Consumed by David Cronenberg (Hamish Hamilton, 2014)
“I’m
a very sick woman. Does that turn you on?” Dunja, a Slovenian woman at the
Molnár clinic in Budapest, asks the New York journalist Nathan Math. “Well, I told you. I’m a failed medical
student. Now I’m a medical journalist. So, yes, I guess sickness does turn me
on in a way.” (Pg. 30). A sick woman, who is about to get an illegal
radioactive treatment for her breast cancer, tries to seduce a medical
journalist, and they end up having sex. She transmits to him a rare STD, the
Roiphes disease, which he ends up also passing to the women that he’s seeing,
Naomi Seberg. Naomi, also in the field, is researching to write a book on the
case of Aristide Arosteguy, a famous philosophy professor, who left his native
France for Japan, after being investigated for cannibalism, eating his wife
Célestine. The title of the book comes from Barry Roiphes, the now-retired
doctor famous for discovering the disease, who wants collaborate with Nathan to
tell his life story, work history, and his experiments on his daughter, Chase,
who is now dealing with some mysterious form of post-traumatic stress.
Surrounding all
of this is the ghost of the Simone de Beauvoir-like Célestine, who’s never
encountered because she was supposedly eaten (the description of the
photographic death scene is nightmarish), but who prior was sexually
promiscuous with her disciples, who Naomi is now interviewing. Célestine and
Aristide describe themselves as open to ‘philosospams’, episodes of obsessive
behavior involving sexual affairs or political activity. After the two
professors attend the Cannes film festival as a jury members, Célestine becomes
obsessed with a controversial North Korean film, The Judicious Use of Insects, which she suspects her former lover
Romme Vertegaal made under a pseudonym, specifically for her. This experience
causes in her a rare form of apotemnophilia, and she starts to believe her left
breast is infected with bugs and would stop at nothing to get it removed. (The
diagnosis scene appears in a slightly altered form in the EYE Film Institute
commissioned Cronenberg video, The Nest
starring the raw Evelyne Brochu).
What is it
about episodes like these – typical of Consumed
in their mixture of Eros and Thanatos – that draws people towards the
works of David Cronenberg? Sex, disease and death. Journalism, cameras, and
social media. This is the shadow world of Consumed.
It’s these taboo themes and obsessions, which are typically repressed in
everyday life, that are brought out into the open and freely indulged. In
Cronenberg’s world, more general human experiences like relationships,
education, professions, growing old, diseases and death are heightened towards
an extreme, parasitical level.
This theme of
the parasitic and infections is everywhere in Consumed. Nothing is safe from it. If something bad could happen,
then it will. No wonder Stephen King praises the book. But there is almost a
mathematical and scientific structure to how it unfolds, just like in a
Cronenberg films. After Cronenberg’s more recent gangster films (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises)
and probing the subconscious (A Dangerous
Method), now he’s returning to the original body horror of his early career,
but the world is different and its implications scarier. So similarly to Maps to the Stars, Cronenberg’s most
romantic film in the Goethien sense, or Cosmopolis,
in Consumed and in these recent
works, the worlds, both individual and social, end up falling apart. For
example, Agatha is scarred with burn wounds (among her other psychological and
physical problems), Eric Packer has an asymmetrical prostate, and in Consumed bodily mutations and deviations
are rampant. But even if the world is dark, there is still a beauty to this
gesture of showing it fall apart and disintegrate in its multifaceted forms.
There are many
episodes from Consumed that bring to
mind ones from other Cronenber films. The journalist protagonists and their
globetrotting adventure recalls Naked
Lunch, the medical setting and the procedures that go awry makes one think
of Dead Ringers, the carnal love
affair that takes place in Asia is reminiscent of M. Butterfly, and the mad scientist character could be right out of
The Fly.
