Thoughts on the book by J.G. Ballard
"In a totally sane society, madness is the only
freedom."
The problem with being prescient is that sooner
or later the rest of the world catches up with you, leaving your predictions,
once innovative and shocking, entirely out-of-date. It could be argued that
such a fate has befallen "Running Wild."
Written by J.G. Ballard as a response to the
Hungerford massacre, "Running Wild" outlines, in forensic detail, the
peculiarities of a strange killing spree. The entire adult population of a
gated, upper-middle-class, suburban enclave along the Thames valley, is dead,
their children abducted. Over the course of the book, a psychiatric advisor
from Scotland Yard will piece together the various clues and oddities
surrounding the case until the shocking truth becomes clear.
Running Wild [J.G. Ballard, 1988]:
When Ballard wrote the book in the late 1980s, the
concept of the "spree killing" was something of a rarity in the UK.
Crimes like the massacre at Hungerford weren't supposed to happen. Not in suburban
England. Among other crimes, we had terror attacks and abductions, domestic
violence and robberies gone wrong, but the appearance of something as senseless
but seemingly well-orchestrated as the massacre in Hungerford was shocking in
its lack of precedence.
The Hungerford massacre occurred on the 19th of August
1987. Michael Ryan, a 27-year-old unemployed handyman and gun enthusiast, shot
dead 16 people, including a police officer and his own mother, before shooting
himself. His final words to a police negotiator, "I wish I'd stayed in bed",
grimly captured something of the banal existentialism of the whole ordeal, and
the selfishness of the violence itself.
The Hungerford Massacre (BBC Documentary) [Teresa
Hunt, 2005]:
Carrying a handgun and two semi-automatic rifles while
dressed in full camouflage, Ryan must have cut a surreal figure as he stalked the
streets of this quiet English suburb, opening fire on anyone he encountered. It's
the incongruity of the image that's terrifying. Ryan as the displaced soldier
of fortune; the relic to some forgotten conflict, wandering suburban streets as
if patrolling an occupied territory, searching for a war that only exists in his
own tortured mind.
Ballard in particular must have been fascinated by
this image and the machinations of this kind of violence that was almost
performative in its public exhibition, as the narrative of "Running
Wild", sparse and to the point as it is, seems to exist specifically to
facilitate a discussion on the senselessness of a crime like that of Hungerford,
but also like many of the other senseless spree-killings that have followed in
its wake.
It is here where Ballard's prescience has been
diminished. Without engaging in spoilers, the mystery surrounding the massacre
at Ballard's fictional Pangbourne Village eventually
leads to a conclusion that its central character, Dr Richard Greville, and his
colleagues on the periphery of the narrative, consider too shocking to
entertain. Unfortunately, for those of us that have lived through the
deplorable murders of James Bulger and Ana Kriégel, or the massacres at
Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Virginia Tech and others,
it appears sadly less shocking, instead merely predictive of a kind of violence
that is now all too common within western society, and a breed of perpetrator that
would have once been considered above suspicion.
Written as a series of journal entries in a largely
cold, professional voice, "Running Wild" is never exploitative or
salacious in its enquiry. It attempts, quite admirably, to understand through
hypothetical conjecture, how a crime like Hungerford, which, from the outside
in, appeared totally senseless and without intent, could happen in a setting as
incompatible as the leafy narrow streets of suburban England, and in doing so,
allows the reader to ruminate on subsequent but similar atrocities, such as the
massacres carried out by Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane Scotland, Martin Bryant in
Port Arthur Tasmania, Derrick Bird in Cumbria England or Omar Mateen in Orlando
Florida.
If the book fails to offer any concrete reasons for
why such crimes not only occur but have seemingly become a pandemic in the
decades since its initial publication, then it's by no means a flaw. Instead, it's
the inability of both the writer and his central character to fully explain or
comprehend this expression of violence that makes it all the more unsettling.
Artwork by Stanley Donwood for the 4th
Estate re-issues of Ballard's work [Photographer unknown, 2015]:
What Ballard does arrive at, however, is a theme of
social conformity and the notion of violence as an act of rebellion. There's a satirical
aspect to this in which the author goes to great and often darkly comic lengths
to centre the affluence and cultured leanings of the Pangbourne residents as a stark
contrast to the violence brought against them.
Throughout his career, Ballard has concerned himself
with the idea of social regression; of seemingly cultivated and civilized
societies descending into levels of primal violence and corporeal degradation. In
this context, the violence becomes a protest against societal order; an attempt
to regain a sense of self by disrupting the organized structure and routine of
suburban middle-class civility; a kind of ideological terrorism.
Ballard would return to the same theme in several of
his later books, specifically "Cocaine Nights" (1996), "Super
Cannes" (2000), "Millennium People" (2003) and "Kingdom
Come" (2006) respectively. In each of these books, a random act of violence propels the narrative forwards.
As the world continued to change and crimes like the one depicted in "Running Wild" became sadly more widespread, Ballard continued to ask questions; placing such seemingly senseless bursts of performative violence within a context of political terrorism, the homogenous, depersonalized nature of twenty-first century existence, and the growing rise of the kind of specifically British fascism that ultimately led to Brexit.
