David Cronenberg on the Nature of Reality

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

David Cronenberg, whose movies include The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Spider, and A History of Violence, among others, making movies is about more than simply telling a story: “I’m interested in character and concept and philosophy and those things intertwine,” he says in an interview with Chris Wallace of Andy Warhol's Interview. 

Like actors, directors can become typecast, so to speak, Rosenberg suggests, and, when they do, some critics resent their trying something different than the type of films for which they've become known: “Doing a movie that doesn’t fit the mold that has been built for you annoys people. They’ve had you pegged as one thing and knew what to say and think about what you do. But with something that’s not the same, how do they deal with that?”

His first novel, Consumed, which had been a work in progress he recently completed, after working on it “between movies” for eight years, is certainly something that doesn't fit the director's perceived “mold.” Consumed recounts a journalist's obsession for getting a “scoop” on a story involving “the murder and cannibalization of a renowned polyamorous intellectual in Paris and the disappearance of her famous philosopher husband.” 

The novel shares a premise with many of Cronenberg's films: desire drives life forward; without it, people are as good as dead. He investigates the potential meaning of this premise, using various characters who live in different times and places, a process he likens to the scientific method: “I always say that you are a scientist when you’re an artist. You are experimenting with your characters, experimenting with modalities of living that are different than the one that you are actually living yourself. You are transcending your own life.” 

For Cronenberg, reality is organic, a matter of neurology, of “how your nervous system and your sensory organs work.” This reality can be changed by altering one's consciousness, through drug use, drinking alcohol, or otherwise. Both self-destructiveness and creativity arise from the same impulse to transcend personal reality, he believes. This insight, he says, led to such movies as Videodrome and to the creation of body horror: “If neurology is reality, that’s an incredible theme—how to structure a narrative that will discuss that? Immediately you’re into changing the body to change the reality, and that’s what led me to all of those things like Videodrome.”

Implications of the Fantastic

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation. . . [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from “reality” as it exists in the common opinion. . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the works belong to another genre; the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (41).

Indeed we distinguish, within the literary Gothic, two tendencies: that of the supernatural explained (the “uncanny”). . . and that of the supernatural accepted (the “marvelous”) (41-42).

-- Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre

Whatever one may think about Todorov’s theory of the fantastic, he or she would likely admit that the philosopher does a good job, for the most part, in defining his terms. The fantastic is either the supernatural or the apparently supernatural, depending upon whether it is resolved as explicable in terms of “‘reality’ as it exists in the common opinion” (that is, as the “uncanny,” or “supernatural explained”) or it remains inexplicable (that is, “marvelous”).

One of the terms that is not as explicitly defined is “‘reality’ as it exists in the common opinion.” This term is more vague, although, within the context of the other terms’ definitions, its meaning is fairly clear, referring, it seems, to the scientific world view in which the universe is synonymous with nature, cause-and-effect relationships govern all events, knowledge is obtained through the application of the scientific method, and the results of this method of inquiry are codified in theoretical principles often called “laws of nature,” “laws of thermodynamics,” “laws of physics,” and so forth. It is “reality” in this sense upon which the fantastic itself is predicated, Todorov says, and which the fantastic actually supports:

The reader and the hero, as we have seen, must decide if a certain event or phenomenon belongs to reality or the imagination, that is, must determine whether or not it is real. It is therefore the category of the real which has furnished a basis for our definition of the fantastic.

. . . Far from being a praise of the imaginary. . . the literature of the fantastic posits the majority of a text as belonging to reality--or, more specifically, as provoked by reality (167-168).

It is also for this reason that the literature of the fantastic ultimately reaches its end, or, as Todorov declares:

Today, we can no longer believe in an immutable, external reality, nor in a literature which is merely the transcription of such a reality. . . . Fantastic literature itself--which on every page subverts linguistic categorizations--has received a fatal blow from these very categorizations (168).

In short, as I myself suggest in “Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?”:

The prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

 However, in general, individuals follow, rather than lead, developments in cultural and theoretical paradigm shifts. The cultural Weltanschauung changes, usually centuries before, the individual’s world view, and what is accepted among the elite of specialized communities such as those of academics, scientists, and philosophers usually becomes accepted much more slowly, often centuries later, in fact, if ever, by the general public. For this reason, outmoded views of the “reality” of which Todorov speaks continue to inform and to direct, if not determine, their thoughts, behavior, and, to a lesser degree, perhaps, their feelings. For them, such divisions as those listed below will continue, more or less, to hold sway:

The Fantastic (or what might be called the “supernatural undecided”): The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, The Shining (film version; directed by Stanley Kubrick), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King), The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson). 

