eXistenZ: The ORIGINAL Inception

Back in 2010 Christopher Nolan came out with his critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated film Inception, which explored the idea of a sophisticated technology that made it possible for a group of people to enter one person's dream. Naturally it messes with the heads of everyone involved, especially given the job was to plant an idea in a person's head. Really, when you get down to it, the whole movie was essentially a backwards heist film (a group of characters devising an elaborate plan to infiltrate a seemingly impenetrable location and get past all the security systems to put something into a safe).

There's no doubting that its ideas were used well. The whole backwards heist plot was wrapped up in a mind-boggling structure wherein the characters had to enter multiple levels of dreams. Over time it becomes a bit harder to tell dream from reality, and in the end we are left to question if what we are seeing is real or if the characters are still in the dream. There are some serious questions of reality, and it is very effective in its delivery, but the idea of exploring different levels of a virtual world and being left unsure of whether you ever left it is hardly anything new.

Imagine, for example, that Inception was made in 1999 on a lower budget. Replace the dreams with video games. Instead of a heist film, perhaps make it more of an action thriller. Put David Cronenberg in charge and you've got the basic setup for eXistenZ, a surreal film in which we experience a video game within a video game in another video game. In all of the strange experiences the characters go through, a few serious and perhaps ultimately unanswerable questions are raised. Do we truly have free will? What is reality? What is illusion? Is there a true reality or only illusion?

The whole movie begins in what seems to be reality, but early on there's plenty of clues that what we are seeing is not what it appears to be. One of the first clues is the appearance of the "gristle gun", smuggled into a demonstration of a new video game by a would-be assassin. This particular device becomes something of a strange motif throughout the movie, but as we find out later on, it was built by Jude Law's character of Ted Piker within the world of a video game. How could something from a video game make it into reality before that game was even played? The only logical answer is that what we think is "reality" is in fact part of the same video game.

There are lots of other little things. Allegra is a pretty strange name, perhaps one chosen to be gender-neutral so that the role could be played by either a man or a woman. Even more bizarre is when she and  Ted Piker (Jude Law) pull aside at a gas station and encounter a station attendant literally just named "Gas" (Willem Dafoe). It could be a nickname, one which could easily have been picked for someone who was never planned to be a major character, or just a name they thought fitting for a gas station attendant.

Also notice the peculiar designs of the gamepods. As Piker notes, making a fully functioning virtual reality system out of animal parts should be impossible. The products themselves look somewhat sickly, like weird molds of flesh attached to the body by what looks like an umbilical cord. It is also curious that Piker has no understanding of how the games work throughout the film, even though he is in a world where he should be surrounded by them. All this provides a handful of small clues to the reveal at the end.

Early on, an assassination attempt is made on game designer Allegra Gellar (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who flees into the countryside with Piker. Unfortunately, it turns out hiding is not as easy as one would expect. Why? Because a lot of people don't want their perceptions of reality distorted. Their position is not to hard to see, and if we were to develop virtual reality of the calibre depicted here, it would not be inconceivable that certain parties would oppose it.

Allegra and Piker go into the game of eXistenZ to find out if there's any damage, but this is where a lot of the questions begin to come up. So far we think we know how to tell the difference between this game and what seems to be reality. It all should be simple enough, but as we've seen, there are little things that hint that this reality is not actually real, at least not in the way that we understand it.

The world of eXistenZ does somewhat resemble the way a video game today might work, the only difference being that you are fully immersed as opposed to watching a picture on a screen and pressing the appropriate buttons or keys. Many of the people they interact with in this segment behave like video game characters, repeating the same lines when prompted and simply going into a "game loop" while waiting for the players to respond to their dialogue.

The two of them are cast as unidentified characters, people who have to follow an unknown plot. Piker eventually goes on to point out that he doesn't like getting dragged along through this game with no obvious plot or goal, but really what he describes isn't much different from what we would consider to be "real" life. Here, free will seems to be almost non-existent, as both Allegra and Piker find themselves doing things out of instinct without thinking simply because the game requires them to. Piker builds the gristle gun out of habit, which also curiously resembles the same weapon used in the opening scene, yet another clue that the "reality" may not in fact be real.

The two of them finally get out of eXistenZ but things get even weirder. During a brief pause session, Piker notes that "reality" suddenly feels more like a game, and there is a reason for that. When the two of them emerge after apparently finishing eXistenZ, they realise that a disease that should have only existed in the game has somehow bled into the real world and infected Allegra's pod. This should not be possible... unless what we've thought was the "real world" was in fact another part of the game. Just like Inception, they've been playing in layers. What we have seen is literally a video game within a video game.

