Within the most recent issue of Time, a section titled “The 50 Best Inventions of the Year” offers a survey of innovative gadgets and ideas that range from NASA’s Ares rocket at number one, to the world’s fastest steam-powered car at fifty. Positioned between Xbox’s controller-free gaming and the telescope for invisible stars, sits teleportation, which conjures scenes from the various incarnations of Captain Kirk beaming back and forth with little consequence to save a dying planet, a cadre of green women, a cult of people who are both black and white—think half-moon cookie, not interracial — or a mission to defeat replicas of Abraham Lincoln and Genghis Khan. However, teleportation also strikes a more ethically macabre, cynical chord that portends the crumbling of human relations during a quest for perfection. While The Fly, originally made in 1958, offers a glimpse at an overall apathy toward living creatures that do not have opposable thumbs, David Cronenberg’s 1986 study of a man on the verge of changing the world through teleportation exchanges apathetic characters for parasitic ones and examines the nefarious nature of relationships in a liberal-capitalist society.
The relationships within the film are precarious and are impelled by the invention of telepods, the beginning and end portals of teleportation, which function as the fulcrum for the relationship between Seth Brundle and Veronica Quaife, the eager journalist who is assigned to cover the Bartock Convention, a gathering of scientists who peddle their technological wares. Finding little groundbreaking material at the convention, Veronica agrees to accompany Brundle to his apartment. In addition to being a socially disconnected individual whose words are spoken in rapid-fire succession interspersed with “um..ahs” that resemble one’s brain reconciling complex questions at seven thousand rpms, Brundle occupies an apartment in an industrial wasteland and owns five outfits, all of which are exactly the same. His rationale for this is that he doesn’t “have to waste any time deciding what to wear,” buttressing the assumption he is steeped in his work and relishes a situation that allows him to mingle with an attractive woman who, for the sake of a paycheck, shows a quasi-interest in their initial conversation. Veronica’s motive is clear as she enters the laboratory, sees nothing of consequence, and suggests that she should leave as Seth pounds out a few bars of Beethoven on a piano that sits adjacent to his pull-out sofa bed. However, Brundle reads this intention to exit as flirtation and, referring to the telepods, says, “You’ve already seen them. I can’t let you leave here alive.” Clearly, Veronica is unaware that she was in the presence of telepods as she refers to them as “the two phone booths”; though, when Brundle explains their purpose and asserts that they will “change the world and human life as we know it,” Veronica’s intrigue is piqued, and she slyly activates a tape recorder, slipping it into her pocket, despite Brundle’s request that this exchange remain off the record. It is in this moment that the trust Brundle has in Veronica is rendered an illusion, broken by Veronica’s pragmatic desire to disseminate the existence of this invention to the world, suggesting that personal gain outweighs social privacy.
In the chiaroscuro of business and pleasure, Brundle’s vulnerability is exposed when he learns that Veronica intends to bring this information to her editor, declaring “I thought this was personal; you can’t write about this.” Genuinely hurt by the deception, he parleys his way into a pseudo-relationship by suggesting that she give him time to perfect his telepods and document the process. However, it becomes clear that this is a ruse to satiate his loneliness the first time that Veronica turns on the camcorder and Brundle is hesitant to speak.
Admittedly, as the documentation takes place, Cronenberg fashions a bit of a love story by depicting scenes of intimacy and happiness within Brundle as he cites Veronica as the muse who helps him fix the final flaw in his telepods. However, I would posit that Brundle is the only one who feels an intimacy while Veronica remains driven by notoriety. This is most clearly evident after Brundle perfects his machine and Veronica opens a large manila envelope that has been left for Seth; inside the envelope is an advance copy of Particle, the magazine for which Veronica writes. Brundle’s face is on the cover next to an article titled “The Future of Teleportation,” but Veronica is not the author. Instead, it is her editor/ex-boyfriend, Stathis Borans. Her initial reaction shows no sympathy for Seth’s desire to keep his invention under wraps until he can perfect it; rather, it shows a competition-driven antipathy toward Stathis. Without explanation, Veronica leaves, blows off dinner plans, and rushes to Particle to confront Stathis, throwing down the envelope and declaring, “Everything that has to do with transportation will become obsolete—and I’ll be right there in the middle of it. It’s my story!”
Here, Veronica’s argument seethes with irony as its crux is that she has been shifted from the center to the periphery; however, she was never in the center; she was an accessory. Likewise, much in the way that Stathis has poached her story, Veronica has poached Brundle’s invention while obviating his due credit and apprehension over potential failure.
