Archive: Film Reviews, May 2003
Videodrome
Dir: David Cronenberg, USA/Canada, 1983
A Review by Polona Petek, University of Melbourne, Australia
In 1981 the Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg made his sixth feature film, Videodrome. When released in 1983, reviewers and cinema scholars (Wood, 1983; Beard & Handling, 1983) almost unanimously interpreted it as yet another instance of misogyny, often recognised as the recurrent problem if not even the defining element of the sci-fi horror genre (Creed, 1987), from which Cronenberg is not exempt. Those more favourably disposed towards the filmmaker (who was also known as 'the Baron of Blood' but would soon gain a reputation as a controversial art-house director) greeted the film as a successful cinematic representation of McLuhan's theories (McLuhan, 1994) of mass media in the age of electronic communication (Laing, 2000); or they attempted to offer a praising account of the film by ignoring, or even manifestly refusing any psychoanalytic interpretation. (Boss, 1986; Shaviro, 1993: 138-144) My reading of the film is, in a sense, an attempt to bridge these diametrically opposed positions. I believe it is possible to view Videodrome as a subversive, though indeed pessimistic meditation on gender as a cultural construct, enforced, perpetuated and manipulated by mass media (among other factors), without ignoring those aspects of the film that are usually singled out and reproached by psychoanalytically informed film critics.
In this review I will be using three forms of the word videodrome: Videodrome refers to Cronenberg's film, 'Videodrome' to the TV show within the film, and videodrome to the signal. Videodrome features the story of Max Renn (James Woods), one of the owners and program managers of Civic TV, a local channel broadcasting all varieties of pornography. When searching for new viewing thrills, Max comes across a pirate copy of 'Videodrome', a provoking sado-masochistic show, eventually revealed as a videotape planted on Max by his technician-cum-friend Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) and Barry Convex (Les Carlson), the owner of Spectacular Optical. The tape emits videodrome, a fatal signal produced by Spectacular Optical, which can be used to manipulate subjects exposed to it. Convex wants to gain power over Max to secure access to his TV station, which could broadcast videodrome and thus serve Convex's purpose: public manipulation. Videodrome was invented by Professor O'Blivion (Jack Creley), who also became its first victim and is now kept 'alive' by his daughter Bianca (Sonja Smits) through a collection of pre-recorded videotapes. Aware of the signal's capacity, Bianca too plans to use Max. She wants to fight Convex and induce the next stage of (human?) development, the 'new flesh'.
At first glance, the plot of Videodrome seems rather shallow: the good (Bianca) pitted against the bad (Convex), with Max figuring as a dummy in their combat, and videodrome, the quintessential representative of the mass media, as the deadly weapon. However, if we view the film as the story of Max's subjection to the gaze, his pursuit, investigation and finally his attempt to take possession of it, Videodrome turns out to be a far more complex film with quite a radical ideological stance. Indeed, the film features a full range of identities available to women and their representations in a misogynist phallocentric culture. Videodrome undeniably aligns woman with the Other, and designates its exemplary human subject male, but it also shows that any such generalisations are intolerable cultural constructs.
Lacan's distinction between the gaze and the eye (developed in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis [1978]) is extremely useful for interpreting Cronenberg's film. (Kaja Silverman (1992: 145 et passim) pointed out its wider implications as well as its misappropriation in cinema studies.) The gaze is the partial manifestation of the unattainable object of human desire (objet petit a) in the scopic field. It belongs to the Other, whereas the eye, the scopic erogenous zone, pertains to the subject. For Lacan, the gaze has no specular image. Cronenberg, however, manages to give it a rather determinate -- yet, still compatible, that is, somewhat elusive and intangible -- representation by matching it with videodrome. The signal is the example par excellence of the Lacanian gaze: it is clearly emitted from 'outside', yet not from another subject or from a clearly distinguished point in space; it is rather diffuse, dispersed everywhere, issuing from every TV set.
Videodrome (not so Max) initially sharply distinguishes between the omnipotent gaze (videodrome) and the limited eye (belonging to the film's human characters, most consistently to Max). Then, as the film proceeds and Max's videodrome-induced hallucinations escalate, Max and videodrome become increasingly entwined, almost indistinguishable, as the blurred distinction between Max's reality and hallucinations aptly indicates. Lacan (op cit) argued that the subject, which is constituted through the intervention of external agency (the Other, the gaze) and thus always split and decentred, tends to cover up this alterity at its core by eliding the gaze, or confusing it with the eye and attempting to take possession of it. Cronenberg's film, however, does not pretend to have achieved interchangeability or a fusion of the gaze and the eye, nor does it conceal their inescapable division; quite the contrary. The relationship between Max and the signal is anything but reciprocal; there is hardly any evidence of exchange, only the forceful and evidently malign impact of videodrome upon Max. The changes in Max's 'reality' are not a result of fusion but merely a consequence of this impact.
