[Film] VIDEODROME (dir. David Cronenberg)

“The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye.” (Brian O’Blivion, Videodrome)

“When you are in the phone, or on the air, you have no body” (Marshal Mcluhan)

“SEX IS VIOLENT!!” (Jane's Addiction, “Ted, Just Admit It...”)

It's not an unfair statement to say that David Cronenberg is one of my all-time favourite film directors. In the realms of horror and sci-fi, no other director (in my opinion at least) has been able to match his film for their ability to push the envelope in communicating complex ideas while showing depraved, vicious and unsettling weirdness. Not John Carpenter, not Dario Argento, not Wes Craven, not even Kubrick with his film The Shining. Only George Romero (on a good day) manages to come close. Outside of the realms of genre his works stand toe to toe with Scorsese, Pasolini, Hitchcock, and Haneke for their ability and intelligence in shedding a light on the black abyss of the human condition and the moral ambivalence that lies beneath the ordinary and mundane of modern society.

While Cronenberg's films these days concern themselves with ideas of identity, of the self and the human psyche (Spider, Eastern Promise, A History Of Violence), it was back in the 1970s, '80s, and ‘90s where he made his name making a series of films, starting with Sliver and ending with Existenz, that exposed our underlying corporeal fears of sex, morality and mortality. These films often contained themes of infection, mutation, sex, disease, and the mechanics of surgery in ways never realised before.

Of these films, VIDEODROME stands as his truest statement on celluloid. Even though it is now 30 years old, it still has the power to unsettle and shock audiences, while many of the themes and messages stand as true today as they did back then. The film’s comments on society, media, transhumanism and visceral body horror all collide together in a big goopy mess. It works on numerous levels, meaning that it can withstand repeated screenings as well as the onset of time and still retain a level of celluloid freshness.

The plot of the film is simple enough. The protagonist, Max Renn (James Woods), manages a small Cable TV channel in Toronto that churns out a sensationalist mix of soft core porn and hardcore violence. In his quest to obtain even meatier programming, he chances upon a satellite signal showing a programme called “Videodrome,” a plotless show that apparently depicts the brutal torture and murder of anonymous victims. Entranced by the visceral nature of the film, Max becomes obsessed with the origins programme, but the more he watches it, the more his body and grip on reality becomes more tenuous.

The first thing that really grabs you is of course the horror on display, which is inventive and well done, yet utterly disturbing. Today, you know that if someone tried to remake Videodrome, then they would throw layer upon layer of CGI effects all over the shop, making it look spectacular, but ultimately an inert experience. The effects in Videodrome though, with their use of animatronics, latex and slime, feel truly organic, on a par with the effects from John Carpenter’s The Thing. Videotapes breathe in and out. TVs become alive, displaying engorged erectile veins. Guns grow to become an organic extension of the body. Horrific tumours abound... Everything glistens with moisture and wetness, aroused and expectant.

And that’s before we even reach the stomach vagina. The idea of growing sexual organs to transmit data is both original and horrific. When he prods and caresses his new addition with his gun, it’s both erotic and displaying violent overtones. And when the character of Barry Convex forcibly inserts a brainwashing tape into Max’s stomach, it’s effectively violent sexual assault. The chest bursting scene in Alien accepted, no other film manages to work on the male fear of sexual violence so effectively.

Along with the effects work, the pacing of Videodrome as with many of his films, is different from your usual horror film. Eschewing the use of the standard jump scare that would normally make your heart go faster, the camerawork in many scenes is slow and deliberate, almost of a documental nature. It lingers from a distance, allowing you to develop a voyeuristic interest, and a sense of unease in what is happening. The score [listen] accompanying the film (composed by regular collaborator Howard Shore) is minimalistic, yet doomy and portentous in its tone.

