David Cronenberg Films | David Cronenberg Filmography | David Cronenberg Biography | David Cronenberg Career | David Cronenberg Awards

Following the box-office success of his first major film, Shivers, David Cronenberg was critically confined by an assortment of directorial titles, including the ?Baron of Blood? and the ?King of Venereal Horror.? Indeed, Cronenberg was pigeonholed as a horror/sci-fi director throughout the 1970s and well into the 1980s. While these generalizations and classifications adequately describe certain aspects of Cronenberg's earlier work, which were obsessed with visually documenting the loss of control over and the decay of the human body, they fail to recognize the creative metamorphosis Cronenberg has undergone, as well as the overlying politic that governs his films. Therefore, before discussing David Cronenberg and his films, the strain of discourse that runs from his earliest films to the controversial Crash must be identified and approached in conjunction with Cronenberg's growth as a filmmaker.

Until recently, Cronenberg's films have all fallen neatly into what has been referred to by fans and critics as the Cronenberg project. With the release of Crash, however, that term has become obsolete. In the aforementioned film, the character of Vaughan is obsessed with the ?modification of the human body through the use of technology,? and refers to this endeavor as his project. Such an undertaking is most assuredly at the heart of the Cronenberg project as well, since the importance of the body and the mind, in addition to their reactions to external stimuli, have been the center of the project since the beginning. From the parasites imposing a new world order in Shivers, to the reprogramming of the human mind in Videodrome, to the gene-splicing of The Fly, and finally the body modifications of Crash, Cronenberg has been interested in the functionality and physical importance of the mind and body. Unfortunately, the fact that Cronenberg signals awareness of the critical theory governing the project corrupts its critical notion. As a result, it has become less emphatically vital and the acknowledgement of its existence in Crash indicates that the project has reached some kind of conclusion and has become something else. The Cronenberg project has transcended a merely physical definition and is now something more of a philosophy, or a politic. The Cronenberg politic then has replaced the concept of the project.

The Cronenberg politic (which takes its name from, among other things, a Clive Barker short-story called ?The Body Politic,? wherein human body parts revolt against their keepers) is, like the project, concerned with the notion of the mind and body and the revolutions that plague them. The difference between the two resides in the politic being the solution to the problem proposed by the project. We can then consequently divide Cronenberg's films to date into four filmic periods by referring to Cronenberg's development as a filmmaker and not necessarily to the progressive development of the politic as a philosophy since the elements of the politic are strewn throughout the Cronenberg canon. As a result, all of these films show the presence and construction of the politic.

Cronenberg's early obsessions, as his first filmic period can be labelled, include Transfer, From the Drain, Stereo, and Crimes of the Future. Although the films are all relatively short subjects, they showcase Cronenberg's eye for disturbing visuals (such as the make-up and nail polish worn by the men in Crimes of the Future). Present in this first group of films are the foundations of what will become the politic. All four films involve, to some degree, the mind and body relationship. In Transfer, the psychiatrist's control of his patients is indicative of this. From the Drain takes the concept even further and gives a glimpse of the second phase of Cronenberg's filmography when a phallic plant creature emerges from the drain and disposes of its victim. Stereo and Crimes of the Future, with their secretive medical practices and cold, emotionless hospitals exerting their will upon a hapless society, set the stage for the films in Cronenberg's second period.

The second period of Cronenberg's filmic development is marked by an obsession with venereal disease, an obsession which, in the early 1970s earned him the nickname the King of Venereal Horror. The two major films of this period, Shivers and Rabid, serve as the nucleus for the politic. Whereas Cronenberg's early obsessions can be found, upon reflection, throughout the films of the politic it is with these two films that Cronenberg's filmic sensibilities begin to gestate and grow, much like one of the venereal parasites from Shivers. In both films, an out-of-control disease threatens the established society. In Shivers, the appropriately phallic sex parasites threaten society with its reconstruction into a more sexually unrepressed one. And in Rabid, the mutated form of rabies that spreads through society displays the same kind of unrepressed emotion, although in its disease form it now has no sexual connotations. Present in these films for the first time is the concept of the Cronenberg hero. He is usually the odd-man-out, the one trying to come to terms with the bizarre evolution that is overtaking mind and body, an especially good example of which is in Shivers in the guise of Dr. Roger St. Luc who is so much the opposite of those infested with the sex slug that he becomes almost unlikable, thereby making the parasites' conquest of him at the end of the film an act of salvation.

