Videodrome
This program has been supported in part by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Federal-State Partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Videodrome
dir. David Cronenberg, US/Canada, 35mm, 1983, 87 mins, color
Aside from his brief appearance in the 1977 Woody Allen film Annie Hall, Marshall McLuhan’s most notorious film “appearance” was in this sci-fi/horror film; David Cronenberg based the character Professor Brian O’blivion on McLuhan (Cronenberg was a student at University of Toronto when McLuhan was a lecturer there). As the main character Max Renn, played by James Woods, digs deeper into a mysterious and disturbing television transmission his conception of what is real and what is fantasy merge into a frightening nightmare for the electronic age. The film gives new meaning to the concept of media manipulation.
preceded by
A Message from Our Sponsor
dir. Al Razutis, Canada, 1979, 16mm transfer to video, 9 mins, color
Using only “appropriated footage’” (unlicensed, copied, etc.), A Message from Our Sponsor deals with television and its mythologies – the fetishization of violence through competition (seen as a dominant historical process in American culture) and the fetishization of sexuality through consumption.
The claustrophobia of media “reality” – compartmentalized into game shows, movies, news reports, commercials – is presented as continuous interchangeable spectacle. This film looks at the ideology of misrepresentation, the turning of facts into icons, history into myth. It analyzes the media’s meta-language, especially the image of woman as spectacle and commodity; and the psychology and economics of male voyeurism. – Al Razutis
