Contemporary Film Theory and Practice.
Organic Technology:
How are the Boundaries between Human and Technology blurred in the
films of David Cronenberg?
“[Television will] herald the evolution of man as a
technological animal”
- Bianca O’Blivion (Sonja Smits), in Videodrome1
1
David Cronenberg, Canada / US, 1983.
1
The term “technological animal” describes not only the creations presented to
us by the films of David Cronenberg but can also accurately relate to humanity as it
exists today in the post-modern world. With the spread of household computers and
the advent of the internet, the use of technology has become all the more
commonplace whilst newer developments are constantly occurring. Technology is
ever present in today’s society and film has not only embraced it but has also often
explored the ramifications of these developments in films such as The Terminator2
which uses the notion of the ‘cyborg’ to study technological fear. What I shall be
doing in this essay is examining aspects of the cyborg and the boundaries between
man and machine and then looking at how these ideas manifest themselves in
Cronenberg’s films. I will be examining how flesh and technology become one within
his films, looking at how this relates to gender and potential loss of individual identify
and exploring how these effect the impact of his films in a wider cultural context. The
treatment of the body within contemporary film is a rich and detailed area of study
and I hope to demonstrate the complexities involved in the breaking down of
boundaries and how these ideas are related to notions of postmodernism.
I wish to begin by exploring the concepts of postmodernism and the
postmodern body and how they relate to ‘cyborgs’ and then examining the subject of
cyborg’s in film. Douglas Kellner suggests that postmodernism has been characterised
by “breaking down the distinction between high and low art, by incorporating within
aesthetic forms a panoply of icons and images of media culture, and by challenging
conventional barriers between artist and spectator” though as he also goes on to say,
there is “no one postmodern theory”3. The idea of postmodernism is one that defies
strict definition, instead it can be understood as something that has come after the
2
James Cameron, US, 1984.
2
‘modern’ and opposes it in ways such as the ones mentioned by Kellner.
Advancements in technology is a large part of the postmodern world, the development
of computer systems led to the internet and global communication, information on
almost any subject is readily available to nearly everyone whilst medical advances
allow the replacement and repair of damaged body parts and even the surgical
alteration of any bodily feature. This brings me to the notion of the ‘postmodern
body’ which, through the application of these technological advancements is able to
transform its identity, whereas previously “identity was a function of predefined
social roles and a traditional system of myths which provided orientation and religious
sanctions to define one’s place in the world”4. Anne Balsamo argues that
“bodybuilding, coloured contact lenses, liposuction, and other technological
innovations have subtly altered the dimensions and markers of what counts as a
‘natural’ body”5 whilst Kellner explains that “in the consumer and media societies
that emerged after World War II, identity has been increasingly linked to style, to
producing an image, to how one looks”6. What both analysts are describing is the
transformation of self through the use of technology, the development of an image
that can be based on media images, life-style choices, surgical enhancement or many
other possibilities. This is where the notion of the ‘cyborg’ features in relation to the
postmodern body, it is a fictional merging of organic flesh and artificial technology
and thus a clear representation of contemporary identity and concerns towards
technology played out in a fictional narrative, this point is supported by David Tomas
who gives an example of one such concern in his following statement.
3
Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the
Postmodern, 1995, Routledge, UK, pp 46 – 47.
4
Douglas Kellner, Media Culture, pp 231.
5
Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, 1996, Duke
University Press, US, pp 1.
6
Douglas Kellner, Media Culture, pp 232.
3
The image culture that has provided the most fertile
ground for popular speculations on the
body/technology interface has been a cyborg-based
science fiction film culture in which late twentiethcentury transformations of the human body are
linked more or less directly to the development of
advanced imaging systems7.
Further to this Jennifer Gonzalez suggests the image of the cyborg “contains on its
surface and in its fundamental structure the multiple fears and desires of a culture
caught in the process of transformation”, this comment seems particularly relevant in
relation to David Cronenberg’s Videodrome where the cyborg character is part of the
instigation of a change in his society though I shall look at this in more detail further
on in this essay8. What I hope to have made clear here is that cyborgs are used within
films as a way to explore the contemporary world, they fuse cold metal and hot flesh
and represent fears of this clash between the constructed and the biological, they
symbolise the reconstruction of self and even, as I shall demonstrate later, challenge
traditional ideas of gender and sexuality. What I shall now move on to do is
demonstrate this by looking at the use of cyborgs within the films of David
Cronenberg, paying particular attention to Videodrome as the strongest example of
the concepts under discussion.