This notion is enforced when an explosion suddenly rocks the lodge at which Allegra and Piker have been staying, and Hugo Carlaw (Callum Keith Rennie), a seemingly fictional character from her game, enters dressed in combat fatigues. Both are confused about how this is possible. The game is destroyed, but what follows seems to play out like it could be in a video game. After evacuating the two leads from a burning building, Carlaw turns on them only to be shot by Kiri Vinokur (Ian Holm). He also has the gristle gun, and his justification for having it is the same as what Carlaw had told them in Allegra's video game (My dog brought it to me).

What becomes especially curious is the way the battle plays out. There seems to be people running all over shooting at each other, and explosions everywhere, and yet our two leads are able to sit in the open unaffected. In theory, with the chaos building up as it is, they should be in danger of being hit by a stray bullet or caught in an explosion... except it's not real. All that chaos is essentially just part of the scenery, probably serving nothing more than to add to the overall atmosphere.

The game may well have been programmed so they would never hit anywhere near the players, allowing for the final confrontation in which both Piker and Vinokur are shot dead. Additionally, if this is part of the game, and there is an end goal, how much of what has happened over the course of the film was a choice made by the characters? The entire game could have been planned from the beginning to end with the players killing each other off until only one remained.

Allegra is the only one left in the end, and then she is finally left to face the truth that she isn't who she thought she was. In fact, she is exactly the opposite. She stands out in the middle of the battle scene, and suddenly finds herself wearing all this other strange equipment. The reveal is that Allegra Gellar never actually existed. The award-winning game designer was herself nothing more than a video game character, and what we thought was reality was in fact part of another game called transCendenZ.

Suddenly we are back where we started, but things are a bit different now. The game controllers are mechanical in nature, and look like something a lot more plausible than the flesh-based controllers seen throughout most of the film. Those were created purely as a stylistic choice for the game.  With her in the room are several of the actors we have encountered over the course of the film, though all of them appear to be very different people from who they were in the game.

If anything, they are the opposites of their in-game characters. The underground anti-game leader that Allegra and Piker met in eXistenZ turns out to be the game's programmer and despite being as psychotic as he was in the game "Gas" seems to be an okay guy outside of transCendenZ.  This is especially notable when the person we have known as the game designer Allegra turns out to herself be a radical who infiltrated a test of this new game with the intention of murdering its creator. She ends up shooting him and his assistant and almost firing on another player before he asks one simple question: are we still in the game?

This final scene seems slightly more realistic than before, but what seemed to be reality also seemed to make sense compared to the world of the game eXistenZ, and we now know that was all a simulation. This could very well be another part of the same video game, or perhaps an entirely different one. Really, when you get down to it, how can you be sure that what you are seeing is real? Countless philosophers have dedicated their lives to solving this problem. If it is not, what is real? Is anything real? Who can say for certain?

Such is the idea explored by eXistenZ. After playing a video game within a video game one can't really be certain if they are still in yet another game. Immersing yourself into a virtual reality makes it hard to tell just what is or isn't real, but in the end does it really matter? After all, who is to say that anything is in fact real at all. Just what exactly is "reality". These are all questions that can never truly be answered, and trying to do so will only result in disorientation and confusion.

In the end, what we have been led to think is reality was nothing more than part of the game. Everybody seemed to have a distinct personality and yet all of them in the end turned out to be just characters created for the purposes of the game. Memories were distorted and inserted. They didn't even know they were in a game the whole time until it was over. Ultimately, how do you know you are not just part of a video game yourself?

This post was written for the O Canada Blogathon hosted by Kristina at Speakeasy and Ruth of Silver Screenings

Don't Do Drugs, Kids: The Lesson to be Learned in Naked Lunch

There is a lot of stuff about David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch I still can’t explain with complete certainty. It is a bizarre movie and at first it is seemingly incomprehensible. However, underneath the giant bugs, the weird aliens, and the surreal international conspiracy, the story is really one about drug addiction. It is certainly an unusual approach to discussing the subject of drugs and how they affect people who take them.

The obvious approach would normally be to clearly show the person's degeneration and how they affect everyone and everything around them. Cronenberg instead opts for a slightly different method by getting inside the head of an addict, and presenting to us how he experiences the effects of taking these weird drugs. The result is a surreal, possibly incomprehensible but strangely brilliant film about just why you shouldn't take any of the weird and unusual drugs people have come up with.

