Videodrome is director David Cronenberg’s philosophical deconstruction of American culture, circa 1983. Yet, it remains relevant today as a commentary on the way in which American style violence infects the world. The story of shock television programmer, Max Renn, played by James Woods, Videodrome is not so much about Max as it is about how the American culture of violence is like an infectious disease spreading across borders.
Max Renn is a carnival barker in the guise of a television executive. As the proprietor of Channel 83, Canada’s least watched yet most controversial cable network, Max specializes in blood and guts from around the globe. His programming features pornography and violence and even pornographic violence. Anything to get attention and sell advertising is okay by Max. But beyond his anything goes style of programming lingers and emptiness, a soullessness that makes Max the perfect test subject for Videodrome.
What is Videodrome? For max, it’s the next big thing in sex and violence. Via his expert engineer and satellite pirate, Harlan (Peter Dvorkin), Max has stolen Videodrome with the intent of airing it on Channel 83. All that Videodrome appears to be, from what we are shown, is an hour of excruciating BDSM. A nude woman, never named, is brutally whipped for nearly an hour. There is no plot, no characters, just sexual violence.
Max is convinced that he has a hit on his hands.
What Max doesn’t realize, not immediately anyway, is that Videodrome isn’t a TV show. Videodrome was not filmed on a soundstage in Malaysia or Pittsburgh. No, the Videodrome is real… sort of. With the aid of a long dead Professor, Dr Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), Max discovers that Videodrome is the creation of a shadowy American, political cabal. It was created to take over vulnerable minds, like Max’s, and use violent imagery to compel the vulnerable toward violence.
Max was chosen because he was a soulless hack, a man with no moral center, a man who lacks character. Max is an empty vessel that Videodrome, and the cabal, behind it can manipulate to do their bidding. Max represents the world consumer, the viewer, the audience drawn toward the twisted thrill of blood and sex and violence. Videodrome is the hypnotic drug of sex and violence that once made up so much of American culture and spread around the globe by television and movies via VHS or Betamax.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media
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