Videodrome: Cronenberg’s Brutal Critique of Media Consumption
Written by Hasyir (Kru’23)
Videodrome, released in 1983, and directed by David Cronenberg, is a film about a man named Max Renn who discovered a strange video when he was searching, or rather, pirating videos from across the globe for footage for his show. A stream caught his attention, it was said to have come supposedly from Malaysia. It is a video of torture and murder. “Perfect,” he said, thinking that the stream would be mere fiction. Little did he know that the video he just watched was only the beginning of his long, downward spiral into the depths of the truly disturbed.
What a premise. Cronenberg sells it once again! Having seen eXistenZ, a film that was like the birth child of The Matrix and Tetsuo, something of similar fashion to Videodrome but more advanced and more so about the world of virtual reality rather than television, the acclaimed film in which Cronenberg proved himself to be one of the pioneers of body horror cinema at the time. With that knowledge in mind, I knew just what to expect. But as I went into the movie, the movie itself had a much darker tone than I had anticipated, making the mysterious and creepy atmosphere reigns more on me.
I won’t try to narrow the film’s message down to simply it being “the dangers of media and how easy it is to get addicted,” because that may just be only one of the many reasons why Cronenberg made this film. But it is fit for its time, isn’t it? In the 80s, television media consumption was at its peak, people were having the times of their lives, while some were maybe paranoid about what the future might look like. This picture critiques specifically that of the niche groups of people who purposefully enjoy seeing others get hurt, whether it be real or fiction, something to get the mind fixed, whatever it may be. A kink, a rather sick one, that is. Human desires, disturbingly limitless, will overtake the body’s mind just for that extra dose of dopamine.
This might also be Cronenberg’s critique of censorship, for his previous films have been eradicated of the things he wanted to show. The paranoia of recent technological leaps might be fitting to put this movie back onto the conversation table, for it may be a stretch but this embodies that truly of media overconsumption. Watch it for the social commentary, watch it for the body horror! David Cronenberg did both for this one, and he made it very entertaining and fun to watch. With his masterful mixing of themes — horror, thriller, and romance — you might just get overwhelmed.
