Videodrome (1983)
David Cronenberg’s Videodrome explored metaverse-like concepts all the way back in 1983, except instead of computers, the technological invention that blurs the boundaries of physical reality and consciousness beyond recognition is plain old broadcast TV. Max Renn (James Woods) is a sleazy Toronto-based executive of a UHF station that focuses on extreme programs; by sheer chance, the station’s satellite dish picks up Videodrome, a show broadcast from Malaysia that shows anonymous victims being brutally tortured and murdered in a cell. The Canadian equivalent of Federal Communications Commission regulations apparently not existing in this universe, Max decides to rebroadcast the show to his audience without a license.
Things could be euphemistically said to go downhill from there as Max discovers there is a lot more going on with Videodrome than murder for profit. Nightmarish imagery in the film includes horrific amalgamations of machine and body, like a phallic gun merged into raw flesh, a video cassette being shoved into a man’s torso, and television screens made out of human skin. So to put it another way, Max might as well have applied for a job at Facebook as a metaverse moderator.
