"First it controlled her mind, then it destroyed her body... Long live the new flesh!"
Videodrome was released in the UK in 1983, directed by David Cronenberg. This film crosses the boundaries between the virtual and reality. The main character "Max Renn" finds a show called Videodrome which shows explicit scenes of sex and torture, which he believes will be a huge hit on his cable network. After watching Videodrome, Max begins to suffer from hallucinations. He thinks that the reason that he is having these hallucinations is that watching Videodrome has given him a tumour in his head. He goes on to find that it is not a tumor but infact another organ controlled by a company called Spectacular Optical. Spectacular Optical is able to change what he experiences on a daily basis by controlling this organ in his head. He is therefore living in a virtual world.
The themes of media saturation and the idea of "the new flesh" are prominent in this film. The idea of the new flesh is related to being lazy, engaging in activities such as watching too much television and gaining excessive flesh.
It is interesting that Max thinks that Videodrome will be a hit with the public as a lot of soaps on television are based upon the themes of violence and sex, although they have storylines to make it acceptable for people to watch them.
In a way humans are beginning to cross boundaries into the virtual. For instance social networking websites such as "Facebook" and "Myspace," websites that allow you to add your own videos such as "YouTube" and blog website are allowing people to put themselves onto the internet in a variety of mediums, almost immortalising themselves in the virtual world. Ordinary people can become celebrities over night by exposing themselves to the global online community. The perfect example of this is "the star wars kid." A teenage boy put a short video of himself wielding a pretend Star Wars lightsaber onto the internet and it became one of the most popular viral (meaning passed on from user to user) videos viewed. It was then edited by someone who watched it and added special effects.
