CRASH is a book by J.G.Ballard, published in 1973. It follows James Ballard, as he falls into a group of car crash fetishists following an accident of his own. The 1996 film adaptation, directed by David Cronenberg, follows the same story. Both book and film faced controversy due to their shocking content.
Watch Crash on the Internet Archive
IN AMERICAN SOCIETY, for better or for worse, the car represents a mode of independence and freedom within the United states’ populated urban centers and highways. From work, school, leisure activities and necessities, the car is the one common denominator between them all, the one that is required to fulfill those activities. The car becomes somewhere between a third and in-between place. The presence of people in the car is not expected, but the absence is equally as expected, unlike in many in-between spaces, where the lack of presence is often unsettling and discomforting.
Think about how much time is spent in a car, spent waiting and spent living in a car. Some people’s worst days were spent in cars, car crashes, deaths, the loss of a job. This is equally as applicable with people’s best days. Births, weddings, love, sex. Marriages end with the couple driving away, tin cans attached and all. Births end with a couple driving the child home. Funerals are punctuated with hearses and funeral processions, black cars.
Some say that after using a tool for a while, the brain subconsciously incorporated the tool into the body. The hammer becomes part of the hand, the car an extension of the body. In this way, when cars crash into each other, it is not just two steel boxes colliding, but two bodies crashing into each other. A exual experience of a different kind.
LA PETIT MORT, or in English, "The Little Death" refers "the brief loss or weakening of consciousness," and more infamously, is used to describe the orgasm.
Just as Bataille says, both death and reproduction are linked through a cycle of continuity