Journal de Etica y Cine

Volumen 14 | Nº 2 - July 2024

From Horror to Body Transmutation in The Cinema of David Cronenberg

Universidad Técnica de Ambato

Abstract

The presence of diseases, viruses, sex, violence and the fusion between flesh and inorganic matter have been the constant narratives of David Cronenberg’s cinema, creating a physical and psychological metamorphosis of the characters. These films present visceral imagery where the horrifying and macabre are present. Cronenberg explores the fears towards the body, the transgressions from inside-out, which materialize with technologies, which intrudes us into the dark labyrinths of the degradation of the anatomical mass mixed with metals and dirt. Cronenberg’s cinema, and perhaps its greatest virtue, is that it allows us to connect a critique to the condition of fragility of the biological body in the face of technoscientific advance, however, it also becomes a battlefield, that stage of the abject, from where binary oppositions are answered, and the vehicle to express all types of metaphorical, allegorical, metaphysical and abstract concepts, which dismantles all Cartesian dualist narrative. This last idea allows us to build a debate about a metamorphosis not only of the biological body, but also of the psychic one that the human species is going through; This being the main objective of this essay.

Keywords: Film industry | film director | corporality | terror

This article is, for the time being, only available in Spanish: Del horror a la trasmutación corporal en el cine de David Cronenberg

NOTAS

Acting: The mise en abyss in cinema as a resource of the analytical clinic Juan Jorge Michel FariñaEduardo Laso
Eraserhead by David Lynch as a sequel to David Cronemberg’s Crimes of the Future. The subversive power of the Body-without-Organs Eraserhead | David Lynch | 1977 - Crímenes del futuro | David Cronenberg | 2022 Luis Ángel Campillos
The femme fatale function in film noir and poetic realism Scarlet Street | Fritz Lang | 1945 - La chienne | Jean Renoir | 1931 Juan M. Dardón
Freud and “cinematic intuition”: psychoanalysis, cinema and epistemology Mireille Berton
The end and the purpose of humanity Interstellar | Christopher E. Nolan | 2014 María Marta Preziosa
Heroicity as an arena of gender struggle. The case of the Robin Hood series Robin Hood | Dominic Minghella, Foz Allan | 2006-2009 Cecilia Luque
Tarantino and subtle violence of ideology Rodolfo Vera García
Hypersonic Metals, Singing Insect Women, Symphonic Orchids. Hybrid Bodies Vermilion Sands | Crash | J. G. Ballard Franziska Humphreys
Multiplication, An Outbreak of The Body The Relationship Between Cinema and Politics in Foucault’s thought Lautaro Colautti
The challenges of society through fantasy cinema: the role of the forest Errementari | Paul Urkijo Alijo | 2017 - Irati | Paul Urkijo Alijo | 2022 Ander Goikoetxea Pérez
PSICOCINE: a space for the promotion of mental health in Camagüey, Cuba Pablo Hernández Figaredo
Book Review A course on human rights on the big screen Los derechos humanos en el cine | Benjamín Rivaya García | 2024 Francisco Pérez Fernández

Etica y Cine (Ethics & Films) is a Peer Reviewed Quarterly Journal Edited by
Department of Psychoanalysis and Department of Deontology, School of Psychology, National University of Cordoba, Argentina
Department of Psychology, Ethics and Human Rights, School of Psychology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
With the collaboration of:
Center for Medical Ethics (CME), Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway
Under the auspicious of:
The International Network of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics.

From Horror to Body Transmutation in The Cinema of David Cronenberg

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