We Are All Willing On The Catastrophe
- Thread starter luka
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luka
Well-known member
That seems a very crude reading. It's typical of those who in place of fiction demand moral fables. The role of the 'hero' in Ballard is not to be some kind of role model. We are never asked to admire them. We may be implicated in their own queasy moral ambivalence but that is another matter entirely. (I'm on the beach)
I think that misses the point, Ballard is all about empathising with the protagonist, in fact Id argue that was his main gift, a very careful and precise use of language to elicit sympathy for generally awful characters.
Regardless, even without that dynamic, the underlying worldview of much of Ballard's work is undeniable.
Regardless, even without that dynamic, the underlying worldview of much of Ballard's work is undeniable.
luka
Well-known member
Empathising is one thing, holding up those protagonists as worthy of emulation or whatever is something else. That's not usually how fiction works. I don't think Ballard was telling people how tp live was he? He was observing psychological mechanisms. Eg the dynamic described in this thread
Franklin's 'What are we to make of J.G. Ballard’s Apocalypse?'
https://www.jgballard.ca/criticism/ballard_apocalypse_1979.html
Perhaps the most cited Ballard essay.
https://www.jgballard.ca/criticism/ballard_apocalypse_1979.html
Perhaps the most cited Ballard essay.
luka
Well-known member
This is so often the problem with Marxist lit crit isn't it. That they want to have writers churning out Marxist propaganda and any deviation from that programme is intolerable. It doesn't strike me as a helpful approach. It's cool he thinks the assassinations of the Kennedys, king, Malcolm X etc were committed by "the secret government of America" though
Not to get sidetracked, but this doesn't seem like a substantive critique.
One point regarding his conspiracy theory. He actually says 'Kennedy', singular, referring to Robert, and there's certainly a reasonable argument to be made in each of those cases, especially King - at least as plausible as Ballard's 'morbid psychology'.
I... really dont think it is, or at least not just that.
A critique of Ballard on the basis that he reduces human motivation down to a number of repressed & unconscious desires based around various psychoanalytical theories, is reasonable, in fact that's one of his distinguishing features. At a time when science fiction was moving outward at an ever expanding rate, he chose to look inward and speculate about the internal psychology of future humanity rather than its external adventures.
A critique of Ballard on the basis that he reduces human motivation down to a number of repressed & unconscious desires based around various psychoanalytical theories, is reasonable, in fact that's one of his distinguishing features. At a time when science fiction was moving outward at an ever expanding rate, he chose to look inward and speculate about the internal psychology of future humanity rather than its external adventures.
version
Well-known member
If you're gonna miss, miss big. . . .
It isn't quite in line with the rest of the thread but I caught some of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow the other night and it got me thinking about the appeal of spectacular failures. There's definitely something about the people who fly too close to the sun. The legendarily disastrous Apocalypse Now shoot, Richard Kelly wrecking his career with Southland Tales, Lynch's Dune, Jodorowsky's Dune. Those huge projects and undertakings which are forever threatening to collapse under their own weight and often do.
It isn't quite in line with the rest of the thread but I caught some of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow the other night and it got me thinking about the appeal of spectacular failures. There's definitely something about the people who fly too close to the sun. The legendarily disastrous Apocalypse Now shoot, Richard Kelly wrecking his career with Southland Tales, Lynch's Dune, Jodorowsky's Dune. Those huge projects and undertakings which are forever threatening to collapse under their own weight and often do.
luka
Well-known member
It's true that the move is inward rather than outward but, like, so what? What I mean is, if you were to read a Christian essay on Ballard, which, instead of scolding him for failing to see the redemption of humanity lay in the revolutionary strivings of the proletariat, he was scolded for failing to see the redemption of humanity lay in Jesus, you would rightly scoff.
I hate to labour the point, but you're just using Franklin's politics to sidestep the substantive nature of his criticism. That Ballard's focus on the inner to explain the corruption of the outer, could very easily be flipping cause and effect, that its the systemic nature of the outer which causes the corruption of the inner, something which, as Franklin points out, Ballard was quite aware of in his earlier works.
This is why issues of character empathy and the worldviews of his protagonists are important. You may not be expected to emulate their actions, which are often irrational and unexplainable even to them - but there is never any question around their worldview, the assumptions behind their attitudes, the ground on which they stand - which is taken as a given. And it is invariably one of a nihilistic, alienated upper middle class professional, often allied or sympathetic with deeply reactionary forces. This is the character that desires catastrophe, someone warped by class and culture, threatened by the other, whose lifestyle allows him the luxury of the fetish - Franklin's 'bourgeois solipsism'.
This is not a suitable avatar for the desires of a species, it is a very particular and peculiar product of a very specific set of societal and cultural circumstances.