequences for the perception of the world around us." One of these odd consequences that relates to a feeling of detachment from the outside world while being in a car is that the experience of a passenger in a car is in many ways parallels to the experience of a viewer watching a movie. The speed of the car and the smoothness of its movement could never be achieved by a person walking, so the way that someone interprets the view out a car window is entirely different from the view of that location outside of a machine. However, the view is very similar to images in movies where the camera pans across a location quickly and smoothly. Listening to music in car (especially wearing headphones), which now is almost a given for the ride, further contributes to the impression of the experience of riding in a car as cinematic. If we think about how the visual and auditory sensory data is so similar for riding in a car and mindlessly watching a movie or tv show, then it's not as surprising that both can cause a similar sensation of detachment.
I was definitely more interested than offended by the readings, mostly because the authors, as well as Duane from Annie Hall, as Dery mentions, are right: there is something undeniably erotic about cars and car crashes. I was left wondering all weekend: why are cars so sexy? Some thoughts.
1) I really bought into Dery's discussion of driving being an emotional activity. As someone prone to road rage, and whose admittedly manic moods direct my driving skills, I understand that driving a car is very unlike operating other machines. Something about interacting with other humans from behind a wheel, without actual physical contact, releases emotions in a more liberal way than usual, perhaps.
2) I recall that Rousseau regarded knowledge of death as distinctly human. In this context, car crashes remind us of our own mortality. As this concern or acknowledgment of death is so human that it is almost animalistic, perhaps this is why connect it to sexuality.
3) Graves-Brown mentions personification, and as someone who has carefully named every car I've had, as well as talked it through long drives, I understand the point about making a car a "part of the family." This is another way in which we separate cars from other machines, giving them more agency and aligning them with ourselves as humans. This alignment could definitely be a reason why car crashes are pornographic: cars represent humans. I'm also reminded in this context that after his crash, Ballard ruminates that his car's true nature has been revealed. Can cars have a good or bad nature, and if so can they trick us?
4) It's interesting that Dery points out that not only are we drawn to the sexuality of cars by the human excitement of near-death experiences and the emotional connection we feel while driving, but also ads that sell cars like chocolate mousse cake after sex. Some of the ads linked in the Dery article look like Tom Ford perfume ads (http://www.cashewblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/tom_ford_blog1.jpg). Enough said.
5) Cars as extensions. One thing about Crash that was interesting to me, even in all of its graphic sexuality, was Ballard's understanding of his body as a machine. He gives into its sexual needs, knows its limits and abilities, often feels disconnected from it but uses it to perform, to achieve something.
Obviously cars are extensions of our selves, and in that way sexually mimic us as humans, but how far can we apply this? Can we really replace our own sexuality with that socially embedded into a machine? What agency do we have in our relationship to cars?
McLuhan would argue that the car is an extension of the self, which is certainly an obvious assertion. But how far can a human's connection to the automobile really go?
There's a lot to discuss, so I guess I'll break it into parts:
1.) Overwhelmingly, I think the only way I could interpret/stomach Crash was by viewing it as an extremely extended - albeit perverse - metaphor for the human's relationship with technology. Dery writes: "The crash functions as a bracing blow that re-connects us with our own bodies and other people at a time when our interaction with the world around us consists, increasingly, of headfirst immersion in machines with screens or human contact squeezed through wires..." (234). The car crash is a "real experience" and it revitalizes Ballard's marriage. It is a break through the monotony of modern life, but it also recognizes the way in which our bodies are our machines and how the development of machinery/technology is leading to a future where one will no longer be able to tell the difference between the two.
2.) Is this believable? I don't know. Watching the movie, I was definitely aware of the eroticism that was mimicked via car chases, but it didn't ring true for me. There's no doubt in my mind, though, that cars can be used as the exoskeleton - in Dery's article, it refers to the car serving as the nervous system of the "human" - so is it that much of a stretch to include the sexual system as well? It's called a "sex drive."
3.) I was also interested in the idea of the SUV being the mediator between world issues (from being an oil guzzler, to the Middle East, etc.) - this goes back to the idea of "the politics of things," something I am getting more and more interested in.
4.) On the other hand, the car is still a "nagging reminder that we still haven't figured out how to zap our Darwinian luggage - the body from here to there" (228). We haven't found a way to teleport yet in the same way we've been able to text message, e-mail, and stay connected across online universes without the use of our body. The car is one of the few things that still traps us within our body and serves as an exoskeleton but NOT a replacement. Cars need people to transport and to drive them, no matter what the Chrysler company forsees in the future.
