Week 5: Videodrome “The ending of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1982) would seem self-evidently nihilistic—the marker of postmodernity. The main character, Max Renn (played by James Woods), apparently commits suicide after seeing an image of himself show him how to do it on a television screen. Afflicted with a tumor behind his eyes which causes him to see hallucinations and to lose all sense of reality, Max resorts to a fatal, self-inflicted head wound to alleviate the pain and confusion of his existence. But this occurs offscreen, in the darkness, after the image fades out. We hear only the gunshot. For Fredric Jameson, this is a “blank screen that registers James Woods’ salvational suicide.” Max Renn may be dead, but what life does he still have? As Steven Shaviro notes above, Max’s “death” may be “a finality, or perhaps a rewind to one more playback.” And if the end of Videodrome is always a rewinding to another presentation, then the film in a sense is always already playing itself in an endless loop, since the end (as they say) is the beginning…”
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 02:33:44 +0000
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