Exploding head syndrome

Noel Vera

David Cronenberg's "Scanners" (1981) begins where Brian De Palma's
hallucinatory "The Fury" ends--with the image of a man's head
exploding in slow motion.

The film goes on to sketch a world of renegade paranormals,
industrial espionage, and shadowy secret organizations worthy of
Philip K. Dick ("Scanning isn't the reading of minds but the merging
of two nervous systems, separated by space"--the mix in Cronenberg's
dialogue of provocatively metaphysical ideas with pulp SF
terminology is pure Dick). The plot is complicated--Cameron Vale
(Stephen Lack) is sent by CONSEC psychopharmacist Dr. Paul Ruth
(Patrick McGoohan) on a mission to infiltrate an underground society
of scanners and eliminate its head, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside)--
but really, only a framework on which Cronenberg hangs his paranoid
and increasingly bizarre view of reality.

It's not an easy film to follow--legend has it Cronenberg was
writing scenes the same time he was shooting--but charges of
incoherence are, I think, a touch exaggerated; the plot does make
sense (more or less) only Cronenberg doesn't give you much chance to
put it all together. Matter of fact, I think its apparent
incoherence helps reinforce the paranoid atmosphere--you know things
are going on, but you can barely keep track of what's happening to
whom where, when, and why.

It's helpful to note that the root cause of all this--a drug
developed for pregnant women that accidentally transforms the babies
into scanners--links what is ostensibly a "head" movie (Cronenberg
films that deal with alienation and paranoia, such as "The Dead
Zone" and "Spider") with Cronenberg's more "venereal" works ( films
that give us horrific metaphors for the human reproductive system,
such as "The Brood," "Rabid," "The Fly," among others). It's also
interesting to note how Cronenberg tends to put the blame on
corporations--in this case, CONSEC and the equally shadowy Biocarbon
Amalgamate. Cronenberg's films are almost all shot in Canada, and
they have this geographically anonymous feel; you feel this is
partly due to some need of his to universalize his stories, to set
it Anyplace, Anytime in the modern world; his apparent mistrust of
corporate entities over nations and their governments could be the
cause of of this "multinational" aspect.

What does hold the film together--what makes aesthetic if not
narrative sense--is Michael Ironside's demonic performance as Revok
(all Satanic brows, wet lips, and gritted teeth); Patrick McGoohan's
eerie performance as Dr. Ruth (he wanders into the film muttering
profundities that almost--but not quite--make sense, then wanders
out the same way); and Cronenberg's inimitable imagery.

It's that imagery that stays with you. In one extraordinarily
prescient sequence, Vale picks up a phone and scans--merges his
nervous system with--a computer. Scientifically speaking, this is
nonsense--the binary operations of a computer, no matter how
technologically advanced, has little to do with the complexities of
human, much less paranormal, thought--but Cronenberg shoots this
scene with such compelling intensity that the metaphor, however
farfetched, comes through with real force…and this years before the
development of the "internet," or the concept of an "online hacker."

And, of course, there's the scanning. Cronenberg rings various
changes on flesh the way an artist works on clay or plaster (in one
of the film's most quietly unsettling scenes, Vale visits a scanner
artist who uses his sculptures of tortured human forms--you're
almost sure he's drawing from experience--as a kind of therapy),
literalizing the effects of mind and will on meat and bone.
In "Scanners" there's a simple cause-and-effect relationship--the
scanner's will molds flesh like so much silly putty--but the sheer
visual impact of what you see on the screen goes beyond mere
sculpture-by-thought (why, for example, do the veins dilate so
horribly? Why does the flesh burn and bubble?). By film's end
Cronenberg offers few answers, but the images--and the questions
they suggest--remain.

Long Live the New Flesh

Noel Vera

"It has something you don't have, Max. It has a philosophy, and
that's what makes it dangerous."

This line, intoned with appropriate foreboding to Max Renn (James
Woods) is the Video Age variation of that classic line of dialogue
from Renoir's "Rules of the Game," only the tragedy isn't that
everyone has their reasons, but that some reasons seem more
compelling, more seductive, more prone to induce belief, fanaticism,
a powerful faith that doesn't hesitate to sacrifice lives--both
one's own and others. In this corollary to Renoir's aphorism,
Cronenberg seems to be telling us, the shape of the future lies.

Max Renn (James Woods) is part owner and manager of Channel 83, a
cable TV station looking for programs that show extremes of sex and
violence--material with an edge, in effect. He comes upon
Videodrome, a bandit channel that features realistically depicted
tortures and executions, taking place in a room walled with
electrified clay.

Videodrome turns out to be a video signal that alters not just one's
perception of reality, but reality itself; Renn is transformed from
TV executive to programmable killer controlled by the group
responsible for Videodrome. Then he meets the members of The New
Flesh…

"Videodrome" (1983) is, if anything, an even more extreme experiment
in horror than his previous "Scanners" (and that featured an
exploding head). Where in "Scanners" the horror came from the mind's
direct control over matter, in "Videodrome" the horror comes from
complete elimination of the distinction between mind and matter--you
aren't sure if what you are seeing is an actual, physical
manifestation ("matter") or a hallucination ("mind"). The TV set
literally becomes an object of desire, with veined, undulating
surfaces and a pair of lips ballooning forward to receive a kiss; a
vaginal orifice forms in Renn's belly, receiving programming in the
form of videotapes inserted into the orifice; a gun melds with the
hand holding it, forming a biomechanical extension to the arm; walls
melt away to become Videodrome's electrified clay walls, suggesting
that Renn has always been in Videodrome, nor is he out of it.

Much critical ink has been spilled in an attempt to interpret
Cronenberg's fantastical images--this one, especially, over any of
his other films; most call "Videodrome" a media satire, a meditation
on perception, a metaphor of how the video image has taken over and
dominated the modern mind.

What not a lot of people seem to have noticed is that "Videodrome"
is also a potent metaphor for the power of faith--how, instead of
the sane mind's ability to shape one's beliefs to fit with the
reality all around us we have the insane ability to shape reality to
fit one's beliefs (the ultimate objective of the religious extremist
or the terrorist group, you could say). Renn starts out as a shaper--
one with a will strong enough to charm or persuade or bend people to
his wishes; at worse he can put a spin to his beliefs, make them
palatable to the outside world--"better on TV than on the streets,"
he says in an attempt to excuse his programming (Woods is able to
say this more forcefully than most actors can). Gradually,
Videodrome breaks down his will by breaking down his sense of
reality (this entire section is a harrowing metaphor for the process
of brainwashing, as seen from the point of view of the person being
brainwashed); he's reduced to being a walking automaton, willing to
take orders and killing without hesitation.

When The New Flesh takes over Cronenberg, in a final, unsettling
twist, gives us little sense that Renn's condition has in any way
improved; he's still an automaton, still under orders to kill (The
New Flesh's philosophy, better articulated than Videodrome's by
Brian O'Blivion, (Jack Creley), only substitutes a religion for
Videodrome's philosophy). An unsettling film, I think, possibly a
great one, for the questions it puts forth so unflinchingly,
imaginatively, powerfully.

(First published in Menzone Magazine, June, 2004)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)