Metafiction in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome
Hi, I guess this is now a series. I will try and write a few more of these, as I am intrigued by the rise of metafiction as a postmodern staple. This being said, metafictionality has been around since Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales — maybe another point of research… I thought that I should add, as is good practice, that some of the content here is lifted from university notes and essays that I have submitted. I hope though, that you find this an interesting read when it is taken out of the confines of a university submission.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a metafictional structure in Robert Coover’s short stroy The Babysitter, that I described as a narrative of possibility.
What we shall call a narrative of possibility is something that is distinctively postmodern in flavour, and, if we are to believe that “the dominant of postmodern fiction is ontological”, then this certainly rings true.
What I mean by the term narrative of possibility, is a text that is grounded in ontological doubt; multi-layered or multi-dimensional, it is unclear or impossible for the reader to distinguish which ‘layer’ of the narrative that they should be perceiving as the ‘true’ one. For me, it is a distinct form of metafiction; when we introduce a ‘fictive fiction’ within a story, we have to begin evaluating how fictive certain narratives within it are, it follows then that we are also examining how real certain narratives are.
Narratives of Possibility in Robert Coover’s The Babysitter.
I hope that if you read my piece on Coover’s short story then you found it interesting, and if you haven’t read it, then I hope this article is interesting enough that you want to read that piece. At the end of it though, I mentioned three other texts that I wanted to write about in regards to the notion of a narrative of possibility, Videodrome being one of them. I think though, that when I discuss ‘narratives of possibility’, I am just trying to sound smart in a discussion of metafiction. So rather than trying to force ideas into a clumsily-constructed box, I’ll simply write today about the metafictionality of Cronenberg’s Videodrome.
The metanarrative at play in Videodrome is almost ironic, it is laid out on a plate for us right at the start of the film: “but don’t you feel such shows [“soft-core pornography to hardcore violence”] contribute to a social climate of violence and sexual malaise?”, both the protagonist, Max Renn (James Woods), and the audience is asked, hopefully knowing full-well the content of the film that they are watching. This question primes the entire metafictional subplot of the film; the audience is immediately asked to reflect on themselves and the media they are consuming: is this film in fact harmless? Why am I watching this?
Underlying the b-movie terror that the film degenerates into is a social commentary on the morality of media consumption; as David Foster Wallace highlights:
“what distinguishes another, later wave of postmodern lit is a further shift from television images as valid objects of literary allusion, to TV and metawatching themselves as valid subjects”.
E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.
Videodrome seems a part of this wave then, and seems appropriate partner to Coover’s The Babysitter in much of the exploration that we have already conducted.
“Certainly I care.” Replies Max Renn, “I care enough to give my viewers a harmless outlet for their fantasies and their frustrations. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a socially positive act.”
What we will soon find, however, in our own viewing of Videodrome is that the consumption of media may not be as harmless as Renn believes. As Professor Oblivion (Jack Creley) states, later in the interview: “the television is the retina of the mind’s eye” — foreboding, but only expanded on later in the film:
The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.
Videodrome.
This extended quotation, an extension of the Professor’s ominous soundbite, provides an ‘explanation’ for a number of hallucinatory sequences within the film.
Thirteen minutes into the film, Nicki (Deborah Harrie) and Max return to his flat preempting an important sex-scene. The scene opens with Nicki asking Max if he’s “got any porno”, emphasising that “it gets [her] in the mood”. Much like in our discussion of The Babysitter, we see an emerging motif of media once again acting as disseminator and definer of the metanarrative and by extension the entire narrative, that is to say, the reality of the film. Here, media is acknowledged as a stimulant, providing and encouraging sexual fantasy prior to sex for, of course, the real world is far more boring than that on the television screen.
Upon selecting ‘Videodrome’, Renn warns her that it’s “Torture. Murder. […] It ain’t exactly sex.” — “Says who?” Replies Nicki, once again suggesting in the opening stages of the film that Hardcore pornography contributes to a sinister sexual malaise.
The real parallels with The Babysitter appear once we see the two having sex in front of the television screen whilst the videotape plays. Much like in our earlier ‘Wild West’ vignettes in The Babysitter:
On the screen there’s a rattle of hooves, and he and Bitsy are rolling around and around on the floor in a crazy rodeo of long bucking legs.
Artificial reds and greens and purples flicker over the child’s wet body, as hooves clatter, guns crackle, and stagecoach wheels thunder over rutted terrain.
The Babysitter.
The lines between 3D and 2D reality become blurred, as the setting changes from Renn’s apartment to the sinister room in which the porno tape is filmed. What is unclear though is whether they are on screen or whether the screen has become real — it likely doesn’t matter; the television is the retina of the mind’s eye of course.
