Money 2--The Voice(s) of John Self

"There are, at the latest count, four distinct voices in my head. First, of course, if the jabber of money, which might be represented as the blur on the top rung of a typewriter--$%$^$^^&&&@$--sums, subtractions, compound terrors and greeds. Second is the voice of pornography. This often sounds like the rap of a demented DJ: the way she moves has got to be good news, can't get loose till I feel the juice--suck and spread, bitch, yeah bounce for me baby...And so on. (One of the subvoices of pornography in my head is the voice of an obsessed black tramp or retard who roams Times Square beat here in New York. Incomprehensible, yet unmistakenly lecherous, his gurgled monologue goes like this: Uh geh guh yuh tih ah fuh yuh uh yuh fuh ah ah yuh guh suh muh fuh cuh. I do a lot of that kind of talking in my head too.)" pg. 104

This passage stood out to me because it analyzes elements of John Selfs narrative voice, or his internal voice. The connotation, or tone in Selfs voice here is particularly witty and somewhat cynical. He compares his constant internal sexual ramblings to those of a "retard" or "black tramp" wandering the streets babbling nonsense (but clearly, lecherous nonsense). He uses this image of a crazy homeless person to exemplify just how base and yet charged with a crazed urge for sex his internal 'pornography' voice is. The diction in this passage also drew my attention to it. Phrases such as "compound terrors and greeds" and "gurgled monologue" create a tone of almost comedic helplessness. John Self cannot control these voices, and we see that through his narrative tone there's an image of powerlessness being portrayed. I found this fascinating, because even though Self seems to have higher mental capacities (especially compared with the so-called retards and tramps he likens himself to) the tone of this passage seems to be that of someone completely out of control (of their internal narrative, that is). There's also some very powerful imagery in reference to the pornographic voice here; I found the image of a demented DJ particularly apt.

Dinero--First Impressions o' Money

Martin Amis’s Money chronicles the hedonistic exploits of John Self, a wealthy British advertising executive who spends his time between New York City and London. He’s a wealthy man, and he puts his cash to good use; in the sense that there’s always a new form of pleasure being offered by society that he can fit the bill for. He drinks and smokes constantly; even saying at one point “Unless I say otherwise, I am always smoking a cigarette.”. He’s a self admitted fatty who likes to get into drunken bar fights with strangers, and more often than not he wins. He has a penchant for violence of pretty much all kinds, and admits to the occasional violent act towards his female sexual partners, which compounds of course with his general lack of respect for the female sex. 

The interesting thing about Self is, that unlike other wealthy transgressive characters (like our infamous Patrick Bateman, for example), he doesn’t seem to draw any dividing lines between high and low quality excess. He gorges himself on cheap fast food, and spends tokens at Porn-Palaces, when it’s clear he could easily afford an expensive meal, or an escort. Relating to John Self as a character is made somewhat more difficult because of this, at least for me. The one thing I found the most fascinating about Self, is that all of his existing relationships with other people depend on money. Whether with the fastidious bellhop Felix, or with the beautiful Selina, an exchange of money is always involved. Originally, this made me feel a level of pity for Self, but as I continued to read further into his character I began to see that it would be extremely unlikely for anyone to choose to have this guy around, if it weren’t for money. 

He’s extremely witty, and seemingly because of his jaunts into the moral underground, he knows exactly what to say and do to please and exasperate people. At first I saw him as just another gleeful explorer into the excesses of modern society, but now I see he’s quite a powerful figure. It’s interesting to see how Amis has placed himself in the novel, in the form of that “creepy writer” who lives on John Selfs block in London; which is very different than Ballards method of placing himself in the novel. It’s a pretty funny idea for an author to imagine a character seeing them as a creepy neighbor with stalkerish tendencies.

“I weepily gathered my street clothes and crammed them into the duty free bag. I hit Sixty Sixth street in a sweat-looped tank top, knee length Bermudas, black socks and squelchy gyms. Come to think of it, I must have looked exactly like everyone else. My body craved darkness and silence but the suns controls were all turned up full blast as I screamed for cabs in the yellow riot of Broadway.”

This passage stood out to me because of the very powerful yet bizarre imagery. The manner in which he describes his appearance sounds gross, and generally just strange; then he goes on to say, he must have looked like everyone else, which gives the scene a strange, somewhat alien tone. The most unique use of language in this passage is definitely in reference to the “yellow riot” of Broadway. By use of such words like “weepily” and “craving darkness”, we get a powerful image of a defeated, somewhat emasculated Self after an embarrassing tennis match. 

This image is unique in that it not only makes us pity this otherwise non-pitiable character, but that it juxtaposes this with an idea of him struggling in the chaos of same-ness; wearing sweaty clothes that make him look just as everyone else does, and fighting to get a single taxi within an entire ‘yellow riot’.

Cronenberg's angry because Paul Haggis stole his movie title, and then made a flick about sassy coppers and human trafficking

I have to give Cronenberg credit; J.G. Ballards novel would be difficult at best to transcribe into film. While I'm a big fan of Cronenbergs other movies, such as Scanners and Videodrome, it was difficult for me to accept his interpretation of the novel. It's hard to translate some of the fantastically large scale mental images of structurally complex underpasses and overpasses, of miles of highway stretching endlessly out of and into the city. It just felt as though the film struggled to convey that sense of unease and other-ness that the setting in the novel does. Even though Cronenberg does a good job avoiding typical pedestrian areas, it still cannot be as striking and isolated as Ballard's images are. I also found that while the movie didn't really shy away from the sex and the violence, the combined sexual arousal because of violence didn't disturb me as it did in the novel. It's difficult for actors to really portray the kind of detachment that comes with a violent paraphilia, and so at times their car-sex seemed more like bored gropings and less like a "new sexuality born of a perverse technology". I feel as though any other director given this task would probably not do a very good job; while I can't say I was that into Cronenbergs adaptation, he did a fairly good job at transcribing a book whose plot isn't really that structurally defined. Also, the setting of Toronto kind of blew it a bit for me.

Crash---Ze Conclusion

Crash is a novel that's heavily laden with symbols of sex and violence; symbols that seek to correspond to the various ways in which technology has changed human psychology. Upon finishing Crash, I was reminded of one of our earlier class discussions where we discussed the concept of the consumer as an addict. The various fascinations in the novel with the permanent divinity of celebrity, as well as the uncontrolled violence of automobile accidents seem to mirror the various obsessions of consumer culture; technology, celebrity, death. I find it interesting that Ballard was once quoted in reference to his motivations for this novel as saying "I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.". Its interesting to think that Ballard was already so disgusted with human submission, or transformation via technology in a year when technologies like the barcode had only been around for a few months. In our current era there would be a million jumping off points for writing a novel about the ills of technology. It was also interesting for me to consider the effect that the European recession as a result of a 200% increase in the price of oil by OPEC possibly had on Ballard in writing a novel about the dire effects of technology. Maybe seeing long line ups like this at gas stations around the UK inspired some mental images of "Automaggedon" for Ballard.