David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg (b. 1943) is a filmmaker from Toronto, Canada. Between 1966 and 2012 he directed twenty-one feature films. He also wrote one novel and directed short films, episodes of television shows, and commercials. Cronenberg is regarded as the best-known filmmaker from Canada, and one of the most accomplished auteur-directors working today. The main theme of his films is the physical revolt of the human body (through disease, trauma, and mutation) against attempts to capture it in rational terms. Cronenberg’s films have often attracted controversy and censorship, especially during the 1970s and 1980s when he was associated with a wave of “body-horror.” This affiliation earned him the nickname “Baron of Blood.” Since the 1990s, Cronenberg’s oeuvre has gained respect and prestige, especially after he started adapting literary works. Even then, some controversy remained. Cronenberg first became an object of scholarly study in Piers Handling’s book The Shape of Rage: The Films of David Cronenberg (Handling 1983, cited under Anthologies), and, ever since, his films have attracted a steady stream of academic attention. By and large, the career and films of Cronenberg are discussed through three perspectives: (1) as a form of cinema aesthetics, (2) as an oeuvre addressing and expressing social and cultural themes, and (3) as a body of films that explore political and philosophical issues of the contemporary age. The first perspective contains discussions of Cronenberg’s films as part of the horror genre (and the subgenre of the visceral body horror film in particular) as well as studies of his films as “literary cinema.” It also includes most studies of the use of special effects in Cronenberg’s films. The methods of analysis most commonly employed under this perspective are formalist, textual, and comparative analysis. The second perspective consists of discussions of Cronenberg’s films in relation to their cultural contexts, most often as a kind of Canadian cinema or as a kind of cinema that has attracted moral commentary and censorship. The method of analysis most frequently used in this approach is a combination of reception study and cultural analysis. The third perspective studies Cronenberg’s films with respect to how they explore, and are reflective of, ideas and philosophical issues that circulate in the Western world today. The method most often used in this perspective is that of post-structuralist analysis. Across these three perspectives, one remarkable characteristic stands out: the almost unanimous acceptance by scholars of Cronenberg’s own interpretation of his films. A highly articulate speaker, Cronenberg has commented eagerly and eloquently on his films. This characteristic trait has had a significant impact on how academics have tended to study Cronenberg’s films, namely as a more-or-less unified body of work of which the author’s own vision equals the truth.</p

Fugitive cult receptions of conspiracy thriller Utopia

This article studies the relationship between ‘fugitive receptions’ and excessive audience engagement with the cult television series Utopia (Channel Four, 2013-2014). ‘Fugitive receptions’ are centrifugal and unpredictable and thus this research offers an unusual perspective on our normative understanding of media engagement as predictable and measurable. The research relies on audience-fan interviews and the longer-term diffused online reception of the series. In particular, the article analyses how audiences go beyond parameters of normalized audience engagement in their navigation of elements of transgression, ideology, paranoia, and the series’ abrupt cancellation

Researching world audiences: the experience of a complex methodology

This essay critically revisits the methods used in the 2003-4 Lord of the Rings international audience research project. We argue that its way of combining in its core implement, a complex questionnaire which eventually recruited almost 25,000 responses, a combination of quantitative and qualitative questions allowed the project to disclose what the film meant, and how it mattered to audiences in new and distinctive ways. Using in particular two sets of findings which emerged from the overall dataset – one relating to which audiences most enjoyed and valued the film, the other relating to patterns in cross-cultural responses – we show the particular ways the methods adopted allowed moves between quantitative and qualitative understandings. This discussion of methods is set within a reconsideration of debates about the apparent benefits of triangulation. We close by noting some limitations in the research, and suggesting ways future research might overcome those limitations