The Kinship of Cronenberg

It’s hard to be a fan of horror in this country and not inevitably fall into a rabbit hole of appreciating – nay worshipping – the Baron of Blood, David Cronenberg. I’ve stood at many a midnight screening or all-night marathon wherein the conversation would casually veer onto the expressway of appreciating a small, but seemingly important, section of Canada’s film canon. “But he’s David Cronenberg! He directed The Fly!” We yell at each other like kids in a 90’s Pizza Hut commercial as we rehearse our horror dude-bro arguments for those who aren’t familiar with David’s oeuvre. I think it’s easy for anyone with an ounce of reverence to horror to respect the work that Cronenberg’s added to the genre, but why are we as Canadians, specifically Canadian horror fans, so dang reverent of him?

I read a recent editor’s note in Fangoria (by Phil Noble Jr, in their 40th anniversary issue that came out this summer) that decried the nostalgic hang-ups horror fans constantly slink back to. Specifically the incessant reminders of when a certain film was released, released on home video, re-released in a special-edition Anchor Bay DVD set… and on and on forever. I enjoy appreciating the classics just as much as I enjoy something new that I’ve never heard of, but within this horror fan sphere it seems our favourite activity isn’t actually appreciating horror in all its forms, it’s nostalgic navel gazing. This seems doubly true toward Mr. Cronenberg, at least North of the 49th. It’s an air of “the golden age of Canadian horror”, if ever even was one.

When pitching horror screenplay ideas to friends I have to consciously refrain from the “it’s The Brood but with the plot structure of Shivers”-isms that run on repeat in my head, countered by my producer-brain thinking, “you know that Shivers will be celebrating its 45th anniversary, right? It’s the perfect time to re-contextualize this monumental Canadian film.” Re-contextualize? As if I, an independent filmmaker with a resume shorter than the evil kids in The Brood, could possibly mine something even remotely equitable from his work. But that may be my self-doubt shining through.

But back to the matter of explaining why I’m writing about the state of the horror community in a blog post that should be about cinematic publics and… nationalism? Here’s what got me thinking about the niche community that I seem to (begrudgingly) inhabit: Benedict Anderson’s parsing out of nationalism’s imagined structures that are created, by us, to form community in the introduction to his book (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins of Nationalism) along with Liz Czach’s article on building national cinemas through canons and film festivals. From Seton-Watson’s Nations and States, Anderson explains that “members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” This struck a few chords with me, specifically with regards to my oscillating opinion of Cronenberg’s status among Canuckle-horror-heads. Allow me to explain:

At this point in my life as a horror stan (apparently this is a reference to Eminem?), as I stand in line for some hypothetical 38th anniversary screening of Scanners, I’ve become quite tired of bending the knee to Cronenberg simply because he’s Canadian. I’m freezing my ass off here, waiting for the doors to open at the Royal, and all I can hear behind and in front of me is gleeful admiration for the North’s standard bearer of all that is terrifying and grotesque. Sure, we talk of how he popularized body horror by exploring the perils of the mind through the transmutations of the body, but what is so Canadian about it? He shot Scanners in Canada, but so are countless other films. I can guarantee academics have dissertations worth of answers to this question of Canadian-ness in Cronenberg, but me? I just have this disconcerting feeling that I’m connecting with other fans, solely based on the fact that we, as Canadian horror aficionados, need Cronenberg as some sort of cinematic floatation device amid an ocean dominated by Hollywood. It feels like we’re clinging to nationalism inside a public sphere, and it’s largely on the shoulders of one filmmaker.

Are Cronenberg’s films heralded by Canadian horror fans as “Canadian horror” simply because we’re telling ourselves that? I mean, I, a Canadian, literally just wrote a blog post about how much I love David Cronenberg just so people would know that I am a Canadian who loves David Cronenberg – and you’re reading it. It’s as if we’ve crafted an imaginary niche within the horror community to justify our nationalism (or even fuelling it) under the guise of the adoration of a pioneer in the genre simply to assert our own tiny space amidst the larger, crowded landscape of horror. And this adoration extends to our collective nostalgia; it’s that navel gazing that allows for us to cling to the promise of always being able to refer to Cronenberg at the drop of a hat. When someone online talks down about Canadian horror (or Canadian film in general), you better believe that us Cronen-bros have our anniversarial ammo at the ready with fully-automatic responses reading like “YEAH BUT RABID” or “YEAH BUT NAKED LUNCH”. 

So maybe I’m a little disillusioned by Cronenberg inhabiting our hearts as the genius of terror filmmaking that he should. Suffice it to say, I’ll never argue his place in our country’s cinematic pantheon. He has every right to be there. My umbrage, as little as there actually is, is with the attitude that he’s our only guy. He’s not our only guy (or gal), nor is he our only horror filmmaker of repute. Hey, I can’t be certain if I’ve argued myself into a hole that I can’t escape from, or if this is just a good time to end it.

Works Cited/Bibliography:

Benedict Anderson, “Chapter 1: Introduction” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins of Nationalism (Revised Edition). London, New York: Verso Books, 2006 (Orig publication 1983): 1-7.

Liz Czach, “Film Festivals, Programming, And the Building of A National Cinema.” The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 4.1 (Spring 2004): 76-88.