Videodrome

‘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,’ according to Brian O’Blivion in David Cronenberg’s bizarre horror film Videodrome. The rise of video culture was a source of inspiration in the early 1980s for numerous cultural philosophers and film makers. The ‘homo video’ was to develop a kind of extrasensory system thanks to the ubiquitous visual culture. When Max Renn (James Woods) is looking for all kinds of rancid programmes on a cable TV channel, he comes across the show Videodrome in which people are really tortured and killed in front of the camera. Max becomes obsessed and in his further quest it becomes clear that Videodrome controls and manipulates his brains in such a way that Max gradually changes into a human video recorder. A mingling of man and machine, of hardware and software – in other words: video kills our free will.