Long Live the, um NEW New Flesh (part two)

In order to begin thinking about this potential remake of Videodrome, something many people (the Cap'n included) are opposed to, I thought it might be a good idea to watch the movie again. This time, instead of simply sinking into the film, I was trying to see how and why this film would be remade (let alone could, as many of you have suggested), and while I remain opposed to remaking this film (which turned twenty-five last year), I now understand the rationale behind it.

The first thing that stood out to me in re-watching Videodrome was how frequently this particular idea has popped up since Videodrome was released, particularly by John Carpenter. While most - if not all - of David Cronenberg's films deal with the body and changes that occur to us, Videodrome also deals directly with the trope of "resistance through enlightenment". Max Renn discovers Videodrome, which changes his body (and his mind) in literal and figurative ways, and while he temporarily becomes the tool of the "evil forces" behind Videodrome, he ultimately embraces the New Flesh and rebels, attaining transcendence from the "old flesh" in the end. This idea had been explored before Videodrome, but perhaps never as graphically - pun intended.

Since Videodrome, we've seen permutations of this in films, typically engaging a device other than television. They Live (subliminal messages), In the Mouth of Madness (books), Avalon (virtual worlds) Tron / The Matrix (computers), and even in Cronenberg's own eXistenZ, which dealt with the New Flesh in a game format. eXistenZ may have been ahead of its time, and because it presupposed the success of virtual reality without being tied down to a console, it was not as effective as, say, The Matrix. While each of these films (and a number of others I'm not mentioning) are successful in some ways, none of them have the visceral impact of Videodrome. Yet, it is Videodrome slated for a remake*. Why?

I suspect it has to do with generational readings of films. As I write this, VHS has been declared all but dead (the last manufacturer of cassette tapes announced they were discontinuing production), and in ten years the VHS tape may totally vanish from what people understand as "home video". This is not a lamentation; it is a likely reality, one that those of us who grew up with video tapes have to get used to. Like cassette tapes, video tapes are obsolete. Unfortunately for Videodrome, the film hinges on the power of the videocassette as a transformative mechanism.

Videodrome spreads to Max not through broadcast but in the form of VHS tapes. His "instructions" after becoming a tool of Convex come through breathing, pulsating videotapes. Television is the medium of transformation, but the tapes are the mechanism by which the change initiates. To many viewers today (and I'm considering the two to three generations that are coming of age as cinema "literate" primarily), VHS is not a legible medium. As time passes, Videodrome will become increasingly difficult to connect to, removing them from the experience of watching this film.

Additional things have been rendered obsolete: twenty five years later, the "pirate" tv channel is almost nonexistent, replaced by watered down variations of public access television and pay cable channels. Neither of these versions represent the programming that Renn's Civic TV Channel 83 airs, or anything close to it. Risque, pornographic, and "pirate" frequencies of an overly salacious nature don't exist in the realm of television. Although it is not abundantly clear if Civic TV represents a Cable channel or a sneaky UHF frequency, similar "niche" programming like Z Channel were run off of cable stations with the advent of HBO. Already two of the major thematic devices of Videodrome are rendered illegible to new audiences.

When I jokingly suggested that Videodrome and the New Flesh revolution would present themselves on the internet, it was only half tongue-in-cheek. Even now, as the net grows more and more regimented, the ideas being represented in Videodrome and the transformative mechanisms are more easily mapped onto the "back channels" of the web. While movies like Fear Dot Com and Untraceable ham-handedly explore this possibility, I suspect that the only way to remake Videodrome involves the "viral" quality pervasive online now.

The torture angle that draws Renn into Videodrome has been explored - considerably more explicitly - in films like Hostel and the (regrettably) successful Saw films. The taboo that Videodrome superficially represented has to some degree become discursively mainstream, even if it retains a "forbidden" quality to some. Nevertheless, type "Hatchet vs Testicles" into your google bar and see what comes up. Several of you have already seen it, and authenticity aside, the readily available nature of previously taboo footage also robs Videodrome of its potency. Remaking this film successfully would require a director who was truly willing to push the boundaries further than Cronenberg did in 1983.

Unfortunately, the only person I feel would be willing (and interested) in pushing the New Flesh further than we would be comfortable with is David Cronenberg, and he's already moved on. I think that the relative dismissal of eXistenZ by audiences drove Cronenberg to move his body explorations into less "extreme" circumstances, resulting in the very interesting work of Spider, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises. I sense that he is less interested in going "gonzo" with his films, and the days of stomach vaginas and flesh guns with teeth bullets are over. Accordingly, while I can't speak for all of the potential directors of this very palpable Videodrome remake, it is hard to imagine a successful updating of such a potent original.

I must stress that I feel no excitement about this remake of Videodrome, but after watching the film again I do understand the rationale someone would have about taking it and rendering the material legible for an audience who has no connection to the major plot devices. How to make the film successfully map on more contemporaneous tropes is a problem I would prefer writers and directors not concern themselves with, and yet I can't necessarily blame them for wanting to try. Perhaps it will work; more likely this "new" Videodrome will be at best different. The New Flesh really has no choice in 2009.




* They Live is also in line to be remade, but I feel it's embrace of western and exploitation roots are the impetus behind revisiting the film. Its cult status is no doubt also a factor.