Similar hallucinations, induced we learn by ‘Videodrome’, occur around half an hour later when Renn slaps his secretary in the face only to be met shortly after with no reaction or recollection:
Max: Are you all right? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you.
Bridey: Hit me? You didn’t hit me.
Max: No? No, I know I didn’t hit you. I mean…
Bridey: — Do you want me to stay here? You look awful. Can I get you something?
Max: No. No, I’m just… Er… I’m… I’m exhausted. I was in a deep sleep and I’m not out of it.
Videodrome.
These scenes play out the exact same concerns regarding television that we see at play in The Babysitter, there seems to be an anxiety surrounding television — again, let me amend this to media — as “an unprecedented powerful consensual medium that suggests no real difference between image and substance”. Every hallucination, we experience with Max, before realising again, with Max, that they either did not or may not ever actually have happened.
You see, every time you read a fragment of Coover’s short story, you find yourself having to answer the necessary question: is this what actually happened? Of course the trick here, is that nothing actually happened, but metafiction bla bla bla. And it’s clever, it’s very cleverly constructed. Because not only do we have to distinguish between the fragments that make up the story but also the stories that make up the fragments. Contributing to the whole narrative of possibility running throughout the story is the omnipresence of pop media.
Narratives of Possibility in Robert Coover’s The Babysitter.
The visual medium of the television within Videodrome, much like the short story, is the source of a metafiction highlighting these concerns: it enforces a metawatching process where we are reminded of our media consumption by the watching of fictional characters watching tv. The chaos and hallucinations that follow their viewing of ‘Videodrome’ forces us to reflect on the consequences of our own media consumption.
Professor Oblivion’s assertion that “television is reality, and reality is less than television”, gives cause to reference the same quotation from Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle as I did in my last article:
“Lived reality is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle while simultaneously absorbing the spectacular order, giving it positive cohesiveness. Objective reality is present on both sides.”
Indeed, in the case of Videodrome, perhaps moreso than in The Babysitter, the relationship between media and reality is figured in such a way that ‘objective reality is present on both sides’. Indeed, in this particular metawatching experience, we certainly have to privilege media as the same as ‘the real’.
One area that I believe benefits from further reference to Debord though, is in the discussion of the casting of Deborah Harry as Nicki in Videodrome. Harry, at this point in her career had experienced global success with Blondie as well as with her collaborations with Warhol, but had not previously appeared in as large an acting role before. Whilst she was clearly given the role on merit, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews regarding her performance, I believe there is an interesting discussion to be had regarding the viewing of the film for an audience familiar with her as a celebrity.
“The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived; the star is the object of identification with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations which are actually lived. […]
The Society of the Spectacle, Thesis 60.
An interesting assessment, especially given Harry’s frustration regarding the tensions between her image and her person. I believe that the casting of an established media icon such as Harry can certainly be seen as a separate example of metafiction within the film. For a wider audience, Deborah Harry is viewed as Debbie Harry: the cultural icon and late 70s sex symbol. Just as when Bianca Oblivion informs Max Renn that Nicki was never real and that “they used her image to seduce [him]”, the audience has too been ‘seduced’ by Nicki in the same way that Max was, but also ‘seduced’ by a performance from Deborah Harry; but further to this, rather than Deborah Harry, many in the audience are viewing a performance from Debbie Harry, that is ‘the spectacular representation of a living being’ called Deborah.
Following the logic of Debord, the spectacle of Videodrome conjures further spectacle for an audience believing they are viewing Debbie Blondie, nothing more than ‘the seemingly lived’ spectacle-cum-alter-ego. The acknowledgement of this metaviewing process, of disingenuous character to character to actor to icon to person, demonstrates again the penetrative power of media in an enactment of the film’s concerns: most viewers will inevitably have their view of the fiction defined by a dissemination of the Debbie Blondie media image; such viewers would be continually confronted by this disseminated and penetrative fiction, even when resolving Videodrome’s other fictions within the parameters of ‘reality’.
It seems then, very clearly that tactics of metafiction are a perfect tool for the creation of art concerned with the experience of media consumption. Both The Babysitter and a spritiual successor in Videodrome, employ tactics of metawatching and metanarrative to problematise the consumption of media within their stories, creating similar alieatory, disseminatory, and horror-inducing effects for their own consumers much as the consumers within the text.
I would even suggest though that analysis and criticism can be seen as adding to the metatextual milieu, for the readers of this essay are indeed consuming the process of consumption and viewing the viewing of viewing. To view media through a lens that is conscious of metafiction is to live in a world of mirrors. The outside looking in, fast becomes an inside to be looked in upon, with a vast milieu of narratives primed to reflexively penetrate one another.
