+ THORACIC DROP: < Deposit
> news appropriate to this site.
+ AUTOGEDDON: Subscribe to Ballardian & receive automatic email updates
Super-Cannes Links
Author: Simon Sellars • Mar 6th, 2007 •Category: Ballardosphere, architecture, consumerism, fascism, urban revolt
David Smith is a blogger who came to Ballard “very late”. Having just finished Super-Cannes, however, he has posted a collection of links, reviews and musings relating to that book. It’s a useful primer for anyone wanting to excavate more about one of Ballard’s darkest visions.
Dig deep. Re-acquainting myself with these quotes, it’s interesting to note that Kingdom Come’s theme — ’soft fascism’ transmitted via the virus of consumerism — was well on the way to incubation:
Eden-Olympia’s great defect is that there’s no need for personal morality. Thousands of people live and work here without making a single decision about right and wrong. The moral order is engineered into their lives along with the speed limits and the security systems. … Places like Eden-Olympia are fertile ground for any Messiah with a grudge. The Adolf Hitlers and Pol Pots of the future won’t walk out of the desert. They’ll emerge from shopping malls and corporate business parks.”
———————————————————-
J.G. Ballard. Super-Cannes (2000).
———————————————————-
What a shame it is, then, that this vision — so lauded back then — has palled in the media’s eye, if the reviews of KC are anything to go by.
Meanwhile, out there in the badlands, ‘affluenza’ attacks healthy hosts and remains unchecked, while the antidote is neutered, shuttered up and driven to the perimeter by barbarians.
Author:
Simon Sellars
Find all posts by
Simon Sellars
Newer: The Chromium Geometry of the Toaster »
