Scan barcode
A review by saintakim
Crash by J.G. Ballard
4.0
a bourgeois couple after boredom and resentment pushed them in ever more in complex - yet predictable - sex games encounter by accident a new fetish. as they explore it, they fall - especially the man - under the influence of a charismatic and alluring dangerous man, who guides them toward deeper and deeper depravity. then the temptation becomes too much, the couple triumph getting out of the whole affair renewed and reinforced.
outside of the shock and curiosity of the premise, this story is hollywoodian in the conservatism of its structure.
movies, car, highways - there's a deep selfishness that permeates this text. isolated individuals unable to connect with others not themselves, loosing any sense of reality : just taking, taking, obsessing and taking.
this is not a perverted book.
this is about the death of perversion.
how every frontier of experience gets contaminated and colonised by consumer culture and middle class conformity. it's about how the most vapid, privileged and self involved people you know, capitalism's cockroaches, will get to everything. how even the voyeur is dead, because he is now a lore-obsessed cinema nerd. nothing is weird, nothing is sacred, nothing is perverse - not even death - everything becomes geometry and numbing tourism.
(also, this book isn't saying car crashes are sexually gratifying - it says they are sexually appealing)
outside of the shock and curiosity of the premise, this story is hollywoodian in the conservatism of its structure.
movies, car, highways - there's a deep selfishness that permeates this text. isolated individuals unable to connect with others not themselves, loosing any sense of reality : just taking, taking, obsessing and taking.
this is not a perverted book.
this is about the death of perversion.
how every frontier of experience gets contaminated and colonised by consumer culture and middle class conformity. it's about how the most vapid, privileged and self involved people you know, capitalism's cockroaches, will get to everything. how even the voyeur is dead, because he is now a lore-obsessed cinema nerd. nothing is weird, nothing is sacred, nothing is perverse - not even death - everything becomes geometry and numbing tourism.
(also, this book isn't saying car crashes are sexually gratifying - it says they are sexually appealing)