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

Abstract

David Cronenberg has often been regarded as a literary director, who draws on a well-versed knowledge of literature for his film projects. This is most evident in his adaptations of authors often thought to exert the greatest influence on his work, from Burroughs (Naked Lunch) to Ballard (Crash). Yet there is another author with an equally potent, if mostly unacknowledged, impact on Cronenberg’s output – Franz Kafka. Cronenberg has never directly adapted a Kafka story, yet elements of the ‘Kafkaesque’ permeate Cronenberg’s oeuvre, none more so than in his 1983 film, Videodrome. Drawing on Mark Browning’s work, I argue that the similarities between Videodrome and the short story A Country Doctor (1917) are so stark, that Cronenberg’s film should be considered as an adaptation of Kafka’s composition, and that further connections between the two artists become apparent in light of this association.