rabid (1977)
the perpetual struggle of keeping a feral
burnout woman as a medical subject possesses
undeniable cosmological ramifications. as such a
subject your movements are surveilled but you also get
to be invisible. this is our ability. this paradox is
the means through which two people may engage in an
interpersonal dynamic with catastrophic results;
what’s bigger than a relationship, anyway? abject
terror always and inevitably arises from the
mundanities, from lecherous looks from men in crowded
theaters, from weaponized self-care as a means to a
bitter end. “what you need is a nice hot bath. it will
relax you and then you won’t ache anymore.”
cronenberg would later move on to observations of the
male body, but in his early work, his concern lies in
the female body through a lens that I am unable to
read as anything other than totally trans. rose’s
thorn is phallic but the film circumvents the
oversimplification of the phallus as necessarily
repressive or predatory. vagina dentata, after all,
lends itself well to the transfem body.
fitting, then, that this film largely plays out
internally; it’s human dynamics, connective tissue,
relationships between/to bodies. cronenberg is never
bigger than such relationships but this is what makes
him great. he understands the cosmic implications of
couple dynamics — of the inevitable perversion of
mutual ownership when it functions as the centerpiece
of a larger system of consumption to which we cannot
consent. there is no opting out of being eaten alive.
this is expressed through abstract physicality,
through the abnormal gendered effects of burning
motorcycle wreckage, quebec oldies radio in kenneth
anger’s motorcycle garage. “we can be together on the
phone.” bodies dreaming of bodies (nymphomania) — what
other option is there?
akerman’s je, tu, il, elle culminates with ten
minutes of gay sex and this film is a bloodthirsty
version of that. cronenberg absolutely retains the gay
sex, too, but slows it down to the point of slipping
past you while the film’s own becoming becomes.
the physicality of cronenberg’s body horror resides in
the margins, but the body and its grotesqueness is
also the text itself; a conduit through which identity
morphs and lingers. we are not at home in our bodies,
unable to belong to anyone, let alone “ourselves”; we
are always accompanied by generations of latent
viruses: https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/10/15/remnants-ancient-viruses-could-be-shaping-coronavirus-response-says-new-packard-fellow
like a pandemic, this film is 9 hours long. “that shot
won’t protect you from the crazies.”
watched w/ covid.
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