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CHEMLAB

Ma-r,k D~ry
Interviews
ORliSHS
J.G. Ballard

fiction by
Paul J. McAuley

TROM
FILMS
Still ToxicAfter
All TheseYears
 Mark Dery: I wanted to begin
-
with an intriguingremark David
Cronenberg made to me in my recent inter-
view with him: he said that during your recent public
dialogue with him at the Institute of Contemporary Art in
London, the question of the moralistic tone you took in your intro-
duction to the French edition of Crashcame up. ,'ve always wondered
about that, because it seems out-of tune with the book itself, which is flatlyrepor-
torial, appropriate to the flattened affect of the characters. Cronen berg said that you con-
fessed to him that you appended that introduction after Crashwas written, and that you had some
doubts about how consonant it was with the book
J.G. Ballard: The question you've asked is one which was asked by a member of the audience. David made it ~-_
quite clear that he didn't see the film as a cautionary tale, and I pointed out that at the time that I wrote Crash,roughly
25 years ago, I certainly didn't see it as a cautionary tale. I was exploring certain trajectories that' saw moving across the men-
tal sky of the planet, followingthem to what seemed to be their likelymeeting point. Moral considerations were neither here nor
there; I saw myself in the position of a computer attached to a radar set, tracking an incoming missile. In fact, most of the introduc-
tion consists of an endorsement of the nonmoralistic view of Crash,in that I make the point that an author can no longer preside
like a magistrate over his characters and place their behavior within some sort of moral frame, which is the traditional stance of the
author in fiction. Most criticism of the novel sees it as an instrument of moral criticism of life. I mean, that's the raison d'etre that
justifiesthe teaching of Englishliterature at universities.
MD: Well, American tabloid newscasts still follow that script. They always end with what amounts to a scriptural flourish, and
.there's a Manichean sense that good has triumphed over evilon the slaughter bench of the six o'clock news.
GB: Absolutely; that's very well put. I think that's true over here, to a lar~e extent, but I think it's more true in the States, because
. k Americans are a very moralistic people for historical reasons we don t need to go into. Most of my Introduction disputes this
---- ---
view that the
novelist is a moral arbiter, and it's only in
the last paragraph that I actually say that I
regard Crashas a cautionary tale. Which
I do, inthe sense that Crash,whatever
else it is, is a warning, and insofar as it
issues a warning, it's a cautionary tale. I
mean, a road sign saying,"Dangerous
bends ahead; slow down," is not makinga
moral statement, it's being cautionary. In
that sense"Cd like to think that David's
film is a cautionary tale.
MD: In what regard?
JGB: Well, I don't want to invoke
Swift's"A Modest Proposal," because it's
so easy to do, but it is possible to play
devil's advocate by deadpanning an atti-
tude which seems to be 180 degrees at
variance with what one's supposed to be
doing.
MD: This often seems to be lost on
critics, especiallyof the moralistic stripe,
who, if they have a common
trait, seem to exhibit
an almost painfulearnestness that
vaporizes irony on contact.
JGB: Absolutely.
MD: And as a result there's a tenden-
cy,there, to take Crashliterally.
JGB: You see, Ithink this ambiguityis
very important. People have constantly
asked me over the last year, (and they
were sayingit to me nearly 2S years
ago when Crashwas published), "What
are you saying? Do you believe that we
should all be going out and crashing our
cars? You can't be serious!" But that
ambiguityis part and parcel of the
whole thing. In Crash,I'm taking certain
tendencies which I see inscribed in the
world we live in and I'm followingthem
to their point of contact. Putting it
crudely, I'm saying,"So you think vio-
lence is sexy? Well, this is where it
leads."
But ifyou say to me, "Do you think
we should all go out and crash our
cars?," I would say, "Of course not!"
This is a very important distinction.
I've never said that car crashes are sex-
uallyexciting; I've been in a car
crash, and I can tell you it did not..-
ing for my libido! What I have said is that
the ideo of car crashes is sexually exciting,