The Uncanny (“supernatural explained”): “The Red Room” (H. G. Wells), The Island of Dr. Moreau (H. G. Wells), The Food of the Gods (H. G. Wells), The Invisible Man (H. G. Wells), Hide and Seek (film, directed by Ari Schlossberg), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), King Kong (film, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack), Subterranean (James Rollins), Relic (Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child), Watchers (Dean Koontz), The Tommyknockers (Stephen King), Swan Song (Robert McCammon), The Funhouse (film, directed by Tobe Hooper). 

The Marvelous ("supernatural accepted" as such): “1408” (Stephen King), “Dracula’s Guest” (Bram Stoker), “A Christmas Carol” (Charles Dickens), It (Stephen King), ‘Salem’s Lot (Stephen King), Carrie (Stephen King), Desperation (Stephen King), The Taking (Dean Koontz), Summer of Night (Dan Simmons), Fires of Eden (Dan Simmons), The Green Mile (Stephen King), Silver Bullet (Stephen King), The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty), Dracula (Bram Stoker), The University (Bentley Little).

Such a division also has the benefit of allowing authors, critics, and readers the ability to discern, in short order, whether a writer’s oeuvre tends more toward the fantastic, the uncanny, or the marvelous.

Imagined Horrors

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

-- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Conqueror worm"

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are tales of madness and, quite often, murder. In many of them, the protagonist’s insanity is evident in his perceptions and thoughts, which tend toward the hallucinatory. In listening in on their musings, as it were, readers understand that their notions are irrational. A famous case in point: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which begins with the admission that there is nothing wrong with the character of the man whom the narrator-protagonist would kill; his victim’s error is not in his ways, but in a physical--indeed, a facial--feature: the injured party’s offense, such as it is, is in the eye of the mad beholder:

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture--a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.

Likewise, in “The Cask of Amontillado,” the narrator-protagonist informs the reader that he is about to avenge himself for an “insult” that he, the protagonist, claims he has recently suffered at the hands of his intended victim, Fortunato. The protagonist paints himself as a longsuffering man, but as one for whom patience in the face of longstanding, ongoing abuse has finally reached its end: “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”

As readers, we observe that the avenger never specifically identifies any of the “thousand injuries” he has suffered at the hands of Fortunato, possibly because he cannot do so, since these slights and injuries, in fact, never happened except in his own mind. Likewise, we see that he has plotted his revenge upon the unfortunate Fortunato, presumably for some time, and according to a principle:

AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled--but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

The avenger has a powerful intellect, but his use of reason is perverted by his madness. He is careful to ensure that his vengeance goes undetected and, therefore, unpunished, as, he says, a proper act of vengeance must; a sane man would not suppose that vengeance be perpetuated according to a code or standard.

As readers, we also notice that the protagonist does not confront his intended victim with his allegation that Fortunato has in some way “ventured upon insult.” He does not give his acquaintance the opportunity, as it were, to defend himself or explain his actions. Like a husband who murders, rather than divorces, his wife, the protagonist, rather than confront his longstanding acquaintance or break off his friendship with him, decides to murder him and, indeed, takes pains to pretend that all remains well between them: “It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile NOW was at the thought of his immolation.”

No doubt, the protagonist’s pretense is designed to keep the unsuspecting Fortunato unsuspecting and to permit the avenger to carry out his vengeance with “impunity,” but it also shows the apparently rational man to be utterly irrational and the supposedly injured protagonist to be injurious, indeed. Again, the fault does not appear to lie in the character or behavior of the victim, but in the thought processes, or reasoning, of the mad protagonist.







Other of Poe’s stories, such as “The Black Cat,” are constructed on the basis of the same premise: an unreliable (because mad) narrator tells a story about his own past criminal conduct and, in the process, exposes his madness.


Poe’s method is still used by writers today, who depict similar madmen (and women) whose telling of their stories depict them as insane and whose madness is itself the source of the twisted perceptions or understandings that give rise to the acts of violence and murder that they commit. (Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ “The Yellow Wallpaper” and H. G. Wells’ “The Red Room” are masterful examples of more recent stories that depend upon their protagonist’s hallucinatory or mistaken perceptions and understandings.)

Such an approach suggests that, to an insane person, anything can be considered wrong, perverse, or threatening because the horror is not in the things themselves, or the world, but in themselves. It has been truly said that one’s perceptions are, to the one who experiences them, realities, even if they are mistaken or, indeed, entirely the products of their own psychoses.

For example, why does that light flicker so, in the dead of the night? What must it be thinking? What is it trying to communicate, so fervently ands insistently, and why?