Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo in the bus crash scene [1]
in Frida (dir. Julie Taymor, 2002)
I.
Like most people, I knew that the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo had been seriously injured in a collision involving a wooden bus and an electric streetcar (that may or may not have been named Deseo). But until a few days ago, I didn't know details of the accident or the nature and extent of her injuries.
Now that I do, however, I can see why this event has taken on such metaphorical (and near mythical) status. It wasn't fatal, but it was certainly fateful and reveals not only the brutal reality of what happens when vulnerable bodies are smashed by merciless mechanical forces, but how moments of grotesque horror and suffering can have terrible beauty and be transformative.
Kahlo would say afterwards that she lost her virginity on the day of the accident: the broken iron handrail that pierced her lower body entered via her pelvic region and exited through her vagina (puncturing her uterus as it did so) [2]. But she was not only born a woman on 17 September 1925, but born an artist and what might be called a Ballardian angel ...
II.
For some reason, the sight of Jesus on his Cross has never really resonated with me.
I know crucifixion was designed to maximise suffering over a prolonged period of time - we have the modern word excruciating to remind us of this - and it can't be much fun to have large nails driven through one's hands and feet; as the artist Sebastian Horsley courageously confirmed in 2000 when he re-enacted the Passion of the Christ [3].
But, my compassion for Jesus is limited by the fact that he predicted (some might say provoked) his own gruesome fate whilst doing nothing to prevent such, believing as he did that it was a central and pre-ordained part of God's redemptive plan. In other words, he connived in his own crucifixion and in doing so nailed us all to the Cross.
Further, we are also led to believe that this act of self-sacrifice was something of a sham. For just three days later he was up and about and back from the dead having learned nothing. His resurrection renders his death meaningless - just as his supernatural ascension makes mortal life seem of no real significance.
Frida Kahlo's impaling on a metal pole on the other hand - her rebirth and transformation - seems much more real, much more beautiful, much more moving, much more inspiring to me. I don't adore Kahlo or see her as some kind feminist deity or queer icon - I don't even particularly like her work [4] - but I'd rather sip tequila with her than munch dry bread with Jesus.
III.
Unfortunately for Kahlo, all the tequila in the world wasn't enough to numb completely the severe lifelong physical pain she experienced due to the accident, multiple surgeries, several miscarriages, and the emotional distress caused by her rollercoaster marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivera (twenty years her senior).
She once amusingly wrote: Bebía porque quería ahogar mis penas, pero las malvadas aprendieron a nadar ... [5]. However, we're not here to discuss her drinking habits, her unhappiness, or her art.
We're here, rather, to focus on the crash which has acquired a permanent place in the popular imagination because of the highly surreal details surrounding it - most of which were actually true, including the fact that a fellow passenger was carrying a packet of gold paint powder that burst open on impact and covered Kahlo's bleeding, semi-naked body, creating a horrific yet visually striking and magical image [6].
And then there's the handrail, which we have already mentioned ...
IV.
Certain people - including medieval Christians and Nazi occultists - get terribly excited over what is sometimes referred to as the Spear of Destiny (i.e., the lance with which one of the Roman soldiers is said to have pierced the side of Christ on the Cross to ensure that he was dead before being taken down).
Indeed, just like Kirk Brandon, I was a little obsessed with Trevor Ravenscroft's bizarre but influential bestselling book of that title in the early-mid '80s [7].
Happily, such holy relics now mean nothing to me and I find the thought of Frida Kahlo's little body being impaled with a snapped iron handrail is more fascinating to me than the thought of Jesus being pricked like a sausage by some superstitious Roman centurion.
And, to tell the truth, I'm a little surprised and disappointed that J. G. Ballard didn't mention Kahlo and her accident in his astonishing novel Crash (1973) [8]. The nature and severity of her injuries and the fact she then had to rely on surgical corsets, back braces, and metal prosthetics, perfectly anticipate his work: was he never tempted to call Gabrielle Frida and give her a monobrow?
V.
In sum: Ballard missed a trick!
Connecting Kahlo's real-life accident to his dystopian fiction would have added a brilliant layer to his study of how human trauma, technology, art, sex, and death are entwined. Like the characters in Crash who obsessively photograph and document collisions, Kahlo spent the rest of her life reimagining and mythologising the exact moment her body was fucked by public transport.
Whether the nightmarish events endured by Kahlo and Ballard's crash-loving protagonists provide a liberating line of flight for everyone is, of course, debatable. Not all of us subscribe to a kinky cyborg aesthetic in which human flesh perversely fuses with metal, and wounds become the site of a new sexuality.
(There are still Christians, for example, who prefer to fantasise about a spiritual union with Christ.)
Ultimately, both Kahlo and Ballard suggest that when the human body is shattered by motor vehicles the victim does not simply heal; they are forced to reinvent what it means to be human within a technological world.
Not that the current exhibition at the Tate - Frida: The Making of an Icon - hints at anything like this: it prefers to celebrate the clichéd and kitschy commodification of Kahlo rather than recognise her as the ultimate nightmare angel born of unimaginable violence, physical suffering, social non-conformity and revolutionary politics.
El accidente (17 September 1926), graphite on paper
(Colección Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera) [9]
Notes
[1] This scene - and the surreal operating room sequence that follows in which director Julie Taymor cleverly incorporated stop-motion animation and traditional Mexican Día de los Muertos imagery - can be viewed on YouTube: click here.
[2] Kahlo was a promiscuous bisexual who had affairs with figures ranging from Leon Trotsky to Josephine Baker. Nevertheless, her sexuality - like her art - was to a large extent shaped by her accident and she fucked as an act of defiance and a means of reclaiming power over (and pleasure from) a broken body.
[3] See the post: 'On the Crucifixion of Sebastian Horsley' (4 April 2015).
[4] The modern cultural industry has turned Kahlo into a heavily commercialised simulation and pop icon; see the sister post to this one - 'Fridamania: Notes on a Frida Kahlo Exhibition as a Perfect Crime Scene' (22 October 2026).
[5] This is commonly translated into English as: 'I drank so as to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.' It's an internet variation of a line originally written by Kahlo in a letter to Ella Wolfe (19 October 1938); see The Letters of Frida Kahlo: Cartas Apasionadas, compiled by Martha Zamora (Chronicle Books, 1995).
[6] This scene was powerfully recreated in Julie Taymore's 2002 film, Frida, starring Salma Hayek - see the screenshot above which I chose to illustrate this post.
[7] Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny (Neville Spearman Publishers, 1972).
[8] As far as I remember, Ballard makes no mention of Kahlo in Crash, although he does invoke her name in a much later novel Millennium People (2003), in which the character Sally Markham is obsessed by Kahlo's life and work following a serious accident in Lisbon involving a tram. Ballard shows how modern individuals often base their identities on the lives of famous people in order to add a little glamour to their own boring lives and find some sense of meaning.
Kahlo's absence from Crash has been a point of discussion among critics and fans of the book. See, for example, Steve Finbow's excellent essay, 'The Absent Muse: the Terminal Prosthesis of Frida Kahlo and J. G. Ballard', on creatrixmag.com (5 July 2026).
[9] A year after the accident that enabled her to become the woman she was, Kahlo
recalled the event in this rather charming pencil sketch.
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