In this new scene-by-scene breakdown of Videodrome, John David Ebert illuminates David Cronenberg's 1983 classic film utilizing ideas drawn from the fields of critical theory, comparative mythology and media studies. Borrowing concepts from such thinkers as Marshall McLuhan, Vilem Flusser and Jean Baudrillard. Ebert sees Videodrome as the tale of a man who becomes swallowed up inside of a televisual reality--as we all were by the 1980s--and lives in a world in which, as Baudrillard put it, the simulacra precede, and come to replace, the originals. The real is slowly displaced by the surreal, as Max Renn's reality is transubstantiated from a world of heavy matter composed of atoms and molecules to one made out of self-luminous matter composed of electrons and irridescent photons. The transformation is a profoundly disturbing and disorienting one as Cronenberg charts our society's descent into the rise and predominance of what theoretician Peter Sloterdijk calls "disinhibiting media," or media, that is, which encourage a climate of violence and spree killings.
In this new scene-by-scene breakdown of Videodrome, John David Ebert illuminates David Cronenberg's 1983 classic film utilizing ideas drawn from the fields of critical theory, comparative mythology and media studies. Borrowing concepts from such thinkers as Marshall McLuhan, Vilem Flusser and Jean Baudrillard. Ebert sees Videodrome as the tale of a man who becomes swallowed up inside of a televisual reality--as we all were by the 1980s--and lives in a world in which, as Baudrillard put it, the simulacra precede, and come to replace, the originals. The real is slowly displaced by the surreal, as Max Renn's reality is transubstantiated from a world of heavy matter composed of atoms and molecules to one made out of self-luminous matter composed of electrons and irridescent photons. The transformation is a profoundly disturbing and disorienting one as Cronenberg charts our society's descent into the rise and predominance of what theoretician Peter Sloterdijk calls "disinhibiting media," or media, that is, which encourage a climate of violence and spree killings.