Naked Lunch involves plenty of weird drugs. The whole thing gets started when exterminator Bill Lee (Peter Weller) finds his supply of bug powder mysteriously running short and runs out after starting a job. Turns out his wife Joan (Judy Davis) is the one responsible for its disappearance. She has been injecting the stuff into herself, which according to her produces “a literary high”. It is fitting that something designed to kill bugs is the first of many strange drugs to be introduced. Bug powder is generally meant to kill bugs, and drugs are often known to lead to the deaths of those who become addicted to them.

As Joan describes it “It’s a Kafka high… you feel like a bug.” The reference to Kafka is an early clue to what we are going to be in for with this film. Joan’s remark obviously refers to Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, which centers around a travelling salesman who wakes up to find he has inexplicably transformed into “a monstrous vermin.” The result of the transformation is often depicted as a giant bug-like creature, sometimes with a human face. Later on we encounter many large and similarly grotesque bugs, some of which are merged with typewriters similar to how the hybrid creature depicted in some illustrations of Kafka's story.

Bill tries to consult a specialist, Dr. Benway, for help with Joan’s addiction. He gives him a powdery substance called “blackmeat” made from giant centipedes, explaining the interesting idea that it is to be mixed in with the bug powder. According to Benway, it will gradually block out the part of the brain that gets stimulated by the drug which makes the addict cease to be addicted. If only breaking habits was so easy, and as you would expect, it proves to be too good to be true.

All that really seems to be accomplished is that Bill ends up getting addicted to the stuff himself. He begins hallucinating, and things get weird. He gets “busted” by the cops for having bug powder, and they don’t believe him when he explains he is an exterminator. The two of them note that they have “a bug” in the office and decide to see how it reacts to the powder. What they bring out is a giant box containing what looks like an oversized beetle that begins talking to Bill Lee through the mouth on its anus.

This beetle seems to be completely unaffected by the bug powder. If anything, it actually enjoys it and even asks Bill to pour some on its lips. The bug in question tells Bill that he needs to kill Joan, and suggests that she isn’t even human. Bill quickly realises he is probably hallucinating, which leads him to kill the bug with his shoe and make a run for it. Still, he hasn't broken the habit, and ends up trying to do a “William Tell routine” that results in him accidentally shooting Joan in the head anyway. As if that wasn’t enough, to rub salt on the wound, the glass Bill had meant to shoot off of Joan’s head is the one thing that remains intact.

This is about the point where it starts to become hard to tell where reality ends and hallucinations begin. It looks as though the bugs somehow influenced him to do the deed of shooting his wife, but at the same time, he was hardly thinking clearly. Even stranger is how Joan immediately complies with Bill’s statement, as though they had done it before. Neither was in their right minds at the time, however, given they were both high and possibly drunk.

The possibility of it all being coincidence becomes even stronger when you consider the fact that it this scene was inspired by a real incident in the life of William S. Burroughs, the author of the book the film was (loosely) adapted from. The actual incident happened in Mexico City, but like the movie, it involved Burroughs getting drunk and accidentally shooting his common-law wife while trying to imitate William Tell (a Swiss folk hero said to have shot an apple off a child’s head with a bow and arrow).

Bill Lee ends up meeting an alien creature called a "mugwump" who recommends he buy a specific typewriter and travel to “Interzone” (a shady port somewhere on the African coast). This begins a strange pattern in the narrative. Bill is clearly shown to receive a flight ticket from the mugwump, but later when asked to present it, he pulls out a bag filled with drugs, and similar interactions happen throughout. The fact that he is this confused seems to suggest he is hallucinating encounters like this one with the mugwump. Later on, typewriters appear normal one moment and as living creatures the next. It all ties into that theme of the inability to tell when reality ends and hallucinations begin, very much the sort of feeling an addict might go through.

The big question is whether there is in fact any truth to the existence of "Interzone". We did see that the "ticket" he presented was a bag of drugs, not exactly something that could get him onto a plane. We also never see him actually arriving at the port. It is possible (and perhaps even likely) therefore that he never actually left his home. Interzone, like the bugs, is all a product of his hallucinations.

he ends up encountering an exact duplicate of his wife in the form of Joan Frost (also played by Davis), along with her husband, a writer by the name of Tom Frost (Ian Holm). One thing about these two is that while these people may exist (and indeed were based on a couple Burroughs met in Morocco), their interactions might not be what they seem. There is one scene early on where Tom walks with Bill through a marketplace and tells him (and by extension, the audience) to watch his lips and listen to what he is saying. Sure enough, his mouth is out of sync with his dialogue, and it remains that way throughout the film. 

