Videodrome (David Cronenberg,1983)
Non è una sorpresa il fatto che David Cronenberg sia stato allievo del noto mass mediologo, anche se negli anni Ottanta vi era solo un accenno rispetto a ciò che oggi chiamiamo era tecnologica.
Cronenberg, con Videodrome, reifica la teoria macluhaniana e delinea perfettamente le ripercussioni sulla psiche dell’individuo, alienato, strangolato dai fili elettronici creati da se stesso.
[/column] [column grid=”2″ span=”1″]In today’s era, where does the flesh finish and where does the technology begin? Where does the nature finish and where does the artifice begin? We are hybrid human beings, we are constantly supported by prosthesis, extensions of our arms, for example i-pod and i-pad, mobile phones and earphones, in a world where the air that we breath is full of codified messages, a great network of communication that makes the world smaller, just a click away. The so-called “global village”, as Mc Lhan said. It is not a surprise that David Croneberg has been the learner of the famous mass media-man, though in Eighties there was only a small sign in comparison to what we call technology today. Cronenberg, with Videodrome, reifies the macluhaniana theory and he perfectly defines repercussions on the human psyche, that is alienated and suffocated by electronic wires created by himself.
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[/column] [column grid=”2″ span=”1″]The main actor, that is the owner of a local TV that promotes pornography and various acts of violence, is the exasperation of what happens to a normal citizen: Max believes to have free will, but in reality, he is manipulated by institutions, that are using him for their own objective: extending the Videodrome signal for eliminating from the earth all the people who are tempted by “abnormal excitations”
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Max Renn (James Woods) non ha tutti i torti approposito dell’ abito di Nicki Brand (Debby Harrie), che diventerà presto la sua amante e compagna di giochi sadomasochistici. Ma assistiamo ad un solo rapporto carnale tra i due, quando ancora la realtà è reale. Gradualmente il nostro business man, varcando il confine di ciò che è lecito, perde la percezione della realtà (e noi con lui). Da artefice, diventerà vittima del suo stesso commercio pornografico, infatti il secondo rapporto sessuale avverrà col televisore, che proietterà solo l’immagine di Nicki: comincerà a pulsare, ansimare, prender vita. Allo stesso modo il protagonista, tenterà di ricongiungersi all’amante e, affondando il cranio nelle labbra della donna, si fonderà all’elettrodomestico.
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[column grid=”2″ span=”1″]“… we are looking for the excitement for the excitement, we want a lot of that, we look for it everywhere, we want it more and more, emotional, psychological, sexual excitations and encouraging that is bad. “And why are you wearing that dress? It’s almost excitant, do you know? It’s red, too. Do you know what Freud would say about your dress?” Max Renn (James Woods) is not completely wrong about Nicki Brand’s (Debby Harrie) dress, that soon becomes his lover and his partner during sadomasochistic plays. But, there is only a carnal relationship between them, when reality is still real. Gradually, our businessman, crossing the border of what is right, loses reality perception (and us with him). First he is the author, then he becomes victim of his pornographic commerce, in fact the second sexual intercourse happens with the television, that will show only the image of Nicki: he starts to pulse, to pant, to be alive. In the same way, the main actor tries to be with his lover again and, sinking the skull in the woman’s lips, he merges to the television.
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[/column] [column grid=”2″ span=”1″]Since now, human skin has a constant metamorphosis, hands merges viscidly with guns, the abdomen becomes a videotape-recorder, made of bloody flesh and of death, the head is packed in a crash helmet that could be the first prototype of the one that daft punks are going to wear 10 years later, when man-machine fusion will be made and irreversible.
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[/column] [column grid=”2″ span=”1″]“TV is reality and reality is less than TV” says doctor Oblivion. “Watching TV helps to feel part of the big palette of the world”. Nobody goes now to church to find the faith, but one goes to a “cathode church”, a place where homeless can have the new primary assets, not bread and cloths, but X-ray.
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