Naked Lunch: Exploring Cronenberg’s thematic consistency within any genre

Paper by Wazeerah Williams. Viewed on DVD.

David Cronenberg, also referred to over the years as ‘Dave Deprave’ and ‘Baron of Blood’, is one of the most graphic directors both emotionally and pictorially of the 21st Century. At the core he is a science fiction director with a predisposition for blood and gore, whose work is anchored with 3 defining themes: The idea of the scientists being destroyed by his own invention, the mind-body schism and sexual ambivalence. In 1991, Cronenberg took a respite from his usual gory genre, and releases, Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991), a loosely biographical film about a junkie writer with drug-induced hallucinations. Genre shift aside, Cronenberg still incorporates his three defining themes, with a bit of a twist. Naked Lunch is a psychological horror film about a writer, not a scientist, the invention is the written word, not a scientific invention, and the main character doesn’t physically morph into something else. A thorough examination of selected scenes from Naked Lunch will illustrate how Cronenberg incorporates his three defining themes, thereby maintaining his artistic voice within a new genre.

In Cronenberg’s earlier work the scientist invents in good conscious and then the invention grows into a metaphoric monster. The scientist is then removed from the central telling of the story and instead, the film focuses on how the invention is harming mankind. A prime example is displayed in The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979). Here the scientist is the psychiatrist and the invention is his emotional healing methodology. The methodology ultimately crates zombie children that kill him in the climax of the film. This idea plays out again in Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975). The doctor creates a parasite to help mankind return to it’s primitive self, hoping to alleviate greed and ambivalence, instead the parasite turns everyone into horny zombies that want to have orgies all the time and subsequently infect mankind. The scientist kills himself at the start of the film hoping to prevent an epidemic. Once again the invention kills the inventor.

In Naked Lunch, the inventor is the writer, William Lee (Peter Weller), and his invention is the book that he’s writing. In one of the opening scenes Cronenberg clues us in that the real danger in Naked Lunch comes from the written word. Lee says to his friends in the diner “I quit writing when I was 10 years old. Writing is dangerous”. In this small bit of dialogue the audience knows to be aware of what writing can and will do to the writer and those close to it.

In an effort to futher evoke the danger of writing, Croneneberg slows the camera movement down during this exchange. When the friends are bantering back and forth about the artistic ethics of re-writing, the film cuts back and forth in a normal two-person dialogue sequence. Once Lee joins in it cuts three ways, evenly, until Lee proclaims that writing is dangerous. The camera holds on Lee in a close-up throughout this proclamation and then a few seconds afterwards. Cronenberg wants this bit of information to be absorbed by the audience and by slowing the pace down, he’s able to achieve that.

As the film progresses and the protagonist begins his descent into drug addiction the danger of writing manifest during a scene inside an interrogation room. Lee is left alone to kill a gigantic imaginary insect. The bug informs Lee to kill his wife and suggest that she is not even human. The conversation terrifies William Lee and he kills the bug and escapes the interrogation room. In reality, the interrogation room is his home office, the bug is his typewriter and the words that terrify him are coming from his own imagination. This scene is where we begin to see how the inventor is being harmed by his own invention. In addition to story, Cronenberg also uses camera movement and lighting design to reinforce the terror Lee’s mind creates.

The scene is almost entirely black, save for a few strategically placed accent lights used to reveal portions of faces. Dark shadows are cast throughout the room and the only color we do see is green, to suggest greed, one of the underlying problems of most addicts. When the insect is introduced, it’s preceding with long quiet shots of the three men, each frozen, suggesting something terrifying is approaching. Cronenberg then cuts to an insert shot of a box being slowly opened that only reveals the tip of giant insect wings flapping violently inside. The audience can only see the wings of the bug, nothing else. The camera is subject level with the box as an enormous beetle slowly emerges, engulfing the frame. The ominous introduction of the bug is burned into the audiences sub-conscious, therefore when we later learn that the bug represents Lee’s writing we associate writing with danger. Cronenberg’s use of camera technique is paramount in creating this psychological correlation with danger and writing.

