Videodrome

"The television has become the retina of the mind's eye." There has never been, nor will there ever be, a film more timelessly emblematic of the digital age than this. Technology and visual stimulation as a physical force, a mind-and-body-altering power that both illuminates and takes advantage of the worst depths of our minds. From voyeurism to murder, from our simplest desires to our most perverted, none of it becomes more 'real' than it is with the aid of the television - and now, thirty-three years later, with the aid of an internet stronger than I suspect Cronenberg ever could have predicted. Technology as fundamentally perception-altering, and perception as reality. You are more your phone than you will ever realize. All the more amazing for how willingly complicit it is in its own criticism. As much as it is the anti-work, Videodrome is of course a work of voyeurism in its own right. It's only as powerful as it is because of the unflinching nature of its portrayal, yet that of course makes it, ironically, a perpetrator of its own criticism. Cronenberg is as complicit in the making of this film as you are in watching it. He is as fascinated by these characters and their motivations as they are themselves, just as we are. "And that is what makes it tick."