Seagrave is an important character within the Crash world.  While the movie, with a necessity to gain focus on fewer characters, downplays his role, the novel fills out some of the details. 

In the previous chapter we learned that Seagrave was previously a racing driver.  In this section we further learn that he has started a not too successful hotrod and customization business.  He lives above the garage/showroom of his business with his wife and family, with classic cars on show waiting for customers. 

This final point is of particular interest.  If Seagrave is poorly served in the film, then his wife, Vera, is handled even worse.  When she does make an appearance she seems completed spaced out on booze and/or drugs, docile and stumbling as she tends her spouse after the James Dean re-enactment.  With only a few lines of dialog she is not fleshed out at all, and after two brief visits to Seagraves house, she disappears from events completely. 

The Seagraves, as a family unit, are marked almost as bit players to Vaughan’s overall desires.  This is supported in the novel, but only by imbuing Vera with more substance:  “Vera absolved Vaughan from any responsibility, although – as I realized later and she must have known already – Vaughan was clearly using her husband as an experimental subject.” 

Cronenberg seems to have decided not to spend too much time on Vera and the Seagrave family unit.  Perhaps knowing he would not have time to flesh out the details of their life, they become relegated to ciphers.  In the novel we learn that the Seagraves have a child, and that Vera:  “wore her hair in a simulated afro wig”.   

In the novel, after the re-enactment at the stock car show, Vaughan, Ballard, and Remington drove Seagraves to a hospital to receive treatment, once released they take him back to his home.  This home visit appears in the film, but is put into sharper focus.  For example, the home visit is used to introduce the remaining characters (Gabrielle, Vera) and gives us a chance to see them interact, working through their hierarchy. 

In the novel this scene is played quite differently, although the central themes are there.  For example, heavy drug use is prevalent with descriptions as Gabrielle:  “rolled a small piece of resin in a twist of silver foil” and “She cooked the resin, and rolled the white powder into the open cigarette”.  Cronenberg doesn’t avoid the drugs issue, but he reduces it to marijuana use (although Gabrielle is seen with a tray of drug paraphernalia on her lap, though it’s never truly put in context).   

The novel also includes a character who is completely omitted from the film, a film-producer who had worked with Vaughan when he had his own television show.  He sits on the sofa next to Gabrielle, indulging in her drugs. 

Gabrielle herself gains some additional context.  We learn that she is:  “A social worker in the Stanwell child-welfare department, she was a long standing friend of Vera Seagrave.”  This additional information not only helps flesh out Gabreille as a character, but it also fills in some of the gaps that might leave a movie viewing audience feeling somewhat confused. 

One of the common topics of discussion around Crash as a movie is:  Who are these people?  How do they know each other?  How do they make a living? 

It is one of the curiosities of the movie that for the most part these things are simply not covered.  We see Ballard working at the outset of the film, and he is addressed as “the producer”, so we know what he does.  We learn that Remington works in the Immigration Department.  Catherine is seen briefly, once, in an office setting – but this is simply a connecting scene between two events, and we’re never given a context.  So what of Vaughan, Seagraves, Vera, and Gabrielle? 

Examination of the novel, such as the contents of Chapter Ten, can help us with background information.  We have already learnt that Seagraves has a business modifying vehicles, and that Gabrielle is a Social Worker.  This makes them more identifiable, though it doesn’t go far toward explaining how they became affected by the cult of Crash.  For some, being able to draw some sense from the central themes of Crash requires that there be a starting point which is, at least in some way, familiar.  This is in the source material, but excised from the movie.

Seagrave, and Seagraves world, is interesting within itself.  His relationship to cars, and the full range of possibilities that car driving offers, is more obvious than for just about everyone else.  Not only was he used to the risk of high-speed driving, he is now a stunt driver, performing well orchestrated accidents on a day-to-day basis.  He is  casual about his accident, albeit minor injuries aside, he is always surrounded by broken vehicles at his home (they sit in the garden). 

