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Modernity
and sensory
deprivation
In their sensory-deprived and regulated modern world, the protagonists of Crash exhibit a kind of compassion, an empathy for one another which, although oddly expressed, is remarkable. Perhaps it is also because in this chaotic world of car crash victims they no longer fear their own mortality. Rendered helpless in the face of the binnacles of the car, the crushing weight of the radiator, each has become a passive participant in something greater than themselves — embracing the "benevolent psychopathology" that is Vaughan's project. Sensitized to the possibility of the automobile accident, roadway skirmishes begin to occur with increasing frequency; in fear and anticipation, their traumas not yet vanquished, these characters too are sensitized to the sensual, to erotic possibilities through which they can feel the edges of the containers, the edges of the body, and the couplings become increasingly frenzied and desperate. None of the injured are coddled, none are seen as repulsive reminders of the vulnerability of the flesh (The dead are a danger to those left behind. — Bataille).[36] Instead, wounds are inspected with a tender curiosity, an empathic intimacy, wounds become more intimate passageways to being, a way of knowing the self and the other. Notes 36. Bataille, Georges, Erotism: Death &Sensuality, p.57. |