Episode 157: Long Live the New Flesh: On David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome'
Episode 157: Long Live the New Flesh: On David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome'  
Podcast: Weird Studies
Rating: Explicit Published On: Wed Nov 08 2023
Description: "Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh!" It was perhaps inevitable that the modern Weird, driven as it is to swallow all things, would sooner or later veer into the realm of political sloganeering without losing any of its unknowable essence. David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome is more than a masterwork of body horror: it is a study in technopolitics, a meditation on the complex weave of imagination and perception, and a prophecy of the now on-going coalescence of flesh and technology into a strange new alloy. In this episode, recorded live after a screening of the film at Indiana University Cinema (https://cinema.indiana.edu/index.html) in Bloomington, JF and Phil set out to interpret Cronenberg's vision... and come to dig the New Flesh. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES David Cronenberg, Videodrome (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780810104570) Paul Virilio, The Information Bomb (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781844670598) Weird Studies, Episode 75 on “2001: A Space Odyssey” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/75) Richard Porton and David Cronenberg, "The Film Director as Philosopher: An Interview with David Cronenberg" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41690094) George Hickenlooper and David Cronenberg, "The Primal Energies of the Horror Film: An Interview with David Cronenberg" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41687643) Weird Studies, Episode 144 with Connor Habib (https://www.weirdstudies.com/144) William Friedkin (dir.), The Exorcist (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/) Plato, Timaeus (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780140455045) William Gibson, Idoru (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780425158647) CBC, Yorkville: Hippie Haven (https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1564883669) Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212758)