“From Videodrome to Dexter: ‘Long Live the New Flesh!’ ”

Abstract

Recent symptoms of obsessive addiction to TV series such as C.S.I., Criminal Minds, The X Files, Buffy - the Vampire Slayer and Dexter show a tendency to substitute television soap operas for the Gothic novels and also reveal a perverse attraction to watch violence through the same media that transmits daily news about violent events in different war scenarios all over the world. This irrational attraction to violent images, where reality and illusion can become as confused as in a psychotic mind, explains our constant state of psychic stress that Marshall McLuhan considered as the most negative effect of technology. Being psychologically infected through media, our minds are dangerously trained to receive stronger stimulants that seem specially designed to increase our desires for violence. Immunity to this condition can only be achieved through art, where we can feel the true nature of our present and be deeply aware about our most perverse impulses. David Cronenberg was able to express this awareness in Videodrome (1983), where TV viewers suffer from hallucinations created by electronic signals which provoke brain tumours. Potential victims of this disease, whenever we watch some programs that depict torture and murder, we still remain faithful to our TV screen which we have converted into a domesticated monster we love and where we can see reflected our most obscure desires. No wonder we can feel sympathy for Dexter Morgan’s violent impulses and for his consciousness of being a “clean, crisp outside and nothing at all on the inside.” (Lindsay 2005: 49). After all, we share a common dream: we look for another, more inventive, satisfying fleshy existence, perhaps on the other side of death.