DVD Tuesday: Long Live the New Flesh in Cronenberg's Vidoedrome
DVD Tuesday: Videodrome, reality TV and the temple of the new flesh -- David Cronenberg saw it all!
All hail Mike Judge's Idiocracy(2006): Every time my mind is boggled by the depths to which some new reality TV show has sunk, I can't help but remember the most popular show of Judge's dystopian future: "Ow, My Balls!"
Really says it all, doesn't it?
But much though I'm amused by Idiocracy, David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) really blows my mind (pace Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Home, a Heartache"):. The first time I saw it I was in college, the product of a world in which there were no PCs, no cell phones, no IM, no PDAs, no social networking sites, no games more sophisticated than Space Invaders and Pong… and yet I knew that Videodrome wasn't just a freaky kick.
I'd been following Cronenberg since his experimental shorts Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970) and it was clear to me that he was on to something: In some visceral way, he got both the seductiveness and the lurking horror of a future in which we're all connected: We watch TV, TV watches us, the video signal merges with our brains and the new flesh is born from the cathode ray graveyard.
Videodrome has a permanent niche in my psyche, but I found myself thinking about it all over again when I reviewed Signal (2007), a short, sharp, shocking little parable about the pervasive power of, well, the signal -- the connection with a larger world of order and procedure and control. In the end it's little more than a gloss on George Romero's 1973 The Crazies, but that's not a criticism: People keep writing The Crazies (Eli Roth's upcoming adaptation of Stephen King's novel Cell is the newest) because it keeps speaking to us: How willing are we to surrender to groupthink and how ready are we to fight?
"That's why I refuse to appear on television... except on television."
I loveVideodrome. Always have. It's so very "Steely Dan". This film was designed to make you feel uneasy. And it's exactly what I want from it! I think Cronenberg really mastered that sense of "unease" with Dead Ringers. And while I also like that movie, Videodrome is just more fun.
Now here's a movie that could have an awesome sequel. I wish Cronenberg would return to this perverse little noir world he created.
Nicki: "Take out your Swiss Army knife and cut me here, just a little." Max: "I'd say somebody's beat me to it."
