Editing Crash (Ballard novel) (section)

==Interpretation==
{{Blockquote
|text  = Throughout ''Crash'' I have used the car not only as a sexual image, but as a total metaphor for man's life in today's society. As such the novel has a political role quite apart from its sexual content, but I would still like to think that ''Crash'' is the first pornographic novel based on technology. In a sense, pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other in the most urgent and ruthless way. Needless to say, the ultimate role of ''Crash'' is cautionary, a warning against that brutal, erotic and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape.<ref name="jr">{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20120131151534/http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=6667 JonathanRosenbaum.com » Blog Archive » Sex Drive [on CRASH]]}}</ref>
|author = J. G. Ballard
|source = ''Crash''
}}

''Crash'' has been difficult to characterize as a novel. At some points in his career, Ballard claimed that ''Crash'' was a "cautionary tale", a view that he would later regret, asserting that it is in fact "a psychopathic hymn. But it is a psychopathic hymn which has a point".<ref>{{cite journal | first=Pedro | last=Groppo | title='Death and the Machine: J. G. Ballard's Crash' | journal=Aletria | year=2017 | volume=27 | issue=1 | pages=161–180 | doi=10.17851/2317-2096.27.1.161-180| doi-access=free }}</ref> Likewise, Ballard previously characterized it a science fiction novel, a position he would later take back.{{citation needed|date=August 2020}}

[[Jean Baudrillard]] wrote an analysis of ''Crash'' in ''[[Simulacra and Simulation]]'' in which he declared it "the first great novel of the universe of simulation". He made note of how the fetish in the story conflates the functionality of the automobiles with that of the human body and how the characters' injuries and the damage to the vehicles are used as equivalent signs. To him, the hyperfunctionality leads to the dysfunction in the story. Quotes were used extensively to illustrate that the language of the novel employs plain, mechanical terms for the parts of the automobile and proper, medical language for human sex organs and acts. The story is interpreted as showing a merger between technology, sexuality, and death, and he further argued that by pointing out Vaughan's character takes and keeps photos of the car crashes and the mutilated bodies involved. Baudrillard stated that there is no moral judgment about the events within the novel but that Ballard himself intended it as a warning against a cultural trend.<ref>{{cite book |last=Baudrillard
|first=Jean |author-link=Jean Baudrillard |translator-last1=Glaser |translator-first1=Sheila Faria |date=1994 |chapter=Crash |title=Simulacra and Simulation |location=Ann Arbor, MI |publisher=The University of Michigan Press |pages= 111–119 |isbn=978-0-472-09521-6}}</ref>

The story can be classed as [[Utopian and dystopian fiction|dystopic]].<ref name=":32" />