Cronenberg had
always wanted to write. Originally, after his first two underground films (Stereo, Crimes of the Future) he moved
to Tourrettes-Sur-Loup, France to try to become a novelist. But he would return
to filmmaking, as he tells Serge Grünberg, because it was “a ‘modern’ way of
writing.” And with his filmmaking practice he would remain loyal to writing:
creating his own stories, writing his own screenplays, and adapting novels. And
in this period he would have close working relationships with many esteemed novelist
including King, William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, and Don DeLillo.
It’s
worth noting Cronenberg’s popularity and relevance. Where other older directors
like Peter Bogdanovich or John Sayles can no fund their films and start taking
up other projects like film blogging or novel-writing, with Cronenberg there
isn’t the sense that he ‘lost it’ with the mass public. In the ten years since
the president of the publishing house Hamish Hamilton, Nicole Winstanley, asked
him if he wanted to write a book, throughout his sixties he was able to
artistically reinvent himself, working with some of the most famous young
stars, Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska, on the two critical successes Cosmopolis and Maps to the Stars.
So the next
question: is David Cronenberg a good novelist? Yes. With Consumed, at a length of 284 pages, he crafted a gripping
page-turner, which isn’t clumsy in its prose, and in it he creates both a world
distinct to itself, and one that is in parallel to his body of work as a
filmmaker. Though let me said, if it wasn’t written by him it would probably
have received a lot less attention. But Cronenberg is still great at creating
interesting characters, atmosphere, dialogue, and intrigue. There are two
parallel stories that take place and the switching between them is never
awkward. Though there is a section where Aristide is describing what has
happened to Célestine, which goes on for too long at 50 pages, and lacks the
multi-character energy of the rest of the book.
The Nabokov
influence, which Cronenberg speaks of, is there, as they are both cerebral
writers that regularly bring up major ideas of continental philosophy and
psychoanalysis, along with a wider openness towards the arts and culture.
Cronenberg is especially fond of describing cameras and lenses, though maybe too much.
Naomi is as
complex and fascinating as Maxine Tarnow from Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, both young women
investigators. And there are also similarities between Consumed with the world of Infinite
Jest, as in both works the authors critique the growing use of technology
to mediate interpersonal relations, and the role of entertainment in our
culture and its ability to become a gross obsession. As well Dr. Roiphes’
project seems similar to James Incandenza’s, and Consumed bleak and ambiguous cliffhanger ending also recalls David
Foster Wallace’s.
On a potential
adaptation of Consumed, Cronenberg
has said: “I’ll let David Fincher or Neil Jordan destroy my novel.” And he
presently does not have any new projects in the works.
***
Steven Awalt's
new book, Steven Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film Career, is about a little-known period in the
director’s career. For an older generation, the film might be known for its
acclaimed television screenings, for a younger one it might not be that
familiar as Spielberg is now more associated with his classics like Jaws, the Indiana Jones films or
Jurassic Park. What is it about Spielberg’s early career that demands
re-evaluation? Even the author of Steven Spielberg and Duel doesn’t deny
that the film is “a somewhat forgotten work.” But according to Spielberg himself, Duel is “the key to unlock a career for me.” So with that, the book’s aims are two-fold:
it explores Spielberg’s early television career at Universal, and it tells the
equally gripping narrative of the film’s production.
While Spielberg’s early career is usually treated cursorily,
in Steven Spielberg and
Duel Awalt does it justice by making it the subject of his book.
Awalt, who is a scholar on this period in Spielberg’s career, focuses on
Universal’s television production and Duel’s
many collaborators that would lead to make the film a reality through its
different stages of production. The television dramas that Spielberg worked on,
and which are discussed in depth, include his episode Eyes starring Joan Crawford for Night Gallery, LA 2017 for Name of the Game,
and Murder by the Book for Columbo. In this period the economic
restrictions of the productions instilled in Spielberg a quick working
practice. Spielberg was working with a lot of older technicians, many from the
classical studio era (and was sometimes in conflict with them), which led to a
rich collaborative atmosphere. The many collaborators of Duel include its lead actor Dennis Weaver (Spielberg was a big fan
of his performance in Touch of Evil),
author and screenwriter Richard Matheson (whose screenplay is included in the
book), director of photography Jack Marta, stunt coordinator Carey Loftin (Bullitt), editor Frank Morriss, composer
Billy Goldenberg, producer George Eckstein, and studio executive Sid Sheinberg.
