Crime in Cronenberg’s Videodrome: A perversion of the everyman’s subconscious
Rena King:
“Don’t you feel such shows [of soft-core pornography and hardcore violence] contribute to a social climate of violence and sexual malaise, and do you care?”
Max Renn:
“Certainly I care. I care enough to give my viewers a harmless outlet for their fantasies and their frustrations…”
Videodrome stars James Woods as Max Renn, president of an independent, Canadian (more specifically, a Torontonian) television station, Civic-TV. At a time when everyone seems TV-obsessed, addicted to the emissions of the all-powerful Cathode Ray Tube, Max’s station offers to viewers sensational programming – specializing in a unique mix of illicit sex (“smut”) and violence (“snuff”) – which earns it the dubious slogan of “the one you take to bed with you.” Fearing that his station – and indeed all of North America – is getting too “soft”, Max embarks on a quest to find “tougher” material for his audience. The plot thickens when he discovers pirate tapes of an experimental show called “Videodrome”, a raw, seedy program without plot or characters, only merciless acts of violence, torture and murder. Max quickly becomes infatuated with the scrambled images from the single-camera operation – in which a screaming victim is tortured, whipped, chained and beaten to death by two hooded figures – and develops an obsession with the “purity” (simplicity) of its message.
Penetrating the Penis: Etymology & Gloss
Click here for a visual etymology [PDF]
Note: "Sl." Indicates slang, "L." indicates a Latin word.
The Axiom of Content
In her article, Ellen Seiter mentions the inclination of semiology to ask how, but not what, meaning is created. It seems the tendency of semiotic analysis to examine the conditions and context of an image’s production, paying little notice to the meaningful renderings offered by the image itself; in other words, it tends to examine an image’s purpose but not its performance. Thus, the following discussion aims to evaluate both an image, and the context by which it can be manipulated. Barthes' analysis of signs reveals that there are very few 'innocent' objects, that almost everything is 'coded' (assigned meaning). He contends that two levels of meaning, or signification, are found within a single image: (1) a denoted meaning that is instantly recognizable by the viewer through its faux-naturalness, and (2) a hidden, connoted meaning that is coded ideologically. One can ask, then, is an image’s meaning mediated by context?I assert that although the application of context (through supplementary language and imagery) is successful in altering the denotation of an image, while the connotations of a symbolic image remain unchanged and static as mythical signifieds.
Clinique’s Freudian Purity (In-class exam)
Although Freud's theories of psychoanalysis tended to deal exclusively with dreams, his understanding of the unconscious proves to be entirely useful in deconstructing popular culture. We can take, for example, the Clinique advertisement into consideration by viewing the image itself as a public (perhaps collective) and published dream.Freud may not have been particularly interested in the visual features or compostion of the image, yet these components are vital to the translation from conscious to unconscious thoughts.
First, we can examine the bar of soap itself, as depicted in the scene. We are at once struck by the grotesque and commanding zie (certainly unrealistic) of the bar; yet it also appears insolated - from a consumer, from production, etc. The bar is shown in another (unusual) manner: its yellow-green colour portrays a "clean" and "natural" product, but also conveys an immaculate, medicalized one.
The bubbles surrounding the bar also carry stylistic features; they appear as perfectly "round", "firm", "gentle" and "clean" (although we can see a lather/suds, the bubbles remain completely "pure" in themselves.)
Finally, the pouring water re-iteratres this sense of purity and nature; the waterfall-like motion generates feelings of tranquility and harmony. (The text found in the advertisement supports these sentiments of purity, carlessness ["allergy tested" = worry free] and nature, and for the purpose of my examination require no further mention.)