Commodity horror
Videodrome and the industrialisation of Canadian culture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21783355 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Haven Warwick (0000-0002-2328-6078, University of Warwick, corresponding author), Harry Warwick (0000-0003-2371-9133, University of Warwick) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 420-438 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Review of Film and Television Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1740-0309 • E-ISSN: 1740-7923 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17400309.2021.1926171 |
| OpenAlex | W3164149121 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 11 |
Videodrome arrived in North American cinemas in 1983, four years before the Mulroney administration agreed its free trade deal with the United States, and at a moment when the relationship between Canadian and American media cultures was rapidly changing. Since the 1950s, Canadian culture had become increasingly industrialised – or as some preferred to argue, Americanised – through the privatisation of the airwaves, the development of cable and satellite communication, and boosted private sector arts funding, to give just a few examples. This article argues that such changes, aspects of Videodrome’s socio-economic context, are equally objects of its self-reflection, as the film’s primal scene (where Max Renn appears to pick up foreign satellite signals), the debates it stages over censorship, and its portrayal of Toronto as a transnational space recall us to the shifting structure of Canadian culture in the mid- to late twentieth century. Videodrome also registers the fears of Americanisation that accompanied such changes, though it avoids criticising the latter from that standpoint. Instead, this article concludes, it treats the recent evolutions in Canadian media culture as an effect of a much broader and deeper process, namely commodification
Art history · Censorship · Commodification · Commodity · Economics · Economy · Media studies · Movie theater · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · The arts · Canadian Identity and History · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |