Editorials
When Fiction Becomes Reality: How ‘Videodrome’ Is More Relevant Than Ever at 40
For many, Videodrome (1983) remains David Cronenberg’s signature film. It is not his most successful or necessarily even his best, but it does most thoroughly define the descriptor “Cronenbergian.” It is a distillation of many of the themes and motifs he would explore throughout his filmography. Along with The Fly (1986), it is perhaps his greatest depiction of the subgenre that he is most often associated with—body horror, but it also explores a number of philosophical ideas that thread their way through much of his body of work. Above all, Videodrome is an often uncomfortable interrogation of humanity’s relationship with violence, entertainment, and media, and forty years after its release, that interrogation has only become more disturbing and prescient.
Videodrome is an idea movie wrapped up in a mystery/conspiracy plot. That the plot makes any sense at all is rather remarkable considering, due to Canadian tax shelter policies, shooting began without a finished script and much of it was shaped on the set and in the editing room. This sculptural process ultimately works to the film’s benefit as the leaps from sequence to sequence coupled with its visceral imagery emphasize its ambiguities, making it a film that worms its way into the psyche, forcing viewers to contemplate its mysteries long after they have left the theater or turned off the television. Ultimately it is the striking visuals and the complex ideas about philosophy, media, technology, politics, and their effects on the human body that make Videodrome endlessly relevant and fascinating.
The politics of the film are not as clear cut as they so often are in movies now. An aspect of Videodrome is the ways that both the political right and left use media to their own ends with neither side shown in an entirely favorable light. Though the film ultimately sides more with the left, represented by Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley), his daughter Bianca (Sonja Smits), and television executive Masha (Lynne Gorman), both sides use Max Renn (James Woods) as a pawn in their death game. This political ambiguity was problematic for some, particularly Canadian critic Robin Wood who objected that Cronenberg seemed to come down on both sides of the political spectrum and called his films reactionary. In actuality, Cronenberg presents the discussion and allows the audience to draw its own conclusions.
The tech pirate Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) and Barry Convex (Leslie Carlson) represent the political right, objecting that North America has “gone soft” as the rest of the world has hardened. The character of Barry Convex, who Cronenberg based on the now disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, is the image of a spokesperson for the so-called “moral majority,” embodying the contradictions of that ideology. Convex’s company does performative charitable work, making inexpensive eyeglasses for the third world, but also supplies missile guidance systems to NATO. He has created Videodrome to turn Max into a weapon to destroy his enemies on the left, including Max’s boss Masha and Bianca O’Blivion.
On the other end of the political spectrum, Bianca carries on her father’s work with a mission that supplies food to the homeless but, rather than a religious message, gives them access to television in order to “help patch them back into the world’s mixing board,” mirroring current pushes to supply free internet and wi-fi for everyone worldwide. When Max arrives to assassinate her, however, she removes the videocassette that Convex has implanted in him through a vagina-like opening in his stomach and replaces it with her own, making him the “video Word made flesh,” a variation on a Biblical reference to Christ. Through a kind of death and resurrection, he is reprogrammed to destroy Videodrome along with Harlan, Convex, and ultimately himself.
The audience is shown all this through a series of powerful hallucinations experienced by Max. As the film unfolds and the media world intertwines with the real world, it becomes increasingly unclear where consensus reality ends and these hallucinations begin, raising a number of questions. How much of what is seen is reality? What is hallucination? What is media? The movie also asks a more puzzling question—does it matter? The film posits that reality is what we perceive it to be. So, is there any objective reality at all or is it merely a product of what we take into our minds and, because this is a Cronenberg film, our bodies? It is entirely possible that the second half of the movie is Max’s hallucination while wearing the prototype helmet built by Barry Convex and his Spectacular Optical company to record images from the brain. Brian O’Blivion warns from a videotape early in the film that Max’s reality “is already half video hallucination. If you’re not careful, it will become total hallucination.” In other words, the deaths of Masha and Nikki Brand (Deborah Harry), Max’s assassination of Convex, and even his own suicide could all be in his mind. The power of the film is that it does not tell us but flows freely from what seems to be objective reality to perceived reality and hallucination.