I have deliberately avoided specifically defining what exactly constitutes a
cyborg up to this point as I feel what I have to say will relate directly to Cronenberg’s
films that I shall now be examining. Within culture there is a typical image that is
conjured up by the term ‘cyborg’, it is the direct physical combination of man and
machine that is very prevalent in the science-fiction genre, the Borg from Star Trek:
7
David Tomas, Art, Psychasthenic Assimilation, and the Cybernetic Automaton, in Chris Hables Gray
(Ed.), The Cyborg Handbook, 1995, Routledge, UK, pp 264.
8
Jennifer Gonzalez, Envisioning Cyborg Bodies: Notes from Current Research in Chris Hables Gray
(Ed.), The Cyborg Handbook, 1995, Routledge, UK, pp 267.
4
First Contact9 (see fig.01) are a perfect example of this image, man encased and
entwined with technology, yet the meaning of the term is far broader than this.
Fig.01 ~ the Borg from Star Trek: First Contact, the
standard science-fiction Cyborg image.
Theorists have claimed “anyone with an artificial organ, limb or supplement (like a
pacemaker), anyone reprogrammed to resist disease (immunised) or drugged to
think/behave/feel better (psychopharmacology) is technically a cyborg” and it is more
towards these ideas that Cronenberg’s films lean, with themes relating to
programming individuals in films such as eXistenZ10 and Videodrome11. In fact, a
common theme throughout Cronenberg’s films is the application of technological
advancement and/or medical science to transform a ‘regular’ human into a new,
advanced creature / cyborg, for example it is experimental plastic surgery that results
in the patients growth of a new, blood-sucking organ in Rabid12 whilst in Shivers13
people are transformed through infection by a genetically engineered parasite
designed to be used in organ transplants. The relationships between bodily
9
Jonathan Frakes, US, 1996.
David Cronenberg, US, 1999.
11
Chris Hables Gray, Steven Mentor & Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, Cyborology: Constructing the
Knowledge of Cybernetic Organisms, in Chris Hables Gray (Ed.), The Cyborg Handbook, 1995,
Routledge, UK, pp 2.
12
David Cronenberg, Canada, 1977.
13
David Cronenberg, Canada, 1975.
10
5
transformation and the scientific operations behind them allow for the assumption,
using the above statement, that these are technically examples of types of cyborg,
though ones without traditionally visible signs of such. Samantha Holland suggests
that “the fears concerning technology in the cyborg film appear to be two-fold –
representing both fears that human beings will be replaced by, and that we are
becoming machines”14 though I would argue that, in a wider context, the use of the
word ‘machine’ is far too limiting and that it would be more accurate to say that the
fear is of becoming or being replaced by an ‘Other’. Balsamo notes that “through the
use of technology as the means or context for human hybridisation, cyborgs come to
represent unfamiliar ‘otherness’, one that challenges the denotative stability of human
identity” which relates the idea of the ‘Other’ to the postmodern issues of identity
discussed previously15. Cronenberg’s films feature characters that gain an ‘otherness’
through the application of modern technology is some form, they don’t necessarily
become machines, but they are somehow transformed into something beyond simply
being human and into a technological creation of, to borrow from Videodrome, “new
flesh”, something which makes the cyborgs of his films not only different to many
others featured in fantasy but all the more fascinating because of it.
Moving on from this, it is clear that Cronenberg is less interested in the more
traditional imagery associated with cyborgs and more focussed on not just the
transformation of flesh through technology but also on an area where flesh and
technology become literally indistinguishable from each other. I mentioned above the
film Videodrome where the cyborg character uses the phrase “long live the new flesh”
to describe what he is becoming and I feel the term ‘new flesh’ is thus a suitable way
14
Samantha Holland, Descartes Goes to Hollywood: Mind, Body and Gender in Contemporary Cyborg
Cinema in Mike Featherstone & Mike Burrows, Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of
Technological Embodiment, 1995, SAGE Publications Inc, US, pp 163-164.
