Media Studies 101 (Videodrome - 1983)

Attack of the Final Girls is a podcast about the horror genre, so listener discretion is advised. Please check the show notes for specific content warnings for this episode. And of course, beware of spoilers.

And welcome to another episode of Attack of the Final Girls. I don't know. I was just about to say your full name instead. Welcome to another episode of... juliet's full christian name over here i don't know i forgot i forgot what we were doing i mean i don't know it's been a while you know it's been it's been a time

It's I blame the turning of the seasons. This is going to be like our late Halloween episode too. Yeah. Like a couple days after Halloween. So happy belated Halloween, everybody. Yes. Because the lighthouse was like kind of our Halloween episode, but like we didn't say happy Halloween. Yeah. I mean, it was certainly horrific. So there you go. Whomp. Horrifically boring. No, I'm just kidding. If you like the lighthouse, that's cool.

Tell us why. Please, for the love of God. I just don't want to see two sexually repressed men and a giant dick. That's all. Yeah. I mean, really. But speaking of sexually repressed men.

Today we're talking about 1983's Videodrome. This was, I think, my first David Cronenberg movie that I ever watched. Probably mine as well. Okay. Yeah, I believe so. I can't. fully remember the sequence this is the first one that like actively sticks out to me I love this one I feel like it gets slept on I feel like when people say David Cronenberg they think the fly which like totally fair

The fly is incredible. Yeah. But they don't say Videodrome in the same breath. They like wait a little bit. Yeah. I feel like this movie, I so often hear about it in kind of two different contexts. Either. Videodrome is weird and confusing and it made me feel some type of way and I don't even know how to describe that. Or Videodrome is... Brilliant and prophetic and fascinating. And I'm, you know, gonna...

Tell you all the things about why you should love this movie, whether you want it or not. That's fair. If we're talking about like up through 90s Cronenberg, like I'm going to say even through Crash, which was like 93, I think. One of my favorite. James Spader movies. I do love a James Spader movie. Have you seen Crash? Yeah. Okay. Wild. If we're talking up through like Crash era David Cronenberg, I would say that this is probably his most political movie. Yeah. Political, culturally, you know.

saying something about culture this is definitely it the fly is like definitely saying something but its visuals kind of take over the message yeah i would agree with you on that which like the fly is great and i i do not

Like, no criticisms here. 10 out of 10. The fly is political in a way that a creature feature is inherently political. But this is... political in a whole this is this is media studies this is media studies this is man is the creature this is tv is the creature this is man is tv is the creature like

It's dense. And I think that's why people, because when this movie came out, it was like a colossal failure. It barely made back half of what the budget was. The budget was pretty big too. It's a onion. It's a Shrek of a movie. Yes. It's got many layers. It's sexual. It's violent. It's, you know, are we too violent? Are we too sexy? Are we going down a path of no return when it comes to those things. But is it our fault? Is it the fault of...

somebody who's feeding us this information? Is it a fault of, you know, the world as a whole? Were we inevitably traveling down this path? Like so many questions. And no like real good solid answers. It's also a film, and I know a lot of mass audiences have trouble with this, where at any given moment...

We and the main character do not know what is real at all, and things you are convinced were real are not real, things that you... are convinced we're a hallucination are maybe real or maybe layers upon layers of hallucination and manipulation. Which makes it, you know, it's a challenging film in that regard. It's one that I like for repeated viewing because I like doing that exercise of like, you know, is what we are seeing in any given moment either...

As witness as the audience or through the eyes of the main character, is it actually happening? Right. What is the source? Yeah. Is it... Videodrome? Is it his brain? Is it any number of things? I really love a story that has a lot of thick layers and no good answer.

to as to what exactly is like the real evil or what really is going on because spoiler alert there isn't really a good answer to this and I think in 83 people were not because remember this year is the same year that return of the jedi came out so we're talking about 1983 return of the jedi comes out this year videodrome comes out i think this movie was like studying media and its effect on the world in a way that like

nobody was prepared for and nobody could really understand or listen to so they're like damn that's weird he's got a vagina in his stomach and he put a betamax in there that seems real strange and that was like what people took from it they're like Debbie Harry is on some freak shit. What's going on here? And that's like as far as people could push it. Also, the movie does have points where it really slows pretty far down. Yeah. In the investigation bits.

