AIDS References in the Critical Reception of David Cronenberg: "It May Not Be Such a Bad Disease after All"

Abstract

This essay argues that reception studies need to pay greater attention to topical and rhetorical references in film criticism. Specifically, the article analyzes references to AIDS in criticism of the films of David Cronenberg, with particular emphasis on The Fly (1986).

Epidemics, public health workers, and ‘heroism’ in cinematic perspective

“…The temporal and geographic dimensions of this epidemic-film database is provided in Figure 1 and Table 1. It should be noted that from this database we do not include any film dealing with HIV or AIDS -Kids (Larry Clark, 1995), And The Band Played On (Roger Spottiswoode, 1993), Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013), for example -since these are so numerous that they can be placed within their own distinctive cinematic category, and accordingly, have their own long scholarly literature devoted to them within specific contextual debates (illustrative examples include Pearl 2004;Li 2016;Mathijs 2003). Overall, the film examples in this paper have been manually selected from the database based on the prominence of public health workers as characters within the narrative (public health workers are not always foregrounded in epidemic-related films) -but this is not an exhaustive study given the limitations of space and scope.…”

Towards a structure of feeling: abjection and allegories of disease in science fiction ‘mutation’ films

“…Expressly, given the timing of The Fly 's release during the early years of the AIDS crisis, and the fact that South Africa is itself in the ‘midst of a catastrophic AIDS epidemic’,52 one might read this contagion as HIV. There are some cautionary aspects to take into account in drawing such conclusions, namely, as Ernest Mathijs53 notes, that Cronenberg's films made prior to the AIDS epidemic are also informed by disease and contamination. As further revealed by Mathijs, Cronenberg states that he did not consciously relate the film to AIDS.…”

Cronenberg’s debt to Kafka: An analysis of A Country Doctor (1917) and Videodrome (1983)

“…(Cronenberg 2014: 11) 20 It is this conception that, according to Cronenberg, was key to his vision of The Fly, and by implication, the transformations that feature throughout his oeuvre. Often regarded as an eighties AIDS metaphor (Mathijs 2003), instead, in this introduction Cronenberg posits Brundle's plight as 'more fundamental: in an artificially accelerated manner, he was ageing' (Cronenberg 2014: 14). Cronenberg thus arrived at a concept for a film that was 'Kafkaesque', distilled via Nabokov, Langelaan and Neumann, yet maintaining distinctive differences (Cronenberg's brief introduction uses the phrase 'unlike…Gregor' twice when discussing Brundle).…”