This suggests that what Bill thinks he hears Tom say does not actually line up with what he is really saying. Taking this logic into account, it seems that Joan Frost may not actually be a doppelganger to Joan Lee, but rather the result of Bill projecting her image onto another person. Perhaps something about Joan Frost reminds Bill of his wife, and in turn with all the other hallucinations going around, he sees her as resembling the latter. This would also justify why his “controller” (a weird typewriter-bug hybrid) insists that he complete his “mission” by seducing her.

Bill borrows a Martinelli typewriter from Tom, only to find it getting murdered by his own. They show an image of the two bugs fighting but in Bill’s delusional state, he could have easily smashed the typewriter without realising it, and that is probably exactly what happened. He is then told that it was an “enemy agent”, which appears to be from his typewriter in its supposed bug form when in truth it is simply his mind trying to rationalise a spur of the moment piece of vandalism.

The idea that these bugs are more or less hallucination is enforced when Bill goes to see Joan, who reveals that Tom also has an Arabic typewriter. He talks her into writing something but everything seems normal at first. Nothing actually happens until Joan is convinced to try some of the black meat. It is only after she does that the machine begins to transform into a bizarre centipede-like creature, and as soon as it falls out the window it turns back into a typewriter. Also note how the housekeeper Fadela (Monique Mercure) shows no surprise or confusion about the presence of such a thing or how it got there.  

The real question is why did she feel the need to throw a typewriter out the window? Well, later on, we see Fadela at a stall in the market selling black meat. Perhaps she is the one who really has the power in the household, and only pretends to be servatile. This is supported by the later scene where she is overseeing the distribution of Mugwump juice and the reveal about who she really is.

Tom then arrives demanding his Martinelli, only to find it smashed. What becomes really strange is that Bill’s typewriter is in its bug form throughout this scene, and yet when Tom goes to take it hostage he never seems to acknowledge that fact. He never questions the fact that the typewriter is talking and desperately trying to get away. Either he is used to seeing typewriters that can move on their own, or he is seeing something very different from us. The most likely explanation is that Bill is hallucinating, and Tom is in fact stealing a normal typewriter.

Bill ends up passed out in an alleyway and spending some time with a local boy named Kiki, who helps him “fix” the Martinelli. However, instead of being a normal typewriter, it comes out resembling a Mugwump’s head. The keyboard is apparently in its mouth, and it is not clear how Bill is supposed to fit the paper into it, but that does not stop him. Adding to the apparent hallucination is one scene where the “mugwriter” seemingly comes to life, transforming into a full mugwump, and begins talking to Lee before turning back into the weird-shaped typewriter.

Bill has to go see a strange man named Yves Cloquet and is accompanied by Kiki when they ride in the former’s “wonderful car”. During the ride, Bill relates an anecdote about a man who somehow taught his anus to speak as part of a circus show, only for it to eventually develop a mind of its own and eventually seal his mouth shut. This is a weird anecdote, even for this movie, but it might just explain a few things.

It is not clear if this man was someone Bill knew or if it was just a story he heard from someone else, but either way it would explain where that one detail about the bugs came from. The bugs seem to have mouths on their anuses throughout the film, and if they are hallucinations, that means they were created by Bill’s own mind. Having a story like that would explain where Bill’s mind got that idea.

At Cloquet’s house, we get to one of the strangest parts of this narrative. Kiki shows affection towards one of Cloquet’s parrots, and is talked into going upstairs to “play with” the others he owns. Meanwhile, Bill tries to get information about Dr. Benway. After the two spend some time talking, Bill walks in on Kiki being gruesomely murdered by Cloquet, now taking on the form of a giant centipede inside a bird cage. I still do not have a solid explanation for this scene.

Finally, Bill decides to get his old typewriter back by giving the mugwump typewriter to Tom Frost, which he accepts with gratitude and returns Bill his old device. One thing that is worth noting is that Tom refrains from opening the case containing the typewriter on-screen, so we do not know for sure if what he will pull out is in fact the mugwump head or if it is just a regular-looking typewriter. As noted before, the mugwump head was likely a product of Bill’s delusions.

