The Insect is Awake: The Trans Lens of David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986)
A common theme within the films of David Cronenberg is the notion of the body and how it relates to the mind. The mind and body are at war about physical and mental identity. This is often dramatized to extraordinarily gory and graphic details throughout his filmography, leading to him becoming one of the pioneers for the body horror subgenre. Often, his works push the boundaries of what is socially acceptable to depict in film and have led to both praise and backlash. His 1986 film The Fly not only served as his first major commercially successful film but presents a great example of the monstrosity of identity between body and mind. Seth Brundle’s (Jeff Goldblum) transformation does not solely exist as purely physical but mental. As he puts it, “I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake.” The “insect” exists as the identity he creates and identifies differs from the identity given to him at birth. As a result, the transformation creates a trans reading of the film due to the puberty reading of his transformation, the disconnect and dysphoria he experiences, and the concept of identity.
Seth initially exhibits immature and child-like behavior and prefers to keep to himself. Following the event with the fly in the telepod, Seth essentially enters puberty as his body biologically changes where he only eats sugary foods, becomes stronger, has better agility, and has a much larger sexual appetite. At first, Seth believes that he’s normal and does not question the changes occurring to him. Seth does not desire to dive deeper since it does not ping anything on his radar. By ignoring the signs, he does not wish to question his pre-disposed identity and identifies as a human until the more gruesome physical changes begin. As a result, it forces him to debate on whether or not he believes he’s a man anymore or a “Brundlefly.” He tells Ronnie (Geena Davis), “It wants to… turn me into something else. That’s not too terrible is it? Most people would give anything to be turned into something else.” Seth attempts to reason his fears about the transformation by viewing it positively. The uber grotesque presentation of puberty presents the notion of one’s body-transforming and becoming alien to the extreme. Despite the more inward changes viewed as positive, the outward changes only make him more desperate to try to cure himself and to prevent the changes from happening.
Because of his transformation, Seth’s body and mind often experience a disconnect from each other. More specifically, with how his mind chooses to view himself compared to his physical presence. Seth wonders, “Am I becoming a hundred-and-eighty-five-pound fly? No, I’m becoming something that never existed before. I’m becoming… Brundlefly.” There is a divide with how mentally he views himself as a man despite transforming into a human-fly hybrid. This reads as gender dysphoria due to the discomfort of this change and how he wishes to return to his body before the transformation. As a result, the mutation psychologically affects him. The conflict of whether or not he’s still human, a fly, or both carries on throughout the movie as Seth attempts to adjust his changing body to how it was before. Or in other terms, he tries to treat his dysphoria by reversing the changes occurring to him. At the film’s climax, he wants to use the telepods with Ronnie and the unborn baby, so he’ll be “More human than I am alone.” Despite not being centered around the trans experience, the notion of identity and disconnect of it broadly reads in that trans lens. The human identity he identifies with becomes lost as his body changes, and he wishes to get it back. Seth wants to reclaim how he mentally views himself even as his body becomes unrecognizable to himself.
Lastly comes the aspect of identity within The Fly. Outside of this film, identity is a recurring theme in the rest of Cronenberg’s filmography. The protagonists of his works often struggle and debate about how they choose to identify themselves due to a changing body and flesh. Despite being viewed as a monster, Seth does his best to view himself as a human. Outside of him, Ronnie does not view him as a monster and does her best to care for him even as others are hesitant to do so. His identity as “Brundlefly” makes him a pariah that people often avoid or choose to ignore. Is his identity as a monster due to his appearance but because of others? What’s most impressive, though, is Cronenberg’s ability to peel back the emotional core and dig into it. Instead, the monster derives from Seth’s struggle of trying to adapt to the identity of “Brundlefly” and distancing himself from his previous identity. The monster’s identity becomes thrust upon him, and he is expected to fit within that mold. Based on his physical appearance as a human-fly hybrid, there comes the notion that no matter how hard he tries to be a human again, he can never be viewed in that context. His dreams of being a man become lost as society thrusts the monster’s identity onto him.
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Continuing “Monster March” I will be talking about Near Dark and Shin Godzilla on Thursday and Sunday.
