The animal effect in David Cronenberg

Abstract

This article proposes and interprets the force of an ‘animal effect’ in the films of David Cronenberg. Starting from the concept of zoonosis, or the mingling of human with non-human beings, I argue that beyond the literal hybridizations of man and animal that transpire at the level of narrative in such films as The Fly (1986), Naked Lunch (1991) and eXistenZ (1999), there is a formal dimension of animality that articulates their textual construction. Drawing on the concept of ‘becoming-animal’ in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I enlist the notion of an animal effect to foreground the importance of form and signification in Cronenberg against the prevailing critical emphasis on ‘the body’ in his work. The article defends these claims through a close reading of Naked Lunch, whose formal strategies imply the presence of non-human perceptual agents shaping the narrative, an aesthetic strategy that requires the viewer to actively make sense of their viewership by grasping the ‘inhuman formalism’ of Cronenberg’s cinema.