1980s and The Fly

Even though I was not in class this week , the movie The Fly was shown. I am not a fan of horror films. The Fly is a 1986 American science-fiction horror film directed and written by David Cronenberg. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox. Grossed $60.6 million at the box office against its nine-million-dollar budget, and became the largest commercial success of Cronenberg’s career. A scientist, Seth, meets Veronica, a science journalist, at a press event. Seth took Veronica “Ronnie” to his warehouse  at his lab to show her his invention. Seth persuade Ronnie to keep his invention a secret in exchange for exclusive rights to the story. She began to document his work. His invention was a set of telepods. This invention allows teleportation from one pod to another.

Seth and Ronnie started a romantic relationship, and after their first sexual activity, Seth was inspired to reprogram his invention to cope with living tissue, and he successfully teleported a second baboon. One day, Seth decided to teleport himself, and a housefly slipped inside the pod with him.Seth  was fine when he emerged, but later on, he began to exhibit increased strength, stamina, and sexual potency, which was believed to be the teleportation “purifying” his body. He had crazy cravings and Ronnie was concerned about him, especially that he was growing a lot of hair on his back. He then began to change, becoming violent and arrogant. After many things were happening, and he was back in his lab, he checked his computer records.  He discovered that the telepod computer, confused by the presence of two lifeforms in the sending pod, fused him with the fly at the “molecular-genetic” level. Seth stated to become less of a human, losing body parts and deteriorating. At the end, Seth wanted Ronnie to end his suffering by shooting him and she did it inn tears. No one should ever have to do that.

For the reading this week, in Introduction to World Cinema, it talks about revisiting genre films in the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1970s,  the major studios were taken over by larger corporations that began to produce a handful of big-budgeted, mass appeal feature films. The success of these blockbuster films, like Jaws, generated new economic growth in the film industry. The films moved from the pessimistic anti-genre films of the early 1970s to the popular myths and cultural values later endorsed by the Reagan administration. These films contained strong discourses promoting “family values,” a democracy able to ward off any “evil” empire, and a reestablishment of moral order. In film history, Jaws was one movie that anticipated the new cultural attitudes arising after the Vietnam War. The new film industry had never enjoyed a bigger box office smash, as audiences returned to the movies houses to cheer its fighting heroes again. The rebels in this film were not misfits, alienated characters who dominated American films in the 1970s from Bonnie and Clyde to Taxi Driver. I loved the movie Bonnie and Clyde.