The atrocity exhibition (18 page)

Warning him, she summoned to her side

The latent sexual character of the war. All political and military explanations fail to provide a rationale for the war’s extended duration. In its manifest phase the war can be seen as a limited military confrontation with strong audience participation via TV and news media, satisfying low-threshold fantasies of violence and aggression. Tests confirm that the war has also served a latent role of strongly polymorphic character. Endless-loop combat and atrocity newsreels were intercut with material of genital, axillary, buccal and anal character. The expressed faecal matter of execution sequences was found to have a particular fascination for middle-income housewives. Prolonged exposure to these films may exercise a beneficial effect on the toilet training and psychosexual development of the present infant generation.

all the legions of the bereaved.

The effectiveness of a number of political figures, e.g. Governor Reagan and Shirley Temple, in mediating the latent sexual elements of the war indicates that this may well be their primary role. Montage photographs demonstrate the success of (a) the late President Kennedy in mediating a genital modulus of the war, and (b) Governor Reagan and Mrs Temple Black in mediating an anal modulus. Further tests were devised to assess the latent sexual fantasies of anti-war demonstrators. These confirm the hysterical nature of reactions to films of napalm victims and A. R. V. N. atrocities, and indicate that for the majority of so-called peace groups the Vietnam war serves the role of masking repressed sexual inadequacies of an extreme nature.

By day the overflights of B-52s

Psychotic patients exposed to continuous Vietnam war newsreel material have shown marked improvements in overall health, self-maintenance and ability to cope with tasks. Similar advances have been shown by disturbed children. Deprivation of newsreel and TV screenings led to symptoms of withdrawal and a lowering of general health. This accords with the behaviour of a volunteer group of suburban housewives during New Year truce periods. Levels of overall health and sexual activity fell notably, only restored by the Tet offensive and the capture of the U.S. embassy. Suggestions have been made for increasing the violence and latent sexuality of the war, and current peace moves may require the manufacture of simulated newsreels. Already it has been shown that simulated films of the execution and maltreatment of children have notably beneficial effects on the awareness and verbal facility of psychotic children.

crossed the drowned causeways of the delta,

Fake atrocity films. Comparison of Vietnam atrocity films with fake newsreels of Auschwitz, Belsen and the Congo reveals that the Vietnam war far exceeds the latter’s appeal and curative benefits. As part of their therapy programme a group of patients were encouraged to devise a fake atrocity film employing photographs of buccal, rectal and genital mutilations intercut with images of political figures.

unique ciphers of violence and desire.

Optimum child-mutilation film. Using assembly kits of atrocity photographs, groups of housewives, students and psychotic patients selected the optimum child-torture victim. Rape and napalm burns remained constant preoccupations, and a wound profile of maximum arousal was constructed. Despite the revulsion expressed by the panels, follow-up surveys of work-proficiency and health patterns indicate substantial benefits. The effects of atrocity films on disturbed children were found to have positive results that indicate similar benefits for the TV public at large. These studies confirm that it is only in terms of a psychosexual module such as provided by the Vietnam war that the United States can enter into a relationship with the world generally characterized by the term ‘love’.

Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A.

‘Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A.’ was the title chosen, against my advice, for the edition of
The Atrocity Exhibition
which Grove Press published in 1972. I remember sitting in a London hotel with Fred Jordan, the intelligent and likeable editor at Grove, and arguing against the title on the grounds (a) that the Vietnam war was over (this was 1971), and (b) that it would give an apparently anti-American slant to the whole book. Jordan maintained that the war was not over and would continue to rouse violent passions for years to come. I felt that he was wrong, and that though the tragedy would cast its shadow for decades across America, the era of street protests and marches was over. Even from our side of the Atlantic it was clear that the U.S. public had seen more than enough of the war.

