‘Moral Pornography’ and ‘Total Imagination’: The Pornographic in J. G. Ballard's Crash
Correspondence: * Correspondence to Sam Francis, University of Leeds
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Abstract |
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This article discusses pornographic elements in Crash, J. G. Ballard's controversial 1973 novel about ‘the perverse eroticism of the car-crash’, situating the novel in relation to the debate in Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s about the availability of pornography. The text is seen as displaying many characteristics of pornographic representation, and its problematic depictions of sexualised violence are discussed. However, I argue that the text also parodies pornographic representations and critiques the sexual politics of contemporary culture, particularly the pornographic or voyeuristic sensibility created by the prevalence of technological representations and scientific thought-modes. The novel, I therefore suggest, can be read in terms of Angela Carter's controversial concept of a ‘moral pornography’. I conclude by considering, with reference to Susan Sontag's essay ‘The Pornographic Imagination’, how Ballard's ambiguous novel may also be seen as speaking to the possibilities of the pornographic imagination as a means of accessing extreme modes of consciousness.