Travis Alexander at Aeon Magazine:
‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’ That’s a quote often, though wrongly, attributed to Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 (1961). But it might as well be the theme of Cronenberg’s cult classic Videodrome (1983). The film’s ‘they’ are the menacing minds at Spectacular Optical – a supposed global corporate citizen whose public face is the production of reading glasses for the developing world, while its true business is weapons technology. The company is run by Barry Convex, who tells the hapless protagonist Max Renn (James Woods) not about missiles, but about another product altogether: Videodrome.
The name refers to a top-secret video stream picked up by pirate TV stations like the one Max runs in Toronto – Civic-TV. Part-snuff, part-hardcore porn and entirely unburdened by sentiment, Videodrome delivers in brutal closeup the sadomasochistic torture and murder of its ‘contestants’. Unbothered by the violence and desperate to attract more audience to his flagging station, Max resolves to license Videodrome for Civic-TV.
more here.
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