David Cronenberg's Crash (1996)

When first discussing places of risk for human relations, David Vivian brought up the movie Crash as one work that explored car accident fetish by its characters.  Based on the novel by J.G. Ballard, the story follows James Ballard, and his growing fascination with sex and car crashes after getting injured in his own crash and meeting the driver of the other vehicle at the same hospital.  It was a very controversial film when it was released, given a NC-17 rating in the USA for its explicit sexual content.  Though it is accused of being pornographic, it approaches its subject matter with a fairly clinical lens.

One of the key moments of the film, the re-enactment of James Dean's crash:

The scene (and the character Vaughn) examines our fascination with car accidents.  Although this takes it to the extreme and turns it into a piece of theatre (a perverse form of Theatre of Cruelty), this is a common occurrence on the freeway: the traffic on both sides of the highway slow down as gawkers peer at the carnage on the blocked lane or side of the road: watching with voyeuristic interest.


William Leith made the observation that in today's car culture, "each of us [is] hidden behind a thick carapace, and the only time we take any notice of other human beings is when we smash into each other, and our carapace is cracked – only then can we see anything of the vulnerable person inside"[1].  Perhaps the same metaphor can be used in describing sexual relations: that sex it the only real moment when we are truly vulnerable (and which Hare has noted in Obedience, Struggle and Revolt about the "crucible" of the bed) (see Media Hype & The Blue Room).

The characters of The Blue Room share some of the traits of those from Crash, but not to the same extreme; the closest they get is the "bad trip" experienced by the Politician and Model in Scene 6.  Nevertheless, they do share a tendency to take risks that most people would not.

What Roger Ebert says about that state of mind or trance that many people get when they are drawn to take risks is insightful:

It is that trancelike state when you are drawn to do something you should not do, and have passed through the stages of common sense and inhibition and arrived at critical velocity. You are going to do it.

Such a trance or compulsion is often associated with sex, and is also experienced by shoplifters, gamblers, drug users, stunt men and others mesmerized by pleasure through risk.[2]

One may feel a certain kind of pleasure from doing something risky without getting caught, injured or killed--successfully pushing the limits.  If the first time was successful, can it be repeated?  How far can someone go before the consequences of those actions catch up?

Where Ebert diverges, however, is his inability to accept that anyone would go to the same lengths that the characters do in order to feel pain/pleasure: "The idea of deliberately seeking death in a speeding car is not attractive to anyone; those who seek it want suicide, not ecstasy."  But is such a statement a truth written in stone?  What about those who hang themselves as a means to enhance sexual gratification while masturbating?  It's not a particularly common occurrence, but there are cases where this has happened (and kept very hush-hush by families when it does, and the body is discovered).  Psychology is a strange, mysterious thing; it may not be logical but people do go to these extremes.  As Britt Hayes asks, "how can you bask in the pleasure of an act when that act has killed you?"[3]

Some of the critical opinions of the film can be found here at Rotten Tomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1076271-crash/

This blog gives some of the context behind the creation of the film:
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-story-behind-cronenberg-s-crash-1

Here is a critical discussion of the film that explores its themes:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/01/the-conversations-crash/

For a little light reading, here is the screenplay:
Crash Screenplay