The most powerful aspect of Videodrome and the one that makes it practically prophetic is its examination of our intimate relationship with television. The film opens with this intimacy—a closeup of the Civic TV logo and the tagline “The One You Take to Bed with You,” making the human relationship with television practically sexual from the first shot. When the film was made, this would partially refer to falling asleep in front of the TV, but now we have mobile devices that can literally be taken to bed with us. Television is far more interactive now than it was in 1983 when cable and even home video were relative rarities and luxuries. Now, through physical media, video on demand, and multiple streaming platforms, we can personalize our media consumption to our every whim and desire, and all in the privacy of our own home, or bedroom.
And then there is social media, something that could not even have been dreamed of when Cronenberg made the film. The character of Brian O’Blivion, based on legendary media analyst and intellectual Marshall McLuhan, embodies what would become social media in several ways. First, he never appears in what we would call in today’s world of Twitter and Instagram “real life,” but only on a screen. He admits that Brian O’Blivion is “not the name I was born with. It’s my television name,” anticipating Twitter handles and screen names. When Max seeks O’Blivion out, his daughter tells him that her father may send him a videotape, prompting Max to say that this will make it difficult to have a conversation. She replies by saying, “my father has not engaged in conversation for at least twenty years. The monologue is his preferred mode of discourse.” This is analogous to the Twitter thread, for which the poster can limit who (if anyone) can respond, or simply mute if they simply grow tired of comments. We also learn that
Brian O’Blivion died eleven months before the film begins and his existence and legacy is curated by his daughter as if he were still alive. Today, the social media accounts of many who have died still exist as a record of the aspects of their lives they shared with the public. Some are even carried on by family and friends as a memorial to those who have passed.
This is not to say that certain technologies and media trends did not exist when Videodrome was made, they most certainly did. As good science fiction writers often do, Cronenberg latched onto these trends and extrapolated them to where they could be in the future. At the same time, he avoids the pitfalls that so many science fiction films fall into by extrapolating the ideas, but not the technology. Instead, he sets his film in the present of 1983 and uses the technology available at the time, filling the movie with Betamax video cassettes, tube televisions, large circuit board cabinets, and a primitive satellite dish. Videodrome is frozen in time in a kind of alternate Toronto of 1983 that also exists beyond that in its explorations of philosophies and ideas. As a result, the film does not really age or date itself because it is true to its time and place.
It turns out that many of Cronenberg’s predictions, though he never sought to be any kind of prophet, became reality, some of them even more extreme than they appear in the film. Sex and violence have reached a level on television, especially cable and streaming, that few could have predicted. True crime has become one of the most popular, and lucrative, forms of mainstream entertainment. Media has reached a level of intimacy that is unprecedented with so many options that it can be practically tailor-made to the individual, with social media bringing an even deeper level of intimacy. The scene in which Max kisses and caresses the image of Nikki Brand’s lips on his television now falls just short of literal reality. Much of the fiction of Videodrome has become fact. In a sense, the video Word has indeed been made flesh.
The film is not necessarily saying that media and our relationship with it is entirely bad, but it does change who we are as human beings. We experience a new reality because of it, and we must grapple and contend with the fact that we live in the world of “the new flesh” that only continues to grow and evolve. After the final frame of the film, we are left to ask ourselves what this “new flesh” really is, or if it even exists at all. Max is told by the video image of Nikki that he will transcend, become something new, but only by destroying the old flesh. But is this simply another trick of Videodrome, the arena for the soul of humanity? The ambiguity of the final sequence leaves the viewer to wonder if this new flesh is even worth it. Will media ultimately help us to evolve or will it bring us to destroy ourselves?
Cronenberg would continue to explore the ideas of our interaction with media and entertainment throughout his career. The intimacy of video games in eXistenZ (1999) and the unusual entertainments found in Crimes of the Future (2022) are perhaps the most direct, but the ways machinery, computers, science, and various forms of technology affect the mind and body can be found in The Fly, Naked Lunch (1991), and Crash (1996) as well. Cronenberg’s vision is one of the most potent, intellectual, and visceral in all film, deftly balancing mind and body in ways that continually horrify and provoke. Videodrome becomes more and more relevant as we continue to evolve as a species and society, and it will surely continue to endure.
Long live Videodrome, and long live the new flesh.