It ends up being like, OK, we get a little bit of exposition. Oh, now we got the investigation part. And then we have this like highly sexualized scene. And then we need to go back into the investigation because. As the story is revealed to us, it's also revealed to the main character. But also, like, halfway, two-thirds of the way through the movie, we understand that he has a brain tumor. Yes. Maybe.

called Videodrome, maybe, that is causing him to hallucinate and see things differently and also allow himself to be programmed to do things. But I also love the idea that... Although we are watching the movie through the eyes of the protagonist and like, is it really what he's seeing? There's also this layer of like meta to it where you're like, am I?

seeing yes the same thing as everyone else you know the movie in and of itself is so fascinating but also like the time in which this was produced and just how television works is is also fascinating and like what it means to us. Yeah. Like one of the things I mentioned to you is when we were watching this movie, 1983, everybody still had tube TVs. Nobody had...

you know, internet that went into their house, like commercially available internet was not a thing. Computers were like as big as a room still getting smaller, but still pretty big. So people's experience with television. was still you know i mean we'd had it for maybe maybe 30 years and like really really 40 yeah 30 or 40 years but like really people didn't

You wouldn't see a television in everybody's house until really the 60s. That's when we had all of these fun TV shows and like, you know, we started getting advertisements and things. So like really 20 years comfortably. And cable TV was relatively new in the early 80s. I think that's the big... crux of this movie television was around but cable tv which gave us access to all of these things beyond the four channels three or four channels that you might have locally things that were now come

Coming into our home that we're bringing all sorts of new influences. You know, one of the things they're obviously touching on a lot in this movie are things like Cinemax, you know. Early HBO, early Cinemax. There's a whole genre really of like early 80s made for cable softcore porn. Yeah. You know, like people have written books about this. Emmanuel. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And these are new influences that are being brought into our homes and there's...

you know, sometimes they're scrambled and you could unscramble. And you talk to people who were teenagers in that era about, you know, trying to watch, you know, the scrambled, like, oh, did I see a boob in the scrambling, you know, like silly things like that. But even MTV, you know, that was a new influence that not everybody was thrilled about having it. beamed directly into their homes yeah and vcr too i mean not everybody had a vcr even at this point like it

It was expensive to get a VCR and then to pay for tapes. It was expensive as hell. Well, and we've talked in other episodes, probably when we were talking about X and... Another movie, too. I can't remember which episode that was about. how the VCR brought pornography into the home and how like, you know, your experience of video pornography prior to the VCR and the Betamax was you had to go to a place to experience it.

And that whole revolution started in the late 70s and early 80s of, oh, now porn is something that you obtain. You go to a place and obtain, but you bring it into your home and you...

partake of it inside your home and how that like changed that whole experience. Yeah, absolutely. And this movie is sort of an examination of that, like going from... television or the reception of media as being a collective experience versus a singular experience where you're watching it or partaking of it alone or only with other people that live in your home or are visiting your home in this case.

And how that's different. But one of the cool things about it is, quote unquote, the magic of like how TV works, like how broadcast television works. I don't know. I'm not an expert. I know that it like hits an antenna and. then the antenna, like, you know, puts it in your TV screen. And back then, anyways, giant TV broadcast towers to your antenna, and then you had it. This movie examines both the magic in that because Max's character, his whole thing is that he tries to pirate.

you know, illegal broadcasts and then show it on his cable channel. where he is really upping the stakes of like what you can show on television and nobody's telling him no somehow but he's like oh look I found this thing called Videodrome and it's just people getting beat on television and it's like sexy and enticing. And that's what we're going to show.

But as he goes through the story, there's something layered within that signal that causes you, the video drum signal causes you to have a brain tumor. And as the tumor grows, you'll start to hallucinate. And then he finds out about this oblivion guy. who was the first victim of Videodrome and is trying to tell people about it. And then you figure out that that's not real. But there's something magical, I think, in what our understanding was of television and how broadcast television works.

And also like how taping that onto a, in this case, it was supposed to be a VHS tape, but they're Betamaxes in the movie. But recording that and then redistributing it or watching it yourself. You had said, like, imagine watching this movie before the internet. Yeah. I can't imagine. And thinking, like, could this happen to me? Like, could I?