Another example of Cronenberg’s use of this theme is in the later part of the 2nd act. Not only is the typewriter telling Lee what to type it provides an ‘intoxicating liquid’. The words have become a drug, no different then what he’s shooting in his arm. He is compelled to write with no control over the impulse just as he is compelled to shoot-up with no control over his addiction. Cronenberg achieves this by having Lee shoot up and then immediately cutting to the typewriter chastising him. The typewriter jars him awake as he begins to nod off, informing the viewer that the two are interconnected. If Lee doesn’t stop writing then he’ll never stop using, the two have become synonymous at this point and Lee’s writing will ultimately kill him just as the invention kills the scientist in Cronenberg’s earlier films.

The second defining theme found in Cronenberg films is the mind-body schism; the idea that the mind and body begin to turn on each other. Cronenberg explores this theme graphically in The Fly (Cronenberg 1986). Here the body begins to morph into a fly, thereby causing the scientist to slowly go insane. In Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983) the ‘signal’ causes the mind to lose touch with reality and suddenly his body begins to turn into a machine (VCR). In Naked Lunch the theme of the invention destroying the scientist is the mind-body schism.

The writer believing that his typewriter is alive and instructing him to do harm is the invention turning on the inventor; Lee believing that this is actually happening is the mind/body schism. His toxic body is slowly eating away at his sanity. A scene that exemplifies the mind/body schism is when Lee’s friends find him on the beach. The audience is finally able to sober up and see the world from outside Lee’s perspective. During this sequence we learn that Lee has been mailing off pages of his story to his friend who has shown them to a publisher and about to get the writing published. Lee’s mind has turned on him so drastically that he still thinks he’s mailing off Interzone reports. He also thinks that the bag of various drugs he’s sleeping on is his broken typewriter. The mind has completely abandoned him, insanity has taken over and the character can’t even rejoice in his writing success. A drug addict is a prime example of the mind/body schism and Cronenberg utilized this aspect of the story to affectively illustrate the mind/body schism.

Cronenberg also uses symbolism to explore the mind/body schism element of the film. Half way through the film, while Lee is in Interzone he borrows his alter ego’s typewriter. While shooting up in the bathroom, Lee hears a fight, he peers around the bathroom door and the film cuts to reveal the old typewriter destroying the new one. The entire film is symbolized in this scene. The two typewriters represent Lee’s reality and drug induced hallucinations clashing to the point that both are destroyed, subsequently destroying him. If he can’t file his reports he’s dead in his imaginary world. If he continues to use, he will become permanently insane in the ‘real’ world, as many drug addicts do. Both typewriters take a beating, but the drug induced world wins and Lee proceeds to travel further down the rabbit hole.

The third theme that Cronenberg continuously explores is the idea of sexual ambivalence and the harm human nature can create around the act of sex. In Shivers the entire film is based on this theme. One succinct statement describing Shivers would be: ‘Sex Kills’. The doctor in the film creates a parasite to admonish people’s sexual inhibitions and help the world get in touch with their basic human desire. The parasite is more powerful then the doctor had planned and causes it’s host bodies to become sex obsessed zombies. This premise is a rather close description of the ‘Free Love’ period of the 60’s and early 70’s. Sex without constraint or ethics will kill, is the unsubtle message being conveyed. In Crash (Cronenberg, 1996) a much later film, sex becomes violence. What’s more, the characters are unable to engage in sex without the implied morbid result manifesting itself first through a car crash. Once again sex is dangerous, and ultimately deadly.

The theme of sex and sexuality being dangerous creates the tone for Naked Lunch. The William Lee character is struggling with his own sexual identity and the moments in his life when he tries to face his homosexuality he has to metaphorically kill or harm his wife. After his misogynistic thoughts he finally faces his homosexuality head on, only to be met with more harm and pain. Here hetero-sex and homosexuality is equally violent and harmful. The character is clearly unable to find peace with sex on any level.

