Cronenberg Adapts (Us to) McLuhan: Watching "Videodrome", Reading "Understanding Media"

Abstract

This article argues that Videodrome and the film’s novelization can both be said to adapt McLuhan’s account of television in Understanding Media. Cronenberg’s film adopts McLuhan’s style of thought by rendering figurative language as visceral cinematic image; Martin’s novelization, in turn, uses the literary device of ekphrasis to depict the protagonist’s TV-possessed inner world. Videodrome the film and Videodrome the novel express, respectively, the cinematic imaging and the synesthetic verbal description of media as «the extensions of man». The essay concludes that attending to the ways in which both the film and the novel adapt McLuhan’s writing not only attests to the intermedial nature of the interpretive act, but helps delineate the contours of the contemporary media landscape.

Keywords

• David Cronenberg
• metaphor
• ekphrasis
• adaptation
• intermediality
• Marshall McLuhan