And like, logically, you probably think, well, no, but you don't know how TV works. Like, in 1983, me as just a cat, I don't even know how fucking TV works now. But like, as a casual observer thinking. shit, what if something could be broadcast to me? What if in the waves that escape my television, something gets implanted in my head and makes it so that the world doesn't look the same? Oh, yeah. I mean, so...

Like broadcast science, like over the air broadcast science, like it is a science, like there is a scientific explanation. for how over-the-air broadcast, whether it's television or radio, works. And I understand it from a radio perspective. And yet I still maintain, I was saying this to somebody in a professional context fairly recently, like...

Although there's a scientific term and a scientific explanation for all that, there is still something to my mind magical about beaming sound and pictures and movement and all of these things.

through the air into a box in your home like that's like seances and shit like if you were to you know show a television or a radio to somebody in the let's say 16th century they would think it was like the spirits or something So although, yeah, like it's all based in actual like scientific practice, I still think there is something kind of magical and ethereal and mystical. about the act of over-the-air broadcast and i think this movie touches on that well and like

Those signals move through us. They do. It's not like we're exempt from them. They don't like magically only go to 100 feet above us and then get beamed down like those signals move through us. So imagine trying to explain this to somebody like. Yeah, there's signals that move through the air that get transmitted from a thing and then they move through the air and then they go into a receiver and then you hear them. Well, and I will say like...

And I don't want to like make light of this at all, but anybody who's worked in broadcast for a decent amount of time will have experience like we all get the letters or the emails from people. whose mental state leads them to believe that these broadcasts are harming them or targeting them or, you know, doing something nefarious. And I can see why in a particular mental state someone could believe that.

Because they are these waves that are, you know, kind of in the air all the time. And they are moving through our bodies. So I can see how someone in the right state of mind might jump to that conclusion. I mean, now we don't have broadcast TV as such. You know, it's digital now. They've done away with sort of the antenna form of television and moved everybody to digital.

A couple of years ago, I guess, like 15 years ago now. Yeah, they thought it was going to happen with radio and still hasn't happened. The crux of the movie is that Ren, the main character, owns the cable station.

He sees this video drum tape and he's like fascinated with it. He goes on this television program and he is in a quote unquote conversation with this like oblivion guy. Right. Who is on a television screen. Yeah, he only appears on television on television. And actually, Ren, throughout the movie, never sees this dude in the flesh. He only is ever a part of a television.

He's showing on the screen. And he meets his daughter eventually. And she gives him a bunch of tapes. She's like, he doesn't have conversations. He operates in a monologue format. Like, he wants to lecture to you. He begins to understand that he has this brain tumor in him called Videodrome and that he's going to experience hallucinations because of it.

So he decides he's going to keep investigating, like, okay, why is this happening? Meanwhile, you know, he's hallucinating, killing his boss and finding her body in his bed. And also, like... hallucinating you know putting a gun inside of himself hiding a gun inside of this like gaping opening which people say is a vagina I mean yeah it looks very vaginal for sure but he you know hides this inside of himself and and it's a hallucination but then he can't find the gun right

And then he's like, okay, so then he meets this guy called Convex. And that guy's like, oh, yeah, we sell glasses, but it's actually a front for weapons, which, like, you know, roll with it. As you do. And then he has this thing, this sort of like helmet that you can put on that will record on tape your hallucinations. So Ren is like, OK, well, I'm going to do this because I want to see.

I'm hallucinating this, but I want other people to see what's happening to me, too. And then we sort of go down another layer. And it's like... okay he's actually being programmed like his friend who shows him you know incidentally the guy that works with him who's like oh yeah this is this video drum thing that i picked up he's like actually

That's not a thing like it was a plant. We, you know, I've been working at this for two years to try and get you involved in this program. And we're programming you to go and find this guy because he's the one who's trying to expose us. And it just keeps going. It's just like layers and layers and layers, which I get. That's probably why an audience had a tough time with it. Because like, not only is there a lot happening in this movie, it's also like.

shit are we okay from these like these things that we're you know experiencing like

we're seeing faces of death on VHS. And this is getting bootlegged and pirated and pushed around and people are passing it. People are recording stuff on tape and giving it to one another. And the amount of violence that we're... seeing on a day-to-day basis and the amount of sex that we're seeing on a day-to-day basis is increasing on a regular basis. And the thing that happens when you have a high level of stimulus...

