Crimes of the Future (2022) and the eroticization of viscera
A very celibate January has me reflecting on David Cronenberg, the intricacies of lust and the alternate timeline where I'm writing this from Paris.
Welcome to the weekly dispatch, SENSUAL TERRORS: musings on creativity, movie culture, and some strange bits of life. Trigger warning: While this does not include any excessively bloody images, this installment discusses the work of the godfather of body horror and has a few images that probably should not be pulled up at work. There is also a nod to my disordered eating and I do talk frankly about sex.
I recently had a conversation with a reader about writing the things that scared me — writing dangerously — so here we are. I planned to write this particular post this week anyway. But when I sat down to actually execute my vision, I didn’t bowdlerize one bit.
I should have spent this winter in Paris.
Clearly, since I was a child, I have felt this sentiment. It’s why I took French in sixth grade, after learning a few words on my own, and why I stuck with her until the end. Not only did I take honors and AP classes in high school, I even ended up with a minor in French language and culture.
Now with this tongue lapsed, like my ties to Catholicism, I am good for watching French films sans sous-titres. That’s about it. If you’re a native speaker, I will just give you a pained smile and fumble my way through conjugations as a sign of respect — and un-American humility.
Why did I do the minor, though, if I couldn’t spend January 2025 in France?
La Cinémathèque Française, a film society based in France 1, is currently hosting a David Cronenberg retrospective — and I’m supremely jealous that I can’t be there.
Jan. 14 marked the anniversary of the release of Scanners (1981) in the U.S.
Fangoria, a premiere American horror magazine that has been publishing since 1979, shared a disgusting still on Instagram — a shot of a man’s head mid-explosion — to commemorate the occasion.
A sick curiosity propelled me to watch it for the first time that day and uh, talk about mind blown.
I’ve seen three David Cronenberg movies so far and I can tell you what’s now obvious to me. Apart from the sticky, gooey body horror: Plot points around surveillance, bio-integrated electronics, and the blurred line between magic and science fiction abound.
One comment in particular on Fangoria’s Instagram post caught my attention: Another horror head, who splits their time between Croatia and Spain, was going to make the trek to Paris to attend the Cronenberg retrospective.
That’s when the jealousy started.
This trailer from the institute has a little bit of nakedness, and a lot of weirdness, please advise.
While I have yet to see it, A Dangerous Method (2011) sticks out in my mind as the first Cronenberg movie to cross my desk. At the time, I was a Keira Knightley devotee2 and in the throes of my parasocial teenage lust for Michael Fassbender.
I was also running in SJW circles, so the controversy around this film’s production and contents — which deals with Carl Jung, his abuse of power and psychosexual desire — made it a hot topic of Tumblr discussion.
But my real Cronenberg journey starts with Crimes of the Future (2022, not 1970). The film depicts a not-so-distant future where humans’ bodies are evolving at a rapid-pace.
People are sprouting new and interesting organs every day. It stars frequent Cronenberg collaborator Viggo Mortensen, as well as Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux.
Crimes of the Future also presents the idea of a sort of romantic intimacy that tends to form between patient and surgeon in this era of advanced mutation and unfathomable biotechnology.
I saw it on a hot summer day in my sleepy, local Regal not knowing much about Cronenberg, but my curiosity piqued. And as it turns out, Cronenberg’s work found me when I needed it most.
I was months into the deep logistical and psychological work of disentangling my entire being from the person I had believed, for the previous six years, was the love of my life. Along with her flannel shirts and work binders, I put my Pinterest board visions of getting gay-married in a cardboard box and gave it to God.
Distraught and feeling disconnected from my mortal coil, I slowly made peace with my inflamed joints and ghostly limbs that spring. I started developing a fitness practice for the first time.
I challenged myself to walk more — walk everywhere! — and stretch consistently.
I also met someone who taught me that sex wasn’t supposed to be had reluctantly. And I wasn’t to give up parts of my body in hopes of quelling the numbness in my heart, either.
Instead, Gabriel3 brought an unprecedented aliveness to every part of my corporeal and spiritual form.
Their slow, deliberate pace — their penchant for meditating on carnal delight — shot fire throughout my veins all summer long.
And they didn’t just seek to satisfy me in their bed. Or on the couch. Or on the floor. Or on the cross, where I flogged them in front of a lecherous audience.
They kept me fed.
I always joke, with real seriousness, that I can’t cum if I’m hungry. This is no City Girl ploy to run men’s pockets and have them prove their devotion through dollars spent.
I fear it’s the simple fact that I’m a lifelong hedonist. Even when I was young, my dad used to tell me, “Stop living off of your belly!”
And even in the thick of my anorexia, I was a glutton for starvation.
