Confinement, Conversation, and the Corporeal in Videodrome.
In its exploration of the simultaneous mobilization and imprisonment of the spectator by electronic media, the protagonist of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), Max Renn (James Woods) plays the part of both victim and villain. The film inculpates the audience for producing, consuming and being dependent on -- as well as imprisoned by -- electronic technologies. Furthermore, Videodrome asserts that our interactions with media are dangerous, warning of a world in which the reality of the lived-in human body becomes indistinguishable from the reality of the on-screen, electronic presence.
The false sense of mobility and agency that we as media consumers have is highlighted by Cronenberg, who demonstrates the audience’s lack of power and influence in his depiction of the complex hierarchies that exist in the world of media[i]. Videodrome points out the ways in which we as viewers are imprisoned by the pervasive technologies in our lives and how attempts to mobilize and involve the spectator often result in greater degrees of dependence on media, ultimately immobilizing us by constructing an existence in which technology plays a central role. "As they have mediated our engagement with the world, with others, and with ourselves,” writes Vivian Sobchack in “The Screen of the Scene: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic Presence,” “cinematic and electronic technologies have transformed us so that we presently see, sense, and make sense of ourselves as quite other than we were before them” (139). Max’s secretary appears on his home television screen each morning to inform him of his schedule and provide friendly reminders. Nikki Brand (Deborah Harry) hosts a radio program called The Emotional Rescue Show and is depicted giving life-saving advice to a depressed and a desperate caller she addresses as “lover”. Max depends on the posthumous videocassette advice of Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley) and the Videodrome tapes to tell him what to do next. In Videodrome, just as in 21st century daily life, we encounter people who depend on screens and media to inform, direct, advise, and save them[ii]
In each of these instances, the exchange hinges on the configuration of a standard conversation and is paradoxically regarded as a more advanced stand-in for human interaction and reciprocity. That Brian O’Blivion’s “preferred mode of discourse is the monologue” (even when appearing on talk-show style programs, where the host stands in for the viewer) is emblematic of the illusory and false nature of a mobile, participatory audience. “There is nothing real outside our perception of reality,” an on-screen O’Blivion says “to” Max, “is there? You can see that, can’t you?” According to Lev Manovich, “the screen is aggressive. It functions to filter, to screen out, to take over, rendering nonexistent whatever is outside its frame” (34). O’Blivion calls attention to his own performance as a screen, conspicuously dictating not only what the viewer is seeing (by creating, starring in, and distributing the tape), but also what the viewer should be seeing (by explaining how one is to interpret the content). This exchange and its emphasis on seeing[iii] -- both as a visual mechanism and a means of understanding -- illustrates the spectator’s “immobile, static and atemporal Gaze, which belongs more to a statue than to a living body, becom[ing] immobile, reified, fixated, cold and dead” (Manovich, 34). O’Blivion asking Max, “you can see that, can’t you?” is the ultimate rhetorical question; it doesn’t matter whether or not Max can see it, he cannot reply in any meaningful or effectual way.
Conceived by O’Blivion to be “the next phase in the evolution of the human being as a technological animal,” Videodrome documents humans becoming machines, machines becoming human, and the subsequent implications for the culture at large; “as these technologies become culturally pervasive,” Sobchack writes, “it can come to profoundly inform and affect the socio-logic, psycho-logic, and even the bio-logic by which we daily live our lives” (138). As Max embarks on his Videodrome journey, we observe the emergence of a new kind of duality – one that enables a person to disregard the human body altogether in order to meld his mind with technology. Videodrome’s mantra of "long live the new flesh" suggests that stepping forward into the future requires the shedding of our primitive, human bodies, and that abandoning these bodies will enable us to transcend the limitations of an inevitably transient life.
Videodrome is dangerous, Max’s business associate Masha (Lynn Gorman) asserts early on in the film, because it is “political” and has something that Max does not: a philosophy. Replaying these words in his head, Max retrieves a handgun. Later in the film, Max – despite not being physically coaxed by any apparent external forces – painfully inserts the gun into a mysterious and rapidly opening wound in his stomach. He has internalized the violent philosophy of Videodrome; his literal consumption of a dangerous technology and the fact that this item now resides within him is another step towards a total, inextricable fusion between man and machine. Though Max displays an extensive degree of agency in his experience with Videodrome[iv], inserting himself into the narrative and becoming a mobile player in the Videodrome arena, he is always being instructed and informed by images on a screen, programmed (and imprisoned) by the various forces and media around him[v]. “Changing the program” within Max is always a violent and corporeal experience; often done against his will, those responsible for “programming” Max (the distributors and producers of media) are presented as rapists of sorts, invading and desecrating the human body with their content.