Thus far, Videodrome could only be accused of being pessimistic. But the real problem with Videodrome lies elsewhere. Cronenberg's designation of the 'new flesh' (as a way out of alienated, externally-determined human existence) poses problems, not because it is pessimistic, but because the path leading towards it is articulated excessively through categories of gender and sexuality. When the audience first sees Max, he is no doubt a carefully and consistently constructed stereotype of a white heterosexual male: active, dominant and in sufficient supply of phallic attributes and substitutes. Not until after his encounter with women -- portrayed as seductive, threatening, passive, masochist, or maternal figures -- does his apparently stable identity start disintegrating, which renders him even more vulnerable to videodrome. The latter -- to be quite precise, video and television in general -- is related almost exclusively to women. Even before his exposure to the signal, Max's relation to visual media occurs predominantly through women. His first viewing of 'Videodrome' and meeting Nicki (Deborah Harry) occur almost simultaneously, and shortly after that Nicki's appearances become completely tangled with Max's videodrome-stimulated hallucinations. Even more: videodrome itself, for Max, increasingly takes on attributes of a voracious and ferocious female body. At the same time, as the signal's impact on Max escalates, Max himself is becoming more and more feminised (for instance, he develops the widely-observed 'vaginal' opening on his stomach), subjugated and exploited alternately by Convex and Bianca, and also threatening to men (Max's killing of Harlan quite overtly equates Max's abdominal slit with vagina dentata).
The problem with Videodrome is not that it is complicit with patriarchy, but that it does not go much further than laying it bare. The final sequence of the film is particularly informative in this view. It shows Max approaching the 'next phase' beyond the split between the eye and the gaze. As it happens, Max is about to commit suicide. He (though Max can hardly still be considered male) comes to a desolate industrial site and enters a deserted ship, conspicuously labelled 'condemned vessel'. Here, the image of Nicki on a giant TV screen tells him that videodrome, the tool of exploitation, still exists, and she pleads with him to undergo 'a total transformation into the new flesh'. Nicki shows him how. Max watches himself shooting himself within the (diegetic) screen, and then indeed shoots himself.
Of course, one might suggest that Videodrome's end is ambiguous: is Max's act a result of resignation, disenchantment, revolt or (woman's) seduction? It can also be argued that the final sequence is a climax of the patriarchal attitude to women. Videodrome (television?, mass media in general?) is now completely aligned with the demanding, seductive, yet also threatening image of woman. Max, no longer indisputably male, is simultaneously the victim and the monster. However, I believe the film's end sheds different light on the preceding representations and employment of woman's body. Like one of the twins in Cronenberg's confrontational film Dead Ringers (1988), Max 'can see the image of himself looking back as both subject and object at the same time'. (Russo, 1994: 120) He is given one last taste of what possessing the gaze might be like, but what he sees means giving up human existence. Nevertheless, Max follows the suggestion and carries out his ultimate, yet also his first truly subversive act: having experienced existence in a male as well as a female/feminised body, and having gained insight into the workings of the gaze, he decides not only to annihilate himself as the subject but also to abolish the gaze.
Videodrome is a disturbing and multifaceted film. It attempts to deal with human existence in general as alienated, shaped by culture and finite. It does so from within its cultural context and the context of the sci-fi horror genre. Videodrome manifestly mobilises conventions of the genre and cultural stereotypes regarding gender and sexuality, precisely to expose them as die-hard conventions and all-pervading stereotypes. The film's end is saturated with this air of entrapment. What might seem as a flaw to some viewers, however, is the film's refusal or inability to offer a positive alternative. Ultimately, Videodrome merely states that the current condition is intolerable.
References:
Beard, William and Handling, Piers (1983) The Interview, in Piers Handling (ed.), The Shape of Rage: The Films of David Cronenberg. Toronto: General Publishing Co. Limited, pp. 159198.
Boss, Pete (1986) Vile Bodies and Bad Medicine, Screen 27 (1), (Spring), pp. 1424.
Creed, Barbara (1987) From Here to Modernity: Feminism and Postmodernism, Screen 28 (2), (Summer), pp. 4767.
Lacan, Jacques (1978) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co.
Laing, Rowan (2000) A Comparison between the Theories of Marshall McLuhan and two films by David Cronenberg, Deepsouth 6 (3), (Spring), n.pp.
McLuhan, Marshall (1994) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Russo, Mary J. (1994) The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity. London and New York: Routledge.
Shaviro, Steven (1993) The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Silverman, Kaja (1992) Male Subjectivity at the Margins. London and New York: Routledge.
Wood, Robin (1983) Cronenberg: A Dissenting View, in Piers Handling (ed.), The Shape of Rage: The Films of David Cronenberg. Toronto: General Publishing Co. Limited, pp. 115135.