“The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye.”
David Cronenberg and the 80s are two parts of a sentence, similar to this one, which usually always ends in a discussion of demented science-fiction and fetishistic filmmaking. I’ve come to accept this after experiencing Dead Ringers some years ago. Here however, Cronenberg brings together the ideas of snuff filmmaking, niche underground television and conspiracy theories along with sprinkling murmurs of how television can rot your brain away and does it all in the space of a sub-ninety-minute block.
Max Renn (James Woods) is a television producer working for a small station that has a viewing primarily due to the highly sexual and violent content that he runs. One day he’s exposed to “Videodrome”, a show with no plot or characters and serves the purpose of showing the viewer an hour of unadulterated torture. Max is entranced by this show and has to know more, slowly but surely he begins to hallucinate relating to the Videodrome and Max falls deeper and deeper into this apparent plot of the Videodrome.
If you read the above paragraph and are still interested then I applaud you. This is a film that exists for the purpose to over stimulate its viewers with imagery that will confound and at the very same time intrigue you. We see something like the infamous shot of Max putting his head into his television and also when he pushes his hand into his torso to place his gun we can’t help but be amazed and disturbed at the very same time.
Imagery as shown in this film, along with the general leading nature of the plot, pushes us along the thought process of believing that we can see these things just because Max is seeing it, and he must be going insane which is what leaves us in a sense of calmness at times. However, the doubting nature of the film, due to the untrustworthy protagonist, keeps us on our toes as we move along.
With that said though, that doesn’t make a good movie. At times I was reminded of a later Cronenberg film eXistenZ, which didn’t sit too well with me either when I first saw it, and felt that all that was good about the film were all of these iconic messed up images rather than the overall story that the film was trying to put across. With a muddled message about how “over stimulated” our culture is (which it is) and the problem with wondering how media filled world is going to have to reach new heights – or lows depending on your position in the argument – to try and actually shock their audience today is one that does its best to soften the blow that is this boring unrelenting film, but not enough for my tastes to be honest.
Well, we're going to disagree on this one a lot, it seems. This is not a film I choose to watch that often because of the difficulty of getting through it, but I hold it up as an example of quintessential Cronenberg, playing on all of his major themes and doing it expertly. I also like that the film has in many ways become more relevant in recent years.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say the message isn't muddled, but so extremely meta that it takes multiple viewings to really get. I don't think I had a real handle on this until a second viewing. To that end, I think it's much tighter and focused than you're giving it credit for.
Then again, that may just be my own bias showing through
You may just be right, maybe I got caught up in the Cronenberg-ness of the film and distracted myself away from all the subtlety that he tried to put into his message… but the film truly disappointed my on every level but the visual.