Unfortunately, when Bill opens the case containing his typewriter, he finds it tortured and apparently dying. If there is no international conspiracy going on, than why would Tom Frost resort to torture in an effort to extract information from a regular typewriter? However, Tom did have every reason to be mad at Bill. The man was responsible for smashing both of his typewriters and showed no sign of remorse. It would not be inconceivable that Tom, who in his frustration might not have been thinking clearly, smashed the typewriter in a fit of anger (or possibly as an attempt at revenge). The mugwump typewriter was supposedly forged from Tom’s Martinelli, so in a sense Bill is returning it to its original owner. This in turn allows the two men to reconcile their differences, and as a result by returning Bill his own typewriter he is coming clean about what he had done.

The climax of the film comes up when Bill arrives at a factory filled with mugwumps who are all chained and hanging from the ceiling. Numerous people are drinking some kind of milky fluid out of the tubes in their heads, including several we have seen at different points in the film. Fadela is shown overseeing the process, establishing that she is evidently the one in control and not the other way around (ironic given she was established as the Frosts’ house keeper).

There is one thing about Fadela that comes up, though, which is that she is actually a man in drag. It turns out she is none other than Dr. Benway, the man behind everything. He gave Bill the black meat knowing it was a highly addictive drug and with the intent of drawing him into all kinds of weird things. Apparently black meat is going out of style and mugwump juice is the new industry. Bill agrees to work for Benway in a place called Annexia as long as Joan Frost can go with him.

At the borders of Annexia, Bill ends up in a strange situation. A group of patrol guards pull over his car and ask for some identification. They demand proof that he is a writer by telling him to “write something”. Bill responds by waking up Joan Frost telling her it is time for them to work on their “William Tell routine”, much as he did with Joan Lee. The results are also the same, he shoots her in the head, while the glass on top remains unharmed. The border patrol guards then welcome him into Annexia.

It is harder to pinpoint exactly what goes on in this final scene, but it is possible that Bill is still delusional. The patrol guards’ outfits do look Eastern European, so it is possible he could have ended up in a real country thinking it was Annexia. The real question is why they let him in after watching him shoot a woman for no apparent reason. I’m afraid I don’t know for sure.

Nash and Tara of the website Radio Dead Air have a series called W.T.F.I.W.W.Y. (I’m not spelling out the full title) in which they discuss weird and bizarre news stories that often leave you wondering what the people involved were thinking. As a result, they have developed a few “rules for life” that make sense when you see their show, and one of those rules is “the old drugs still work”. That’s not to say that they encourage drug use, just that the stuff some people get high off of makes things like weed seem mild by comparison. I’m not sure there is a film that better exemplifies that rule than David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. 

Really, though, it is something that is likely to deter anyone with the slightest interest in any kind of drug use. We should stop showing drug PSA’s to the kids and instead just do screenings of Naked Lunch. That will keep them away from illegal and harmful drugs. Don't do drugs or you'll get dragged into a surreal international conspiracy with giant talking bugs.

This post was written for the O Canada Blogathon hosted by Kristina at Speakeasy. and Ruth at Silver Screenings

David Cronenberg's Videodrome and the Role of Television in Our World

You might want to savor reading this post, because this is probably the only time on this blog you will ever hear me talk about pornography, snuff films, exploitation films, and other films of the sort. I'm not normally big on pornography for a variety of reasons, but my main justification is that I just don't like the idea of turning on a movie simply to watch two people I don't know have sex. I'd much rather be engaging in it myself than watching two strangers go at it. I'll also go out and say I'm even less inclined to see snuff films for reasons that should be obvious to any sane person.

While David Cronenberg's science fiction/horror film Videodrome doesn't exactly fit into any of those categories, they do play into its main narrative. Beneath the increased blurring of reality from hallucination, the twists and turns, the body horror, and the brown wig worn by a singer from a band called "Blondie", Videodrome is a strange piece of social commentary regarding the role television plays in our society. The technology used might be a bit dated but the underlying message is every bit as relevant today as it was back in 1983, if not in fact slightly more so.

The whole thing begins with Max Renn (James Woods), the producer of a small-time television network somewhere in the messed-up society of near-future Toronto, Canada. He is overjoyed when his technical assistant Harland (Peter Dvorsky) unscrambles a pirated television signal and finds a new show called "Videodrome". The show in question turns out to have no plot or characters, and is in fact literally nothing but an hour of non-stop torture and murder. That doesn't sound like a very appealing show, does it? 

