This lecture will explore the analogy of media and drugs in David Cronenberg's films, examining the pharmacological implications of media on the social, mental, and bodily conditions of its (ab)users.

Cronenberg's sci-fi and body horror films often center on technology and media, whether it's television (in Videodrome, 1983), cars (in Crash, 1996), or virtual reality (in eXistenZ, 1999). In Cronenberg's work, media exhibit strong pharmacological effects on the human user. For instance, in Videodrome, television functions as a drug that induces acute hallucinations and addiction, anticipating contemporary media pathologies associated with smartphones and virtual reality.  

American writer, visual artist and opiate addict William Burroughs, with whom Cronenberg collaborated on the 1991 film adaptation of Burroughs’ 1959 book Naked Lunch, explicitly likened media to "junk" (a slang term for opium and its synthetic derivatives). Burroughs’ Towers Open Fire (Anthony Balch, 1966) will be part of the lecture. Burroughs anticipated the rise of 24/7 communication channels, algorithmic feedback loops, and what we call today the attention economy, where we are constantly called back to use our digital devices. Burroughs described it as a pathology controlled by what he called the "algebra of need"—a capitalist logic of addiction and exploitation transforming consumers from media users into media junkies .

Drawing on Burroughs’ accounts of apomorphine addiction in Naked Lunch, media philosopher Marshall McLuhan suggested that we can avoid the inevitable ‘closure’ that accompanies each new technology by regarding our entire gadgetry as narcotic. McLuhan argued that our bodies and minds are incapable of handling the new intensities of electronic technologies, advocating for a total media detox as the only alternative. As Burroughs suggested in Naked Lunch: “Shut the whole thing right off [...] Don’t answer the machine—Shut it off”.

However, shutting it off is not as simple as it may seem, as we have entered a phase where the human and the machine cannot be separated anymore. In Cronenberg's films, media, like drugs, have absorbed into the user's body, altering perception, cognition, and even physical properties. Media junkies morph and transform in ways that can no longer be recognized as human in the traditional sense. This symbiotic understanding of media manifests in Cronenberg’s films as a technophobic nightmare. However, Cronenberg’s metamorphoses of the human also hints at liberating possibilities of becoming posthuman.

Amir Vudka is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Beyond academia, he is the artistic director of the Sounds of Silence Festival and the Altered States Festival in The Hague.