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Videodrome * David Cronenberg (1983)

It has been many, many years since I saw this film, too many. For some reason a magnificent classic like this isn’t shown on TV very often either. Maybe because of the fact that my girlfriend recently bought “Naked Lunch”, another classic from the same director, but also because of the many references to this film (samples, titles, etc.) by the French noise-act Propergol I really wanted to see “Videodrome” again. And thus happened!
“Horror” is the genre of “Videodrome”, but not the gory splatter kind of horror (however in a few scenes Cronenberg thought he had to live upto expectations), but a magnificent dense atmosphere does the trick. The story is great too. TV is getting too much influence on the minds of men and “The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears in the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.” A provocative idea, but not entirely grapped from the air. How many people will confuse the lifes of soapstars (and the way they look) with real life or think that ‘real live soaps’ are real? “Videodrome” goes even further. Signals have been put under the images to influence the viewers (this actually happened in the 1950’ies), but in this case, the signals are put under extreme sexually violent images because these images open the human receptors so the signals ‘get in easier’. I suppose that is not how far contemporary experimentation has gone, “but I still think it’s hard to imagine a more thoughtful or accomplished series of investigations into the dark side of the modern day.” (quote).
A film with a great atmosphere, a philosophy (“and that’s what makes it dangerous” Masha says about Videodrome in the film), a few flaws and poor scenes, but heh, this is a classic that you have to watch (again) if you asked me. -13/5/06-

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