Letter: `Crash' is our `Frankenstein' `Crash' is our `Frankenstein' `Crash' test dummies...?

Admonishing you for publishing an extract from the screenplay of Crash, Robert Shipway (Letters, 17 November) asks: "Do you believe that `sexual arousal by car collision syndrome' is a common phenomenon...?" I can answer that I do not. Do I believe that grave robbery by scientists in order to create composite human beings was a common phenomenon 200 years ago? I do not.

What I do believe is that Frankenstein tapped a deep ambiguity about human power to interfere in organic processes; and that Crash offers a shocking metaphor for a real contemporary phenomenon, the sexualisation of technology. Crash may not prove a classic, but Ballard and Cronenberg have made fictional monsters that personify a social threat. This brings about awareness, discussion and debate which is what makes any subject "worth artistic treatment".

Janet Burroway

London W9