The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg by William Beard (review)

humanities 555 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 works from the standpoint of thematic and mythic criticism. In these areas the book is a useful discussion of the Isis, Demeter-Persephone, Hermes, fairy tale, and trickster motifs and themes. In each case, Ljungberg returns to her organizing focus on storyteller as crafter and trickster, certainly a central theme of Atwood=s oeuvre. The most interesting and original contributions of this book to the study of Atwood are the source studies or the examination of parallels with earlier literature. Ljungberg refers to Atwood=s use of Robert Graves=s The White Goddess. She draws interesting parallels between Zenia in The Robber Bride and Captain Ahab in Herman Melville=s Moby-Dick. In a more extended discussion she compares Lady Oracle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge=s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, pointing to the narrators= desires to find captive audiences for their compulsive storytelling. A longer section details the relationship between The Robber Bride, E.T.A. Hoffmann=s stories, and Jacques Offenbach=s opera The Tales of Hoffmann. In this informative discussion Ljungberg analyses themes (such as the loss of the shadow) and strategies (such as the framing devices and narrated tales) of the two authors. I have two small quibbles with the book production, one with the index and one with the proofreading. The index would be far more helpful if it subdivided the discussions of each novel into categories such as theme or character names rather than simply listing all the pages on which the novel appears. Secondly, something has gone awry with the proofreading: starting on page 115, Cordelia begins to take on a split identity, sometimes appearing as Cordelia and sometimes as Cornelia. Ljungberg is a careful and lively reader and interpreter of Atwood. I hope that we may look forward to more of her studies in the future. (KAREN F. STEIN) William Beard. The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg University of Toronto Press. xiv, 470. $50.00 This study, the first in English to provide close readings of all of David Cronenberg=s feature films up to Crash, gives us an apolitical Cronenberg. According to William Beard, this filmmaker >is more interested in neuroses and anxieties, repression and unrepression, the adaptability or unadaptability of people to Astrange@ circumstances, than he is in any social analysis, and particularly any socio-political analysis.= Beard acknowledges that commentators invested in feminist and Marxist theory find a lot to work with in Cronenberg=s daring explorations of power, technology, and sexuality. He argues, however, that the perspectives of such critics are in important ways incompatible with >Cronenberg=s fundamental viewpoint.= Beard develops his argument through detailed commentary on subject, 556 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 theme, style, and attitude, with a special focus on Cronenberg=s treatment of and attitude towards male sadism. He concludes that, while the later films are increasingly self-aware explorations of the consequences of such sadism (both for suffering women and for self-recriminating men), they remain just as apolitical as the earlier ones. He puts this most bluntly when he declares that >the moral= of Cronenberg=s early films is >you can=t fix human nature,= while the moral of the later films is >you can=t fix your own nature.= There is, of course, an implicit assertion here that Cronenberg believes that there is such a thing as human nature, and that there is something like an essential self. So, clearly, Beard=s Cronenberg is no postmodernist. Indeed, Beard makes this explicit at several points. The description of a nonpostmodern Cronenberg is an important element of The Artist as Monster. So is the story of the filmmaker=s development that the book tells. And these two elements are, in fact, closely related. To read this book is to follow Beard on what he treats as Cronenberg=s more and more courageous journey towards self-recognition. Videodrome (1982) marks an important turning point, according to Beard. He greets the depiction of the dereliction and despair of Max, the central male protagonist, approvingly: >in stepping forward...