DEATH DRIVE, CAR CRASHES, CRACKS AND SEXUAL AMBIVALENCE: THE DISSOLUTION OF ORGANIC BODY WITHIN THE RATIONALIZED WORLD ON DAVID CRONENBERG'S ADAPTATION CRASH (1996)

Abstract

As a result of a scientific initiation research project and FAPESB scholarship, in this article we investigate the processes of modern individual's dissolution via bodily mutation, engendered by a myriad of strategies such as: death drive, car crashes, fissures and sexual ambivalence, established from the relationship / tension between the individual and the goods fetishes of contemporary society – cars – which are converted into a new form of cyber / imagery eroticism. Therefore, we examine the film adaptation Crash (1996), directed by David Cronenberg and based on the eponymous novel by J.G. Ballard (1973). In this analytic research, we also considered the imaginary related to automobile and automobile disasters as an image and representation of rupture of both sexual exhaustion and social norms, reflecting the persuasive potential of technology/industry interaction with the human body, mediated by the notion of administered world – a coined term by the scholars Adorno and Horkheimer (2006).