Excerpt from Essay:
Physical violence should greatest be seen inside the context associated with an individual alienation caused, probably, both by apparent insufficient moral best practice rules and, simultaneously, by the continuous development of the consumer, in a constant quest for the absolute (and this is the absolute feeling, the absolute understanding, the absolute manifestations and feelings etc . ).
With the underlying belief that everything can be permitted, the ultra-modern or the postmodern individual is definitely willing to go along with all types of trials that are likely to help in his quest for continuous development. The sexual fetish presented this is clearly abnormal, especially since it is not a remote intimate practice, however the individual permissiveness allows for this to happen. Concurrently, it almost becomes a new normality for the group, a normality which is accepted consequently (or rather not discussed) by the group. This new normality accepts all things that are viewed as abnormalities by other people of world. This could be a thesis that Ballard supports throughout the new: the relativism of normality, the incapacity of acknowledging a basic pair of clearly valid and generally acknowledged moral norms.
Further more, the novel seems to imply that the postmodern person will at some point resume his existence into a single crucial objective during his life span: feeling very good. In order to reach this objective, the postmodern man will resort to any sort of instruments that can help him reach that particular stage of development. However , a society where only principal objective of its members is to bodily ‘feel good’ in any conditions and without some other values is surely a corrupt and reduced world.
One phrase on the subject of superstars in Ballard’s book. Once more the author turns into a visionary, because the obsession with celebrity has grown exponentially coming from 1973 to the current day. In the book, the main figure has an infatuation with Elizabeth Taylor, yearning to see a crash in to her car. The attempt fails towards the end of the book, as he plunges over a bus instead. Precisely what is with this kind of fascination with celebs? It is born out of the buyer society that promotes this kind of values, yet also from the subconscious want of individuals to have some stationary coordinates about which your life can easily rotate. The postmodern globe is a consumer society, one out of which famous people can offer these kinds of false