I probably would not be inclined to view such a program, but in this messed-up world Max is quite taken with how "realistic" it is and begins taping it. One thing that is quickly established is that television is a dominating industry, just as it is in our world, but here perhaps even more so. There doesn't even seem to be much regard for quality anymore, and a lot of what is broadcasted is the stuff that we often see as dirty. Pornography seems to be a big thing now, especially evidenced by the fact that even Max is fed up with it and wants to find something new. 

Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry) sums it up early on when she is being interviewed. As she puts it, we live in a world where we are constantly looking for some form of stimulation, and that may in fact be extremely relevant today, perhaps even more than in 1983 with the internet. How many of us have spent hours watching videos on YouTube desperately trying to get some sort of stimulation out of pure and utter boredom? I know I have. 

Later on, we see Max and Nicki hanging out at the former's apartment with the obvious intention of having sex. One of the first things we see her do is rummage through Max's collection of VHS tapes looking for pornography (which she hopes will get her sexually aroused). This in itself seems a bit unusual. While there is no established rule and there probably are women who watch and even enjoy porn, the industry is more commonly associated with men.  You see men depicted enjoying porn far often than women, so the fact that it is Nicki who is actively looking for the porn is an interesting change and in some ways helps to establish how even she is being influenced by television. What she does find, however, is the snuff show Videodrome, which fascinates her to some... unhealthy levels. 

Not only is she captivated by the show, but it gets to the point where she openly decides to "audition" and participate in it. The fact that she wants to get onto a show that features nothing but nonstop torture is troubling enough, but then Max finds out the reason why the show is so "realistic" is because all the violence depicted is happening for real. From this point on, we never get a chance to see Nicki in person again. All subsequent appearances are on a television screen.

This is also about the point where it starts to become harder to distinguish reality from hallucination. Characters on the television (particularly Nicki) suddenly seem to start talking to him in pre-recorded material. Max seeks answers from Professor Brian O'Blivion (Jack Crely), who seems to know what's going on, but matters are only complicated when he finds he cannot get a one-on-one discussion and can only hear from him through prerecorded messages. 

As it turns out, Brian O'Blivion actually died several months before the film began, which makes it all the more bizarre that he was able to talk to Max. Matters are further confused when Nicki arrives during one of O'Blivion's recordings and strangles him, before she begins addressing Max. Even though the whole thing is supposedly pre-recorded, she seems to be aware of Max's presence. This is also the infamous scene where Max ends up having sex with his television, perhaps yet another (really strange) metaphor for how it has messed up his life.

Then of course there's all the body horror which may or may not be hallucinated. At one point, Max finds an open slit in his stomach which he slides a loaded gun into before suddenly finding that hole to have disappeared and the gun nowhere to be found. During the climax one hand alternates between being fused to said gun and appearing normal. Tapes appear to transform in Max's hands. It all gets to the point where one can hardly be certain where reality ends and the hallucinations begin. Videodrome has been affecting his mind from the beginning, but it is now that we can see it really taking hold of him. 

Worse still, as Max eventually discovers, he has become an unwitting test subject set up by a wealthy businessman who was also working with Harlan. One of his hallucinations is recorded, and in a bizarrely sick moment he finds himself on the set of Videodrome, where he repeatedly whips a television displaying Nicki, who still reacts with pain.

In the end, Max becomes nothing more than a puppet controlled by other networks. He is literally programmed to do as he is commanded (to the point where people literally put a tape into him) and he can't break free, much as it is hard for our own society to break free from the influence of television. Even when he is arguably "liberated" by Bianca O'Brien, he is still being manipulated by a television network. While her station seems slightly more benevolent compared to the guys behind the Videodrome signal, Max has been stripped of anything that made him an individual and is only capable of doing as she commands.

The only escape is his own death, and even that is not completely certain. Does he die in the end, or does he continue to live on the same as Nicki and Professor O'Brien seemingly have? The film ends there, on that open note. Whatever happens next, Max Renn is no longer the man we came to know in the movie's beginning. His mind has been distorted and manipulated by the television signal, and there is no definitive way he can set himself free.

We may not quite have anything like the signal used in Videodrome just yet, but one cannot deny that television plays a major role in our society. It does influence our everyday lives in ways we might not even notice. It's hard to break away from the grip of television programming. Even if you don't watch it regularly most of us have some show or another we tune in to see. Like it or not, television may very well be controlling your mind, and like Max Renn, there is nothing you can do to stop it.

This post was written for the O Canada Blogathon hosted by Kristina of Speakeasy and Ruth of Silver Screenings