The only truly alien planet is Earth. - UniCA Eprints - Università degli ...

Aparelho Voador a Baixa Altitude (2002), tratto da “Low-Flying Aircraft” (1975), il centro del
racconto è una sorta di guerra eugenetica, in cui il regime vuole eliminare prima della nascita gli
Zotes, bambini anormali, devianti, per preservare la progenie dominante. La Nordlund modifica la
prospettiva originale della narrazione in chiave femminile, guadagnandosi dallo stesso McGrath un
altro giudizio non del tutto positivo 397 .
Concludiamo questo breve excursus nella presenza ballardiana nel cinema con questo passo
di The Atrocity Exhibition, nel quale il protagonista assiste alla proiezione di pellicole contenenti
immagini disturbanti, come operazioni chirurgiche, disastri aerei e automobilistici, guerra e morte
violenta:
Travers walked around the rear gangway, now and then joining in the applause, interested to watch
these students and middle-aged cinephiles. Endlesssly, the films unwound: images of neuro-surgery and
organ transplants, autism and senile dementia, auto disasters and plane crashes. Above all, the montage
landscapes of war and death: newsreels from the Congo and Vietnam, execution squad instruction films, a
documentary on the operation of a lethal chamber 398 .
eschew freedom for an “unusually normal” life. Only the space boy, Adam, and the Controller who supplies the
voiceover know any different – Adam, because he’s figured out the secret of the space ship, and our narrator, who is in
on the undefined social experiment the ship represents. […] We learn that after 40 years of thinking they were flying to
Orion all the imaginary spaceship’s crew will be told they never left. Returning to the ship, our narrator pauses with a
ball that looks suspiciously like the earth and soliloquizes: “Where is the frontier between dream and reality?” Realizing
even the earth and the solar system are like the fake ship, all moving through space at 40 miles a second to some infinite
destination, he philosophically concludes, “we are all on an eternal journey…” Interesting reaction from someone
whose life’s work of fooling people has been abruptly terminated. […] [A]s the names of the kids are Adam and Eve,
one might suggest this is a riff on the biblical myth, except in this case the protagonists escape from an ironically hellish
Eden, watched by the serpent-like controller, who discovers the kids have already found and eaten the apple. The two
plot twists – the controller is in on the ruse, and later so is Adam – are stripped of any psychological impact, although
they still retain some of their shock value. We basically don’t know enough about the characters to develop any feeling
for them. The narrator doesn’t even have a name. Mr Controller? Adam seems normal, unlike Ballard’s brainiac
dictator, Abel, and the abridged plot means Nordlund is unable to bring in Ballard’s concerns over “human zoos” and
mind control and how a little secret knowledge can be used for different ends. Devoid of psychological nuance and
character, short on plot, and shorter on motive, this film becomes a one-trick pony, and is only saved in some measure
by its imaginative direction and production. […] But is it Ballardian? I’d say no, given its sharp focus on the social and
not the psychological.» Rick McGrath, “Journey To Orion: Taking The Shortcut to Centaurus”, recensione, in un
messaggio dell’autore inviato alla JGB mailing list il 24/08/2008 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jgb).
397 «Granted, the basic plot is still there – the deformed baby is given to Carmen after the epiphany that these newborn
aren’t monsters – but pretty well everything else – save the location – is changed to a feminine perspective. OK, is that
ballardian? Perhaps. It is a parallel version. […] Nordlund has created the same psychological war zone as Ballard,
putting Eros against Thanatos, but she uses a much less psychologically sensitive path than Ballard, replacing personal
“newsreels from Hell” and the attendant disgust with ‘monsters’ one should fear because they’re seen as grotesque
throwbacks to an earlier, more primitive time.» R. McGrath, “Aparelho Voador a Baixa Altitude: Explaining the Ways
of God to Women”, recensione, ivi.
398 J. G. Ballard, Atrocity, a cura di V. Vale e A. Juno, op. cit., p. 72.
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