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Essay on Analyzing The films Crash And The Family Stone
First, a few words in defense of Canadian director David Cronenberg's Crash. The film, based on a 1973 novel by British science fiction writer J.G. Ballard, has provoked a ridiculous scandal. A middle class couple--James (James Spader) and Catherine Ballard (Deborah Unger)--seems bored and alienated. A serious car accident shakes James out of his routine. He chooses to assign it some erotic significance. Through the widow (Holly Hunter) of a man killed in the crash, he comes into contact with a group, headed by Vaughan (Elias Koteas), which derives sexual pleasure from car collisions. Its members specialize in reenacting famous auto accidents--those of James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, etc.
James, Catherine, Vaughan and the latter's disciples proceed to explore the various sexual possibilities of the automobile, including some that involve risking their lives in highway traffic. The film's harshest critics, including Ted Turner, whose Fine Line Features held up the US release of Crash for months, have denounced the film as perverse and "sick" for its linking of sex and auto crashes. At the Cannes film festival last year, two jurors refused to have any part in rewarding Cronenberg's work its special prize--for "originality, daring and audacity." They reportedly raised the possibility that the film might provoke copycat incidents. All this is absurd from two points of view.
The identification of sex, machinery (cars, planes, boats) and high velocity--with the implicit thrills and dangers--is hardly Cronenberg's discovery. It would be a serious challenge to name a single major action picture of the past several decades that hasn't made that largely unconscious association. Or, for that matter, a single automobile advertisement carried on Turner's various cable stations. Cronenberg was entirely within his rights when he commented, in an interview, "I'm always a little taken aback when people....