And this is just a scientific thing. It doesn't have anything to do necessarily with sex or violence, but like, just as an example, coffee. If you have a certain amount of coffee every single day, eventually the caffeine will lose its efficacy and then you'll have to drink more and more and more. Yeah. And that's what people I think that's kind of the message here is that.

Cronenberg's like, we're getting exposed to this violence, the sexual, you know, television, Cinemax and cable television and the introduction of VCRs into our homes. At what point is it enough? being told through the story of this guy who's being programmed and david cronenberg is also asking you to look at yourself you know are we hitting a limit with the amount of like

Are we going to have to start actually executing people on television in order to get our kicks? But also, what are we doing to ourselves? There's this... essay slash book i think it's a book actually called the media is the message that cronenberg was really drawing from when he made this movie and it's asking ourselves like what are we prepared to do now

In order to get more of the stimulus that we're seeing on the TV screen. Yeah. Which is a fascinating question. And there's also this very interesting and prophetic sort of...

dichotomy presented. I wrote down the quote that I think just got truer and truer as we hurtled toward the modern world in which we're living in. Public life on television is more real than private life in the flesh. So like, this movie presents this dichotomy between like, what is more real?

The real that you're experiencing in your body in what you think is the real world or the real that you're experiencing through the screen or that is being presented to you through the screen or that you're viewing.

yourself through the screen in a couple of instances and I think when we look at you know now in an era of not just reality television but this whole idea of like you know the perception of what our lives are like as we choose to present them on the internet versus what our lives are actually like in the real world like what is more real at this point it's interesting that you brought that up because

I think watching this movie in 1983 would have been mind blowing. But watching this movie now and thinking how we haven't learned the lesson. Oh my God, no. Like we haven't learned our lesson about any of this stuff. Not just in terms of stimulation. We were literally just talking about books and like romance novels specifically and how there's an escalating level of like pushing boundaries. And now we're getting to the point where we're like, OK, holy shit, like we got to back up here. Yeah.

And everything is cyclical. It'll back back down and we'll go back into a more milquetoast period, I guess you could say. But now thinking of how we have... changed our entire world. This is 2025. We've changed our entire world to operate around things like social media. You know, a politician in 1983 would have had campaigns and would have had television coverage and would have had, you know, his works in Congress or her works in Congress.

But, you know, works in Congress that would be scrutinized, newspaper interviews, articles about the person. And now instead we have brands that we follow. Yep. Where every single person who's a part of our, you know. political climate is exposed to every amount of scrutiny, but also they build a brand for themselves. In 2008, more money was spent on social media advertising than was spent in traditional advertising for the first time ever in a political election, which I think is

Very fascinating. That was the first election I was eligible to vote in. It's fascinating to see like the media as the message and then think like, wow, it's been 42 years and we still don't have, we have not learned from this.

When that was published and when this movie came out, the average person was not critically thinking about... No. receiving this sort of message and what that means to us and how much of it we're taking and then using to act well and the average person was not a content creator right the average person was not

I would argue that today, the average person, everyone has a second job and it's content creator. Yeah, absolutely. Which is a lot of things. I have a lot of comments about it. I mean, as somebody... who works in the media. It has really transformed the way I work. I really started in my career right as this disruption was happening.

You know, and we're like, what do we as professionals do to compete or stand alongside individuals? You know, like some of that is helpful. Some of it is harmful, whatever. But yeah, in 1983.