As for the apparent anti-Americanism, the hidden logic at work within the mass media - above all, the inadvertent packaging of violence and cruelty like attractive commercial products - had already spread throughout the world. If anything, the process was even more advanced in Britain. The equivalent of the U.S. television commercial on British TV is the ‘serious’ documentary, the ostensibly highminded ‘news’ programme that gives a seductive authority to the manipulated images of violence and suffering offered by the conscience-stricken presenters - an even more insidious form of pornography. Recognizing this, our new puritan watchdogs have recently called for censorship of the news. Corpses should never be shown at the scene, say, of an air crash, which gags our emotional response (and civic sense that something should be done), and may even engender the unconscious belief that a plane crash is an exciting event not far removed from a demolition derby. ‘Responsible’ TV is far more dangerous than the most mindless entertainment. At its worst, American TV merely trivializes the already trivial, while British TV consistently trivializes the serious.

Each afternoon in the deserted cinema

The latent sexual content of the automobile crash. Numerous studies have been conducted to assess the latent sexual appeal of public figures who have achieved subsequent notoriety as auto-crash fatalities, e.g. James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, Albert Camus. Simulated newsreels of politicians, film stars and TV celebrities were shown to panels of (a) suburban housewives, (b) terminal paretics, (c) filling station personnel. Sequences showing auto-crash victims brought about a marked acceleration of pulse and respiratory rates. Many volunteers became convinced that the fatalities were still living, and later used one or other of the crash victims as a private focus of arousal during intercourse with the domestic partner.

Tallis was increasingly distressed

Relatives of auto-crash victims showed a similar upsurge in both sexual activity and overall levels of general health. Mourning periods were drastically reduced. After a brief initial period of withdrawal, relatives would revisit the site, usually attempting a discreet re-enactment of the crash mode. In an extreme 2 percent of cases spontaneous orgasms were experienced during a simulated run along the crash route. Surprisingly, these results parallel the increased frequency of sexual intercourse in new-car families, the showroom providing a widely popular erotic focus. Incidence of neurosis in new-car families is also markedly less.

by the images of colliding motor cars.

Behaviour of spectators at automobile accidents. The sexual behaviour of spectators at major automobile accidents (=minimum one death) has also been examined. In all cases there was a conspicuous improvement in both marital and extra-marital relationships, combined with a more tolerant attitude towards perverse behaviour. The 552 spectators of the Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza were observed closely in follow-up surveys. Overall health and frequency of sexual activity increased notably over subjects in nearby Elm and Commerce Streets. Police reports indicate that Dealey Plaza has since become a minor sexual nuisance area.

Celebrations of his wife’s death,

Pudenda of auto-crash victims. Using assembly kits constructed from photographs of (a) unidentified bodies of accident victims, (b) Cadillac exhaust assemblies, (c) the mouth-parts of Jacqueline Kennedy, volunteers were asked to devise the optimum auto-crash victim. The notional pudenda of crash victims exercised a particular fascination. Choice of subjects was as follows: 75 percent J. F. Kennedy, 15 percent James Dean, 9 percent Jayne Mansfield, 1 percent Albert Camus. In an open category test, volunteers were asked to name those living public figures most suitable as potential crash victims. Choices varied from Brigitte Bardot and Prof. Barnard to Mrs Pat Nixon and Madame Chiang.

the slow-motion newsreels

The optimum auto-disaster. Panels consisting of drive-in theatre personnel, students and middle-income housewives were encouraged to devise the optimum auto-disaster. A wide choice of impact modes was available, including roll-over, roll-over followed by head-on collision, multiple pile-ups and motorcade attacks. The choice of death-postures included (1) normal driving position, (2) sleep, rear seat, (3) acts of intercourse, by both driver and passenger, (4) severe anginal spasm. In an overwhelming majority of cases a crash complex was constructed containing elements not usually present in automobile accidents, i.e. strong religious and sexual overtones, the victim being mounted in the automobile in bizarre positions containing postural elements of both perverse intercourse and ritual sacrifice, e.g. arms outstretched in a notional crucifixion mode.

