“The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television” – Max Renn

With this quote we immediately dive into the core of Videodrome; a dystopian world in which TV has become so intertwined with the human brain that it represents a new step in human evolution. The show ‘Videodrome’ allows people to step into a new unknown world through the fusion of flesh and metal. And so we witness how main character Max ends up in this feverish world when Videodrome has damaged his brain. Max has to make do with a distorted vision of humanity that has been involuntarily programmed into his mind, making it increasingly unclear what is hallucination or reality.

The organic fusion of flesh and steel is an important part of Cronenberg’s work. It earned the filmmaker a nickname, namely the ‘master of the body horror’. A typical Cronenberg film can indeed be recognized by fleshy, visceral physical transformations and the intertwining of psychology and technology. Videodrome is pre-eminently one of the films that should not be missed when we talk about his idiosyncratic oeuvre.

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