Body Horror, Technology, and You. Part I: The Video Word Made Flesh (VIDEODROME, wri/dir by David Cronenberg, Universal, Canada 1983, 89mns) By Joey Povinelli
The vessel that houses our perspective, desire, and identity is a flawed mechanism. Vital functions operate in silence and impact waking life. Some fixate or make changes out of necessity but there’s a population with a fractured relationship, living as a sort of floating head. Bodies are uncomfortable to think about because they are both essential and, at least partially, out of our control.
Body horror, through extreme exposure therapy, puts visuals to these often invisible forces. Though other examples predate him, David Cronenberg is the granddaddy of the genre. Modern body horror films (like the 2024 hit, The Substance), can’t exist without his influence. He’s like The Beatles of unexplained growths.
Videodrome stands as both preamble and prediction on the melding of our existence with the media and technology we produce. Cronenberg expresses perversions of thought through irrevocable changes to the physical form.
Max Renn (James Woods), the president of CIVIC-TV, a local television station, seeks the next big thing. Renn is desensitized from the proposed softcore shows and wants something “tough,” something shocking. Renn is introduced to Videodrome (a broadcast perceived to be from Malaysia but, in actuality, is out of Pittsburgh) as a tape of a woman being assaulted against an electric wall. Renn and Nicki (Debbie Harry), a radio host who he meets on a televised panel, begin hooking up with nights capped off by viewings of Videodrome. She likes it even more than him.
Ah, David Cronenberg. Your imagery is always so comforting.
When Renn is eventually told that Videodrome is real, his mind and body change. Body horror often features a growing other-presence within that the afflicted cannot control as it overtakes everything. Max’s affliction is what he witnessed; he sacrifices decency at the altar of a cheap thrill. Videodrome itself is revealed to create brain tumors on its viewers that O’Blivion (a media theorist portrayed by Jack Creley) speculates is a “new outgrowth” of the human brain. No matter what happens Renn cannot wash the stains off. Hallucinations and bodily changes will occur.
Renn suffers physical changes like a vaginal slit in his stomach that houses inanimate objects. The first item he inserts is a gun, melding sexuality and violence. When he finally retrieves the weapon, it sprouts new appendages that link to the skin on his hand, becoming a weapon himself.
Other characters immerse in the television until their physical forms are gone completely. Nicki eventually goes to Pittsburgh to join the show. She doesn't come back. Nicki is radio; the old way, she is sacrificed for television. This is most apparent in O’Blivian who no longer has a corporeal self: he exists on TV screens, an entire personality made up of tapes.
Inanimate objects also take on human attributes: a TV set pulses and breaths as an organic presence. A Betamax tape (which also pulses) is inserted into Renn’s stomach. The TV is even whipped in a BDSM-influenced frenzy. As the film progresses, the human and technological become unrecognizably intertwined.
The television wants you!
In the later acts, two opposing forces emerge: Convex (Leslie Carlson) who wants to use Videodrome to remove the sickos who may be attracted to extreme programming from society; and the O’Blivion family, who believe Videodrome will open the next level of consciousness. By the end, Renn becomes a tool for O’Blivion, joining the terrifying new, post-human, future.
What makes Cronenberg interesting compared to other purveyors of body horror is he seems to have an appreciation for “the new flesh.” Instead of rejecting the changes, he sees them as the inevitable steps in human evolution. Take his 2022 return to the genre, Crimes of the Future, where humans evolve to be able to ingest plastic, which was released in the same year when scientists detected microplastics in breast milk. The environment we have manufactured is in tandem with our adaptability. It’s not inherently negative but more so observational.
Cronenberg wasn’t announcing the artificially influenced human as the future: we’ve already arrived. Take Civic TV’s slogan: “..the one you take to bed with you.” That was 1983, look at how we sleep next to our phones today and meet their gaze upon waking. Cronenberg saw media’s all-consuming appetite. The depravity of Videodrome itself is nothing compared to the gore sites that thrived in the internet’s early days (and still do).
And it looks like you want the television.
O’blivion says, “the television screen has become the retina of the mind's eye.” Max, and the viewers, are redefined by image. By the end of the picture, Max sacrifices his physical body to become part of the screen forever. He turns the gun on himself, his last words, prologue to a shot: “Long live the new flesh.” We see it on a TV screen first.
Joey Povinelli is a writer known for his film and theatre work with jpeg Productions, including live talk show, The Martini Hour, and nationally screened horror short, “Interitus Adfectus.” He also writes about film and rock ‘n roll for a variety of publications. He is attracted to uncompromising emotions and gorgeous aesthetics.