In The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard, the author explores sexuality in a very sterile, surgical way. This seemingly sexually removed approach in fact thrusts the reader further into the subject with images of death, specifically through the use of pictures, politics, psychology, and language. A very methodic, well thought-out structure brings this literature to sexual depths in which the reader might otherwise hesitate to delve; this sterile method, however, allows the reader to take an intellectual, though still perverted, approach to the subjects of sex and sexuality.

While some may say that pictures in a book are not part of the book's literature because they are not written words, in this book specifically the pictures do indeed weigh heavily and contribute to the words surrounding them. These pictures serve to break down the barriers of the body, to present them from a removed, dehumanized point of view. The first illustration (on page 8) depicts a section of vertebrae (and shattered pieces thereof), a penis cleanly disconnected from a body, and some sort of piping (perhaps a blowtorch head). Each of these images has a triangle imposed on them, and they are all labeled as if they are scientific specimens grouped for comparison. The broken vertebrae symbolizes death, the penis symbolizes sex. The piping dehumanizes the other two objects; the similar triangles on each object serves to mathematically or scientifically equate the three objects, making death and sex both similar in a perverse way.

Similarly, the picture on page 18 combines sex and death (though not literally death, but injury) by presenting an image of a girl with a finger in her vagina, and two pictures of bone dislocation and fracture superimposed on it. Other pictures are photographs of very phallic objects, such as the building on page 50, which seems to be a negative print of a photograph to make it dark, reminiscent of death and perversity. And similar to the first picture mentioned, the image on page 55 (in the section "The Great American Nude") illustrates the cross-section of a person's face with a penis in its mouth. This too is labeled with letters, and there are other images superimposed on it of grotesque sexual nature (such as the possibly cut or decaying flesh of a nipple).

Likewise, as these pictures explicitly show this sexual nature, Ballard explicitly illustrates in words the likeness of the Presidents' faces to penises in the section entitled "Why I want to Fuck Ronald Reagan":

Results confirm the probability of Presidential figures being perceived primarily in genital terms; the face of L.B. Johnson is clearly genital in significant appearance-the nasal prepuce, scrotal jaw, etc. Faces were seen as either circumcised (JFK, Khruschev) or uncircumcised (LBJ, Adenauer). ... Reagan's face was uniformly perceived as a penile erection. Patients were encouraged to devise the optimum sex-death of Ronald Reagan. (107)

Earlier in this chapter, the author uses fictional psychological experiments to illustrate a strong link between sex and death. He reports, "In 82 percent of cases massive rear-end collisions were selected with a preference for expressed fecal matter and rectal hemorrhages" (105). This revolting "statistic" further stresses the author's attempt to illustrate the connection between sexual desire and death. Similarly, the chapter entitled "Crash!" concerns itself wholly on the connection between car accidents and sexual desire.

This theme of sexuality ties the chapters together, making it an interesting exploration of sexuality, rather than a random, disjointed piece of modern literature. The importance of this book is not that Ballard uses a new literary style or that his writing is at a heightened, beautiful level; rather, it goes beyond pornography to make people really think about sexual desire. This very sterile approach keeps this work from being pornography, and it allows the reader to continue reading, forcing him to recognize, question, and ponder over this inherent connection between death and sexual desire.