How my father, JG Ballard, foresaw our strange present
With this year’s mix of dramatic politics and all-powerful technology, the novelist has been the man of the hour. His daughter is not surprised
It’s unlikely JG Ballard would have been surprised at the rise of Donald Trump from American Apprentice to the White House. Photograph: Heidi Gutman/David Giesbrecht/NBC
‘Reality is now a kind of huge advertising campaign, selling television’s image of what life is about.” That could be a response to recent events, but JG Ballard said those words in 1988. As readers of my father will know, he was fascinated by the way advances in technology and the mass media revolutionised our lives.
When reality television became a massive new trend, my father was unsurprised. He once said to me: “How about a series with celebrities fighting?” (I was by then a TV producer, no doubt influenced by the fascination with which he watched the small screen at home.) His suggestion was uttered, of course, with a certain amount of glee in his voice and a mischievous chuckle. And he was right – we’ve seen that fight many times over now, from I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here to other incarnations. American cable TV is awash with such formats.
But in a way, TV itself is now finding itself outdated, making way for new forms of technology, new forms of entertainment and reality. He predicted YouTube nearly 30 years ago, in an interview with Vogue, a medium “in which each of us will be both star and supporting player. Every one of our actions during the day, across the entire spectrum of domestic life, will be instantly recorded on videotape. In the evening we will sit back to scan the rushes, selected by a computer trained to pick out only our best profiles, our wittiest dialogue, our most affecting expressions filmed through the kindest filters, and then stitch these together into a heightened re-enactment of the day.”
We’ll also have the freedom to pretend to be mass murderers, to be an active participant in our own fantasies and dramas
He was also predicting other social media. My children have grown up with Facebook and now Instagram and I see them and their friends filtering and manipulating their profiles and photos to present what they see as the best version of themselves and their lives. Photos are retouched before posting, social media etiquette is carefully positioned.
It’s a technological freedom that could take dark turns. “We’ll also have the freedom to pretend to be a mass murderer for the evening… You’ll no longer be an external spectator to fiction created by others, but an active participant in your own fantasies/dramas,” my father wrote.
What’s this, but virtual reality? Consider the Audi Virtual Experience car, which enables a driver to wear a headset and then go out for a drive in a real car.
The simulation takes place on a controlled track at Munich airport. The virtual world features a track around a virtual city. In the virtual world, a cyclist falls over and another virtual car pulls out in front of the driver. It doesn’t feel like we are a world away from the world of Crash (the Ballard book, later adapted for film) and my father’s famous equation: sex x technology = the future.
However, where the developments in media technology have had the most profound impact is on the world of politics. I would love to know what my father would have to say about Donald Trump’s rapid political rise and his race for the White House. He would have found it fascinating. Given that he predicted a B-movie actor (Ronald Reagan) becoming president, I doubt he would have been surprised that a TV reality star ended up doing the same.
But it’s hard to imagine it happening in a world before television and social media. TV loves Trump’s soundbite style – his brashness and machismo. In the American Apprentice series, Trump sat in a boardroom similar to the Oval Office. It was a dramatic setting clearly designed to accentuate his power: the mahogany oak table, the lighting, the American flag in the background and the informed advisers conjure an image of Trump as pseudo-president.
Perhaps he was plausible as a leader to the American public because he had appeared in their living rooms for so long, playing a fictional commander. The idea of a powerful and decisive leader who dismisses people with a fierce “You’re fired!” can become a reality. In Britain, the recent European Union referendum was also played out like a TV show. The television debates were staged like a talent show, with the politicians on stage debating in short, soundbite style. One of the debates was held at Wembley Arena – in front of a vast crowd who either hollered approval or jeered, in the style of the Hunger Games films.
This was not a debate that was conducted with intelligence and due consideration, even though it had severe implications for the UK’s future. It was about who performed best on TV. Like another episode of The X Factor, except that Britain got to lose its future health and stability, rather than missing out on a recording contract.
Interestingly, the tide of nationalist, anti-immigration fervour was something my father had written about in Millennium People and Kingdom Come. We are now seeing this rise in nationalist sentiment coming to the fore in other parts of Europe, all played out on TV of course.
Trump, Marine Le Pen, the break-up of Europe, the rise of nationalism… violent terrorist attacks… the world feels eerily like a world dreamt up by Ballard. Meanwhile, to close the loop on where my father first came in, we will retreat into new private worlds of fantasy and escape through virtual reality.
Bea Ballard is executive producer of the Jonathan Ross show, and former creative head of BBC Entertainment Events.
Source: Guardian.com