And in summer 2022, I couldn’t get enough of Gabriel.
It was the first time I actively volunteered to go down on a partner, because I couldn’t get enough of the weight of them on my face. Their taste went down like Evian. Like full-fat oat milk. Their hairy thighs, sculpted from rollerskating during lockdown, felt firm and wonderful under my palms.
The Latin food, and the sushi, and the Thai only made me more eager. And looking back, I imagine, made me feel even more safe: It was a small but important act of care.
In therapy this week, I had a breakthrough about the trajectory of some recent pseudoromantic failures. When I demanded my therapist psychoanalyze me a bit, he talked about my demisexual and sapiosexual tendencies. That’s where the epiphany happened: I look for intellectual compatibility and am satisfied enough by that to proceed.
Often, if you have the wit to keep me laughing and the smarts to be a good dom — one with storytelling and directing skills, attentiveness, a robust understanding of consent while also brushing up against the limits — it’s good enough for me.
But the trust, I’m realizing, shouldn’t stop there. It’s a nuance the uninitiated may not understand. I can trust someone enough to let them to bind my wrists with rope, to cut off my air supply, to hit me in the face, but I still won’t be sure if I can trust them with my heart.
It’s why, after all this time, Gabriel always comes to mind. They couldn’t meet my emotional needs, in the end, which is why I’ll resist the urge to text them that I’m writing about a Cronenberg retrospective I can’t attend.
But thanks to the auteur and Gabriel, body horror will forever be synonymous with flexed fingers and knowing looks.
I’ve come close to finding play partners of the same caliber and ilk. But goddamnit, who else is going to feel me up during Crimes of the Future?
Last year, I moved onto Videodrome (1983). A local TV producer who starts broadcasting snuff films gets in over his head. His hatefuck with a local radio host, played by the endlessly dreamy Debbie Harry4, leaves him worse off for wear.
And just like Crimes of the Future, Videodrome is heavy on the technology and freak appeal — the paranoia is just more amplified.
Tomorrow, somewhere in Paris, a bunch of absolute weirdos will be about arriving 30 minutes early to a strict screening of Videodrome at La Cinémathèque.
They’ll have to wait until Feb. 1 for Crimes of the Future — the one that made me criminally turned on. The other, unrelated Crimes of the Future, also directed by Cronenberg, will show on Feb. 3.
In between, they can watch Scanners and hear from Viggo Mortensen, too.
And today, maybe right now if you got this in your inbox, Parisian subculturists and gore whores will arrive 30 minutes early to listen to David Cronenberg himself talking about The Fly (1986). Or, as it’s called in French, the most memorable niche vocab word on one’s francophone journey: La Mouche.
I have an expansive imagination, so my FOMO doesn’t stop at “darn.” I see myself fully on the other timeline.
I would have stayed in Montmartre; I would have eaten at Pink Mamma. I would have finally attended a show at Moulin Rouge and Crazy Horse Cabaret. I would have visited the Chantal Akerman exhibition at Jeu de Paume, which closed this past Sunday.
I hated Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) when I watched it in undergrad. But now that I’m older, I appreciate the way Akerman makes you feel every ounce of the drudgery of the domestic life.
And I would have fallen in love.
Revived by a good museum session, my blood equal parts espresso and crème fraîche, steak-frited down, a cool-toned matte red lip on, full of Parisian joie de vivre, I’d fall in love.
I’d lock eyes with quelqu’un qui est hot and well-dressed while getting refreshed for another hour and 30 minutes of brain-melting or wound-fucking.
I’d try my hand at discussing the surveillance state in French. Good thing it’s oligarchie, en français aussi. Easy to remember.
I’d make great use of my minor. I’d charm my conversation partner with my pluck; they’d charm me with their taste for tasteful dismemberment.
I’d feel awake for the first time in months — chasing the veritable thrill of getting turned on by body horror with someone, again. Finally.
La Cinémathèque has branches in other Francophone regions: None in Africa, but a presence Quebec and Switzerland. I’m looking to visit Switzerland if only someone can go with me to the H.R. Giger café… and propose, preferably.
I’m a real adult now so I don’t really “stan” anyone, but Keira Knightley literally raised me. That’s mother. IDC what any of y’all have to say. All these new lil girls with high cheekbones and thigh gaps and thick brows owe everything to mama. She paved the way! Y’all are her sons, no Nicki.
My Catholic mind told me to trade homeboy’s government name for something else Biblical. Thank god this angel Gabriel didn’t bring me an unexpected pregnancy.
I’m starting to become a Debbie Harry lover. I have literally seen Blondie live, but I really enjoyed Harry’s acting roles in Videodrome and Downtown ‘81.