How David Cronenberg’s Crash helped me over­come my fear of driving

By the time David Cronenberg’s Crash arrived in UK cin­e­mas in 1997, it had already left a trail of con­tro­ver­sy in its wake. A head-on col­li­sion with tabloid puri­tans in the US caused a cul­tur­al crash site, mean­ing British audi­ences would have to wait a full year to see a film which had been dubbed ​“beyond the bounds of deprav­i­ty”. Yet, to me, Cronenberg’s adap­ta­tion of JG Ballard’s 1973 nov­el proved less scan­dalous than the papers sug­gest­ed and more per­son­al than the caus­tic satire crit­ics have since championed.

At the age of 12, I was involved in a car acci­dent. Although I suf­fered only bumps and bruis­es, the crash instilled in me a deep fear of the com­fy con­fines of the auto­mo­bile. What was once my own pri­vate movie the­atre onto the world – with cuphold­ers and reclin­ing chairs to boot – was now a satin-coat­ed cas­ket, child-locked indef­i­nite­ly. Like any rea­son­able neu­rot­ic, I retreat­ed to my bed­room. That shady nook of sus­pi­cious smells and for­got­ten toys became the only place where I felt in the driver’s seat. It was here, under the famil­iar glow of the tele­vi­sion screen, that I first encoun­tered Crash.

Hor­ror cin­e­ma has always been root­ed in the loss of con­trol; the moment some­one los­es their grip on their iden­ti­ty and their life veers off course. It’s ter­ri­fy­ing, thrilling, and a recur­ring theme through much of Cronenberg’s ear­ly work. But where the likes of Shiv­ers and Video­drome see char­ac­ters sur­ren­der their inde­pen­dence to strange, malig­nant forces, Crash flips the script. The film fol­lows a cou­ple who are lured into an auto-erot­ic sub­cul­ture in which car crash­es become a strange, sex­u­al com­pul­sion. By con­fronting death, the char­ac­ters ulti­mate­ly rewrite their own narratives.

What instant­ly stood out to me was the eerie real­ism with which Cro­nen­berg depicts the car crash­es. For a film fizzed up to be a nihilist’s wet dream, they are remark­ably unspec­tac­u­lar. Nei­ther fast nor furi­ous, the acci­dents are instan­ta­neous blips. Clean, crisp and unclut­tered by high-wire cam­era tricks, it’s clear that the direc­tor is more inter­est­ed in the after­math – the same place I found myself per­ma­nent­ly stuck.

The film’s visu­al régime of twi­light hues and clin­i­cal detach­ment per­fect­ly mir­rored the dull rhythms of my PTSD. As years passed, I came to the somber con­clu­sion that I would nev­er be able to dri­ve. When, at 17, friends start­ed pulling up to school, bran­dish­ing new­ly print­ed licens­es, I qui­et­ly cham­pi­oned the virtues of planes, trains and bicy­cle wheels. Cronenberg’s frame, much like my own frame of mind, was one of gnaw­ing frustration.

The pro­tag­o­nist appears no dif­fer­ent. James, played by a som­nam­bu­lant James Spad­er, is a pile-up of sti­fled urges. Hol­low, stiff, with a com­plex­ion verg­ing on translu­cent, he wafts through scenes like a spec­tre seek­ing pas­sage from pur­ga­to­ry. The ini­tial car acci­dent he suf­fers, cat­a­pult­ing him into a nether­world of technophil­ia, sym­bol­ised for me a sud­den jolt, resus­ci­tat­ing the soul from a state of slum­ber. It became evi­dent that Crash wasn’t the fetish flick its detrac­tors claimed. Its char­ac­ters are more akin to pio­neers than per­verts, search­ing for mean­ing in a sense­less world.

Mean­ing becomes mal­leable with­in Crash’s play­ful phi­los­o­phy, ren­der­ing flesh into met­al, death into sex, where even the scar which tears across Gabrielle’s (Rosan­na Arquette) thigh can serve as a makeshift sex­u­al ori­fice. Pain, like most things shot through Cronenberg’s lens, mutat­ed before my eyes, becom­ing a raw mate­r­i­al for power.

On its sur­face, Crash may seem a cau­tion­ary tale against the pas­sive accep­tance of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. Yet it’s the exis­ten­tial romance rum­bling beneath the bon­net that res­onat­ed with me, one cel­e­brat­ing the pow­er of human will. The ​“benev­o­lent psy­chopathol­o­gy”, which Elias Koteas’ Vaughn pre­dicts will soon alter humankind, to me, sound­ed a wake-up call to reroute my own destiny.

Cronenberg’s film affect­ed me the same way its col­li­sions affects his char­ac­ters. That first view­ing was akin to hot-wiring my con­scious­ness before charg­ing into the unknown. These were bod­ies in rebel­lion and I was prepar­ing for war. When final­ly – after many attempts – I sat behind the wheel, adjust­ing dials, nudg­ing ped­als, check­ing that the hand­brake was indeed on, I felt the fear which once paral­ysed me slow­ly drift beyond con­cern. I was final­ly tak­ing back control.

“Maybe the next one,” I told myself, quot­ing the film’s final words each time I flunked my dri­ving test until, one day, I passed. Crash may not be your typ­i­cal road movie, but if there’s a les­son to be learned come its journey’s end, it’s in accept­ing that we all pos­sess the strength to realign the bor­ders of self­hood. We are mutants, shapeshifters, grow­ing and evolv­ing, Cro­nen­ber­gian crea­tures of infi­nite potential.