As of this writing, Videodrome is over 30 years old and it still disturbs me like it did when I saw it at age 20 in a mall movie theater in Athens, Georgia full of other University of Georgia students who also had no idea what they were getting into when they bought a ticket. Well, some of us knew who had seen heads a-popping in the movie Scanners or Rabid (Cronenberg doing zombies way before zombies were cool). I had an idea, but even so…nothing could have prepared me for Videodrome.
Cronenberg’s early films liked to mess with our fears of technological obsession. This film explores the nature of reality in the video age. Yes, video as in VHS. Some watching this film for the first time will see things they hardly recognize. Like many will wonder exactly what is that thing they keep sticking into James Woods’ stomach? It’s a VHS tape, by the way. You can still see them at the Smithsonian I believe. J It’s like watching Sorry, Wrong Number and going, “What’s that spiny thing on her phone?” Or watching When a Stranger Calls wondering what’s scary about a call coming from inside the house? With a cell phone, the call can come from anywhere! But one thing should still resonate with modern viewers and it's also something that shows how far ahead of his time Cronenberg was, and that’s how reality and fantasy become blurred when filtered through television.
Great speech from the movie:
“The battle for the mind in North America will be fought in the video arena. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore the television is a part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore whatever appears on the television screen, emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality and reality is less than television.”
“The battle for the mind in North America will be fought in the video arena. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore the television is a part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore whatever appears on the television screen, emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality and reality is less than television.”
Only today it’s more like the computer screen or the tablet screen or the iPhone screen. We’re no longer chained to a TV screen like in the movie. We carry them around with us and they DO turn some into mindless zombies. It still cracks me up that Korea has an actual statistic each year of how many people die from walking into traffic while texting on their phones.
What I really like the most about this movie is that it puts an interesting spin on the age old debate about how television exposure to violence and sexual images “contributes to a social climate of violence and sexual malaise.”
To apply a literary skill to this one, I’d like to look at the concept of THEME. The important thing to remember is that THEME is different from SUBJECT. You may think the theme of this film is sex and violence, but those are the subjects.
Theme is what a writer is trying to tell us about the subjects. In Videodrome, the fear of TV destroying our society becomes a literality as well as a tool of social reform in the most malevolent sense. While many claim erotic and violent TV shows lead to desensitization and dehumanization, Woods’ character Max Renn responds by saying it’s all about economics. It’s the chicken or the egg argument. If there were no demand for the product, the supply would not be as ubiquitous as it has become. If you want Hollywood to stop producing violent movies, then stop going to see violent movies and putting money in producers’ pockets. In Videodrome, Cronenberg takes it to extremes (hey, he’s Cronenberg!). Deborah Harry sums it up when her character says, “We crave stimulation for its own sake.” The irony is that a theme of the dangers of extreme visual violence in a film that’s jam packed with violent images of sex and death and torture and sadomasochism and bodies splitting in half and…well…yeah…you get it.
To apply a literary skill to this one, I’d like to look at the concept of THEME. The important thing to remember is that THEME is different from SUBJECT. You may think the theme of this film is sex and violence, but those are the subjects.
Theme is what a writer is trying to tell us about the subjects. In Videodrome, the fear of TV destroying our society becomes a literality as well as a tool of social reform in the most malevolent sense. While many claim erotic and violent TV shows lead to desensitization and dehumanization, Woods’ character Max Renn responds by saying it’s all about economics. It’s the chicken or the egg argument. If there were no demand for the product, the supply would not be as ubiquitous as it has become. If you want Hollywood to stop producing violent movies, then stop going to see violent movies and putting money in producers’ pockets. In Videodrome, Cronenberg takes it to extremes (hey, he’s Cronenberg!). Deborah Harry sums it up when her character says, “We crave stimulation for its own sake.” The irony is that a theme of the dangers of extreme visual violence in a film that’s jam packed with violent images of sex and death and torture and sadomasochism and bodies splitting in half and…well…yeah…you get it.
For a film that’s 30 years old, it’s still visually disturbing and that is an accomplishment. Cronenberg is steadily honing his visual craft while his storytelling in Videodrome is still developing. For me, his perfect marriage of nightmare visuals and nightmare storytelling doesn’t arrive until Dead Ringers. We’ll be looking at that one on the 25th. So until then…
Click HERE to read an interesting look at Videodrome by my friend who enjoys movies about as much as anyone.
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