Welcome to my Defining Favourites, a section dedicated to essays about films that I feel confident in calling favourites in some way or another - akin to Roger Ebertâs âGreat Moviesâ reviews. These essays are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to read more beyond the free preview, please consider subscribing.
Directed by David Cronenberg
Screenplay by David Cronenberg
Produced by Claude HĂ©roux
Starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, Debbie Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Les Carlson, Jack Creley, Lynne Gorman
Premiere Date: February 4, 1983
Running Time: 89 minutes
An advertisement for Max Rennâs television network CIVIC-TV reads out that itâs âthe kind you take to bed with you.â Itâs maybe the most fitting way that a film like Videodrome can start, because television was at one point a new invention before it has simply become a commodity in many households today as we see it. But a filmmaker like David Cronenberg knew that there was something else happening underneath, which would only make for a synthesized relationship which our bodies experience together with the media that we consume. It all starts with acts of curiosity in erotic and violent media which stimulates our own sensibilities, but Cronenbergâs synthesis of such would only result in maybe the most ambitious film heâs made thus far.
When people find themselves first dabbling into a fascination with supposedly taboo media, it feels like they fall down a rabbit hole that only gets deeper and deeper the more that they allow it to grow. It isnât just the fact that David Cronenberg found a perfect setting to explore such a fascination in Videodrome that results in one of the greatest horror movies ever made, but a very deeply layered exploration of the attempts to render a consumer of such media into becoming a part in that media too. In fact, this all happens to go further than what weâre watching on the screen, because it extends itself into feeling like reality when we become so infused with what we consume in that same process.