Unless you were like making a zine or something, you know, something like that. Something like punk underground. It was. It was. Because even like public access, because cable was new, public access was new. And if you know anything about the... early days of public access it was so renegade and so fucking punk and so cool and weird and weird just like you know early community radio same thing like so cool and out there

I guarantee that there was some channel out there that after they watched this movie, they were like full on Alex Jones. Like, oh, I mean, like the waves are going to make you a weapon, man. And you're going to. I think I know some of those people, honestly, who went on to very illustrious careers in public access. But I mean, like, most people didn't have... the access or the interest to be media makers, like people that wanted to be media makers.

would point themselves in that direction they were finding the tools but now it's like i don't think we actively acknowledge that enough that like we're all content creators these days you know if you have a social media account You're a content creator. You're creating content, whether that's for what you think is a very small audience and is literally everybody in the known universe and the government, because that's the case with all of us, or whether your intent is to be.

somebody who does on purpose or by accident become internet famous. We're all doing it. Well, and think about like people who want to be successful in more traditional styles of media, like we were just talking about again, books.

Now the expectation is that you have to have a brand. You have to... create content you have to have a brand you have to build a community for yourself online rather than you know traditional publishing even 20 years ago where you're like find an agent send query letters publish your book you know in a legitimate sense in everybody's you know stuff can vary but like that's the expectation now so two years ago my colleague and i went to this music industry

summit it was being put on by um a college who has like a music industry like business department and it was free to attend so we attended because it was a pretty short drive and we were just like let's just Soak up some information. And the most disturbing thing for us was that there were so many panels of industry experts talking specifically to young artists about.

all of the things that they needed to do to build their brand, many of which I found very disturbingly encouraging parasocial relationships with their fans, which I could like... digress on that for hours about you know how the industry puts young artists in harm's way but also We ran into a young artist who we know who was attending. And this person said to us, we said, you know, what do you think of what you're learning here? And they said, you know, it just reinforces the fact that.

i'm a musician i just want to make music i don't want to have to do all this other stuff i don't want to put myself as a person out there i just want to write songs and sing them and play them right But every career, it's like no matter what you do now, you have to have the accounts. You know, you have to be a, most often, a one person.

Not just making the art, but marketing it, selling it, monetizing it. This is all to say capitalism sucks. I hate it. It's disturbing to expose your life. And have the expectation that your life will be exposed to everybody that has a social media account to think that. In 1983, that was not the case. If I saw a movie with an actor in it, I couldn't just Google them or look up their Instagram page and leave a bunch of hateful comments on some shit. I would be like, wow, that's cool.

that movie that had Bill Murray in it I'll never meet him sick you know like that was it maybe I'll see him on the cover of some magazine when he makes another movie right and that'll be exciting and I'll go see that movie too yeah but there's like no I mean There were some expectations and that's how literally John Lennon was killed. But but most people would never have an expectation of having any sort of personal line to a celebrity or a public figure of any sort.

Like, oh, I might go to a football game and that would be the closest I'll ever be to OJ Simpson. Like, I don't know. I'm just trying to think of a football player that would have been playing around that time.

But that'll be the closest I ever get. And I'll never like have his phone number. Right. I might send him fan mail even. But like it's going to be a P.O. box that somebody else goes to get. It's not going to be like O.J. like, oh, cool. I'm reading all my letters. Like that's not going to be a thing.

and now we have this thing where like everybody is expected to be like fully open all the time and tell you about their partners and their lives and like you see behind the scenes or you pay money and you see more behind the scenes it's been a big problem in wrestling lot of wrestlers have been posting recently like there are these videos and things where they're just like out being a person you know they're not in their character they're not working they're like

going to get a cup of coffee or something, or like getting off the plane to the next city they need to travel to to do their work. And people are just like, mobbing them and shoving cameras in their faces and expecting that they are ready willing and able and ought to be available to their fans all the time like they owe their fans this you know like

It used to be paparazzi. Remember, that was like such a big problem in the late 90s and early 2000s. Princess Diana's death. Princess Diana's death. You know, thinking about like the downfall of Britney Spears in the early aughts. All of the terrible things that happened to Lindsay Lover.

Amanda Bynes, like how that really broke them mentally, you know, and some of them in varying degrees have like bounced back from that, like Lindsay Lohan, for example. But like Britney Spears, I would say I would argue has not. you know, has not really bounced back. Like she's emancipated now and like is able to, to pursue her own, you know, interest, but. She's fundamentally like a very harmed person based off of the experience that she had when she was a young adult.

