Long Live The New Flesh

George Orwell's "1984" is, quite rightly, hailed as a prophetic vision of our 21st century world. However, there is another tale which I think is even more prescient. David Cronenberg's hypnotic, nightmarish master work foresees a world in which television signals cause tumours to grow inside the brain, tumours which cause hallucinations that leave the population susceptible to control by a totalitarian government. One particularly prophetic scene portrays vagrants in a homeless shelter receiving not food, drink or blankets, but access to television in private cubicles. The homeless need to be plugged back into the social mainframe in order to function once more. Sounds remarkably like the internet, but this film was made long before even the idea of the internet had become popular.

The mastermind behind the titular control-by-TV programme is Dr. Brian Oblivion (not his real name, that's his "television name.") He still appears regularly on chat shows and hosts seminars, even though he is dead. Before he died, he recorded thousands of hours of monologues on video tape and it is through this medium that Oblivion makes all his "appearances." His words on a chat show early on in the film explain very clearly how television can blur the boundary between what is real and what is imaginary.

"The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena..... The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television."

James Woods plays a purveyor of pornographic video material who, "for research", tries watching some of the hard core violent pornographic videos that make the brain more susceptible to the signals which cause the brain  tumour to grow and the audience see the world through his eyes as it gradually disintegrates into a nightmare where the real and the hallucinatory are no longer distinguishable. When I listen to some Trump supporters apparently denying the evidence of their own eyes and believing the "alternative facts" fed to them by the administration and Fox News, I can't help wondering if they don't have a brain tumour causing them to hallucinate.

Like THX-1138, this is a film that I always have to watch in silence, in an almost trance like state, surrendering totally to the horrific world it summons forth. Do you know the title of this amazing film?

Now that the film has been identified, here is the scene I was imitating.