15
Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body, pp 32.
6
of describing the nature of the cyborgs within Cronenberg’s movies. This ‘new flesh’
is perhaps easiest to see in eXistenZ where humans become technological through
acquiring a ‘bioport’ (fig.02) in their back which links them to their ‘game
pod’(fig.03), which, in turn, is a machine that appears organic. It is not just the human
characters who have become partially technological but the technology has, in a
sense, become partly humanised which is a concept that can also be witnessed, to an
Fig.02 ~ Pointing out the bioport in eXistenZ.
Fig.03 ~ The Game Pod, an example of organic
technology in eXistenZ.
extent, in Videodrome where televisions and video cassettes also become organic and
seemingly breath and pulse. Balsamo discusses a situation “where machines assume
organic functions and the body is materially redesigned through the application of
newly developed technologies” and, in a sense, Cronenberg takes this a step further as
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machines not only “assume organic functions” but actually become organic
themselves16. These, themselves, are cybernetic organisms and in both eXistenZ and
Videodrome they play an important part in relation to the ‘humanoid’ cyborgs and
often have some kind of direct connection such as the bioport in the former and video
cassettes in the latter. This ‘new flesh’ that Cronenberg demonstrates and utilises in
his films is something that I shall now further explore in taking a more detailed look
at cyborg incarnations throughout his films.
What I now aim to do is explore more directly, using Videodrome as a case
study, is examine the development and nature of cyborgs within his films and so that I
can attempt to discover how they relate to contemporary concerns. Videodrome
follows Max Renn, an executive of a cable TV station, who tries to find a new type of
programme, “something that’s breakthrough, something tough”, to broadcast and, in
doing so, discovers Videodrome which depicts realistic torture and death. He is soon
involved in a political conspiracy which sees him affected by a hidden signal
broadcast with Videodrome which distorts reality, causing hallucinations and
transforming his flesh into something new. The film plays with the notion of the
traditional cyborg image at times, when Barry Convex gets Max to wear a helmet to
record his hallucinations we are presented with an image of an organic body and
(seemingly) mechanical head whilst on another occasion we see a gun fused to Max’s
hand in an image reminiscent of traditional cyborg images (fig.04) though later this
gun/hand becomes more ‘fleshy’ (see fig.05) in keeping with Cronenberg’s
16
Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body, pp 2-3.
8
Fig.04 ~ Traditional image of human and machine
fusion in Videodrome.
Fig. 05 ~ The organic gun later on in Videodrome.
themes of organic technology. Videodrome uses the transformation of flesh to create
fear and addresses certain areas of concern such as masculinity in crisis where Max
develops a vagina-like slit in his chest, something which also renders him a human
video player where tapes can be inserted and program him to commit certain actions.
He also, at one point in the film, loses a gun inside the same slit, only to remove it
later when he needs to use it effectively rendering his body a holster as well, thus
emphasising the idea of a single body becoming a tool, machine and man are merging
beyond the need for any external devices. Kellner suggests that science-fiction often
“presents the disappearance of the human and the replacement of the human by
technology”, the fear in society is that we are being swamping with technology and if
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the boundaries become to blurred then their if the fear of a loss of humanity, that is of
becoming an ‘other’17. However, in Videodrome the cyborg, it seems, is just an
evolutionary step where bodily identity becomes malleable and changeable, it has a
lot in common with themes relating to cyberpunk as Kellner demonstrates,
“cyberpunk is the implosion between biology and technology – human body parts are
easily replaceable with technological prostheses, personalities are programmable…
and individuals enter strange new technological worlds” which fits perfectly with the
events of the film18. Cronenberg is suggesting that perhaps the ‘new flesh’ should be
embraced as the next stage of evolution where all boundaries are broken down,
something addressed later, including those relating to gender and sexuality which is
what I shall go on to examine now.
As previously mentioned, the postmodern body is flexible and identity can
easily be altered and this includes a sexual identity relating to gender, transvestites
can code themselves as female whilst transsexuals use medical technology to change
themselves physically, this is represented in Cronenberg’s films in a number of ways.