which is very different and in a way much
more disturbing: Why is it that our imagi-
nations seem so fixated on this particular
kind of accident?
MD: Crosh'snarrator,JamesBallard,
says at one point that it took a car crash
to snap him out of his terminal emotion-
lessness: "For the first time I was in physi-
cal confrontation with my own body," he
says. In Crash,the car crash functions as
a bracing jolt that reconnects us with our
bodies-bodies that are part of a material
reality that seems to be receding as we
spend more and more time on the other
side of the screen, be it the computer
terminal, the television, or the video
game.
JGB: Of course, it's the ideo of the car
crash which jerks us out of our apathy;
this is the important thing. One mustn't
take brief episodes from a novel and try
to generalize a complete moral universe
from them, because these are just cogs in
a machine whose purpose is unknown to
the cog. I mean, the characters' roles
within Crashhaveto be seen as fullyinte-
grated into an imaginary drama, and it's
the drama as a whole that one should
look at.
MD:RobertTowers, in hisNew York
Reviewof Books review of The Kindnessof
Women takes you to task for the "lack of
inwardness and psychologicaldepth" he
sees in your writing. But I think he and
others like him miss the point that your
the postmodern sel r
fiction constitutes a sychoanalysis of
. To my mind,
you're one of the first novelists to offer
a science-fiction premonition of the post-
modern ego-a decentered self, to use
the cultural critic Frederick Jameson's
term, disoriented by the generic place-
lessness of mallsand retail chains and the
vertiginous whirl of free-floating facts and
images peeled loose from their referents.
Does this resonate with your thinking?
JGB: Absolutely. For the last 30 years,
ever since I started writing the pieces
that made up The AtrocityExhibition,I've
been sayingthat we live in a world of
complete fiction; so much of what used
to be an internalized psychologicalspace
within an individual'shead-his hopes,
dreams, and all the rest of it-has been
transferred from inside our individual
skulls into the corporate sensorium rep-
resented by the media landscape. You
see people, these days, who give the
impression that their minds are a com-
plete vacuum; no dreams or hopes of any
importance-even to themselves-
emanate through the sutures of their
skulls, as it were. But that doesn't mat-
ter, in a sense, because the environment
itself is doing the dreaming for them.
The environment is the greater sensori-
um generating these
individualhopes and ambitions, signs of
the cerebral activity that has been trans-
ferred from inside the individual'sskull
into the larger mental space of the plane-
tary communications landscape.
Now that's a very dramatic shift,
because it means that Freud's distinction
between the latent and manifest content
of a dream now has to be applied to the
outside world. You can't just say that
these huge figments and fantasies that
float across the planet and constitute our
real sky can be taken at face value; they
can't. .
Exactly 30 years ago, when I wrote my
piece, 'Why I Want to Fuck Ronald
Reagan,"when Reagan was governor of
California, I was trying to (I won't say
deconstruct, because that's a horrible
word) analyze what Reagan really repre-
sented. Part of the problem that some
critics have with the apparent lack of
depth in my characters arises from the
fact that my characters, right from the
earliest days when I started writing fic-
tion, were already these disenfranchised
human beings livingin worlds where the
fictional elements constituted a kind of
externalized mental activity. They didn't
need great psychologicaldepth because it
was all out there, above their heads.
MD: You and Cronenberg seem to
share an interest in psychology in general
and Freud in specific;have you two dis-
cussed psychology in relation to the
characters in Crash?
JGB: Not really. When Ifirst met
David, I'd seen all his films,but I think in
many ways we were so closely tuned to
each other that we really didn't need to
talk about our respective work. But
there are a surprising number of reso-
nances between Cronen berg's work and
my own. I've always thought, from the
beginning,that he was the perfect choice
to film Crash. What's so interesting is
that Crashis in many ways unlike any of