recapitulated all his memories of childhood,

The optimum wound profile. As part of a continuing therapy programme, patients devised the optimum wound profile. A wide variety of wounds was imagined. Psychotic patients showed a preference for facial and neck wounds. Students and filling station personnel overwhelmingly selected abdominal injuries. By contrast suburban housewives expressed a marked preoccupation with severe genital wounds of an obscene character. The accident modes which rationalized these choices reflected polyperverse obsessions of an extreme form.

the realization of dreams

The conceptual auto-disaster. The volunteer panels were shown fake safety propaganda movies in which implausible accidents were staged. Far from eliciting a humorous or sardonic response from the audience, marked feelings of hostility were shown towards the film and medical support staff. Subsequent films of genuine accidents exerted a notably calming effect. From this and similar work it is clear that Freud’s classic distinction between the manifest and latent content of the inner world of the psyche now has to be applied to the outer world of reality. A dominant element in this reality is technology and its instrument, the machine. In most roles the machine assumes a benign or passive posture - telephone exchanges, engineering hardware, etc. The twentieth century has also given birth to a vast range of machines - computers, pilotless planes, thermonuclear weapons - where the latent identity of the machine is ambiguous even to the skilled investigator. An understanding of this identity can be found in a study of the automobile, which dominates the vectors of speed, aggression, violence and desire. In particular the automobile crash contains a crucial image of the machine as conceptualized psychopathology. Tests on a wide range of subjects indicate that the automobile, and in particular the automobile crash, provides a focus for the conceptualizing of a wide range of impulses involving the elements of psychopathology, sexuality and self-sacrifice.

which even during the safe immobility of sleep

Preferred death modes. Subjects were given a choice of various death modes and asked to select those they would most fear for themselves and their families. Suicide and murder proved without exception to be most feared, followed by air disasters, domestic electrocution and drowning. Death by automobile accident was uniformly considered to be least objectionable, in spite of the often extended death ordeal and severe mutilatory injuries.

would develop into nightmares of anxiety.

Psychology of crash victims. Studies have been carried out on the recuperative behaviour of crash victims. The great majority of cases were aided by any opportunity of unconscious identification with such fatalities as J. F. Kennedy, Jayne Mansfield and James Dean. Although many patients continued to express a strong sense of anatomical loss (an extreme 2 percent of cases maintained against all evidence that they had lost their genitalia) this was not regarded as any form of deprivation. It is clear that the car crash is seen as a fertilizing rather than a destructive experience, a liberation of sexual and machine libido, mediating the sexuality of those who have died with an erotic intensity impossible in any other form.

Crash!

This 1968 piece was written a year before my exhibition of crashed cars at the New Arts Laboratory, and in effect is the gene from which my novel
Crash
was to spring. The ambiguous role of the car crash needs no elaboration - apart from our own deaths, the car crash is probably the most dramatic event in our lives, and in many cases the two will coincide. Aside from the fact that we generally own or are at the controls of the crashing vehicle, the car crash differs from other disasters in that it involves the most powerfully advertised commercial product of this century, an iconic entity that combines the elements of speed, power, dream and freedom within a highly stylised format that defuses any fears we may have of the inherent dangers of these violent and unstable machines.

Americans are now scarcely aware of automobile styling, but the subject has always intrigued me, and seems a remarkably accurate barometer of national confidence. When I visited the U.S.A. in 1955 all the optimism of Eisenhower’s post-war America was expressed in the baroque vehicles that soared along its highways, as if an advanced interstellar race had touched down on a recreational visit. But the doubts engendered by the Soviet H-bomb, the death of Kennedy and the Vietnam war led to a slab-sided and unornamented flatness, culminating in the Mercedes look, simultaneously aggressive and defensive, like German medieval armour, among the most dark and paranoid I have ever seen. On my last visit to the States, in 1988, I was happy to see that 1950s exuberance was returning.