Soon after the New Hollywood generation took over the entertainment industry, they started having children. And more than any filmmakers that came before—they were terrified. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), Eraserhead (1977), The Brood (1979), The Shining (1980), Possession (1981), and many others all deal, at least in part, with the fears of becoming or being a parent. What if my child turns out to be a monster? is corrupted by some evil force? or turns out to be the fucking Antichrist? What if I screw them up somehow, or can’t help them, or even go insane and try to kill them? Horror has always been at its best when exploring relatable fears through extreme circumstances. A prime example of this is Larry Cohen’s 1974 monster-baby movie It’s Alive, which explores the not only the rollercoaster of emotions that any parent experiences when confronted with the difficulties of raising a child, but long-standing questions of who or what is at fault when something goes horribly wrong.
Cohen begins making his underlying points early in the film as Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) discusses the state of the world with a group of expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room. They discuss the “overabundance of lead” in foods and the environment, smog, and pesticides that only serve to produce roaches that are “bigger, stronger, and harder to kill.” Frank comments that this is “quite a world to bring a kid into.” This has long been a discussion point among people when trying to decide whether to have kids or not. I’ve had many conversations with friends who have said they feel it’s irresponsible to bring children into such a violent, broken, and dangerous world, and I certainly don’t begrudge them this. My wife and I did decide to have children but that doesn’t mean that it’s been easy.
Immediately following this scene comes It’s Alive’s most famous sequence in which Frank’s wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) is the only person left alive in her delivery room, the doctors clawed and bitten to death by her mutant baby, which has escaped. “What does my baby look like!? What’s wrong with my baby!?” she screams as nurses wheel her frantically into a recovery room. The evening that had begun with such joy and excitement at the birth of their second child turned into a nightmare. This is tough for me to write, but on some level, I can relate to this whiplash of emotion. When my second child was born, they came about five weeks early. I’ll use the pronouns “they/them” for privacy reasons when referring to my kids. Our oldest was still very young and went to stay with my parents and we sped off to the hospital where my wife was taken into an operating room for an emergency c-section. I was able to carry our newborn into the NICU (natal intensive care unit) where I was assured that this was routine for all premature births. The nurses assured me there was nothing to worry about and the baby looked big and healthy. I headed to where my wife was taken to recover to grab a few winks assuming that everything was fine. Well, when I awoke, I headed back over to the NICU to find that my child was not where I left them. The nurse found me and told me that the baby’s lungs were underdeveloped, and they had to put them in a special room connected to oxygen tubes and wires to monitor their vitals.
It’s difficult to express the fear that overwhelmed me in those moments. Everything turned out okay, but it took a while and I’m convinced to this day that their anxiety struggles spring from these first weeks of life. As our children grew, we learned that two of the three were on the spectrum and that anxiety, depression, ADHD, and OCD were also playing a part in their lives. Parents, at least speaking for myself, can’t help but blame themselves for the struggles their children face. The “if only” questions creep in and easily overcome the voices that assure us that it really has nothing to do with us. In the film, Lenore says, “maybe it’s all the pills I’ve been taking that brought this on.” Frank muses aloud about how he used to think that Frankenstein was the monster, but when he got older realized he was the one that made the monster. The aptly named Frank is wondering if his baby’s mutation is his fault, if he created the monster that is terrorizing Los Angeles. I have made plenty of “if only” statements about myself over the years. “If only I hadn’t had to work so much, if only I had been around more when they were little.” Mothers may ask themselves, “did I have a drink, too much coffee, or a cigarette before I knew I was pregnant? Was I too stressed out during the pregnancy?” In other words, most parents can’t help but wonder if it’s all their fault.
At one point in the film, Frank goes to the elementary school where his baby has been sighted and is escorted through the halls by police. He overhears someone comment about “screwed up genes,” which brings about age-old questions of nature vs. nurture. Despite the voices around him from doctors and detectives that say, “we know this isn’t your fault,” Frank can’t help but think it is, and that the people who try to tell him it isn’t really think it’s his fault too. There is no doubt that there is a hereditary element to the kinds of mental illness struggles that my children and I deal with. But, and it’s a bit but, good parenting goes a long way in helping children deal with these struggles. Kids need to know they’re not alone, a good parent can provide that, perhaps especially parents that can relate to the same kinds of struggles. The question of nature vs. nurture will likely never be entirely answered but I think there’s more than a good chance that “both/and” is the case. Around the midpoint of the film, Frank agrees to disown the child and sign it over for medical experimentation if caught or killed. Lenore and the older son Chris (Daniel Holzman) seek to nurture and teach the baby, feeling that it is not a monster, but a member of the family.