5.) On a slightly lighter note, I wanted to share a book I once reviewed when I worked as a book reviewer awhile back: http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Book-Owners-Manual/dp/0679890289
It's called A Guy Book: An Owner's Manual. With chapters called "Under the Hood," "Yielding the Right of Way: Consent," and "Avoiding Hazardous Conditions: STDs," the book boils down the entire life of a teenage boy using the car as an extended metaphor. I have a copy somewhere, but there's a whole chapter that dissects part of a car to match up with, erm, parts of the male.
Wow. I can't wait to see what we're going to talk about in discussion.
Nietzsche wrote that pleasure makes its pact with cruelty rather than with tenderness, and sexual love becomes "war; and at its basis the mortal hatred of the sexes." Sexual gratification, then, is sadic, and no one can do sadic better than Marquis de Sade, not even J. G. Ballard.
But what is it with the aging, European intellectuals and their preoccupation with pornographic sex, using it as bait-&-switch for a philosophical idea they have their bets hedged on? Losers. It does lead to some great insights, I admit, but also to awesome feats of bad writing. "She put away her breast with a deft hand," writes Ballard.
One of the texts that supplement our reading of Ballard, Graves-Brown and Dery might be Adorno and Horkheimer's "Dialectics of Enlightenment," in which Adorno writes about Marquis de Sade in relation to the end of bourgeois Enlightenment. "Sade demonstrated empirically what Kant grounded transcendentally," Adorno writes, "the affinity between knowledge and planning which has set its stamp of inescapable functionality on a bourgeois existence rationalized even in its breathing spaces" (69). Ballard seems to be dealing with this rationalized bourgeois existence, and like in de Sade's work, "no moment is unused, no body orifice neglected, no function left inactive" (Adorno's description of de Sade's "Juliette").
What is Ballard criticizing in "Crash"? Again Adorno: "what seems to matter in such events, more than pleasure itself, is the busy pursuit of pleasure, its organization... the established bourgeois order entirely functionalized reason... a purposiveness without purpose." Exactly the pursuit of Helen, James, et al. I believe it is a mistake on Graves-Brown's part to believe that such a pursuit is a means of breaking out of a dehumanized rational order. It's true that these characters try to escape "functionalized reason" with their dis-order and disregard for decorum. Yet this kind of a sexual drive is only a reified drive indistinguishable from self-destruction, hence cannot be a humanizing movement, as Graves-Brown claims... I guess more on this in class.
Sorry for posting so late--my password was defective and I ended up having to open a new account and subsequently create a new identity!
Agreeing with Morgan, I’m glad to have read the book and hope we are able to discuss why exactly, it is so disturbing to so many of us. I definitely blushed many times throughout, self-conscious, and kept thinking, if the person sitting next to me only knew...
Graves-Brown offered fabulous insights about the accident and our new sense of embodiement: “the self of its corporeality and hence of reawakening the deadened self and sexuality.” However, it was hard for me to reconcile his interpretation of Crash as a kind of ‘cautionary tale’ with the way the novel was framed by Ballard. If within the novel, the accident was meant to be a kind of ‘wake-up call,’ from our sexually and mentally numbed urban lives, I didn’t feel that Catherine and Ballard woke up (at least in the sense of being mentally liberated). At the end of the novel, there certainly is a different sense of caring between Catherine and James, but it seems more solely a reawakened perversity focused towards the body. Ballard (the protagonist) still seemed ambivalent towards Catherine’s potential death at the hands of Vaughn, presumably because it excited him sexually. Because James dwells and relishes in his reawakened sexual self Ballard seems to be leaving it wholly to readers to contextualize as morally lacking (which I think Dery suggests).
Lolita, for example, felt less morally ambiguous—either because of its dark humor or Humbert Humbert’s downfall at the end of the novel. Ballard himself also seems to have second thoughts. On a site called ‘the Ballardian” I read that Ballard (in author mode) added explanatory forwards for later editions. In 1974 French edition for example, Ballard writes '...the ultimate role of Crash is a warning against the brutal, erotic and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape.”
I wonder why Ballard felt the need to add this.