And Paris Hilton has bounced back with quite a bit of success. She, you know, has a family and continues to be a personality. Man, so much of that at the time was paparazzi just catching them at their very worst moments. And now it's people, you know, everybody's got a camera attached to them 24 seven. And they think that they need to, you know. have access to these people. I feel like Videodrome was light years ahead of the expectation.

of like what we were going to see and what we are seeing right now in terms of like how media is affecting us and how just as you said we're all content creators which is sort of terrifying yeah like if you think of us all being our own television channels and that we have to keep people's interest we have to fight the algorithm which like you could say that's Videodrome itself oh god I mean truly

and like we have to fight this algorithm now we have to fight ai in terms of content creation there are so many i'll tell you like this is truly a terrifying thing to me There are so many fake Instagram accounts that people share stuff with me from where like I can tell that it's a fake account.

I'll just look at the username or look at the profile picture that sends when you share something. And then I'm like, this is fake. This is something automatically taking screenshots of old Reddit posts or old Tumblr posts and reposting it. And they're making money off of this because it's just like a churn. It's just a machine that's doing this. It's not a person. Oh, absolutely. And same with this. There's this other thing. I don't have the app.

So I'm not going to say the name because I don't want to like put us on a list of some weird bullshit. But it's like a crafting app similar to Pinterest. It's an app where I see a lot of like... on Facebook, I'll get these like group posts that I'm not even part of these groups. So I don't really know how that works, but I hate it. But it'll be like, look at this thing that I made and I found it on this app. If you look at.

All of the posts, they all will say the app name in it. And I'm like, this is fake. This isn't real. People would not say this. People would not be like, and then I found it on this thing. It's like a commercial. But people think that's real. It's wild. I was listening to a podcast yesterday in the car. I was driving around a lot for work. And I kept getting this ad, you know, in the ad breaks. And he was talking about – it was like –

AI agents are really helpful, but sometimes they go rogue. And like the whole commercial was about buy our service that will help like... keep your AI agents in line. And I was like, Jesus Christ, what fucking world are we living in right now that I'm literally being advertised a service? To keep my AI from misbehaving and going rogue. Nope. This is weird. I mean, and it's probably like if you work a certain type of job.

Like, you're probably like, oh, yeah, yeah, we are using AI agents, whatever the fuck that means. But I work in a job where we deliberately do not use AI. So I'm just like, what is happening? This is terrifying to me.

I won't say 100% what I do, but it has to do with the government. There was a big thing about like... using ai to like take notes for for meetings and then they were like wait a second this isn't classified so we have to be careful because all these people have clearance and now we have this ai and like how much of it are they so it got pretty hairy there for a minute and then everybody was like wait a second do we really need to do this yeah like do we need notes taken like this

You can turn it on and it will listen and create notes based off of what you say in the meeting. So, yeah, it's it's real weird. Thanks. I hate it. Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong.

There are terrible things about AI, and I'm definitely going to get some hate here. There are terrible things about AI. The fact that they're using so much water is one of the big ones. Oh, yeah. I do not think that the burden of water usage should be on the average person though. This is like...

The fucking straw thing again. Well, yes. It's like three people are creating 85% of the emissions in the United States. Yeah. Three people in their companies. It should not be on me. Granted, did I stop using straws as much? Absolutely. But like some people need straws. It's an accessibility aid, blah, blah, blah. Yes. There are reasons to use straws. Me cutting out straws did not reduce.

The overall popular, you know, and not even everybody, even if we all went away from plastic straws. Yeah. It's not on the individual consumer. And like. There is no reason why AI should be using so much water. Zero reason. It is absolutely possible for them to recapture the water usage. They just...

Don't give a fuck about doing it. They don't want to. They don't want to. It would cost more money to do that, to repurpose that water, to capture the water and then recycle it. It would cost more money to do that. So instead, they're passing on that cost to us as a consumer.

And the guilt associated with it. Yeah, people in Columbus are getting fucking $1,200 water bills because of the data centers that they're having to fund the water for, which is ape shit. Why not, like, first of all... draw back on these stupid data centers and like yeah start to be like no you have to figure out your own water you can't just use it and not create reclamation centers or whatever number one number two

By calling something evil and shaking our fist at it, we're not encouraging responsible learning or usage of it. So like, that's how I feel about it. If we keep saying AI is evil, then AI is going to turn into Oblivion and we are going to get Videodrome. Yep. Like for real, if we made Videodrome now, Oblivion would be AI. And that would be what is programming you into doing X, Y, or Z thing.

