From the vault. 1.

This summer, we took occasional breaks from the buzz with "summer readings," worthwhile reads that weren't necessarily newsy. I've finally come up with a name that'll allow us to go on with these excerpts and pointers, no matter what the season.

There can be no "positive aspect" to the moral, mental, spiritual, and physical transformations the men and women in Cronenberg's films seek, Beard insists, "no matter what Cronenberg may say." "These people are now experimenting, they have taken it upon themselves to invent new meanings for themselves, and to reinvent sex, to reinvent death, to reinvent love," Beard quotes Cronenberg on the men and women in Crash, who have found themselves sexually vitalized through their own mutilation. Forget it, Beard says: Look at what the films say, what they show, what they cannot turn away from, whether you can or not. The artist must lie, because even if the artist's work says there is no way out, the artist goes on living and making art—in other words, the artist must act as if his or her own discoveries are false. But a work follows the trajectory of its own drama; it generates momentum toward its own end. A film has its own fictive necessities, and so no matter what Cronenberg may say, Beard can say what, to him, the movies say: "Really nowhere in Cronenberg's whole cinema, and despite his repeated insistences to the contrary, is this transformation or reinvention anything other than appalling." If as a philosopher-filmmaker Cronenberg has locked humanity in a box, as a critic Beard will take away the key.

Greil Marcus reviews The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg, by William Beard, Bookforum, Spring 2002.

Posted by dwhudson at October 7, 2003 2:38 AM