Super-late Blog Post (Sorry Everyone!)

First off, I completely forgot I was supposed to write one of these last week. I commented instead though. Sorry!
"I felt that this act was a ritual devoid of ordinary sexuality, a stylized encounter between two bodies which recapitulated their sense of motion and collision" (161).
I thought this one single line from Crash held a lot of meaning within it. Firstly, it includes the word "stylized," which, as Dr. Stuber pointed out in class the other day, is repeated multiple times in the novel. Personally, I think the word "stylized" is repeated so many times because of its connotation of forcing something to conform to a certain style. This connotation makes sense considering Ballard is using the phrase to refer to the way Vaughan makes women conform their bodies to resemble those of car crash victims. The second thing I wanted to point out of interest in this line is the last part where James describes the sexual encounter of his wife and Vaughan as having a "sense of motion and collision." The words motion and collision both seem to relate sex to a car accident, strengthening the connection between the two concepts in James's mind.

Unreliable Narrator

Memory is a tricky thing: it's hard to know what really happened, what you made up, and what has been added due to other people's influence. Kathy in Never Let Me Go often uses the language of uncertainty and even admits to times when her recollections differ from Tommy's or Ruth's memories. There are times where she can't remember the reason for or location of a memory; she can't even keep them in chronological order always.

Kathy is also looking back on her life as she finishes her work as a "carer." I imagine she wants her life to look prettier in retrospect than it actually was, such as when she insists that no one cared that The Cottages were falling apart, or when she pulls out her oft-repeated phrase, "but you have to remember." She knows she's telling a life narrative, but how accurate can memory be?

Does her memory make Kathy an unreliable narrator?

working at the car wash

"The gantry retreated to its start position.  The machine switched itself out of circuit.  The rollers hung limply in front of the clear glass of the windshield.  The last of the detergent-stained water ran through the darkness to the drainage vents.  Sucking at the air through his scarred lips, Vaughan lay back exhausted, staring at Catherine with confused eyes...I wanted to reach out and care for them, helping them into their next sexual act...celebrating in this sexual act the marriage of their bodies with this benign technology." (162)

The entire car wash scene, which occurs for many pages, is one of the most striking scenes to me in Crash.  It is in this scene where the reader truly understands that the characters have unconventional emotional attachments to sex.  Granted, becoming aroused by car crashes is far from conventional, my focus here is more on James and Catherine and their sex and emotional lives.  From the start, we (and they) know that each of them has had affairs, making their relationship abnormal to begin with.  This scene in the car wash is significantly deviant from societal norms - James watches his wife have violent sex with another man.  Why?  James seems to be fascinated by their sex acts because the positions Vaughan puts Catherine in relate to the crash victims, but James is also fascinated with Vaughan's body that has been marked by many car crashes.
It appears though, that the most important relationship in during this car wash is not Catherine and Vaughan, nor James watching Catherine and Vaughan, but the sex act in conjunction with the large mechanized car wash as well as the reenactment of the crash victims positions.  This connection of sex and technology can be seen in the sexual language mixed in with descriptions of the heavy carwash machinery.  Phrases such as "retreated to its start position," "out of circuit," "hung limply," "detergent-stained water ran through the darkness," connect machinery with Catherine and Vaughan having sex.  James is so mesmerized by their connection to technology that he continues inserting coins to make the car wash keep going.
Sex is still an emotional event, but it is no longer a shared emotional event between two people.  While two people are still needed, there is no emotional connection between them.  The connection occurs between each person and a car, which represents technology.  It is through these fascinations that each character becomes more embedded in themselves, constantly seeking ways to improve their sexual experiences.

The Morality of Voyeurism

Well. I started reading this novel without any sort of context, as I do with most of the novels we've read for class. So, (and I feel like most of you can probably sympathize) I really wasn't ready for the *ahem* intense nature of Crash.

Now, that being said, I'll jump right into this bloggity blog post.

The--to put it gently--intimate nature of Crash combined with both James and Vaughan's fetishization of the car crash highlights the theme (is that the right word choice?) of voyeurism that is present throughout the novel (or at least what we've read so far). Vaughan is a voyeur in his desire to actively seek out/witness car accidents, not to mention the heaps of camera equipment he hoards around in his trunk (Rear Window, anyone?). But we, as the audience, are really no different than Vaughan in terms of our voyeurism: as Ballard describes sexually explicit acts, we look on and witness these acts unfold.

When I first read about the sexual pleasure these men achieve from car crashes and their horrifying consequences, I was instinctively (pardon my French here) freaked the fuck out. The idea of becoming aroused at the pain and suffering of others is, quite frankly, repulsive. However, despite my initial horror at this thought, I realized that these men aren't actually doing anything wrong. At least legally. (Well, with the exception of Vaughan's attempt to murder Elizabeth Taylor...let's disregard that for the moment.) Their actions, though I may find them incredibly creepy, do not affect those around them. So my question is this: does the fact that I (and possibly some of you, as well) find their type of voyeurism appalling necessarily mean that what they are doing is wrong? Or is voyeurism ok, despite the content of what is being watched for sexual gratification? And what does that say about our own voyeurism? For it's undeniable that we are, in fact, voyeurs, especially in relation to this novel.

Ending Isolation

            I fully expected to dislike this book going in. A book about people being aroused by and obsessing over deadly car crashes set my dispositions strongly against this novel. So I picked up the book and waited for the rage... it never arrived. It took me a while to figure out why I was enjoying reading Crash so much.