I previously mentioned Max’s vaginal slit in Videodrome, something which is often
penetrated, whether by the phallic image of his gun or by the video tapes inserted by
Barry Convex and Harlan. Not only does the vaginal slit act to feminise Max,
representing male anxieties of castration and loss of masculinity, but the insertion of
the video tapes (fig.06) is depicted as a violent and painful rape, further emasculating
17
18
Douglas Kellner, Media Culture, pp 308.
Douglas Kellner, Media Culture, pp 304.
10
Fig.06 ~ Barry Convex inserts a video tape into Max’s
vaginal slit in an act of rape.
him, Anna Powell suggests that “the body is ungendered and rendered amorphous by
the invasion of machine parts”19. Videodrome deliberately removes yet another social
boundary by re-defining Max as neither masculine and feminine, relating to both the
idea that gender if flexible in the contemporary world and that, because of this,
masculinity is now less clearly defined, Holland suggests there is a fear that “in a
possible cyborg future, biological gender would disappear, rendering patriarchy’s
centrally constituting hierarchy of masculine over feminine untenable”. Videodrome
does not suppress this fear but demonstrate it creating a terrifying and uncomfortable
image for male audiences though one that I believe the film tells us we should try and
embrace20. Crash21 depicts sexual stimulation through involvement in car crashes,
directly linking sex with technology in an alternative way to Videodrome, the
characters transform their bodies and obtain scars through the car accidents they
involve themselves in. Parveen Adams suggests the characters revel in “these
transformations of skin and tissue, these crusts of a new and hybridised body” 22 and
Murray Smith suggests the are trying to reach a kind of transcendence through this
19
Anna Powell, Deleuze and the Horror Film, 2005, Edinburgh University Press, UK, pp 82.
Samantha Holland, Descartes Goes to Hollywood, pp 166 – 167.
21
David Cronenberg, US, 1996.
20
11
“techno-sex”23. Again, in Crash there is another form of cyborg as the characters alter
themselves through technology and, again, sexuality is clearly linked to this as in
Videodrome, Shivers and Rabid where sexual limits and boundaries are
deconstructed. Cronenberg himself has described how he imagines sexuality as
becoming more undefined and, I believe, clearly states the theme of Videodrome in
this statement;
“human beings could swap sexual organs, or
do without sexual organs as… the distinction
between male and female would diminish, and
perhaps we would become less polarised and
more integrated creatures… I’m talking about
the possibility that human beings would be
able to physically mutate at will… sheer force
of will would allow you to change your
physical self”24.
What we can see from this is that sex and technology are directly linked and both
bring up concerns of loss of masculine identity, cyborgs like the T-1000 in The
Terminator represent “over-compensations for masculinity in crisis” whilst
Cronenberg exploits these concerns of alternative sexual practices in order to promote
discomfort in audiences and explore fears of transgression.
Throughout the film reality is questioned as the Videodrome signal takes
effect on Max, Cronenberg himself claims that “by affecting the body – whether it’s
with TV, drugs (invented or otherwise) – you alter your reality” and wonders whether
such a process is an evolutionary advance25. eXistenZ also deals with the nature of
reality, as Michael Grant notes, “the relation between the events of the virtual reality
22
Parveen Adams, Death drive, in Michael Grant (Ed.), The Modern Fantastic: The Films of David
Cronenberg, 2000, Flicks Books, UK, pp 104 – 105.
23
Murray Smith, (A)moral monstrosity, in Michael Grant (Ed.), The Modern Fantastic: The Films of
David Cronenberg, 2000, Flicks Books, UK, pp 72 – 73.
24
David Cronenberg quoted in Carol J. Clover, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern
Horror Film, 1992, BFI, UK, pp 197.
12
game, eXistenZ, and those of ordinary reality, which at the beginning of the film
seems clear, is by the end rendered retrospectively ambivalent”, and in both the case
of this film and Videodrome it is the cyborg that is at the centre of the distorted
perceptions of what is real26. Whilst the distortions in the eXistenZ game are at least
partially deliberate, the hallucinations Max has are not as controlled but are related to
“a new organ, a new part of the brain”, according to Videodrome creator Brian
O’Blivion who also suggests that this new organ (new flesh?) was created by the
hallucinations, themselves created by a electronic signal, and not the other way round.
