Hooptober XII
8/35

I think we live in overstimulated times. We crave stimulation for its own sake. We gorge ourselves on it. We always want more, whether it's tactile, emotional or sexual.

This was my first viewing of a Cronenburg film which feels pretty wild to say! Not even 10 minutes in and I could tell this was my kind of movie. I originally saved this due to following Blue Ghosts for years and because I love a weird, psychosexual film—but this is so much more than that. Videodrome makes for a hallucinatory viewing experience between its body horror and techno-surrealist visuals, and somehow its themes have only become more potent and relevant in the 40+ years since its release. Eerily prophetic, many would say.

The phrase “what we put in our brain is what we become” is written at the top of a whiteboard in my office. When the credits rolled on Videodrome, I just had to cross my arms and stare at that quote on my wall in awe for a while—because what do you mean I happened to have a thematic core of this film scribbled on my wall for years?

I wrote that down as a constant reminder to myself of the truth it holds. So with both that quote and Videodrome in mind, my assorted thoughts regarding the film and its themes are as follows:

• Does violence and transgression within our societies stem from what we see and consume, or is darkness and depravity innate in all of us, and the media we view merely cultivates/instigates those tendencies?

• Does viewing violence through a screen shape our behaviour? From a psychological perspective, what we put in our brains categorically changes the way we perceive and interact with the world. These days people are putting more information from their screens into their brains than ever before—we’re quite literally bombarded by the horrors every time we get online. It also creates a kind of feedback loop, where we become what we consume, and the version of us that media created then has its own output, thusly affecting the world around us and continuing the cycle.

• Governing bodies are actively working to restrict, control, and propagandize what we view and consume. This element of Videodrome is unsettlingly relevant—controlling what goes into people’s brains allows you to manipulate how they view, understand, engage with, and move through the world. That alone is a terrifying concept.

• Does desensitization to violent or transgressive acts result in an increased occurrence of those acts? Our societal consumption of porn and violent media certainly results in dopamine deficits that incentivize humans to seek out constant, excessive stimulation in increasingly extreme forms.

• I want to briefly highlight what Maddie said about Max’s stomussy being a metaphor for porn and its invasive nature into our psyches. The “horror of having a hole everyone wants in on” felt incredibly palpable during my viewing and I’d argue is a neglected element of this film, at least from the male viewership.

• With time, media has only gotten better at blurring the line in our brains between fiction and reality (e.g. fiction that appears visually realistic, the dark web, AI, etc.) because ultimately, the “reality” we experience is whatever our brain constructs for us, which is based on what we feed it. In many ways, we do become what we consume. But now we’re barreling toward a whole philosophical rabbit hole.

In summation, this slaps. I had such a great time viewing it, the practical effects were fantastic, it left me with a lot to chew on thematically, and I will certainly be returning to it in the future. Long live the new flesh!