Why Video­drome feels more rel­e­vant today than ever

“Since I see tech­nol­o­gy as being an exten­sion of the human body, it’s inevitable that it should come home to roost.” David Cro­nen­berg was refer­ring to his 1988 film Dead Ringers when he offered up this fas­ci­nat­ing insight into his work, but to a vary­ing degree it applies to all of his ear­ly films, from Shiv­ers and Rabid to The Brood and Scan­ners. Yet it’s Video­drome which per­haps best encap­su­lates this self-reflex­ive statement.

Released in 1983 and hailed as the decade’s answer to A Clock­work Orange by none oth­er than Andy Warhol, Cronenberg’s eighth fea­ture fur­ther enhanced his rep­u­ta­tion as North America’s fore­most pur­vey­or of body hor­ror while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly estab­lish­ing him as the think­ing person’s genre film­mak­er. It is a bold, cere­bral exam­i­na­tion of human kind’s masochis­tic, sub­servient tendencies.

Right from its immer­sive open­ing shot, Video­drome imag­ines a near-future in which tech­nol­o­gy has infil­trat­ed every aspect of dai­ly life. On a screen with­in the screen, a colour­ful ident for CIVIC-TV (“the one you take to bed with you”), a Toron­to-based sta­tion spe­cial­is­ing in shlock pro­gram­ming, flash­es up before a woman (Julie Khan­er) serene­ly deliv­ers an auto­mat­ed wake-up call. Cro­nen­berg may not have been active­ly try­ing to pre­dict the future, but this scene con­tains an eeri­ly pre­scient blue­print for the likes of like Siri, Alexa and oth­er intel­li­gent per­son­al assis­tant systems.

Hav­ing been eased back into con­scious­ness, CIVIC-TV CEO Max Renn (peak James Woods) descends into a wak­ing night­mare as he is slow­ly and painful­ly con­sumed by Video­drome, an entire­ly plot­less, extreme­ly low-rent tele­vi­sion show – think of it as an even more exploita­tive pre­cur­sor to real­i­ty TV – which he believes to be the next big thing.

Watch­ing Video­drome today – from a pris­tine 35mm print at the 71^st Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val – it’s strik­ing just how rel­e­vant it feels. Its smoky, late-night aes­thet­ic and ani­ma­tron­ic spe­cial effects place the film firm­ly in the 1980s, but the social­ly-con­scious theme run­ning through it is alarm­ing­ly per­ti­nent when viewed in a con­tem­po­rary context.

It’s a film made in and about the VHS era, but sub­sti­tute in the inter­net and the mes­sage would be much the same. We live in an age where tech­nol­o­gy facil­i­tates every­day human inter­ac­tion on a macro scale. A time of unpar­al­leled inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty in which infor­ma­tion is trans­mit­ted, processed and shared quick­er and more wide­ly than ever before. In Cronenberg’s dark satire on con­sumerism and the cult of tech­nol­o­gy, Max reflects both the director’s con­cerns over the elec­tron­ic dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion (espe­cial­ly via face­less, moral­ly-dubi­ous cor­po­rate enti­ties) and his com­pul­sion to cre­ate provoca­tive, erot­i­cal­ly-charged art.

Here­in lies the curi­ous dichoto­my of David Cro­nen­berg. His ear­ly films pulse and spurt with vis­cer­al imagery – explod­ing heads, self-impale­ment by scis­sors, a man insert­ing a video cas­sette into a vagi­na-like cav­i­ty in his chest – intend­ed to pen­e­trate deep into our psy­che. Yet at the same time they warn us against the poten­tial­ly cor­rup­tive influ­ence of visu­al media. Forc­ing us to watch Deb­bie Har­ry stub a cig­a­rette out on her bare stom­ach as Max recoils in hor­ror may ulti­mate­ly say more about the director’s impuls­es than our own, but there is a cer­tain per­verse plea­sure to be derived from such explic­it­ly fetishised moments.

Of course, it is no coin­ci­dence that Video­drome now appears scar­i­ly prophet­ic in the way it depicts the inter­sec­tion of sex, vio­lence, media and tech­nol­o­gy. Cro­nen­berg is a mas­ter at intu­itive­ly tap­ping into our col­lec­tive sub­con­scious. He knows how peo­ple are wired, so even though Video­drome oper­ates on the lev­el of its cen­tral character’s deranged dream log­ic, the direc­tor is able to reflect our innate fears and desires back at us with sober­ing clar­i­ty and precision.

Cro­nen­berg has also said that he doesn’t believe in an after­life, that mind and body are inter­re­lat­ed and thus insep­a­ra­ble. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in Video­drome, where Max’s men­tal col­lapse man­i­fests as a grotesque phys­i­cal muta­tion care of spe­cial effects mae­stro Rick Bak­er. What the film doesn’t fore­tell, how­ev­er, is that each of us now has a dig­i­tal fin­ger­print which we add to any time we browse the inter­net, use social media or stream a movie – a unique code con­trolled not by the indi­vid­ual to which it relates but by forces even more pow­er­ful and insid­i­ous than the one Cro­nen­berg imag­ines here.

Still, as a com­ment on our desen­si­ti­sa­tion to pornog­ra­phy and the increased inti­ma­cy of our rela­tion­ship with screens and tech­nol­o­gy at large, Video­drome feels sev­er­al decades ahead of its time. It states in no uncer­tain terms that the next stage in our evo­lu­tion as a species will be a dehu­man­is­ing one. For bet­ter and for worse, 34 years on Cronenberg’s fright­en­ing futur­is­tic vision is start­ing to become real­i­ty. Long live the new flesh.