            I think, at it's heart, Crash is about human connection, particularly human connection in a world where isolation and distance is the norm. The first passage that comes close to this expression happens right after the James' crash with Helen.

            "During my first hours in Ashford Hospital all I could see in my mind was the image of us locked together face to face in these two cars, the body of her dying husband lying between us on the bonnet of my car. We looked at each other through the fractured windshields, neither able to move... as if unsure what had brought us together." (Ballard 20)

It is from this painful experience that any significant human interaction arises. James' affair with Helen and the revival of James' relationship with his wife Catharine both originate from this event. In the imagery of the crashes and in the vivid perversity of sexual acts and desire one feature that is pervasive is the act of joining. We can debate about weather or not this is healthy interaction latter. I think the important aspect of this is that human connection is preferable, in whatever form it comes in, to a sterile world where each individual is isolated from others.

            "Now, what isolation?" You may ask. Excellent question. The answer, I think, is somewhat more subtle and subdued than the vivid and erotic collisions of cars and flesh and is therefore less noticeable. Distance is one aspect of this isolation. There are many scenes (pick your favorite) where James observes people or cars or buildings from an impersonal distance. Vaughan uses his telephoto lenses to photograph Elizabeth Taylor. Each person is in their own capsule and is insulated from others. The people in the other cars become scenery that you navigate but have no real relationship with. The crash breaks through this isolation. The crash creates a brief but intense moment where you and the life of another person are directly and irrevocably joined. Those who live are changed and carry the scars both physical and mental with them all their lives. There is an intense, intimate, and sadistic power in a crash.

            But why the perversity? Could the same point not have been made with a heartwarming story of James and Catharine befriending Helen and coming to forgive and love one another? The answer, I think, has something to do with how a  crash is a twisting of social order. In the cold impersonal routine of modern life each person passes hundreds if not thousands of people without ever forming a connection. This is the structure of daily life. A crash breaks this order, distorts the structure that the society relies upon. This disruption is perverse, a violation of the social norm. To convey this contrast, the human interaction that results from the crashes, and the crashes themselves, are put in terms that both express the perversity and the intimacy so that we can understand just how wrong this situation is. If anything, isolation should be perverse and intimacy revered.

            I hope this makes some sense to everyone. I'm still trying to understand my own position.

Cars Crashes and Change

Well, this has been an interesting read so far... I'm not even sure with what aspect of this story I should begin conversation...
I guess a quote that really stuck out to me was "the deformed body of the crippled young woman, like the deformed bodies of the crashed automobiles, revealed the possibilites of an entirely new sexuality."
The idea of rebirth of self through a car crash is a constant theme throughout the novel, and I think this quote demonstrates the driving force that has enveloped most of the characters. I don't think the characters are turned on by the cars themselves, but rather it is the idea of a new self, a new sexuality, derived from having survived a close encounter with death that ignites a new flame in the characters. The involvement in a car crash acts as the ultimate pinnacle of adrenaline rush and physical awareness, and as a result the only way for the characters to become aroused is to keep experiencing the crash. In this way they are not the same people they were before the crash, and their sexualities have become dependent on the physical cars. The physical s(cars) of those who have been "changed" such as James, Helen, Vaughn, and the rest can be contrasted with the physical perfection of Catherine who has undergone no such change. The scars symbolize the extent of their sexual perversion (in terms of cars, obviously Catherine is a bit perverse otherwise) with Vaughn possessing the quintessential scar on his penis, symbolizing his complete transformation into the "nightmare angel of the highways."  I'd like to know what the rest of you think about the idea of rebirth physically, mentally, and sexually through the car crashes? I've also been thinking about the fact that Vaughn has experienced many crashes, but has he undergone many changes as well, or only continued down the path of this new identity? Catherine has not been involved in a crash...yet at least, but she is constantly described as having undergone her own changes. Why are they unique?

SHEEP

There are no worthy excuses for why this post is late.

Whenever Dr. Stuber divided us into groups in order to discuss some specific reoccurring images, I found the book's fascination with sheep to be especially compelling and was disappointed that we didn't have the time to share our close reading and observations with the class. Some of the thoughts that I'm about to share were formulated much through the ideas of my other group members so it's only fair to offer them a little credit.

I think it's very helpful to preface with the fact that Molloy actively calls himself a "creature" because it easily invites us to compare him with animals that the text presents. On page 36-37, Molloy strikingly states, "I don't smell like a sheep, I wish I smelt like a sheep". In expressing his desire to smell like a sheep, it is difficult to not see Molloy as very self-deprecating and lacking in confidence, potentially considering his own smell so repugnant that it falls below that of a sheep. If examined in other light, however, it is instructive to unpack stereotypical characterizations of sheep to complete our comparison. Traditionally, sheep mostly have a negative connotation, coming off as unimpassioned, mindless followers of their shepherd. Because Molloy desires to be more like a sheep (even to the extent that he might be emulating them on pg. 35 - "I ate a little too, a little grass"), we must consider what about their existence or lifestyle may be appealing to him. A certain comfortable, guaranteed purpose and acceptance is implicated in the fact that sheep primarily exist in groups and are very goal-oriented. This could be reiterating his estrangement from society or his struggle to understand its meaning.

Because Molloy also provides narration detailing the sheep's "bad beginning" and trip to the slaughterhouse, we wonder whether this is indicative of his frequently mentioned desire for or fixation with death. Or perhaps he's just offering a commentary on death's inevitability.