A typical trait of Ballard’s work is the observation of everyday life, especially its trivial aspects, through a voyeuristic lens, which magnifies and, at the same time, surrealistically distorts reality. Hence, the trivial ends up becoming the morbid center, a schocking and pornographic one, around which Ballard’s whole narrative revolves. His whole narrative production, as he stated, is in fact “much more concerned with the significance of the gleam on an automobile instrument panel than on the deity's posterior”. A trivial car crash, as it happens in Crash – made into the eponymous movie by Cronenberg in 1996 – becomes the key to exploring the infinite subliminal relations between technology, sensuality and the unsuspected religious vocation of the victim’s bodies. The shattered corpses on the seats of scrunched-up cars, a real slaughterhouse museum, become the models for a sexual union, an extreme and unimaginable one. Furthemore, the position of the corpses, whose arms are spread in the guise of a crucifixion, reminds of the Man of Pain’s. This phenomenon, as expectable as it is traumatic, mirrors the infinite possibilities of mankind’s evolution in the interaction with the technology world – a second nature which fascinates and terrifies due to its fatal and irreversible character.

Città spazzatura e natura selvaggia in J.G. Ballard: un’inquietante favola postmoderna

CUOZZO, Gianluca
2013-01-01

Abstract

A typical trait of Ballard’s work is the observation of everyday life, especially its trivial aspects, through a voyeuristic lens, which magnifies and, at the same time, surrealistically distorts reality. Hence, the trivial ends up becoming the morbid center, a schocking and pornographic one, around which Ballard’s whole narrative revolves. His whole narrative production, as he stated, is in fact “much more concerned with the significance of the gleam on an automobile instrument panel than on the deity's posterior”. A trivial car crash, as it happens in Crash – made into the eponymous movie by Cronenberg in 1996 – becomes the key to exploring the infinite subliminal relations between technology, sensuality and the unsuspected religious vocation of the victim’s bodies. The shattered corpses on the seats of scrunched-up cars, a real slaughterhouse museum, become the models for a sexual union, an extreme and unimaginable one. Furthemore, the position of the corpses, whose arms are spread in the guise of a crucifixion, reminds of the Man of Pain’s. This phenomenon, as expectable as it is traumatic, mirrors the infinite possibilities of mankind’s evolution in the interaction with the technology world – a second nature which fascinates and terrifies due to its fatal and irreversible character.
2013
1
97
117
http://www.morettievitali.it/?post_type=libri&p=2311
natura; tecnologia; spazzatura; Utopia; Tempo; apocalisse
Gianluca Cuozzo
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/128683
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact