The Fly (1986) - Contemporary History
Happy Spooky Season! I am a coward.
As you may have seen on my socials, I crowdsourced some ideas for a more thematic October on Review Roulette with the caveat that I am not a horror movie person and am barely a thriller movie person. I am not someone who enjoys feeling unsafe, so I will not simulate danger to trigger the chemicals meant for survival. That kinda thing is not my bag, baby.
But I did take the suggestion that 80s horror/thriller sci-fis are more gross than scary, so for this week’s review, I watched David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), and, boy, let me tell you how fucking gross it was. The Review Roulette wheel landed on Contemporary History for our focus, so let’s jump into the world of special effects and Ronnie Reags while discussing how utterly disgusting this film is (and also putting it into conversation with earlier counterparts in their own contemporary histories).
In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Hollywood’s special effects capabilities expanded significantly. With advancements in prosthetics, make-up, and computer-generated effects, special effects were becoming not only more interesting, but also more practical. Simultaneously, stand-alone special effects companies, such as George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic, were rivalling studios’ own in-house departments, some of which had already been disbanded by the mid-70s. Talented visual and practical effects artists such as Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), John Dykstra (Star Wars), and The Fly’s own Chris Walas were working at a pivotal time in the development of practical effects that in itself would encourage more science fiction films, but was conveniently emerging during a conservative government.
A general rule of thumb (not 100% of the time) for sci-fi in Hollywood is that you get more of it in times of growing social and/or political conservatism. One of the reasons for this is the nature of the genre. Sci-fi tends to look forward, taking elements of the past and present and imagining a future or advancing technologies to bring something new and unnatural into the world. By definition and ideology of conservatism, that level of change doesn’t really gel. We also see sci-fi as an outlet for counterculture, imagining different world scenarios that challenge the political regime or social structure of a time, and this typically leans leftward. Again, not always, but it is a trend.
So, in 1986, in the midst of these technological changes in Hollywood and right in the middle of the second presidential term of Hollywood alum, Ronnie Reags himself, we get a very interesting, very disgusting film in Cronenberg’s The Fly.
For those unfamiliar, The Fly is about scientist/inventor/hermit Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) who accidentally splices his genes with those of a housefly in his teleportation pods. As the effects of the gene splicing take hold and human Jeff Goldblum is coated in phenomenal make-up, prosthetics, and eventually bodysuits, Brundle becomes more and more fly-like as the Brundlefly emerges in its ultimate puppet forms.
Now, Cronenberg has said before that his idea of the gradual deterioration of Brundle represents ageing and disease in general, something universal. Many viewers in the day – mid-1980s – read the film as a depiction of AIDS specifically, an understandable connection to draw as the AIDS epidemic wrought tragedy across the country. Cronenberg denies this was his intent but granted that it made sense for audiences to see this in his movie. Instead of questioning what the transformation represents itself though, I want to discuss the choice that was made for a transformation at all.
Cronenberg’s 1986 The Fly is a remake of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 The Fly which was a film adaptation of George Langelaan’s 1957 short story The Fly which first appeared in Playboy. The original film is very similar to the short story, both of which differ from their 1986 counterpart. In these earlier versions, Seth Brundle’s counterpart is dead, having been killed by his wife in mercy. In her confession, the wife recounts that the scientist went through his teleportation device accidentally taking a fly with him and creating two hybrids: a fly with the head and arm of the man, and a man with the head and arm of a fly. The swap situation posed the possible solution of catching the fly to go back through again and hopefully swap back in a fucked up Freaky Friday kind of deal, but the fly evades capture. In the 1958 film, the fly with the head of a man is heard screaming “Help me! Help me!” in a little fly voice before a spider can eat it, while in the short story, the man with the fly head goes through the teleporter and gets cat parts mixed in in an even worse fucked up Freaky Friday. So, we have two entities in each of these (fly with man head, man with fly head), but in the 1980s, we only get one entity. One very, very gross entity.
This is the part where I tell you all that I’m currently obsessed with remakes and what goes into making them. Changes made from the original material speak volumes in a remake and often point to social, cultural, economic, and/or political changes between the periods in which they were made. Changing the swap situation to a merge is a fascinating development, and if we want to take Cronenberg’s word for it, it was to symbolise ageing and natural human deterioration towards an eventual death.
But we could also read it allegorically. Brundle claims he is inventing teleportation not for any grand design of making the world a better place, but because he gets motion sickness in every other vehicle. In 1984, Reagan’s re-election campaign put out the “Morning in America” ad claiming (I’m paraphrasing) that everything in America is perfect because Ronald Reagan is perfect and why would anyone ever want to go back to Jimmy Carter and his solar panels? Obviously that’s some bullshit, but if we take Brundle to be in that kind of mindset, that “the world is grand and innovation isn’t a matter of necessity, it’s a matter of desire because we need for nothing in Reagan’s America” then we get a really juicy left-leaning conclusion from the film.
When Brundle comes out of the pod, he starts getting stronger, leaner, “purer” in his words. He perceives himself as a more powerful version of his past self, despite the fact that he is visibly deteriorating. He starts becoming more extreme, more aggressive, angrier when his love interest Veronica (Geena Davis) cannot (or is not willing) to keep up with him. He is adamant that he is right and that she is mistaken when she gently suggests that something went wrong in the pod. He lashes out and hurts her both emotionally and physically. He is convinced that he is stronger and that the oozing, pulsating boils on his skin, the lacerations, the cravings, the rage, all of the red flag warning sign changes anyone else would seek help for are all positive signs of purity.
You know, like the modern GOP.
(Before anyone comes for me, you can absolutely read The Fly in a more conservative way of fearing technological advancements. The pods are reliant on human perfection in creating them and the computer does not recognise the flaw of the fly when reading Brundle’s genetic make-up. It can definitely be read as a more surface-level warning against unchecked innovative tech. Personally, though, I like comparing the emerging fly monster with the fucked up final puppet form to Reagan’s lasting effects on the GOP. To each his own.)
I really enjoyed The Fly, and I think a real strength of it is how many layers are in such a disgusting package. Jeff Goldblum gives a truly phenomenal performance under all of the make-up and prosthetics, acting mostly with his eyes and fly-like movements. If you can handle body horror and a crisp 90 minutes of going “eugh oh god why would a person ever say that to another person?” then I fully recommend it for an October-y watch.
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
Feminist
There’s a fascinating gender difference between the two eras’ versions that is not what I would normally expect. The earlier versions had an emphasis on truth seeking. The story was skewed and told from a second person’s perspective and in memory after shocking events unfolded, all within the context of a murder investigation. This lends far more to a mid-century film noir kind of vibe and imports that genre’s focus on distrust of other people and truth seeking with concerns that the woman in question is insane, ultimately ending with a subversion of reality that the woman was telling the truth the whole time and the real thing not to be trusted is our own expectations and prejudices. Classic early Cold War sci-fi elements.
In the 1986 version, we still have that peppered in misogyny, but it does not get subverted, and we are aware from the beginning that the teleporters exist. Cronenberg shifted the story beats to how the teleporter becomes a gene-splicer, taking away the suspense of whether the woman was telling the truth or whether she truly did commit a heinous murder. Instead, what we get is the unfolding of events of a gnarly transformation of a man who wanted to sleep with a woman, so told her that he had teleporters and then tried to backtrack when he realised she has a whole career as a science journalist, and then he gets jealous without any proof whatsoever so gets drunk and goes through his machine where the fly is. So really it’s all Geena Davis’s fault. (She gets treated so badly in this film, but that’s a whole other review of grossness in The Fly).