CRASH
David Cronenberg
1964

A serious change takes place in horror films in which the standard motif of the “eruption of the repressed” disappears and the body itself becomes the site of horror. This may be related to the development of AIDS and the body as a source of its own demise.

David Cronenberg, was born in Totronto, Canada into a middle class secular Jewish family. His films often reflect this new approach in horror/science fiction in which his films see the body and its modification by science as resulting in or reflecting a societal breakdown as well. His early films deal with ”body horror” in films like Shivers and Rabid. In these early films the scientific modification of the body leads to its breakdown as well as a breakdown in social order.

Cronenberg’s career shows a shifting pattern with what the body represents more personal problems, but the body remains the focus. By his later period the films become more psychological although films like M Butterfly still deal with body problems.

The “disease” that affects the body becomes the focus of the films and is a kind of force for change. Disaster like disease is something which causes some change in the person. This becomes clear in Crash were the disaster (the crash) is seen as a “fertilizing “rather than “destructive” .

The film deals with the relationship between sex, disfigurement, danger, excitement and death. Excitement is associated with sex and also danger whether it is the danger of public sex, car crashes, as a state of excitement and arousal. Things associated with this “high” become fetishized and in film terms “specularized”

The problem in filming fetishes is that the camera almost needs to llinger longingly over the fetish.However if the audience members are not interested in the fetish, problems of maintaining interest can easily develop. The camera may have a male gaze and that may be more tolerable than it having a fetishist gaze. In a sense, the intercuts between the fetishistic aspects with actual sex acts may be an attempt to get the audience to link the two. The audience is given the fetish to look at and almost immediately the shot is followed by sexual behavior.

Cars and the materials from which they are made likewise become touched by the excitement. The people who have fetishized become obsessed with their fetish reconstructing crashes which kill famous people and watching accidents with test dummies. Cars and people become linked and hospital beds match the rows of cars in the police bound, also victims of the accident. When James discuss the dent in one of the cars he rubs his hand over the dent with a crack in the metal leaving little doubt as to what it represents to him.

The filming of the crashes, clearly the specularized pieces of the film are often shot in part from the driver’s P.O.V. but often the camera is placed outside the side of the car so that the hood of the car is visible as it rams into the other car. The sexual implications of this are quite clear.

The scene in the car wash tries to eroticize the entire event by having the car close down - roof comes up, windows shut. The sounds of the machinery are linked to the people having sex in the car and the mechanical and the human merge the way the medical braces link juman and mechanical in the film.

The film has reflexive elements as well. James is a film producer and Vaughn is interested in filming crashes and injuries. How does the fascination with photographing wrescks and injuries link to Cronenberg's filming Crash?

While the film definitely indicates the danger and desruction of the crashes, the eroticism which grows out if them links them also to fertility.