Max’s voluntary abandonment of his physical self[vi] is evidence of what Sobchack calls the trivialization of the human body by the electronic, “the crisis of the lived-body… [in] this historical moment in our particular society and culture. Its struggle to assert its gravity, its differential existence and situation, its vulnerability and mortality, its vital and social investment in a concrete life-world inhabited by others” (152). Max struggles to overcome the impact of the Videodrome signal on his mind and body, but it ultimately defeats him. When Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) and Barry Convex (Leslie Carlson) instruct Max to “open up” so they can insert a new Videodrome tape, his body reacts independently of his mind; large gusts of wind blow open his shirt and the cavity on his torso expands obediently. The implication that Max’s physical body, much like a machine, has no free will and must respond accordingly when triggered reflects this crisis of the lived-in body and our cultural tendency to privilege the electronic over the physical. This notion is exceedingly visible in the character of Brian O’Blivion, who, despite having died, continues to exist (on-screen) via thousands of recorded videocassettes; “by the end,” Bianca says of her father, “he was convinced that public life on television was more real than private life in the flesh. He wasn’t afraid to let his body die.”
The lives created by cinema, Jean Epstein describes in her 1923 essay “On Certain Characteristic of Photogenie,” “have little in common with human life… to things and beings in their most frigid semblance, the cinema thus grants the greatest gift unto death: life” (317). Nearly a century later, films like Videodrome suggest that humans themselves, having “devalued the physically lived body and the concrete materiality of the world,” have become frigid, inanimate objects that require meaning to be bestowed upon them by technological representations (Sobchack, 152). Epstein asserts that being a viewer is not enough: one must actively engage with the film in order to be enhanced by cinema (a challenge when the very structure of screens and media function to imprison and immobilize the spectator). The 21st century fixation on validating one’s existence through a web presence, coupled with the simultaneous terror at the lack of erasure and potential privacy intrusion that accompanies this presence, are manifestations of the anxieties explored throughout Videodrome. With the evolution of electronic technologies, human life has evolved and adapted in order to appropriate and utilize the available technologies; perhaps the cost of making room for these allegedly life-enhancing things is that humans have lost sight of their corporeal humanity and physical reality.
Works Cited
Epstein, Jean. "On Certain Characteristics of Photogenie." French Film Theory and Criticism. By Richard Abel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ., 1988. Print.
Manovich, Lev. "Toward an Archaeology of the Computer Screen." Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable? : The Screen Arts in the Digital Age. By Thomas Elsaesser and Kay Hoffmann. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 1998. 27-43. Print.
Sobchack, Vivian. "The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic "Presence"" Materialities of Communication. By Hans Ulrich. Gumbrecht and Karl Ludwig. Pfeiffer. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1994. 137-54. Print.
Videodrome. Dir. David Cronenberg. 1983.
Epstein, Jean. "On Certain Characteristics of Photogenie." French Film Theory and Criticism. By Richard Abel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ., 1988. Print.
Manovich, Lev. "Toward an Archaeology of the Computer Screen." Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable? : The Screen Arts in the Digital Age. By Thomas Elsaesser and Kay Hoffmann. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 1998. 27-43. Print.
Sobchack, Vivian. "The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic "Presence"" Materialities of Communication. By Hans Ulrich. Gumbrecht and Karl Ludwig. Pfeiffer. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1994. 137-54. Print.
Videodrome. Dir. David Cronenberg. 1983.
[i] Max’s role as the President of Civic TV is central to the film’s narrative, and his interactions with other media figures shed light on the hierarchal structure of the industry (including corporate, military, and government interests). One of the first scenes in the movie depicts Max meeting with Chinese pornography distributors, whose content Max then screens with his partners at Civic TV. The sequence demonstrates the multitude of barriers and gatekeepers that our content is filtered through prior to the public’s consumption of it; furthermore, it draws attention to the variety of screens that exist surrounding what we ultimately see on our own screens and the lack of meaningful participation and influence available to the spectator.
