
Conspiracy of the Dead: David Cronenberg on The Shrouds

“Long live the new flesh.” The most famous line in any Cronenberg picture, uttered by Videodrome’s Max Renn (James Woods), is also something of a mission statement for much of the Canadian master’s work. The technological and corporeal fuse across his filmography, resulting in new sensations, desires and ways of being in the world. In Videodrome, unusual orifices form, as stomachs become insertion points for violent VHS tapes. Real and virtual worlds blur in eXistenZ as videogame controllers jack directly into spinal cords; more recently, in Crimes of the Future, the surgical removal of surreal organs is the latest form […]