Long Live the New Flesh: The Cronenbergs’ Take on Tomorrow’s Sexuality Might Grow On—or In—You

Father and son share a fascinatingly organic/orgasmic view of the future

Science fiction cinema may have given us masterpieces like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the bubble gum delights of Star Wars, but it took David Cronenberg, and as of 2012, his son Brandon, to give us—albeit often unsettling—glimpses at human sexuality’s potential evolution.

Shivers (1975)  

The elder Cronenberg may have begun exploring similar ideas in experimental films like Stereo and Crimes of the Future; it took Shivers, aka They Came From Within, to establish him as a groundbreaking director with a penchant for disturbingly erotic body-horror imagery.

Set within the claustrophobic confines of an ultra-modern Montreal apartment complex, Shiver’s plot revolves around the illicit creation of a bioengineered parasite, which, once taking hold of its host, drives them into a sex-fueled frenzy.

Like many of Cronenberg’s works, Shivers relishes showing the dark side of future sexuality, noticeably when technologies like genetic engineering get in on the fun.  

Though frightening, the concept of a desire-enhancing or more beneficially regulating, self-contained organism is intriguing. Grown, not manufactured, it could be affordable, and sufficiently genetically tweaked, it would mesh perfectly with its host’s system, reducing the possibility of rejection.

eXistenZ (1999)

Reality isn’t what it once was in Cronenberg’s latter film, which deftly inserts his fondness for organic ickiness into an endlessly recursive virtual experience for its characters and the audience alike.

As the old saying goes, getting there is half the fun, and in the case of eXistenZ, the titular game exists as a classic, old-school console or, during its initial introduction, a squishy, glistening, pulsating organism not played with buttons but plugged directly into the player’s spine.

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Interestingly, Cronenberg doesn’t depict eXistenZ as neither a positive or a negative, merely the biogenic McGuffin everyone’s pursuing.  

Again, cultivating rather than assembling pleasure devices or virtual reality interfaces has a respectable number of pros in their favor, and when they die, could be composted or used to make biofuels.

Crimes Of The Future (2022)

Sharing its name with his early 1970s short, Cronenberg’s 2022 Crimes Of The Future is jam-packed with increasingly outré concepts from a deathless/painless society for whom Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen)—aided by his wife Caprice (Léa Seydoux)—performs as a surgical artist to rebels fighting a ruthless government for the right to adapt their bodies to consume plastics and toxic waste.

Off to the side of all this is Tenser’s move away from today’s physical intimacy, as he succinctly puts it, “I’m afraid I’m not very good at the old sex.”  

Crimes of the Future intentionally or inadvertently shares a commonality with anti-sextech advocates who fear pleasure devices might supplant good, old-fashioned human sexuality.

Unsure if that’s Cronenberg’s intention, I prefer viewing the film’s message as more about the underground’s rejection of outdated societal norms by opting to evolve socially, psychologically, and sexually.

Antiviral (2012)

Not so much following in his father’s footsteps as contributing his unique perspective, Brandon Cronenberg’s second full-length release spins off today’s celebrity worshipers with a dash of medical fetishism by constructing a future where obsessed fans can get unsettlingly close to their favorite A-listers—by infecting themselves with their illnesses.

It may be hard to face, but considering our already celebrity-obsessed culture, it’s not difficult to imagine Antiviral’s fantasy eventually becoming a contemporary reality, especially in light of how many people are already willing to pay top dollar for a lock of a famous person’s hair, their worn clothing, or even more intimate aspects of their lives.

Infinity Pool (2023)

Like his father’s Crimes Of The Future, Brandon’s recent Infinity Pool is replete with enthralling possibilities.  The difference is in Crimes, bodies are inescapable prisons, while in Infinity Pool, they and the people whose minds inhabit them are as unendingly reproducible as they’re utterly disposable. 

A maze of interlocking who’s who, Infinity Pool plays havoc with the audience’s expectations, killing or, in some cases, psychologically warping its protagonist, James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård), over and over, steadily unpeeling his personality like a blood-soaked onion.

Infinity Pool’s reality might appear too far-fetched, but approximating it may not be.  For instance, keeping cloned or bioengineered copies of ourselves in storage, fitting each with a high-speed neural implant, using artificial intelligence to smooth out any problems and jumping from body to body, or putting one or more on personality-mirroring autopilot might give us a more benevolent version of Infinity Pool’s world—one where we could try on bodies or selves at a moment’s notice.

Flesh is here to stay

Despite the Cronenbergs’ shared fondness for viscera, father and son remain two of the few writer/directors willing to delve into some of our darkest, most disquieting sexual nightmares or, more troubling, our fantasies.  

In cinema, as well as the rise of new and perhaps potentially challenging sexual technologies, it’s up to us, the audience and/or consumers, to fear the future or dare to dream of a better one.
Image Sources: Depositphotos, IMDB