his other films. So many of the
Cronenbergian tropes, the biomorphic
horrors and the pulsating washing
machines and so on, have all been aban-
doned because they're not necessary any-
more. The biomorphic horrors are
implicit within the ideas being portrayed
in the most realistic way. Likewise,you
know, if you've got something as dramat-
ic and contortionist as the car crash, you
don't need to play around with the every-
day structures of material things.
MD: Watching the film, I was struck by
the extent to which its pathological sur-
realism has come true. The whole idea
of the sexuali~ of scars is enacted now in
the so-called' modern primitive" subcul-
ture, where those on the far fringes of
youth culture have taken up scarification
as a fashion trend and a tribal totem.
Crashseems lessand lesslike"an
 extreme metaphor
for an extreme situation." as you call it in
your introduction. than a laboratory study of
an increasinglypathological culture.
JGB: Well, at the ICA conversation in
London, I said to the audience that Crash
illustrates what I call the normalizingofthe
psychopathic-the way in which formerly
aberrant or psychopathic behavior is
annexed into the area of the acceptable.
This has been proceeding for probably a
century, if not longer, but certainly it has
gathered pace tremendously in the last 30
or 40 years, and it's been aided by the pro-
liferation of new communications technolo-
gies: television, home videos, video games,
and all the rest of that paraphernalia, which
allows the anatomizingof desire. The nor-
malizingof the psychopathic is most
advanced. o(course, in the area of sexuality.
Sexual behavibr that my parents would have
deemed a one-way ticket to a criminal
insane asylum is now accepted in the priva-
cy of the bedroom. tolerable if both parties
are in agreement. We're much Jess
shocked than we used to be by deviant
behavior. I mean, the tolerance of male
homosexuality and lesbianismand the huge
range of what, previously, would have been
regarded as out-and-out forms of psy-
chopathy are now accepted. And this
extends beyond sexuality, into other
realms as well. To take a trivial example.
among my parents' generation, shoplifting
was one of the most reprehensible things
the ordinary person could do, and if you
were arrested, it would lead to social
ostracism. Nowadays, ifyour neighbor
was arrested for shoplifting,one would be
sympathetic: "Poor woman, her husband's
been havingall these affairs,she's been very
unhappy..." We're extremely tolerant of
behavior that would have outraged our
parents' generation.
MD: Again,in the introduction to Crash,
you write that "the demise of feeling and
emotion has paved the way for all our
most real and tender pleasures...in the
excitements of pain and mutilation." In
Crash,sex, although unencumbered by the
trappings of S&M,is characterized by a rit-
ualized brutality that is undeniably sado-
masochistic. What do you make of the
strip-mailingof S&M,in the basement
scene inPulpFiction,in Madonna's Sex, in
Gianni Versace's bondage collection, in
BatmanForever,and so on? S&Mseems to
be emerging as the talismanic sexuality of
millennialculture.
JGB: It's puzzling,because if you don't
share a particular sexual proclivity, it's
rather difficultto get worked up about it.
But I agree with you; it's everywhere-in
magazines.advertising, and the like. And
one wonders what the subtext really is;
whether it's purely a sort of style. intro-
ducing a bawdy fascism-the glamour of
the jackboot, the thrill of the psychopath-
ic and the forbidden-or whether it's a
kind of personal theater in which one
sees a preview of pathological virtual real-
ity fantasies. I don t know. It strikingly
dramatizes all sorts of moral ambiguities;
it's a willfulmimicry of activities that in
any other space would be regarded as
near criminal.
MD: The Surrealists were great fans of
de Sade. and enshrined him as an hon-
orary Surrealist. Didn't you. at one time,
immerse
yourself in him?
JGB: Immerse myself in de Sade?
What a thought! (laughs)
MD: (laughing)I don't mean
bodily, I mean mentally.
JGB: Well. he was, in his
way, a genius; I once
described The /20 Days
of Sodomas a "black
cathedral of a
book." De Sade
is an enormously
important influence
on us today, and has
been for a long while. He
constructs a highlyconvincing
anti-society which defies bourgeois
society and liberalism by constructing a
