Movie 666

David Cronenberg’s Crash is currently a late night staple of the Independent Film Channel. While cable channels like Showtime and Cinemax lull viewers with softcore dramas based on sleazy private detectives and women’s fantasies, IFC has the after hours market cornered for sex involving car crashes.

IFC goes so far as to precede Crash with vital statistics on the movie: number of sex scenes: 17; number of car crashes: 22; number of cars used in film: 18. Crash welds these episodes together with a loosely structured plot that tells the story of a sexually jaded filmmaker who progresses from car crash virgin to experienced practitioner of the autoerotic.

Linking Crash with softcore porn is not accidental. Crash is similar to Emmanuelle (1974) and The Story of O (1975) — softcore, late night, cable classics. Like these films, Crash explores “sexual awakening” through a plot just firm enough to support the sexual vignettes that are the true meat of the film.

Crash is ultimately distinguished from softcore fare by its hardcore car wrecks. The automobile becomes both the “vehicle” of sexual discovery and sexual partner. Characters have sex in cars, but through the act of crashing are also penetrated by the automobile. Crash also differs from the softcore as it inverts the traditional gender roles of the late night cable sexual discovery film. In Crash, the man, not the woman, awakens to new passion and the obligatory “lesbian scene” of softcore cinema is replaced with male homosexuality.

Crash seduces the viewer by reminding the viewer why cars can be sexy (and by extension, sexual): seats recline, mirrors reflect, belts restrict, fluids inject. Cars are used for sex and seeking sex. But Crash quickly moves from the easily understood into more sinister terrain. The bored, burned out characters of the film recognize the car crash as the ultimate thrill ride (despite their dull expressions), replete with build up, climax, and swapping of fluids (semen, blood, power steering).

This trajectory of sexual discovery is ultimately suicidal. The consequence of greater and more extreme forms of thrill seeking is death. This is the consquence of obsession with the automobile in general and other potentially dangerous yet seductive machines. Crash is similar to the Story of O in this sense, wherein death represents the greatest degree of submission.

Racing head-to-head on cable with other softcore fare, Crash actually plays a role similar to the programming of Videdrome in the film of the same name. In Videodrome, Cronenberg’s hallucination of terminal television, a rogue cable producer discovers a pirate video channel featuring pure sex and violence. To him, Videodrome is the most powerful, pure form of entertainment possible, possessed of the singular ability to rouse viewers from their dull, viewing slumber (and revive the dead ratings of his own television station as well).

Crash is a kind of Videodrome compared to the standardized, formulaic, and utterly innocuous offerings of sex cable (compare Crash to Red Shoe Diaries, for instance). Despite its edgy, jagged feel, however, the actual pleasures offered in Crash are — like Videodrome — fleeting and ironic at best.

Related posts:

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2. Softcore Eurotrash Neutered in Vicky Cristina Barcelona
3. Fashion Nazis Should Love Valkyrie Movie
4. Secret War: Will the Public Ever See Kubrick’s Fear and Desire?
5. Brutal Massacre: A Comedy

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