Because it would be sentient. It would be self-sustaining. It would know its own purpose and tell you that purpose. And then you would be convinced because the AI has been morphed, molded into the thing, the very specific and special thing that will get you to do. absolutely it's so funny to watch this movie 20 you know 42 years after it was made and think

Wow, we are still in the midst of Videodrome. We've not solved any of the problems that this movie presents. In fact, I think we've exponentially increased the problems that this movie presents. Yeah, and like... The other thing is, you know, AI creating its own avatars to do things like Videodrome, like Oblivion. Is he a real person? I mean, this woman says that was her dad, but like, who knows?

What if that was all a creation of Videodrome? What if that happened now with AI? It would be more convincing than ever because you would have something that is smart enough to tell you. to communicate with you in exactly the way that will get you to do whatever it wants. Oh, yeah. And that's a terrifying thing.

Very much so. And I know that people, there are some people that disagree with me and think that it should be shut down entirely. Totally valid. You can absolutely think that. And I'm not going to say that you're wrong because like. would the world be a safer place without ai in it maybe you know like and if we had the opportunity to just pull the plug on it like cool i mean it would definitely save our water no kidding but also like

I think that living in a world where you just fight against a thing without understanding it or like encouraging responsible use of a thing, i.e. television or internet, asking for bad things to happen. Like what happened in the internet? I'm thinking the early aughts, like... 2003, because I mean, by the time I had a computer in my home with internet access was probably like 2003, 2004. And the shit you were seeing on the internet, I'm thinking rotten.com, you know, like.

i mean remember that like yeah like it was bad there was some really cool shit but it was bad what people were getting into their you know kids these days man they don't understand yeah the sort of shit that was just like wild and out on people's internet and like it became very dangerous

The dark web was developed, you know, and like the dark web still exists, obviously. But like those sorts of things, like what you could torrent and stuff like that was was very dangerous. And people were just throwing their hands up like the Internet is the devil. And it's like, OK, the Internet's not the devil, but it is creating these spaces where like really nasty shit's happening. And I think it like directly was talked about in Videodrome.

on the emerging media that we had then, which was video and cable TV. And then it changed to the internet. And now it's social media. And it's just in this weird 20-year cycle. And we can't seem to break ourselves out of it.

The sort of like overarching message like in Videodrome that I think persists today despite the types of media changing is just like ultimately like. individuals are being told, like... that they don't have to make choices or think critically about any of this. And the corporations are doing our thinking for us. I mean, like not to sound like a total like conspiracy theorist here. But that is, you know, the overarching message of Videodrome is that.

Max thinks he has choice. You know, he thinks he has autonomy. He owns a cable station. So he thinks that he is thinking critically about media and like he's in this world. And ultimately. It is people far more rich and powerful than he that are deciding his fate. And he ultimately kind of doesn't have a choice. It's just like...

At what point is he going to comply? It's not whether he's going to comply or not. It's just at what point is he going to comply with this plan that has been laid out for him. And I feel like, you know, that is. kind of the problem with the internet now is that ultimately like all of us individually like yeah we can decide how we want to engage or not. But really, it's these corporations, these companies like I'm looking at you, Meta, you know, as one of many that are.

Choosing to do evil. Remember when that used to be Google's slogan that they've surreptitiously dropped when they formed the Alphabet Corporation? It was something like, you know, don't be evil. They've dropped that, you know, like these corporations are actively deciding to be evil. And it's really just our choice. At what point do we want to just shut up and comply? If we even.

still have that capability yeah because think about fake news i mean like god there's so much of it like it used to be that the corporations would have to do those things for you and now it's us doing them to ourselves and to other people you know propagating those like fake articles or you know

taking pieces of the truth or whatever they're force-fed, and then being the ones to fight your neighbor about that. That is now the point of social media. It's not to show a funny picture or like, hey, I'm having this event. It's, hey, I'm going to post this article about this thing that I don't agree with. And then you fight with your neighbor 50 times in the comments.