Beyond the graphic horror, Videodrome deals with themes of mass media, the relationship between technology and the human body, and how our nature of reality is not necessarily absolute. Looking back with today’s eyes, the technological terrain inhabited by the characters in the film is of a decidedly grubby, lo-fi nature. There are no mobiles, no Internet or e-mail (faxes only please), no social media, and instead of torrent downloading, you need a huge satellite dish to be able to get a flickering TV signal from far away. The TV and video pictures have a grainy and grimy texture to them.

But once you get past the shift in the technological progress, the messages of the film still resonate. While we had the revolution of high speed Internet over the last decade, the period when Videodrome was released also saw a revolution in mass consumption of visual media, through the VCR/Betamax wars, and the proliferation of home video cameras and cable television. With such massive changes in our media consumption often come concerns about the perceived danger it could pose to society, especially young people. This manifested itself in real life crusades such as “Video Nasties,” the “Parental Advisory” stickers from the PMRC, subliminal messages in records and i-Dosing, to modern campaigns to places blocks on the net to protect people against violence and porn. Videodrome with its idea that a specialised TV signal that can physically and mentally alter a human being, manages to tap into many people’s underlying fears of new technology, and how it can interact, influence and control people in a negative fashion.

Today we are a generation of over stimulated, time-poor wretches, drowning in cultural and information effluent. Yet despite being from a different era, Max Renn (played brilliantly by James Woods) is someone who is very much a man of our times. He is a man who is saturated in the trash of culture and is overdosed on caffeine, cigarettes and exploitative sex and violence. He is twitchy, impulsive, engages in kinky sex with his girlfriend Nikki (another person who is overstimulated), and as his consumptions grow, he finds himself looking for bigger, more visceral thrills. In an early scene in the TV stations boardroom, Max and his partners are viewing the results of his Japanese softcore porn purchase, yet he is bored and restless with what’s on the screen. “I'm looking for something that'll... break through. You know? Something… tough.” When he is taking part in a TV debate on the nature of TV sex and violence, he hurls out platitudes about choice and freedoms, but such is his moral ambivalence, it's as much to convince himself as other, and as such they ring hollow.

As Max’s exposure to Videodrome increases and his hallucinations become stronger, the film constantly asks us just what we can safely call “real” in absolute terms. Cronenberg shows this subtlety at first, using jump cuts to insinuate him slapping his secretary (or is it his girlfriend Nikki?) in his flat. But by the point in the film where he allows his hallucinations to be recorded, the world around has become completely warped, to the point where we are confused as he is as to what is real and what isn’t. The climax of the film is deliberately kept open ended as to whether the events in the film actually happened or if they are the result of his growing psychosis. The strength of Videodrome is that either choice works just as well in the narrative (of course if you really want to fuck with people, then just tell them that you never see Max take off the helmet that is recording his hallucinations).

In many ways Videodrome's idea of people adopting and interacting with a more virtual world in place of reality is eerily prophetic of our times. As the media guru character of Brian O’Blivion (a dead man who communicates from beyond the grave via monologue on videotape) states, "After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?" Although Cronenberg himself said that he was really thinking about the role of interactive TV, these days many of us live out most of our daily lives in an Internet landscape that is all encompassing. A formless world where geography and time is rendered flux, where our interactions, friendships and even relationship are created, fostered and laid out via Skype, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. While we can safely tell the difference between this version of reality and IRL outside, for many they would much rather prefer to live their lives out in the digital ether than face to face.

Videodrome is one of those rare films in that the level of storytelling continuously asks questions and throws ideas at the viewer, yet also draws you into a grand illusion that is so surreal yet manages to convince to completely accept what is happening before your eyes. You always leave the cinema going “what just... happened?”
- Bob Cluness

Videodrome was recently screened in Bíó Paradís as a part of the ongoing Svartir Sunnudagar series, that have successfully continued since its inception two years ago. Get familiar with the cinema and its films here. Furthermore, keep up with Svartir Sunnudagar here.

Read more Bob Cluness at Reykjavík Sex Farm!

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