Seagraves and Vaughan enter into a discussion about the stunt work, with the former whimsically describing what he would like to do to the actors he works with.  From this sketch we find dialog lifted for the movie:  “…I can see those big tits, cut up on the dash.”  At the time this line is delivered in the novel it is not clear to whom he is referring precisely.  Cronenberg, for his film, decided to make things more obvious.  In fact, in the novel, Seagraves instigates the discussion about the next re-enactment, while in the movie, Vaughan gets the honor. 

The introduction of the Seagraves household feeds into Ballard’s getting invited into Vaughan’s workshop.  Cronenberg used this scene very cleverly.  At the time it occurs we are still unsure of the relationship between Ballard and Vaughan.  Ballard’s appreciation for Vaughan and his “project” is a process of exploration, and the information is teased out gradually.  When Vaughan does attempt to explain he does so in an abstract way, leaving room for a reassessment later while they are out driving. 

In the novel Vaughan is more straight-forward:  “This is the project Ballard…..I’m doing a special television series as part of the spin-off.”  This is a reference to the day-to-day work Vaughan must perform. 

It is also at this time that Ballard is introduced to Vaughan’s photographic album, viewing the pictures of Gabrielle at the time of her accident.  The details of the Gabrielle pictures are taken in, and Ballard is quick to draw parallels between the event and sex in all its guises.  In describing the accident, the vehicles, the injuries, and the blending of them all, JG Ballard suffuses it with sexual possibilities and images.   

The following examples serve to illustrate: 

“Her expressionless face looked up at the fireman’s he held his torch, almost as if waiting for some bizarre sexual assault.” 

“Later, even more bruises appeared on her arms and shoulders, the marks of the steering column and instrument panel, as if these lovers had beaten her out of an increasingly abstracted despair with a series of grotesque implements.” 

“Vaughan himself appeared in one of these photographs, staring down at the car in Byronic pose, Heavy penis visible in the tight crotch of his pants.” 

“Three months later, sitting beside her physiotherapist instructor in her new invalid car, she held the chromium treadles in her strong fingers as though they were steins of her clitoris.” 

“Her crippled thighs and wasted calf muscles were models for fascinating perversities.” 

The description of Gabrielle’s accident, and the new possibilities it offered seen through the filter of sexual desire, follows through when Ballard comes upon a series of pictures about his own events.   

The additional component at this stage is the homoeroticism involved, with Ballard pondering what he and Vaughan could indulge in.  While homosexuality, indeed sexuality of all kinds, is embraced within the Crash novel, the movie had to face the realities of its audience’s reaction.  Such is the make-up of mainstream audiences, and the conventions of censorship, that lesbianism is somehow more acceptable than homosexuality.  Cronenberg does not bypass this challenge; in fact he introduces it at this point within the movie in the subtle movements of Vaughan as he stands behind Ballard.  Later Ballard sodomizes Vaughan in the front of his car.  In the novel however, with more lenient censorship (acting with almost no constraints), JG Ballard doesn’t hesitate to examine the details of a sexual response between the two men. 

The revelry of Ballard and Vaughan is broken by the entry of the television producer with his drugs laden cigarette.  Cronenberg altered this, removing the Producer entirely, replacing him in this case with Gabrielle.  She even gets his line of dialog:  “The nerve center, huh?  Vaughan makes everything look like a crime.”  This dialog appears verbatim in the movie version. 

Further, the chapter ends with the introduction of a third set of pictures, a set completely removed from the movie – those including Elizabeth Taylor.  Ballard is apparently using her in the commercial he is filming, and Vaughan thinks he can meet her through this connection.  Of course, Vaughan’s desires go beyond a simple handshake. 

The chapter ends with the more obvious conjunction of sex and cars.  Vaughan hands Ballard a set of Swedish sex magazines in which models are posed with vehicles.  The descriptions of the pictures of copulating couples and their relationship to the cars are similar to those discussed earlier.  It asks us, as readers, to accept that sex and cars is already a huge part of our psyche, and that many of us have drawn appreciation for such things through avenues other than accident reports. 

Meanwhile Seagrave attempts to breast feed his son.