Videodrome

Digital media, vhs tapes, and clay walls. This film depicts the repercussions of allowing a modernising society to become desensitised to violence and perverse sex. Preceding legal cases touching on these themes (Jamie Bulger etc), this film’s meaning appears increasingly relevant as society modernised and consequently becomes more reliant on technology. Throughout its enticing labyrinth of fantasies and nightmares, visions, dreams, and sexual pixelated glows from TV screens, Cronenberg is overwhelmed at the possibilities yet horrified at social obliviousness, presenting media as ‘the double-edged sword cutting its maker and filming the guts through a video camera’. Much of this is introspective, gazing back at us with the same seductive illusion and atmospheric, expressive visuals designed to captivate an audience; however, it directly confronts the viewer, confronting them with the question of where the boundary lies between the documentation of violence to the normalisation and even encouragement of sadism and masochism.