It’s Alive takes these ideas to an even greater degree in the fact that the Davis Baby really is a monster, a mutant with claws and fangs that murders and eats people. The late ’60s and early ’70s also saw the rise in mass murderers and serial killers which heightened the nature vs. nurture debate. Obviously, these people were not literal monsters but human beings that came from human parents, but something had gone horribly wrong. Often the upbringing of these killers clearly led in part to their antisocial behavior, but this isn’t always the case. It’s Alive asks “what if a ‘monster’ comes from a good home?” In this case is it society, environmental factors, or is it the lead, smog, and pesticides? It is almost impossible to know, but the ending of the film underscores an uncomfortable truth—even monsters have parents.
As the film enters its third act, Frank joins the hunt for his child through the Los Angeles sewers and into the L.A. River. He is armed with a rifle and ready to kill on sight, having divorced himself from any relationship to the child. Then Frank finds his baby crying in the sewers and his fatherly instincts take over. With tears in his eyes, he speaks words of comfort and wraps his son in his coat. He holds him close, pats and rocks him, and whispers that everything is going to be okay. People often wonder how the parents of those who perform heinous acts can sit in court, shed tears, and defend them. I think it’s a complex issue. I’m sure that these parents know that their child has done something evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still their baby. Your child is a piece of yourself formed into a whole new human being. Disowning them would be like cutting off a limb, no matter what they may have done. It doesn’t erase an evil act, far from it, but I can understand the pain of a parent in that situation. I think It’s Alive does an exceptional job placing its audience in that situation.
Despite the serious issues and ideas being examined in the film, It’s Alive is far from a dour affair. At heart, it is still a monster movie and filled with a sense of fun and a great deal of pitch-black humor. In one of its more memorable moments, a milkman is sucked into the rear compartment of his truck as red blood mingles with the white milk from smashed bottles leaking out the back of the truck and streaming down the street. Just after Frank agrees to join the hunt for his baby, the film cuts to the back of an ice cream truck with the words “STOP CHILDREN” emblazoned on it. It’s a movie filled with great kills, a mutant baby—created by make-up effects master Rick Baker early in his career, and plenty of action—and all in a PG rated movie! I’m telling you, the ’70s were wild. It just also happens to have some thoughtful ideas behind it as well.
Which was Larry Cohen’s specialty. Cohen made all kinds of movies, but his most enduring have been his horror films and all of them tackle the social issues and fears of the time they were made. God Told Me To (1976), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and The Stuff (1985) are all great examples of his socially aware, low-budget, exploitation filmmaking with a brain and It’s Alive certainly fits right in with that group. Cohen would go on to write and direct two sequels, It Lives Again (aka It’s Alive 2) in 1978 and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive in 1987 and is credited as a co-writer on the 2008 remake. All these films explore the ideas of parental responsibility in light of the various concerns of the times they were made including abortion rights and AIDS.
Fifty years after It’s Alive was initially released, it has only become more relevant in the ensuing years. Fears surrounding parenthood have been with us since the beginning of time but as the years pass the reasons for these fears only seem to become more and more profound. In today’s world the conversation of the fathers in the waiting room could be expanded to hormones and genetic modifications in food, terrorism, climate change, school and other mass shootings, and other threats that were unknown or at least less of a concern fifty years ago. Perhaps the fearmongering conspiracy theories about chemtrails and vaccines would be mentioned as well, though in a more satirical fashion, as fears some expectant parents encounter while endlessly doomscrolling Facebook or Twitter. Speaking for myself, despite the struggles, the fears, and the sadness that sometimes comes with having children, it’s been worth it. The joys ultimately outweigh all of that, but I understand the terror too. Becoming a parent is no easy choice, nor should it be. But as I look back, I can say that I’m glad we made the choice we did.
I wonder if Frank and Lenore can say the same thing.
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