Videodrome

David Cronenberg, Canada, 1982, 84 minutes

Videodrome is not as well known as Cronenberg’s later work, but what other movie manages to combine an extreme version of the theories of Marshall McLuhan with shots of Debbie Harry at her hottest? James Woods plays Max Renn, an unscrupulous cable TV executive with a penchant for extreme television. In his quest for what we would now recognize as proto-reality television, he stumbles across a pirated signal of the show Videodrome, grainy but apparently real footage of executions and beatings.

Max becomes obsessed with tracing Videodrome’s origins and in the process comes across Professor Oblivion, a white suited eccentric with theories about overstimulation and the media, and Nicki (Debbie Harry) host of 'The Emotional Rescue’ radio show. Things start to get really weird when Max’s television and videotapes begin experiencing sexual responses and speaking to him in Nicki’s voice. All technology and all media become extensions of the human senses. We learn that the Videodrome signal will either give you cancer or force you to grow an extra organ, potentially leading to the next step in human evolution. All this has something to do with the tagline "all hail the new flesh".

Videodrome is not just an example of early sci-fi horror crossover, a genre hybrid immortalized by later films like Ringu and Tetsuo. It is also a profound comment on the place of television in our lives, especially the increasingly blurred line between technology and the self, and our appetite for increasingly shocking fare. Considering the power of the media, particularly photography and video, to record and then disseminate images of atrocity, particularly of the recent Iraq war, makes the themes of Videodrome all the more relevant.

Review by Sarah Artt
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2004