community based on torturers and their willing
victims. Now, that's a prospect that the liberal
conscience just cannot cope with. I'd like to think
that Crashisa moviede Sadewouldhaveadored.
MD: You seem to enjoy nettling ideologues and moral cru-
saders at both extremes of the political spectrum, and yet, in
your reviewof MauriceLever'sMarquisdeSade[includedin
Ballard'sA User's Guide to The Millennium],you raise the moral flag
y,ourself,noting that "the jury will always be out" on de Sade, whose
'novels have been the pillow-books of too many serial killers for comfort."
JGB: Well, that's a worry. isn't it? One can see, on one hand, that de Sade is
an enormously important figure in European and American thought. On the other
hand, he has been the pillow reading of too many psychopaths-the Moors
Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hyndley,who killed children, for example.
MD: Likede Sade, they're practically pop stars now.
JGB: Yes, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. either. One of the Surrealists-
Breton, I think-said that the ultimate Surrealist act would be to take a revolver and
fire at random into a crowd. Now, one can salute the brilliance of that insight, but at
the same time if somebody actuallyfound a revolver and put that insight into prac-
tice. one would have to deplore it. This same ambivalence,this ambiguity,is at the
heart of something like Crash,and this is what people find difficultto cope with-that
there's no clear moral compass bearing. I'llbe very interested to see how the film is
received in the States.
MD: Throu~hout the novel. there is an almost "paranoiac-critical" confusion, to use
Salvador Dalis term, of bodies and the built environment. of flesh and commodity
fetishes. There's an obsessive repetition of geometry. as in, "Myright arm held her
shoulders, feeling the impress of the contoured leather, the meeting points of hemi-
spherical and rectilinear geometries." Disappointingly,we catch only fleeting glimrses
of this Euclideaneroticism in the movie. I kept looking for signature images like 'the
conjunction of an air hostess's fawn gabardine skirt...and the distant fuselages of the
aircraft," but they weren't there.
JGB: One or two people have pointed that out. But to be fair to Cronen berg, no
film can possibly contain the whole of a novel in a couple of hours. The important
thing is to concentrate on the nervous system of the novel. I think David has done
that; he's goneto the heart of the obsessionalworld that Crashdescribes.
I've seen the film three or four times, now, and I constantly see things in it that I
hadn't seen before. The performances are wonderful, and the film itself is very art-
fullyconstructed. It's ostensibly quite naturalistic. but in fact it inhabits a strange
penumbral space. There's something deeply premonitory about it. deeply prophetic.
Just as some films cast a light on the past. this one seems to cast a light into the
future.
MD: I'd like to end with a few obvious questions. One of Cronenberg's earliest
feature filmswas a movie about cars, FastCompany,and the first movie he ever made
was an a-millimeter documentary about auto racing in which a CBC producer was
killedwhen his Triumph TR3 rolled over. Have you and he talked about cars?
JGB: We talked about his Ferrari, and the differences between American indy car
racing and European Grand Prix racing, over dinner in Cannes. He's a great car buff,
which I'm not. People think I'm a car fanatic, but in fact I'm not in the least interest-
ed in cars, really. although I am interested in the psychologyof automobile design,
car stylingas a barometer of the public imagination. Fluctuations in American auto-
mobile design over the decades seem to reflect the state of the American psyche: the
enormous Baroque and confidence of the Eisenhower years, and then, after
Kennedy's death, the puritanical slab, flat-sided and undecorated-the American car
was in mourning. No, not in mourning-it was in denial, to use the latest jargon.
But now it's started to get more exuberant, hasn't it?
MD: There seems to be a rroliferation of post-Moderne compact cars-downsized
versions of Raymond Loewys aerodynamic roadsters of the '30s. How do you psy-
choanalyze this neo-streamlining vogue? 78 ~
JGB: Ithink it reflects an awareness of the future. Thirties design was
 -----
strongly influ-

