J G Ballard at Club Med

J G Ballard at Club Med

[I wrote about the novelist J G Ballard in April 2016. He was a writer preoccupied with what he saw as the frailties of the structures holding modern civilisations together, and the chaos and savagery that have the potential to emerge if those structures bend or collapse. He also detected in human nature a disturbing tendency to be drawn towards such anarchy. His fictions explore these themes in imagined closed, or closely-linked, communities that “go wrong” in horrible ways. Much though I enjoyed my stay in a Club Med resort, it immediately struck me as fertile ground for the Ballardian imagination…]

Monsieur Ballard, you remember that tonight’s dress code is “masked”? For this night, we regret that no children are allowed. Our monitors will ensure both their absence and their safety. We call it ‘Le Soir des Libertines’. We have an understanding with the local police. Our fully trained medical staff are on hand in case of incidents..

There is only one rule tonight. It is that there are no rules – absolutely none.

Club Med provides classic Ballard material- the closed, or fairly closed community, with characteristics that can, in imagination at least, be turned into the ingredients of a macabre dystopia.

Let me be clear. Club Med has a wonderful formula for all immersive, all-inclusive holidays, family and otherwise. But the formula relies on certain benign artificialities, susceptible to Ballardian tweaks.

First up: once you pass a Club Med resort’s “event horizon” (ie you arrive), there’s none of the usual reasons (ie bars and restaurants) to go anywhere else. (Of course, you will probably be doing some sort of outside activity, which may or may not be by Club Med’s direct provision.) Every meal is catered for, every drink, alcoholic or otherwise, is yours to command. Every child can be whisked off, out of sight and mind, from early to late afternoon. When the children return, nobody minds if they turn the communal areas into a riotous playground.

So, a bit like being on a grounded cruise ship; or in a gated community; or in a vast High Rise…

Second up: the club Med ethos is based on entertainment, on Everyone Having some Fun, or at least seeming to have it. This is from the Club Med website:

At Club Med, kindness is a profession… and that profession is more than a job, it’s a lifestyle, it’s a form of life…The profession of Gentil Organisateur (ie the main staff) .. is unique …[It] brings them close to customers and produces moments of happiness..

The ethos manifests  itself in the relentless smiling and bonjouring of the many staff whenever they pass you, through their practice of coming to sit with you at meals to make happy small talk, to the every-evening themes complete with dress code, compered sing-alongs and dancing.

Third up: the name “Club”- in legal terms, one no longer; but the clubbiness lives on, in the professional geniality and the ubiquitous branding (and selling of branded stuff), the badging of staff as GOs. There is an air of a convention, not so much a political one, more hobbyist; but perhaps a little cultish, in a gentle way.

These features could be viewed through a dystopian lens. Where to inject a bit, or a lot, of manipulative cruelty in the style of the Master?

The club organisers could recruit guests to perverse games…. A snow storm could shut off a resort for days or weeks, and nationalist tensions could simmer and erupt lethally, pitting French against British… The long suffering guardians of the infant Club Medders could prove to be sinister pied pipers, turning the innocents into feral tiny brutes, as in Lord of the Flies….A dissident group of guests could revolt, seize a wing of the resort and wage guerrilla warfare against the rest.

Let us hope that it is never (per Keats) “like Adam’s dream – he awoke and found it truth”. But it would certainly be Ballard’s.

April 2019