Crash By J.G. Ballard
Crash By J.G. Ballard
Society often associates the visual appearance with a particular identity within the real world, utilizing persistence of vision to mentally link a series of images to form a whole. The fragmented collage of Crash distorts the linearity of a steady narrative, as J.G. Ballard constantly explores alternative tempos, speeding up and slowing down episodes within Vaughan and Ballard’s lives to create a new reality within the science fiction genre. Rather than exploring outer space or the distant future, Ballard chooses to explore the familiar environment of near-distant futuristic London in which the subconscious desires of the characters are externalized through a technological fusion that creates an entirely new plane of reality. Ballard himself believes that we live in a fictional world, and it is his job as a science fiction writer to create a reality within a text. Crash transforms the familiar urban landscape into a world in which the only way to escape the fictional confines of society is through desires and experimentation. The various sexual incidents that occur become increasingly real for Vaughan and Ballard, with the women becoming less vital in the men’s equation for pleasure, and instead focusing on the sensuality of the automobile. For these characters, the real world is no longer enough, and the unexplored avenues of the inner psyche serve as a plane of subconscious exploration that is paralleled in Ballard’s fragmented and psychological writing style.
As a science fiction new wave writer, Ballard presents a world that is extraordinarily realistic as well as extraordinarily stylized. He stresses the production quality and processed environment that seeps into this culture through technology and media. Unlike some science fiction writers, Ballard does not use an abundance of neologisms to compose Crash, but rather creates unfamiliar images using familiar words and objects. Literally using preexisting terminology:
Her body formed an awkward...
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- Date Submitted: 10/06/2008 04:05 PM
- Category: English
- Words: 3221
- Pages: 13
- Views: 52
- Rank: 4753