By Harry Hook
‘Television is reality and reality is less than television’. David Cronenberg’s chilling prophecy rings true 35 years since his 1983 film Videodrome was first released. The film concerns Max Renn, the president of a television station who, dissatisfied with his current programming, is introduced to a Malaysian television signal which displays gratuitous violence. This signal eventually warps his mental and physical state, transcending his role as a human being into something higher; a technological Ubermensch. Described as ‘techno-surrealist’, the film has gained a cult following in the intervening years since its release and has become hauntingly relevant to our modern day existence.
The irony in the statement ‘television is reality and reality is less than television’ is that it is spoken by the character Professor Brian O’Blivion who only ever appears on a television screen, refusing to be seen in person. This character is later revealed to have died a year previously, having recorded thousands of videotapes, thus living vicariously through television and extending his finite lifespan. This indicates the power of television to immortalise people, allowing them to serve a purpose far beyond their physical existence. His daughter Bianca O’Blivion shares a similar vision by running the Cathode Ray mission which aims for television to replace every aspect of everyday life. The O’Blivion’s seem to view television as a kind of messiah which serves to solve humanity’s problems. The Spectacular Optical Corporation also use television signals to serve their own ends, being the producers of the Videodrome signal. This presents how technology (and television in particular) can be utilised to serve a political motive as it allows those in power to present their viewpoint to the world and influence the masses into their way of thinking. The depiction of television in the film is described by Daniel Dinello in his book Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology as ‘an information virus that literally affects the brain, transforming and eventually annihilating the organic body through a grotesque fusion with media technology’. This fusion of the organic and the technological is achieved through media manipulation, as Max is used as a guinea pig to ‘hasten the next stage of man’s evolution’.
The character of Nicki (played by Deborah Harry) personifies how television can influence and control through the use of titillation. Her sadomasochistic tendencies are revealed upon viewing the Videodrome signal, which sexually arouses her. These sexual desires influence her to travel to Pittsburgh in order to audition for Videodrome, only to never be seen again in her physical form. Nicki’s journey displays the power that sexuality plays in the human psyche and how it can be employed by television and advertising to actuate our decision making abilities. Furthermore, it creates a division between the corporeal form and the virtual as Nicki only appears in televisual guise throughout the rest of the film. One such occurrence which links the embodiment of television with the sexually perverse is within a hallucination Max has in which he repeatedly flagellates a television monitor, which synchronously displays the image of Nicki deriving sexual pleasure from this. This reveals Max’s hidden desires as the signal is picking up impulses from his brain, thus possibly alluding that his passion for broadcasting controversial material may be more than just a business tactic. On the other hand, it may show that Max is being succumbed into Videodrome through the adage of ‘sex sells’, using the object of his sexual desires to influence his mind, comparable to advertising techniques.
Cronenberg’s notable use of ‘Body Horror’ is tied in with the theme of television as a perverse influence through the notion of the Videodrome signals corrupting and transforming the physical form into what David J. Skal defines in his book Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture as ‘an uneasy nexus of meat and mechanism’. The Videodrome signal induces a tumour in the victim’s brain which is described as ‘a new organ within the brain’. The tumour creates the hallucinations Max experiences and warps his physical body into becoming ‘The New Flesh’. Cronenberg’s trademark body horror serves to blur the lines between illusion and reality not only for Max but for the audience. Janet Maslin of The New York Times attributes Max’s physical transformation as poetic justice as he is ‘eventually turned into a walking personification of the sexual, violent, media-mad exploitation to which he has contributed’. His Videodrome-influenced powers make him a tool for others’ political gain which mirrors how the victims presented in his television programmes are exploited for his financial gain. One such scene which demonstrates how the physical world is blurred with technology displays an undulating television screen which reaches out and points to Max. In this sense, Videodrome is a fable forewarning us about using technology in order to warp the natural order of things.
Even though technology has transformed since the film’s production, the ideas Cronenberg conjures concerning technology and its influence on our lives remain more pertinent than ever in a world where the content we experience are determined by algorithms and our lifestyles are influenced by what lingers on our screens. Film critic Tim Lucas describes the thematic content of Videodrome as ‘the very wallpaper of twenty-first century living’. What he means is that the fears we once had about technology have dissipated as technologies such as personal computers and smartphones have become more commonplace in our society. The world grows smaller as signals invariably bounce through space, opening humanity up to new discoveries and new horrors. People can form inter-personal relationships without physical contact in a similar way to how Max and Nicki’s relationship transfigures after she disappears. ‘The New Flesh’ is comparable to how people use filters through their phone cameras as a means of changing the appearance of the camera’s subject. The effect this has is that reality and artifice are made indistinct from one another. The film is accurate in its depiction of virtual reality as the device that Max uses to experience Videodrome in the experiment conducted by the Spectacular Optical Corporation is not dissimilar to the virtual reality headsets available to the public today. While we are not going to be transformed into a hybrid of flesh and technology any time soon, it could be argued that technology has begun to eschew our notion of reality.
Succinctly, Brian O’Blivion’s theory that ‘television is reality and reality is less than television’ demonstrates that the hyper-stimulation of technological advancement possesses the ability to forge a new reality; one that is governed by projections of the real world. Videodrome presents a depiction of humanity in which carnal desires are synthetically satisfied and minds can be warped by electronic impulses to reflect a political or sociological motive. The film displays how our perception of reality can be warped through the use of technology, displaying our own hubris in our perceived ability to create.
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