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in slow motion the test cars move

towards each other on collision courses

unwinding behind them the coils that ran

to the devices by the impact zone as

they collided the debris of wings and

fender floated into the air the cars

rocked against each other as they

continued on their disintegrating

courses in the passenger seats the

plastic models transcribed graceful arcs

into the buckling rubes and windshields

here and there a passing fender severed

a torso the air behind the cars was a

carnival of arms and legs

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I think the key image of the 20th

century is the man in the motorcar it

sums up everything the elements of speed

drama aggression the junction of

advertising and consumer goods for the

technological landscape the sense of

violence and desire power and energy the

shared experience of moving together to

an elaborately signaled landscape we

spend a substantial part of our lives in

the motorcar and the experience of

driving condenses many of the

experiences of being a human being in

the 1970s the marriage of the physical

aspects of ourselves the imaginative and

technological aspects of our lives I

think that the 20th century reaches its

highest expression on the highway

everything is there the speed and

violence of our age it's strange love

affair with a machine with its own there

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the styling of motor cars of the

American motorcar in particular has

always struck me as tremendously

important bringing together all sorts of

visual and psychological factors as an

engineering structure the car is totally

uninteresting to me I'm interested in

the exact way in which it brings

together the visual codes for expressing

our ordinary perceptions about reality

for example that the future is something

with a fin on it and the whole system of

expectations contained in the design of

the car expectations about our freedom

to move through time and space about the

identities of our own bodies our own

musculature

the complex relationships between

ourselves and the world of objects

around us these highly potent visual

curves can be seen repeated in every

aspect of the 20th century landscape

what do they mean have we reached the

point now in the 70s where we only make

sense in terms of these huge

technological systems I think sir myself

and that it is the vital job of the

writer to try to analyze and understand

the real significance of this huge

metallized dream

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I'm interested in the automobile as a

narrative structure as a scenario that

describes our real lives and our real

fantasies if every member of the human

race would have vanish overnight I think

it would be possible to reconstitute

almost every element of human psychology

from the design of a vehicle like this

as a writer I feel I must try to

understand the real meaning of a lot of

common place for tremendously

complicated events I've always been

fascinated by the complexity of movement

when a woman gets out of the car

they're ungainly transit across the

passenger seat through the nearside door

the overlay of her knees on the metal

door thing

the conjunction of the aluminized gutter

trim with the volumes of the thighs

the crushing of her left breast by the

doorframe and it's self extension as she

continued to rise

the movement of her left hand across the

chromium trim of the right headlamp

assembly

the movements distorted in the

projecting arrow place of the bonnet

the Joplin drape of her pubis as she sat

in the driver's seat

the soft pressure that her thighs

against the rim of the steering you

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the close relationship between our own

bodies from the body of the motorcar is

obvious American automobile stylists

have been exploring for years the

relationships between sexuality on the

motor car body the primitive algebra of

recognition which we use in our

perception of all organic forms

if the man in the motorcar is the key

image of the 20th century then the

automobile crash is the most significant

trauma the car crash is the most

dramatic event in most people's lives

apart from their own deaths and in many

cases the two will coincide

are we just victims in a totally

meaningless tragedy or does it in fact

take place with our unconscious and even

conscious connivance each year hundreds

of thousands of people are killed in car

crashes all over the world millions are

injured are these arranged deaths

arranged by the colliding forces of the

technological landscape by our own

unconscious fantasies about power and

aggression our obsessions with consumer

goods and design the overlaying fiction

for the more and more taking the place

of reality it's always struck me that

people's attitudes towards the car crash

are very confused but they assume an

attitude but in fact is very different

from their real response if we really

fear the car crash none of us would be

able to drive a car

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I know that my own attitudes to the

crash car are just as confused the

distorted geometry of this tremendously

stylized object let's face it the most

powerful symbol of our civilization

seems to pull at all sorts of concealed

triggers in the mind of postures of

people in crashed vehicles deformed

manufacturers styling devices crashed

General Motors cars look very different

from crashed for the stylizing of the

instrument panel which after all is the

model for our own wounds driving around

each of us knows what is literally the

shape of our own death

regaining consciousness she stared at

the blood on her legs the heavy liquid

pooled at her skirt

the bruise under her left breast reached

behind her sternum seizing like a hand

at her heart

she set up

lifting herself from the broken steering

wheel uncertain for a moment whether the

car windshield had been fractured

against her forehead the strands of

blood formed a torn veil

above her knees I hadn't moved toward

the door evil

as she watched the door opened and she

fell out

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lifting herself she held tightly to the

car feeling the pressure of the doorsill

against her hand turning she stared at

the waiting figure of the man she knew

to be dr. Tallis

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however seeing some films on television

of chest crashes a few years ago they

were using American cars of the late 50s

a period I suppose when the American

Dream and American confidence were at

their highest point metering coils

trailed out of the windows and they had

dummies sitting in them they were

beautifully filmed they filled them

beautifully because they wanted to know

what was happening they weren't

interested in the aesthetics of the

thing these cars were in head-on

collisions right-angle collisions and

sideswipes and plowing into other

structures like utility poles one could

see four feet of metal suddenly become

one foot filled in slow motion these

crashes had a beautiful stylized grace

the power and weight of these cars gave

them the immense classical dignity it

was like some strange technological

ballet

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I remember looking at these films and

thinking about strange psychological

dimensions they seem to touch they seem

to say something about the way

everything becomes more and more

stylized more and more cut off from

ordinary feeling it seems to me that we

have to regard everything in the world

around us as fictional as if we were

living in an enormous novel the kind of

distinction that Freud made about the

inner world of the mind between say our

dreams appeared to me and what they

really meant now has to be applied to

the outer world of reality all the

structures in it flyer was a motorways

office blocks and factories are all part

of this enormous novel

take a structure like a multi-story car

park one of the most mysterious

buildings ever built

is it a model some strange psychological

state some kind of visual glimpse within

its bizarre geometry what effect does

using these buildings have on us for the

real myths of the century being written

in terms of these huge unnoticed

structures

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more exactly I think that new emotions

and new feelings are being created that

modern technology is beginning to reach

into our dreams and change our whole way

of looking at things and perceiving

reality but more and more it is drawing

us away from contemplating ourselves to

contemplating its world

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