Nick Stillman Presents Videodrome
Friday Feb 19
8PM
Listen, most of us spend most of our waking hours now looking at screens. Reality is everything we want it to be. We don’t have to get into it, but you know it’s true.
There’s a lot of penetration in Videodrome. “New flesh” virgins get VHS tapes rammed into vaginal slits that appear on their bodies, people get shot, miraculous claws autopenetrate a wrist, and of course, Professor Brian O’Blivion’s head is pathetically penetrated by the cancer (he calls it “a new organ”) that is Videodrome. But Cronenberg’s bodies aren’t just avatars for hallucination—raw sex is everywhere: James Woods and Debbie Harry fuck on the floor, Woods’ secretary’s nipples poke unmissably through her sweater vests, Woods hangs out shirtless on his couch with a gun, Harry’s entire body is a drome for fetish. Videodrome is uncontrollable flesh.
This 1983 film may take place in the cold New Wave streets of Toronto, but they act and look like New Yorkers, and New Yorkers are so boring; the real thing is happening in Pittsburgh. I like that “drome” in Videodrome. “You know, like arena, circus?” Woods’ pockmarked head explains to a Russian cougar producer of blasé softcore. “Got any porno?” Debbie Harry coos, and from then on it’s long live the new flesh.
See you in Pittsburgh bitches,
Nick