Though this echoes back to Rabid where lead character Rose grows a new organ
through experimental plastic surgery, it more directly connects modern ideas of
technology and media effecting human development and Brian O’Blivion directly
connects technology with the human form when he states that “the video screen is part
of the physical structure of the brain”. We have established that the cyborg body is
one that is created through technology and Joanna Zylinska believe this includes
“technologies such as television, film and Internet”27 which is exactly the way in
which Max begins his transformations as he is affected by the Videodrome signal,
whilst Brian O’Blivion himself has been killed before the films opening and only
exists as pre-recorded video messages, effectively existing and interacting with others
through technology. Today the internet is a major resource giving access to instant
communication and almost unlimited amounts of knowledge, it is a virtual reality that
Kevin Robins calls “a utopian vision for postmodern times”28 which cyberspace
travellers can explore although, according to Balsamo, “as technological apparatuses
25
Cronenberg, David, Cronenberg on Cronenberg, 1992, Faber and Faber Limited, UK, pp 45.
Michael Grant, Introduction, in Michael Grant (Ed.), The Modern Fantastic: The Films of David
Cronenberg, 2000, Flicks Books, UK, pp 15.
27
Joanna Zylinska, The Cyborg Experiments: the extensions of the body in the media age, 2002,
Continum, UK, pp 34.
26
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replace sense organs as the media of knowledge, ‘the body’ becomes a piece of
obsolete meat”29. Robins claims that the belief in virtual realities benefits “is driven
by a feverish belief in transcendence; a faith that, this time round, a new technology
will finally and truly deliver us from the limitations and the frustrations of this
imperfect world”30. This use of the term ‘transcendence’ seems vital in understanding
the nature of the ‘new flesh’ in Videodrome and what the cyborgs in Cronenberg’s
films represent. At the conclusion of the film Max must sacrifice his old flesh in
order to obtain the ‘new flesh’, we have witnessed his transformation into a cybernetic
being throughout the film, and the climax suggests he will soon become an complete
merging of man and machine through destroying his previous identity altogether.
The initial question I put forward was how are the boundaries blurred between
human and technology in Cronenberg’s films but I have come to believe that what the
‘new flesh’ actually represents is a complete removal of the boundaries. Tomas brings
forward the notion of a state where it is “no longer a question of machines functioning
as organisms, or of organisms functioning as machines… the machine and organism
[can] be considered as two functionally equivalent states or stages of cybernetic
organisation” which I would suggest is partially a description of this new being
Cronenberg has suggested31. All of these areas discussed are related to concerns with
contemporary life and the current development of human existence, as Gonzalez tells
us “the cyborg body thus becomes the historical record of changes in human
perception”32. The divide between reality and a digital realm is being broken down
28
Kevin Robins, Cyberspace and the World We Live In, in Mike Featherstone & Mike Burrows,
Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, 1995, SAGE
Publications Inc, US, pp 135.
29
Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body, pp 14.
30
Kevin Robins, Cyberspace and the World We Live In, pp 136.
31
David Tomas, Feedback and Cybernetics: Reimaging the Body in the Age of the Cyborg in Mike
Featherstone & Mike Burrows, Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological
Embodiment, 1995, SAGE Publications Inc, US, pp 27.
32
Jennifer Gonzalez, Envisioning Cyborg Bodies, pp 270.
14
(eXistenZ, Videodrome), the human form and human behaviour can be altered
through drugs
and medical procedures (Shivers, Rabid), extreme sexual
experimentation and the destruction of gender boundaries are becoming prevalent
(Videodrome, Crash) and identity is something that can constantly be shaped and
redefined. David Cronenberg’s films use science and the concept of the cyborg to
explore the negative and positive aspects of the destruction of boundaries in society
and whilst Rabid shows the loss of boundaries to cause chaos and destruction,
Videodrome offers hope that the complete removal of boundaries (the ‘new flesh’)
will open us up to new levels of identity, experience and sexuality that aren’t
repressed by social restraints and fears of having to conform to predefined
expectations of identity.
15