David Cronenberg has perfected the art of making us simultaneously cringe with disgust and stare with furtive fascination. With an early career marked by restless explorations in low-budget horror, he is no stranger to shocking cinema -- in fact, his biggest...
[more]David Cronenberg has perfected the art of making us simultaneously cringe with disgust and stare with furtive fascination. With an early career marked by restless explorations in low-budget horror, he is no stranger to shocking cinema -- in fact, his biggest claim-to-fame may be the notorious exploding head in his box-office hit, "Scanners." But Cronenberg has refused to be pigeonholed as a choreographer of B-movie bloodbaths. In entering the mainstream, he has established himself as a thoughtful, astonishing -- and certainly controversial -- director.
After growing up in a household overflowing with artistic activity, Cronenberg attended the University of Toronto. There he studied both English literature and the sciences, interests that would fuse to disturbing effect in his later film attempts. At the university, he produced two experimental film shorts, "Stereo" (1969) and "Crimes of the Future" (1970), which would pave the way for his work in features. Though both demonstrate his career-long penchant for stylistic experimentation and science fiction themes, these early works did little to prepare audiences for his first feature film, 1975's "Shivers." A gore-fest about parasites run amok, the film was ripped to shreds by horrified critics. It even prompted the publication of the now-famously entitled review, "You Should Know How Bad This Film Is. After All, You Paid For It."
Cronenberg has a knack for hitting the zeitgeist's most painful nerve in more ways than one. Certainly his films delve deeper into social issues than their gruesome surfaces initially indicate. "The Fly," for example, though entertaining as a simple horror flick, also functions as a contamination metaphor for 1980s fears about AIDS (much the way that "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" unintentionally tapped into 1950s communist paranoia). Likewise, Cronenberg's "Videodrome" deals with both the detrimental effects of television and perverse sexual consumerism in one fell swoop. The film portrays a TV producer's single-minded obsession with a sadistic-erotic television show -- an effective commentary on our relationship to the medium's emphasis on sex and violence. When a vagina-shaped video cassette player grows out of the main character's stomach, the effect is both gleefully gross and tellingly symbolic.
And though Cronenberg has abandoned splashy special horror effects for more subtle work in the 1990s, his themes are no less unsettling. 1997's "Crash," based on the J.G. Ballard novel, explores the sexual fetishization of auto accidents -- territory few other filmmakers would dare attempt, much less release as a major feature starring name-brand actors.
His camera is an eye into our darkest cultural taboos: infection, gender identity, sexual aberration, obsession, and insanity. His monsters are always ourselves, reflected in the distorted mirror of our blackest desires.
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