D enced by the sense

that one would be liv-
ing in the future, and I
think people are get-
ting more aware of
the future as the
countdown to the year
2000 comes. Maybe
the human race is t'l-
ing to escape. It can t
go into outer space, Granada.
because that's basically MD: Dear
inaccessible, and it's
Lord.
already tried to escape
into inner space JGB: Iknow. But
through drugs and mys- again, ('m not interest-
ticism and to some ed in cars.
extent, the Internet. MD: You had a
Maybe it's going to try rollover right after com-
to escape into another pletingCrash; didthe
realm altogether. God novel in a sense impel

c knows what it will be.

MD: Your characters
are always trying to tear
loose from the time-
space continuum. I
wonder if,in a weird
that? Was that the final
plot twist, an instance
of the book leaking into
reality?
JGB: Well, had I died
in the crash, two
weeks after completing
way, the car crash is an

R attempt to tear through the manuscript, people

the fabric of reality-to would have said that
"break on through," as this was a willed death,
the '60s catchphrase has expressing the essence
it. of the book. (think it
JGB: I think so, was pure coincidence,
absolutely. As I've often actually, because I
said, we live in a world of found writing the
I book a very fearful
I manufactured goods that
I
I have no individualidenti- experience. I had
I ty, because every one is three very young chil-
I
I like every other one, until dren crossing the
I road a hundred times
something forlorn or trag-
ic happens. One is con- a day, and never at
1! stantly struck by the fact any point during writ-
that some old refrigerator ing that book did I
Ii glimpsed in a back alley has ever envisage putting
I:
I much more identity than that psychosis into
I the identical model sitting practice. I was too
I
I in our kitchen. And noth- frightened by what I
I
I ing is more poignant than a was uncovering to
I field fullof wrecked cars, want to test out the
I
I because they've taken on a theories the book
I seemed to embody.
unique identity that they
never had in life. So I certainly don't
MD: One could imagine think I had a
blowout because I
II _ ,- J the crash as the car's des-
wanted to. I think
n.:rcrrr-.:1Hun perate attempt to estab-
lish-if only for a fleeting
it was a case of
nature imitating art.
moment-a sort of self-
hood, even at the expense
An extreme case. ..
( 1131-&511-511011I1111II
of its existence.
JGB: Exactly. Very
strange, that; paradoxical.
Also, there is a deep melan-
NEXT ISSUE:
~ark rvlews
.lnt~
Uavid
Derv

Cronen berg!

H 7.0& )
choly about fields fullof old
machinery or wrecked cars
because they seem to chal-
lenge the assumptions of a
s h e I s civilizationbased on an all-
potent technology. These
n I c e a n d machine graveyards warn us
thatnothingendures.
w I I I t a k e MD: One last question:
what sort of car are you dri-
y a u r ving now?
JGB: Oh, this willshock you!
I drive a Ford
man e y
~-------------------------------
I:
 -----------------

strongly influ-

D enced by the sense

that one would be liv-
ing in the future, and I
think people are get-
ting more aware of
the future as the
countdown to the year
2000 comes. Maybe
the human race is t'('-
ing to escape. It can t
go into outer space, Granada.
Ii because that's basically MD: Dear
inaccessible, and it's
Lord.
already tried to escape
into inner space JGB: I know. But
through drugs and mys- again, ('m not interest-
ticism and to some ed in cars.
extent, the Internet. MD: You had a
Maybe it's going to try rollover right after com-
I to escape into another pletingCrash; didthe
realm altogether. God novel in a sense impel

c knows what it will be.

MD: Your characters
are always trying to tear
loose from the time-
space continuum. I
wonder if,in a weird
that? Was that the final
plot twist, an instance
of the book leaking into
reality?
JGB: Well, had I died
in the crash, two
weeks after completing
way, the car crash is an

R attempt to tear through the manuscript, people

would have said that
the fabric of reality-to this was a willed death,
I "break on through," as
I the '60s catchphrase has expressing the essence
I
I it. of the book. (think it
I
I JGB: I think so, was pure coincidence,
I absolutely. As I've often actually, because I

..
I
I said, we live in a world of found writing the
I book a very fearful
I manufactured goods that
I have no individualidenti- experience. I had
ty, because every one is three very young chil-
like every other one, until dren crossing the
road a hundred times
something forlorn or trag-
ic happens. One is con- a day, and never at

.. stantly struck by the fact

that some old refrigerator
glimpsed in a back alley has
much more identity than
the identical model sitting
any point during writ-
ing that book did I
ever envisage putting
that psychosis into
practice. I was too
frightened by what I
in our kitchen. And noth-
ing is more poignant than a was uncovering to
field fullof wrecked cars, want to test out the
theories the book

I
R
I
because they've taken on a
unique identity that they
never had in life.
seemed to embody.
So I certainly don't
think I had a
MD: One could imagine
_
I
I
the crash as the car's des- blowout because I
II I, wanted to. I think
in-'-CraT~e HUn perate attempt to estab-
lish-if only for a fleeting
it was a case of
nature imitating art.
moment-a sort of self-
An extreme case. ..
(
hood, even at the expense
of its existence.
NEXT ISSUE:
JGB: Exactly. Very ~ark Derv
113.1151'510111II11II strange, that; paradoxical. .lnt~!;Vlews
UaVlu
Also, there is a deep melan- Cronenberg!

H 7 !UJIi )
choly about fields fullof old
machinery or wrecked cars
because they seem to chal-
lenge the assumptions of a
she s civilizationbased on an all-
potent technology. These
n c e a n d machine graveyards warn us
that nothing endures.
w t a k e MD: One last question:
,I what sort of car are you dri-
.I
I:
'I
you r :
I
I
ving now?
JGB: Oh, this willshock you!
:
~
m 0 n ey :
~
I drive a Ford