“YOU ARE A NEW CREATURE’’ David Cronenberg’s Diseased Triangle: Consumption, Body, and Technology

Abstract

In the everlasting process of technology becoming an inseparable part of human lives, the definition of ‘being human’ has been altering accordingly. This change, more than a simple dystopian society captured by technology, refers to the coalescence of technology and human as a new subject ‘beyond’ the human. Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is telling stories of human evolution that modern man has seized control of and the complex relationship of this evolution within his triangle of consumption, body, and technology in his movies. Cronenberg’s cinema was mainly focused on the bodily transformation of modern man by diseases, especially in the early period of his cinema; giving the notion of ‘disease’ that humanity is obsessed with today -an exceptional meaning. Besides, he makes a comeback to this philosophical infrastructure with his first novel Consumed (2014). As a result of this bodily transformation, the term ‘new flesh’ emerged in the middle of the consumption, body, and technology triangle. In this comparative study, Cronenberg’s ‘new flesh’ concept which refers becoming of technology and body, and diseases as a mediator between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ flesh in his cinema will be examined in the light of contemporary cultural studies since it would be a pathfinder to understand the digital cinema which is the ‘new flesh’ of contemporary cinema.