As Dery suggests, Crash might be seen as “a metaphor for our current psychological (and increasingly physiological) symbiosis with our machines.” Is Dery then suggesting that the characters enactments of this new world reflect our repressed inner mental worlds? What then, does this imply for females who appear as objects of technology rather than initiators of action? I had trouble making the connection between sex and technology, and I wonder if this connection has relevance only for males. I kept wanting to laugh every time Ballard described the erotic instrument panel.
Lastly, as Marilla suggested and we are to see the book itself as a kind of 'crash,' and our disrupted mental states as traumatic aftermath, then perhaps it would be helpful to think of our class discussion as a beneficiary support group.
Remaining random questions: Can the car crash be extended to thinking about non-car crash accidents? Do they have the same implications?
I spend so much of my time during the week thinking about issues raised in this class. Two things that I've been thinking about...
- In class on Monday, I was thinking about the relationship between cars and bodies. While I don't want to reinforce gender stereotypes, I do think there's a parallel between the relationships some men have with their cars and the relationships some women have with their bodies. Both the car and the female body are locations that are controlled and primped in order to attract romantic partners or impress or compete with others. The man with the hot car and the woman with the hot body are using different means toward the same ends. This parallel reinforces the sexual power that cars are invested with, and the way that cars become, as Graves-Brown argues, both a skin and an extension of self.
- As an addendum to that postulation, I heard a very applicable anecdote about cars and sexwas on This American Life yesterday. A female-to-male transgender individual, Griffin, was describing the effects of his first testosterone injections for an episode called, sensibly, "Testosterone." His first injection contained an amount of testosterone approximately equal to the testosterone content of two linebackers. One of the effects that Griffin experienced right away was an erotic attraction to cars. He remembered walking down Fifth Avenue and seeing a red Cadillac and suddenly, out of no where, getting aroused. It makes sense to me that cars can be sexy, but how bizarre that an increase in a hormone level can attune someone to that. Why wasn't Griffin attracted to cars before? Was he subconsciously expecting that effect, having probably been socialized to associate cars with sex? Did the testosterone highlight something visual that he had missed before?
Just some things to think about instead of german homework... Over and out.
- hannah schmidt
Sorry this is so late; I had a crazy two weeks trying to sort out a sore tooth. But thankfully with my root canal almost finished I finally have no more pain. So now I am making up for the posts that I got behind on!
Unfortunately I missed last Monday (damn tooth) because from what I gathered from the emails about Crash it seemed as though many people were taken aback by the book and instead focused on the essays. I really wanted to be in class that day to hear the discussion (perhaps one day I will as Cyborg be able to send my brain to focus on a lecture while by body is still in the dental chair….). While reading the essays (Graves-Brown in particular) definitely helped me to take the book a step further, I found the book engaging from the beginning and felt that it was greatly related to what we have been talking about. The eroticism was unexpected at first because it was a course book, but it worked in the story and was necessary, I feel, for what Ballard wanted to get across.
The inability for the characters to feel aroused outside of mechanics of the car and the stimulation of the road represented so well the inability to touch and be connected that can occur with all of the growing multiplicities of mediated relationships. The points between one thing and another are crossed with machines and intermediaries, where things shift their orientation and distinctions break down. Sexuality is something seen as so human (not reproduction, but sexuality and eroticism) yet the characters can’t access it through the relationships of husband and wife because they have become shallow. Instead new horizons open and the mediator of machine and technology becomes necessary for stimulation of one person by another. Hence it is the car that brings together not only the life and death of all the characters, but their innermost feelings of connection and arousal.
I guess my stance on the intense imagery was to go with it because it was the reality. It may seem perverse but it encompassed the same feelings, the same basal instinct, it just couldn’t occur in the “normal” way anymore for the characters. So I chose to embrace the eroticism of the car because to do otherwise was to remain within the false consciousness (I don’t like that phrase but I can’t think of a better one) of the pervious ages.
Anyway, I could probably go on for a while about the different parts of the book that I felt highlighted areas of interest regarding our dissection of humanism and human/nonhuman relations, but since I missed the discussion I’ll leave it at that, and I guess be happy that I didn’t have to be the one person in class defending Ballard (maybe there were others?)…….
Latour’s discussion of time was perhaps the most confusing for me. It seems like his sense of the word ‘time’ often shifts in meaning without prior alert. For example, he says (73) The notion of an irreversible arrow—progress or decadence—stems from an ordering of quasi-objects, whose proliferation the moderns cannot explain.”
Then he says, “The connections among beings alone make time." (77). Is his discussion of reversibility/irreversibility in terms of moderns who impose their sense of time (progress)?
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