This
impressive group led to a creative atmosphere that gave Spielberg the
creative freedom to make Duel especially cinematic. It’s practically a
non-verbal sensorial experience as its story is told through ambitious
filmmaking techniques more so than the conventional ones associated with the
television of this period, which includes impressive mobile shots following the
car, a long-take into a café, and dramatic staging during the confrontations.
The origins of Duel begin with Richard Matheson who was
inspired to write the original short story after a similar experience happened
to him. The murderous truck of Duel,
which pursues David throughout the film, is a significant villain for multiple
reasons. First off, he is significant as a faceless antagonist, which is the
catalyst for the film’s Hitchcockian wrong man narrative. Secondly, the
chase story would become a regular structural trademark for Spielberg. And
thirdly, as a symbol of an environmental problem, as its petrol freight
reflects a natural resource that is constantly and recklessly exploited under
industrial capitalism.
Also related is Duel’s critique of patriarchy. The film begins
with a travelling salesman named David Mann driving down a desert highway. He
is listening to the radio where on a talk-show a caller is discussing a survey
where he admits that he’s no longer “the head of the family.” Shortly after the
driver stops at a roadside Laundromat to call his wife in which they continue
their argument from the previous night. Like the son Michael Brody from Jaws
who can’t connect with his father, or Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the
Third Kind who runs off from his family, or lonely Elliott in E.T.;
Spielberg is presenting the disintegration of the nuclear family. And as he
expands upon in his Suburban trilogy (Close Encounters, E.T., Poltergeist),
Spielberg in this early stage of his career is chronicling issues surrounding
Fordism and the growing class of American society and especially the complexity
of their emotional lives.
In the book,
Awalt engages with the discourse around Duel
by employing a close reading of every scene in the film. Awalt is especially
critical of Andrew M. Gordon’s contentious psychoanalytic reading of the film.
The side-bars and footnotes in the book offer a wealth of supplementary
information regarding the film. There are side-bars that focus on the swearing
that had to be censored, harbingers, its class consciousness, and
how some of its footage
would be used in an episode of Hulk
(to Spielberg’s chagrin). Awalt debunks the myth of a young Spielberg escaping
the Universal Bus Tour and setting up shop, as the truth is that his father
knew a librarian that sponsored him as an intern. And there is a fascinating
footnote of Spielberg’s rare cameos in his own films.
In terms of
Spielberg making-ofs, Awalt’s book isn’t as richly illustrated and colorful as
some of the other ones (The Complete
Making of Indiana Jones, Memories from Martha's Vineyard). But it’s as
gripping and informative as either Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log or any of Laurent Bouzereau’s special features. There is a charm to the modesty of the
project, in comparison to more theoretical film books, and Awalt’s sense of story-telling
is open, fun and generous. For
example, if in Ray Morton’s book on the making-of Close Encounters of the
Third Kind he makes the argument that it’s Spielberg’s first personal film
because it owed to his earlier teenage film Firelight. (Spielberg
himself typically identifies his first personal film as E.T.). Awalt
pushes this intertextuality even further by arguing that Duel owes to
Spielberg’s earlier train-crash home movies that he’s famous for bringing up.
It’s the casualness and insight of observations like these that reflect a deep
knowledge and contemplation of Spielberg’s cinema, which makes Awalt’s analysis
so pleasurable to read.
Steven
Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film Career stands alongside the other note-worthy
recent Spielberg books that includes: James Kendrick's reconsideration of
Spielberg’s oeuvre which argues for the persistence of his pessimistic themes
and the complexities of its ideological incoherence (Darkness in the Bliss-Out), Richard Schickel's general overview and
interview with the director (Spielberg: A
Retrospective), and the official book on Schindler's List and the USC Shoah Foundation.
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