How does ‘Videodrome’ play on human instincts through gore and pornography?

This article focuses on David Cronenberg’s Videodrome to analyze how gore films and pornography appeal to primal urges in humans and how these genres provide visual representations of scenes that are difficult to experience in real life.

 

I love provocative movies. One of my favorites is David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. In this movie, the scenes where the main character pulls a gun out of his stomach and his guts are ejected from an exploding TV are some of my favorites. Although it’s been almost two years since I watched it, I’d like to refresh my memory and analyze the surrealist effects of the film once again, and compare them to gore and pornography.

 

 

Videodrome presents a unique way of dealing with violence and death in cinema, with its detailed depiction of blood and guts. The film criticizes the cinematic compositing techniques of omission and exteriorization used by many directors today, and rejects suggestion outright. Videodrome doesn’t care much about giving the audience a sense of reality, and wants to end the absolute dominance of exteriorization. They don’t hide anything, they show everything. The camera has always used exterior shots to further maximize horror, but when physical pain and death are constantly recreated, omission is no longer necessary. Instead of flowing down a door in Cat People, it now pours in front of the camera like an elevator in The Shining. But in the moment of showing instead of hiding, it becomes less a question of “what to see” and more a question of “how to see?”
Making a surrealist film requires the director to use a certain rhetoric. In terms of aesthetics, these films emphasize clarity of expression and realism. After Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast, gore films began to move away from the traditional shadow and fog aesthetic of horror films used in early German Expressionist cinema, showing murders and dismemberment in bright light. The horror of gore films was now revealed under strong lighting, changing the environment from one of darkness and fog.

 

 

Close-ups play an important role in gore movies. The systematic use of close-ups of gaping wounds and dismemberment in the frame is one of the major innovations of gore cinema. However, it’s not enough to define a gore movie solely by its close-up aesthetic. Another important factor is editing. Editing plays a key role in creating the gore effect. It’s no surprise that many directors, from George A. Romé to Jürgen Gerwig in Necromantic, edit their own films.
The scene in the movie where the protagonist pulls a pistol out of his stomach is a perfect example of the power of editing. The 1983 film was released in 1983, and despite the lack of special effects and computer graphics at the time, audiences take it in stride. The scene is composed of 18 shots, each shot separately. The repeated close-ups of the actor’s face are important to show the fusion of the hand and the pistol, while giving the special effects crew time to change devices.
Film is a moving image medium. Audiences focus on what’s in front of them for two hours through the camera lens. To make the spectacle effective, you need to know the optimal viewing angle, especially in scenes where special effects are important. These directorial choices exist within a single frame that conforms to a cinematic code. In gore films, the aesthetic of excess is deeply involved in the rhythm, structure, and tone of the drama, and the victim’s body becomes a mere offering.
In many gore films, the victims are often careless prostitutes, pretentious campers, or young people seeking pleasure in groups. They’re brutally killed by a psychotic killer, and the plot is just an excuse to accumulate gory scenes. This is why gore movies are starless. “Actors are just hunks of meat,” a special effects guy once said.
In gore, the body loses its identity and becomes a stage for a gory story. Skin caught in close-up becomes part of the scene where the blade enters and the blood flows. When Goldie Hawn’s stomach is shot through in A Woman Must Die, it’s an example of special effects, not gore. In John Bruno’s Virus, on the other hand, true gore occurs when a mechanical monster pierces a man’s stomach. The gaping hole in the body reveals bits of guts along with blood, and the appeal and repulsion of gore movies is that they remind us of the instincts we try to suppress: that we are doomed.
Gore films reject traditional body relationships and establish a new order of the human body. Arms, legs, and organs outside the control of the brain act independently, as in Evil Dead 2. The hand gains autonomy when it attacks its own body with murderous impulses and is eventually cut off. The fingers are cartoonishly animated as they run away, transforming them into independent characters.
Why do we watch gory movies like Videodrome? A comparison with pornography is necessary here. Both genres have something in common: they fulfill our primal voyeuristic needs. Gore and pornography are also similar in that they use the body as the center of the action. The penis and blade being inserted both imply the devaluation of human flesh, represented as mere chunks of meat. If pornography is about vicarious sexual gratification, what is the purpose of gore movies? Both genres bring to the screen scenes that we would never see in real life. What are the chances of witnessing a man and a woman engaging in sexual activity? What if a murder is happening right in front of me? We don’t want to pass by a car accident scene, we want to see it up close. We don’t often see death or dismemberment in real life, and it’s equally rare to see it in a movie. Movies are often called the “art of fiction”. Even movies based on true stories are not 100% realistic, and audiences recognize this. We know that the spectacle in front of us is fake.