[ii]According to Brian O’Blivion, “the screen is the retina of the mind’s eye; therefore the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience to those who watch it”. Later in the film, O’Blivion describes Videodrome as a “new outgrowth of the human brain which will produce and control hallucination to the point that it will change human reality”. By O’Blivion’s logic, the threat posed by Videodrome has already been realized -- as Manovich writes, “the screen disappeared. It completely took over the visual field” (34). The pervasive presence of screens and technologies in our everyday lives, coupled with our inability as viewers to distinguish between Max’s hallucinations and real experiences (as well as, according to Sobchack, our tendency to understand our lives as movies and understand our minds/bodies as computers), implies that Videodrome is not so much a warning about the future as it is a comment about the present.
[iii] Videodrome further explores the role of eyes and seeing through glasses and photography. The prominence placed on eye glasses suggests, among other things, that we are not even qualified to be spectators in our natural bodies; we require enhancement from a foreign addition to validate our sight and make sure what we see is real and accurate.
Both Videodrome and Peter Greenaway’s 1996 film The Pillow Book position photography as a middle ground, eventually exposing the medium’s shortcomings. Harlan (a pirate and photographer) and Hoki (Nagiko’s Japanese photographer acquaintance) are portrayed as being medium-mediums: middle men who act as go-betweens between hierarchal forces (Harlan delivers Videodrome to Max while posing as his friend [also, as a pirate, filters content from one source to another]; Hoki proposes Nagiko write a book and offers to deliver the work to the Publisher). When Max believes he has killed Masha, he immediately enlists Harlan to come photograph the evidence, reflecting Max’s belief that a photo is more dependable than his own eyes. [Moreover, the fact that Harlan wears glasses and is a photographer can be read several different ways; it could indicate a kind of superiority and ability to see things in a realer, more accurate way or be interpreted as a visual manifestation of his role as a “medium-medium”. The combination of glasses and photography can also be seen as indications of Harlan’s multiple identities -- evidence that he is hiding his actual self and should not be trusted.]
Ultimately, Harlan and Hoki represent the inadequacy of photography as a medium. Despite laying the groundwork for Videodrome, when things begin to escalate Harlan tells Max that he’s “out of [his] depth now… [and] has to bring in the reinforcements” before revealing his involvement with Barry Convex. Hoki does not satisfy Nagiko sexually nor does his skin provide a suitable surface for her to write on; additionally, his presentation of Nagiko’s writing is rejected. Just as photography plays a central role in the history and implications of film and other electronic technologies, both Harlan and Hoki are integral to the plots of their respective films and serve as catalysts for fundamental storylines, only to eventually be relegated and deemed inferior.
Both Videodrome and Peter Greenaway’s 1996 film The Pillow Book position photography as a middle ground, eventually exposing the medium’s shortcomings. Harlan (a pirate and photographer) and Hoki (Nagiko’s Japanese photographer acquaintance) are portrayed as being medium-mediums: middle men who act as go-betweens between hierarchal forces (Harlan delivers Videodrome to Max while posing as his friend [also, as a pirate, filters content from one source to another]; Hoki proposes Nagiko write a book and offers to deliver the work to the Publisher). When Max believes he has killed Masha, he immediately enlists Harlan to come photograph the evidence, reflecting Max’s belief that a photo is more dependable than his own eyes. [Moreover, the fact that Harlan wears glasses and is a photographer can be read several different ways; it could indicate a kind of superiority and ability to see things in a realer, more accurate way or be interpreted as a visual manifestation of his role as a “medium-medium”. The combination of glasses and photography can also be seen as indications of Harlan’s multiple identities -- evidence that he is hiding his actual self and should not be trusted.]
Ultimately, Harlan and Hoki represent the inadequacy of photography as a medium. Despite laying the groundwork for Videodrome, when things begin to escalate Harlan tells Max that he’s “out of [his] depth now… [and] has to bring in the reinforcements” before revealing his involvement with Barry Convex. Hoki does not satisfy Nagiko sexually nor does his skin provide a suitable surface for her to write on; additionally, his presentation of Nagiko’s writing is rejected. Just as photography plays a central role in the history and implications of film and other electronic technologies, both Harlan and Hoki are integral to the plots of their respective films and serve as catalysts for fundamental storylines, only to eventually be relegated and deemed inferior.
[iv] Just as a “screen’s frame separates two spaces, the physical and the virtual,” for us as viewers, Max encounters these same multiple spaces in his experience throughout Videodrome, blurring the lines not only on screen but within our own physical, material world (Manovich, 34). This paradox is visible both in the on-screen narrative of Videodrome and the off-screen reality of watching the movie as a spectator; Max Renn’s experience in the film positions him as both a mobile participant and an immobile viewer, resulting in a parallel journey of sorts between the viewer and Max.
