Read & Watch: Videodrome & Explanation of Videodrome!

I've always been a fan of David Cronenberg's Videodrome from 1983. With that said, there have always been aspects of it beneath the surface that went over my head.  I'd be lying if I said I understood clearly, every minute of it.  Until now that is.  I came across an essay on it, and it makes everything clear.  Makes my appreciation for the movie that much more, and it definitely makes it feel ahead of it's time and totally relevent to today's era of technology and "reality" based entertainment culture.

 

Here is an excerpt from the essay:

Videodrome certainly sheds light on the nature of post-modern man's existence in the world of the hyperreal, but the bleak assessment of our culture that it offers is, by no stretch of the imagination, easy to accept without many sleepless nights. When a director like Cronenberg makes a film that tells us that the world we have created has made reality obsolete, the most disillusioned of us recoils in shock at this blatant display of cynicism. However, with the aid of an open mind and a strong stomach, it becomes aundantly clear that what has just been witnessed in Videodrome is a prophecy, and hardly one that we have to wait to examine the truth of. After all, Max Renn's inability to differentiate between what he sees on the show "Videodrome" and physical reality of acting out of the psychopathology he subjects himself to, is a metaphor for the era of The Terminator (1984), not that of Dante. One does not have to undergo Renn's ordeal of having a videotape-eating orifice open in one's abdomen in order to see that the simulation of real experience has outrun the reality of it in every way, shape and form -- not only for the characters of Videodrome, but every last one of us. For example, watching a sitcom is muchmore entertaining than the banalities of real family life, which would involve working a twelve-hour day with a whiny child's complaining as reward, as opposed to vicariously living through a show one can turn off.   (Written by, Jean, Baudrillard)

 

The rest of this brilliant essay can be found HERE!