And that's the sort of thing that shows up in your feed. Those are the sorts of things where the algorithm is going to push that to the top. It's not going to be like, oh, look, a picture of a dog from your friend because you like dogs. It's going to be like, hey, your neighbors are fighting. Why don't you get it?

that oh yeah why don't you comment or here's legitimate news about a legitimate thing happening in your community and perhaps a solution to a problem in your community no that never unless you give them money that never gets the same favor in the algorithm as hey here's a bunch of fighting over petty bullshit or hey we're gonna post an article

That touches on something to do with some community that is marginalized and people are going to wild out in the comments and you're going to, you know, sit there and watch it like the.

watch the train wreck unfold. Yeah. And that like the dopamine release of that too, like there have been studies, which I think are fascinating about how, like where we have an overload of dopamine now, because like our dopamine receptor. don't work very well anymore because we have this instant gratification that we get from social media or youtube or television or you know we have 86 million choices that we have on our on our on our

television screens. If you have Roku, you can watch literally anything. And our dopamine receptors are tired because we just get this constant flood of dopamine when you post a picture. And somebody who likes it, that's a release of dopamine. Oh, yeah. You know, and that's not something that you could get before. It was so now our brains are like, you know.

They can't keep up. They cannot keep up with the constant flood of shit that's coming into our minds. We just simply are, you know, caveman brains just can't keep up with that. We don't understand. We're like, oh, well, dopamine release. I need to do that more. You know, I need to post the funniest comment and everybody likes it or whatever. So living your life online, as we all do, like we're, you know, 90% of us are, you know, victims of this.

creates this like microcosm of shit where also you're only seeing what the algorithm wants you to see absolutely yes it was you know ai evil but i i posit that the algorithm is evil oh yes and that's what is pushing us to you know to act in the ways that we do because like i mean if you're a social media content creator like let's say you legitimately work as a content creator

Your boss is not your boss. The algorithm is your boss. The ways that you can get your posts and your items, you know, further up in that algorithm with a wider reach. That is what you're fighting against. Yep. And who even knows if that shit's fake? Like nobody knows. You see that you have like, oh, this thing has 600 views. Who knows if that's bullshit?

I mean, I think some of it is bullshit, but also like I literally had this experience at work like two days ago. I made a post about a thing, an event to which I need to sell tickets. and i could tell the algorithm fucked me on it yeah i could i could tell because based on the way i normally see views and likes and reshares of posts from that account it yeah like I couldn't even see it in my own feed I'm like oh

The algorithm fucked me because it's an event and they know I need to make money on it. So they want me to pay for the boost. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And like, that's not your job. Your job is not like fucking with social media. Your job is music and events and, you know, community organization. It's not. social media yeah and nobody's job is social media I think

Christ, I don't have to work in an industry where right now I have to be like, look at my thing on social media because I would fail at it. I legitimately would not do a good job at it. I don't even do well at posting my own social media. Maybe that's my own naivete like of not. being able to do, you know, well in certain aspects because I am not good at it, but I'm also not interested in it. Like that just is like.

It just feels like a brain rot thing. And I'm just like, oh, OK. I mean, I say as I constantly have Judge Judy on in the background or like cops or something, because I'm just like, oh, I need something in the background to like distract my brain from total silence. But like.

Cronenberg's always like wildly ahead of the time absolutely about like social commentary and then like it kind of fucks him because then he's like oh well I made that movie 40 years ago and y'all didn't listen and it's like okay yeah we're ready to receive the message and he's like okay but i have made movies since then what the fuck sorry david yeah right you're like you were right all along yeah yeah

So next time we are going to do a Brazilian film that I found on Shudder. It is in Portuguese. It's called Medusa and it is about... Young women being manipulated into victimizing other young women and then having an awakening about the forces that are at work against them. Okay. All right. Yeah. That'll be our Thanksgiving episode. Perfect. Love it. I love it. Thanks for listening to attack of the final girls. Find us online at attack of the final girls.com.

and hear bonus episodes at patreon.com slash attack of the final girls. We're Attack of the Final Girls on Instagram and TikTok. Our theme music is by House Ghost and is available on Rad Girlfriend Records. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode and rate and review on Apple Podcasts so more... I'm Juliet. And I'm Teresa. Until next time, stay scary.