Friday, April 18, 2008
Prompt 11
Cronenberg's use of sex and violence gives his perspective on the relationship between the body and technology By using sexualized violence, he pucks an issue that we as humans identify as wrong. Therefore, by associating this theme of sexualized violence with technologized Max, Cronenberg gets his point across to the audience. Cronenberg takes the issue of violence, which is already seen as bad, and makes it worst by associating it with sex- something pleasurable. By doing this, Cronenberg accomplishes a twisted level of violence that no one can dispute. He builds this idea through the main character Max. First, Max simply pierces Nikki's ear while having sex. Though it is unusual, as a viewer, I did not think of Max as a bad person. It was unusual the extent to which Nikki enjoyed it, but I thought of it as simply getting her ears pierced. Cronenberg then built on this idea and Max was shown in a scene where Nikki burnt her breasts with a cigarette. The sudden end to that scene caused me to question if Max engaged in that act with her. Eventually we see Max enjoying whipping the TV screen he thinks is Nikki. As Max becomes more technologized, as a viewer, I lost sympathy for him. He wanted to engage in sexualized violence and once he did, he lost my sympathy. Therefore, Cronenberg developed Max into a technologized body and paralleled this with Max's sexualized violent acts, resulting in a negative, unsympathetic view of Max in this respect. This is how sex and violence was used to support Cronenberg's argument of technology and the body.
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2 comments:
I think your arguments are very good for Videodrome. You explained that Max’s technologized body paralleled with his sexualized violent acts. These turned into negative feelings and you felt unsympathetic towards him. I think that this also parallels with Max turning into a machine. He became something that couldn’t feel. So while he was loosing the human characteristic of feelings, the audience began to lose feelings for him. I think that is kind of interesting. I think that the director’s argument is illustrated by making the audience more involved. I also liked what you said about the piercings. That is a more harmless form of bodily destruction, but when it gets worse, it is hard to relate to Max. This again shows the technological advances negatively when it becomes too strong.
Your point that Max becomes more and more involved in violent acts is very interesting. The more he is affected by Videodrome, the more he participates and enjoys violent acts. Once he becomes completely taken over by Videodrome and is basically a machine, he moves to murder. When he kills Convex and Harlan, he is not human, but a machine. I also think that it is interesting that once we see people participating in violent and perverse acts we lose all sympathy or good feeling towards them. We cannot relate to people who do things like pierce each other or whip televisions.
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