With the exception of Crash, no cyberpunk text has inspired more inquiry along Baudrillardian and Deleuzian lines than David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) which seems emphatically able to demonstrate and augment either theoretical position. Indeed, Cronenberg seems to be the director of choice for critics of both persuasions. In Videodrome, Max Renn (James Woods) is the President of CIVIC TV, a television station that broadcasts hardcore violence and softcore pornography. Pursuing new markets and new perversions, Max has Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) pirate signals, leading them to the enigmatic Videodrome: ‘Just torture and murder. No plot, no characters, very, very realistic. I think it's what's next.’ Attempting to decipher the origin of the signal, Max becomes sexually involved with the masochistic Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), who quickly abandons the relationship to become a Videodrome ‘contestant’. The carcinogenic signal inspires fantasies of torture, masochism and sadism that render indiscernible the distinction between reality, phantasy and simulacra, wherein bodies, machines and images interact in ecstatic, violent assemblages. Max finds his corporate interests, phantasies and bodily and psychic integrity at the centre of a ‘battle for the mind of North America’ waged between Barry Convex (Leslie Carlson) of Spectacular Optical – whose corporate slogan is ‘Keeping An Eye On The World’ – and the Cathode Ray Mission, presided over by McLuhanesque media prophet and creator of Videodrome Professor Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), who intended it to be ‘a new organ, a new part of the brain’, a catalyst for the next step in human evolution, the ‘Video New Flesh’. Spectacular Optical, a front for a systemic organisation, murdered O'Blivion and took control of Videodrome. O'Blivion now exists on thousands of pre-recorded videotapes, appearing ‘on television, as television’, and his daughter, Bianca (Sonja Smits), who presides over the Cathode Ray Mission, lives in fear of Videodrome agents.