In the beginning of the film, just after scoring some bug powder (heroin), Lee rushes home to shoot up and walks in on his wife’s exhibitionist sex on the couch with their mutual friend while a third friend reads from his manuscript. Lee’s wife and friend seem to only be enjoying themselves mildly, and the third man is more focused on his work then the explicit act right before him. What’s more, Lee is not fazed in the least that his wife is having intercourse with his best friend. Instead, Lee simply observes the act, turns down an invitation for an orgy and heads off to the bedroom to get high. His wife walks in the bedroom moments later, Lee shoots her up, and the two of them play William Tell, only Lee accidently kills her. At first observation, it’s easy to assume he kills her because he’s jealous but in the scene immediately following a very pretty, androgynous young man named KeKe asks Lee “Are you a faggot?” Cronenberg has begun to include the final defining theme: Sexual ambiguity and the harm that comes from sex and sexuality. Lee needs to imagine the death of his heterosexual life, his wife Joan, in order to face the hard truth that he is actually a homosexual desperately trying to come to terms with it.

This metaphoric death of the heterosexual self to explore the homosexual self is exhibited again after Lee arrives in Interzone. The scene where he first meets Joan and her husband who have come to Interzone for ‘the boy’s’. Joan asks Lee if that’s why he’s there. During this sequence the idea of Joan with a husband is Lee objectifying his reality, he splinters his psyche and creates an alter ego to be his wife’s husband, allowing him to be a third party in his marriage, free from the responsibilities of Joan and/or heterosexuality.

In the very next scene Lee is awaken on the beach after an all night bender and dines with Yves Clokay, a Swiss millionaire who is also in Interzone for ‘the boys’. During breakfast Lee confides in Clokay that he remembers the day the word homosexual ‘seared {his} brain’. He’s visibly distraught and finally confesses about his sexuality. Whether Clokay is real or imaginary is inconsequential, the point of the scene is that Lee finally faces his demons head on.

The film after this point is driven by the theme of sexual ambiguity. Lee is told by his typewriter to kill Joan again so he makes his way to her house and finds her alone. They begin to write together which leads to erotic groping and kissing. This is the only sexual exchange where Cronenberg includes Lee with a female, in the entire film. Cronenberg film’s Lee behind Joan suggesting Lee’s inability to perform if he has to acknowledge that he’s with a women. The typewriter turns into a sexual creature with a large penis, further suggesting that the only way Lee can perform with a woman is if there is another man present. The orgy is abruptly ended by an androgynous dominatress, and Lee proceeds to visibly unravel. Now the imaginary world is turning on him, he can’t hide from his sexual demons, even in a drug induced state.

This leads Lee into finally submitting to his sexual preference and the film depicts Lee waking up with the androgynous, very pretty, Interzone boy, KeKe. KeKe is the only representation of tenderness and sensuality toward Lee in the entirety of the film. Cronenberg chose white to dominate the color in the morning-after scene with KeKe and Lee. The two man a very gentle with one another. True to form, Cronenberg has delivered the unexpected. The Interzone boy is portrayed throughout the film as a male prostitute and every word out of Lee’s mouth concerning his own homosexuality is negative and terrifying, yet this is the only tender and normal depiction of sexual closeness. Cronenberg has propelled us directly into William Lee’s psyche and we feel as normal as he does for the first time. Lee is a gay man, and will only feel peace when he allows himself to walk in his personal truth.

Keeping with the theme that sex and sexuality is damaging, Cronenberg follows this tenderness with the most disturbing image in the film. Sweet KeKe is being physically devoured in a gargantuan birdcage by the overbearing, narcissistic, Clokay. Clokay morphs into a large man-bird penetrating KeKe, in both the traditional sense, and with his talons crushing KeKe’s skull. The audience knows this is another Lee hallucination because he shoots heroin in the scene just prior. In knowing that this is Lee’s mind creating this horrific imagery, the audience understands that his diseased mind has conjured this image out of disgust with homosexual sex and his own sexuality. He finally allows himself to be a homosexual and then immediately punishes himself afterwards. Cronenberg’s commentary is not on homosexuality, or even sex, it’s on sexuality and the struggle of sexual ambiguity.

‘The Baron of Blood’s’ artistic fingerprint is not only expressed through body horror, or fantasy, but also psychological horror. As his career progresses’ his genre choices continue to shift, however the element of physiological horror remains. By examining the psychological component to each of his film’s characters and incorporating psychological bases themes, Cronenberg is able to maintain his unique authorship within any genre. Naked lunch marks the beginning of Cronenberg’s genre shift journey and is a prime example that through strategic camera technique, editing style and production design an auteur can tell any story, within any context and not lose their artistic imprint.