The third group in Cronenberg's filmography encompasses two decades and includes his films from 1978's Fast Company to The Fly in 1986. These films all concern themselves to varying degrees with the relationship between the mind and the body, a concept that is solidified in Videodrome with the introduction of the term the ?new flesh? to the Cronenberg canon. The ?new flesh? is instrumental here in that it gives a concrete designation to the previously referred to revolution of the body. Although this relationship was present in Cronenberg's earlier works it was in this period that he began to examine it with full interest. Even a seemingly non-Cronenbergian film like Fast Company succeeds in addressing the politic by examining the mind/body relationship by suggesting that technology can be used to facilitate and foster the relationship by serving as a type of flesh, an idea that would be expounded upon to a greater degree, and more successfully, in Crash. For Cronenberg, the relationship between mind and body is not necessarily a cooperative or civil one; it is usually a violently destructive battle. For example, in Scanners (incidentally, the only Cronenberg film where the good guys actually win), the politic is represented in that Cameron Vale ultimately loses the battle for his own body. Although it could be said that he surrenders his physical presence for the noble motive of defeating his brother and assuming his, Vale displays little control throughout the film over his destiny. In fact, he is the victim of manipulation throughout the film and his final victory over Revok, although heroic, is belittled by the fact that he has only performed the function for which his father has rescued him from the gutter to do. His biology has succeeded in controlling his destiny. It is this biological control of destiny that now emerges as a major concern of the Cronenberg film and politic. In his next films, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and The Fly, Cronenberg will explore with great detail this relationship. In Videodrome, Max Renn is the pawn in a predestined plot of political assassination and apparent global domination. In The Dead Zone, Johnny Smith is apparently chosen to rid the world of the next Hitler. And in The Fly, Seth Brundle cannot escape the transformation that will eventually cost him both his mind and his body.

The notion of control and the idea that biology is destiny is carried over into the final Cronenberg period. In Dead Ringers, this idea is given substantial recognition when the twins cannot hope to escape their biological connections and must die. In Naked Lunch, Bill Lee is unable to escape the control that drugs and the accidental murder of his wife have over him. In M. Butterfly, Ren? Gallimard also cannot fight his biological destiny when he takes his own life, becoming a symbolic Madame Butterfly. And, in Crash, the complacent marriage of James and Catherine Ballard cannot escape the predetermined path that must inevitably end in death. The nature of control in these films is ultimately the tragedy in each of them?the characters cannot possibly hope to escape control, as is perfectly illustrated in Dead Ringers. The tragedy of that film erupts from the concept that biology is destiny. Cronenberg succeeds in questioning this theory while at the same time subscribing to it by suggesting that the concept of free will is the destructor of destiny. That is, while the brothers in Dead Ringers functioning as gynecologists allows them to control biology to a certain degree, it is death that ultimately triumphs, although they still maintain a certain amount of control over that.

To equate the new Cronenberg film with dramatic tragedy however, is ultimately a simplistic method of characterizing Cronenberg's development as a filmmaker. Although the four Cronenberg films following The Fly have displayed the traits of a classical tragedy (indeed, each film ends with a death or, in the case of Crash, the expectation of certain death), it is difficult to label them as anything other than Cronenberg films and subscribers to the politic. In Dead Ringers, Cronenberg first displayed concerns for the biological control of destiny and the usurpation of that control in a more cerebral and suspenseful method than he had in previous films. In Naked Lunch, he would further explore this relationship using drug dependency and Burroughs's writing as framework. Even M. Butterfly, which could easily be dismissed by those unfamiliar with the Cronenberg politic as being highly un-Cronenbergian, belongs to the politic by showing how two people can be controlled not only by their physical bodies but by their mental states as well. The new Cronenberg filmic period then culminates in Crash, which is in many ways an old Cronenberg movie, by using technology and its relationship with human biology to examine the concerns of the Cronenberg politic. While it is true that the films since and including Dead Ringers have had roots grounded more in genres other than sci-fi, as did his earlier films to a lesser extent, it is also the case that the classification of a David Cronenberg film as anything other than just that is ultimately futile.?MICHAEL J. TYRKUS