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The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg

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I'm pretty sure I've read every book available about David Cronenberg in two languages (English & French). This book by William Beard is probably the thickest and says the least.

Beard analyzes Cronenberg film by film (up to but not including Existenz). His approach is academic. Now I have no problem with theoretical or erudite books, being a professor myself. But this book, entrenched in academic film analysis, must be the least enlightening book on a director that I've ever read. It takes utterly trivial insights and phrases them in the most long-winded verbiage.

Here's a sample from the first paragraph of the chapter about Videodrome. Decide for yourself:

In Videodrome, "there is finally a shift of the ground of the action into the male protagonist, a centralization of this masculine figure who can now properly represent the masculine sensibility of the film. The marginalization or diminishment of this figure in the earlier features looks in retrospect like a kind of evasion -- or, to be more charitable, perhaps simply a stage in the filmmaker's continuing hunt to discover the ground zero of desire and prohibition. Now, that centre is at last discovered to be not the sexually transgressive woman, nore the inventor-father, nor unfeeling and predatory elements of society (although all of those forms are importantly present in Videodrome), but, rather, the self. And the appetites and anxieties, with their bodily mutations and diseases, finally unfold in and enact themselves on the self, and the self's body. The self is the monster." (page 121)

I would think that this must be a central paragraph of Beard's book, since he bases his title on it (artist as monster). But what is he really saying? That the "self" is monstrous because "appetites and anxieties" give it a working-over? Everyone has appetites and anxieties -- why is that so monstrous? How does that illuminate the film? It's hard to tell what analytical stance this even represents -- some vague form of psychoanalytical criticism?

In the preface to the book Beard admits that he thinks Cronenberg is not a "great artist but a powerful minor one." I couldn't help but think that this was the book's entire problem. It thought more of itself than of Cronenberg.

Personally I think Cronenberg is a great artist, and this book is a minor one -- a powerless minor one.

(If you want help understanding Cronenberg, try the Pocket Essentials book by John Costello -- which is clear and to the point -- or, if you can read French, the interviews with Cronenberg by Serge Grunberg. The latter is probably the best book about Cronenberg available).

In my large collection of books on David Cronenberg this is the most important one. Beard shuns unreasonable or extremely biased attitudes (like radical feminism) - which does not mean he ignores them: on the contrary, he eagerly engages in polemic discussion, often incorporating some notions specific for various ideologies into his own discourse. Doing so, he performs a comprehensive analysis of Cronenberg's films, seen both as separate and intertextual pieces of art. It is really amazing to see how he manages to combine the complexities of academic approach with the utmost clarity of message.

This is partially due to the structure of the book, which also makes it extremely easy to use - movies are discussed in separate chapters, divided into smaller sections, devoted to the most important themes and motifs present in each of them.

For all those reasons, Beard's book is not only a valuable and helpful source for all kinds of academic discussion, but also a great reading for all Cronenberg fans.