Max inhabits a lived-in body, but many of his experiences take place beyond and separate from this body. Because of our immobility as viewers, we are dependent on Max's navigation and understanding of the worlds he encounters; because of the hallucinatory elements and general premise of the film, Max is far from a stable narrator and his mobility complicates our knowledge of what constitutes reality. At the same time, as spectators of a film, none of what we are watching is reality, and all of Max’s experiences (even the “real” ones) are occurring in virtual space. Videodrome’s emphasis on the “new flesh” undermines and destabilizes the human lived-in bodies on the screen, placing our own lived-in bodies somewhere beyond immobility and closer to irrelevant.
Max inhabits a lived-in body, but many of his experiences take place beyond and separate from this body. Because of our immobility as viewers, we are dependent on Max's navigation and understanding of the worlds he encounters; because of the hallucinatory elements and general premise of the film, Max is far from a stable narrator and his mobility complicates our knowledge of what constitutes reality. At the same time, as spectators of a film, none of what we are watching is reality, and all of Max’s experiences (even the “real” ones) are occurring in virtual space. Videodrome’s emphasis on the “new flesh” undermines and destabilizes the human lived-in bodies on the screen, placing our own lived-in bodies somewhere beyond immobility and closer to irrelevant.
[v] Despite her location as the subversive alternative to the totalitarian Videodrome, Bianca is equally guilty of playing Max “like a video tape recorder” and forcing him to follow her orders. All producers and distributors of content are inculpated in the film, and essentially every media authority figure we are introduced to is dead by the end of the movie. Harlan explains to Max that as a society, we are “entering savage new times – we need to be pure and direct and strong to survive them,” while Max defends his station’s controversial programming as being a “matter of economics” during his television appearance and claims that he only watched Videodrome “for business”. Videodrome consistently aligns media production and distribution with violence and capitalist interests, and nobody is blame-free. Even those with the power to “make you do what they want” are subject to harm by those who they are corrupting, ultimately asserting that any and all interaction with electronic technology involves the imprisonment and eventual destruction of the user (while also demonstrating the general vulnerability of the human body).
Throughout both Videodrome and The Pillow Book, we witness what Sobchack calls the “expansive and totalizing incorporation of Nature by industrialized culture, and the specular production and commodification of the Unconscious” (148). The publisher in The Pillow Book is similarly vilified as a corrupt person who demands sexual favors in exchange for publication (the publishing industry is also condemned for polluting both the planet and the minds of the consuming public). Financial concerns are brought to the forefront in both films; Nagiko being told that her work “is not worth the paper it is written on,” emphasizes the politics of gatekeeping and the way editors, publishers, and producers exist as aggressive screens that “function to filter, to screen out, to take over, rendering nonexistent whatever is outside its frame” (Manovich, 34). Moreover, the subsequent acceptance of the same work when printed on skin reflects our culture’s prioritization of material commodities over human worth.
Throughout both Videodrome and The Pillow Book, we witness what Sobchack calls the “expansive and totalizing incorporation of Nature by industrialized culture, and the specular production and commodification of the Unconscious” (148). The publisher in The Pillow Book is similarly vilified as a corrupt person who demands sexual favors in exchange for publication (the publishing industry is also condemned for polluting both the planet and the minds of the consuming public). Financial concerns are brought to the forefront in both films; Nagiko being told that her work “is not worth the paper it is written on,” emphasizes the politics of gatekeeping and the way editors, publishers, and producers exist as aggressive screens that “function to filter, to screen out, to take over, rendering nonexistent whatever is outside its frame” (Manovich, 34). Moreover, the subsequent acceptance of the same work when printed on skin reflects our culture’s prioritization of material commodities over human worth.
[vi] Videodrome and The Pillow Book end with the deaths of Max and the Publisher, respectively. Max watches an image of himself committing suicide (with his hand-gun handgun) on a television set. The publisher enlists Nagiko's final book, The Book of Death, to end his life. In both cases, it is the medium that does the killing (also, both people being killed previously functioned as gatekeepers and screens). Max dies on screen on screen, and the audience is left to decide whether or not he actually kills himself; raising the question of how something that occurs on a screen on a screen is any less (or more) real than something that happens on only one screen. The voluntary abandonment of their physical bodies performed by the Publisher and Max is evidence of the screen becoming the “vehicle for directly affecting reality…rather than acting solely as a means to display an image of reality,” because in both instances, the medium is the weapon (Manovich, 32).