Similarly, Veronica’s agenda mirrors that of Bartock’s, Brundle’s corporate employer who covers all expenses for his experiments. While Brundle is the physicist behind the innovation, he explains that Bartock leaves him alone “because [he’s] not expensive, plus they know they’ll end up owning it all—whatever it is.” In other words, Brundle’s work is a minor write-off for Bartock, who will claim credit for what will ultimately be unveiled. Much in the way that Bartock financially supports Brundle to reap the financial benefits of teleportation, Veronica functions as the lamprey on Brundle’s side that will soon be carried into notoriety by breaking the story. The way in which Cronenberg parallels Bartock and Veronica further questions the validity of relationships in a capital-driven society while fostering a parasitic relationship rather than a mutually intimate one. An additional question to ponder is whether or not Veronica would maintain the pseudo-relationship with Brundle once she receives credit for bringing teleportation to the forefront. If Cronenberg is attempting to mirror Veronica and Bartock, it seems more likely that Veronica would use the recognition to transition to a position at a more elite publication.
Of further importance is Seth’s reaction to Veronica’s unexplained disappearance when she leaves to confront Stathis. Feeling abandoned and jealous, Seth proceeds to get drunk on champagne. While Veronica is oblivious to the Seth’s emotion upheaval, Brundle strips naked and enters one telepod to transport himself—and a fly that hides against a recessed pane of glass— fifteen feet across the room. Unaware of the fly, Brundle exits the second telepod victoriously and proceeds to pass out. Aside from leading to the climax of the film, Brundle’s obliviousness to his fusion with the fly limns teleportation as a narcissistic conquest that leads to the illusion of perfection and ultimate human mechanization.
During the initial stages of Brundle’s metamorphosis, no changes are apparent for the first few days; however, we soon find that Brundle adopts unparalleled physical strength and muscle control. For example, while Veronica sleeps on the fold-out sofa, Brundle is unable to sleep, ventures into the living area, and contorts himself in a Cirque du Soleil acrobat fashion on a chair before grabbing a pipe that hangs parallel from the ceiling and embodies an Olympic horizontal-bar gymnast, revolving three times before landing a perfect dismount. Succumbing to his newly inflated ego, Brundle shifts the focus from teleportation as a mode of transit to an innovation that leads to a “purification process” that says to the world, “Let’s go. Catch me if you can!” The dramatic irony is that we know Brundle’s body is being transformed into a two hundred pound insect; however, one should consider Bartock’s initial interest in teleportation: a revolution in transportation.
While teleportation would ultimately eliminate a dependency on foreign oil to operate automobiles and mass transit, it also serves to eliminate the time an employee toils in transit. That said, less time and energy spent in transit translates to more time and energy focused on the job at hand. Clearly a revolutionary mode of transportation, teleportation would ultimately benefit corporate production because it would generate more efficient workers. The way that today’s iPhone allows employers and employees to be in constant contact, the teleporter transforms an after-hours visit to the office or job site from a nuisance to a momentary interruption. Likewise, imagine the burgeoning interest of a corporation that could distribute purification machines. In other words, these purifiers would transform the average worker into a super-human, capital-generating, production machine that doesn’t require sleep to function at a highly-focused level. Essentially, The Fly imagines already pallid social relations and whitewashes them with suggested imperviousness that occludes the need for any meaningful social relationship since time is no longer a losable commodity, and the threat of danger to one’s self is minimal. Essentially, purification machines could be peddled a technological version of the Holy Grail, promising a version of immortality.
Cronenberg ends this critique by illustrating the dangers of seeking perfection as Seth’s human shell sheds away, falling from the emerging larva like skin on fetid fruit, leaving Brundle as a giant insect whose only chance at partial recovery is to fuse he, Veronica, and their unborn child into an amalgamated being through the re-wired telepods that have now become gene-splicing machines. Of interest here is that Brundle’s last attempt to regain humanity relies on his and Veronica’s co-willingness to sacrifice themselves to create one sentient human. While the visual of a two hundred pound fly aesthetically demonizes what Brundle has become, his plea for mercy is endearing. He merely wants to maintain his humanity and, in essence, exist with—or rather, within— whom he fell in love. In the end, Brundle’s plan is sabotaged and he is mistakenly fused with the telepod itself, creating a human/fly/teleporter creature that tumbles out of the destination telepod and drags itself over to Veronica who holds a shotgun in quivering hands. Here, Veronica dons a veil of faux-humanity as Brundlecreature grips the muzzle of the shotgun and holds it flush to his forehead as Veronica pulls the trigger; however, what masquerades as an ending filled with empathy is actually rather sardonic as Veronica falls to the feet of Stathis, the very man who had poached her original story and, in a sense, fueled Brundle’s jealousy that impels him to enter the telepod with the officious fly. This final moment is paradoxical in that the audience’s initial reaction is presumed to be one of tender relief for Veronica. After all, she has just killed a grotesque creature, a two hundred pound version of the parasitic nuisances that swarm above garbage cans on summer days, one whose miniature counterpart any one of us would try to obliterate with a rolled up Time magazine. At the same time, Veronica’s companion and aid is her enemy, which illustrates parasitic relationships of convenience and loneliness.
In the end, Cronenberg gives us Brundle, a man thrust into a world that wants his genius for its own success. A man who finds the Holy Grail and succumbs to its inevitable consequence. And while we are unsure of whether or not he is indifferent or insouciant, the reality is that Brundle seeks a collective relationship that slowly grows obsolete as individual endeavors take center stage. Thus, give me the robot penguin!
