"For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It's impossible to do"
About this Quote
Cronenberg starts where most pop philosophy politely refuses to: meat. The “first fact” isn’t love, language, or ideas; it’s the body, stubbornly present, leaking, aging, failing. That opening move is a manifesto for his whole filmography, which treats flesh not as a vessel for the “real” self but as the self’s most inconvenient truth. You can build religions, careers, and identities on abstraction; you still have to sleep, bleed, get sick, and die.
The quote’s pressure point is the collision between biology and narration. “Embrace the reality of the human body” sounds like a wellness slogan until he follows it with the real invoice: mortality. Cronenberg isn’t romanticizing death; he’s describing a cognitive limitation. The self-conscious mind can picture pain, loss, even apocalypse, but it can’t stage its own absence without smuggling in a spectator. The imagination keeps a little camera running. That’s the subtext: our deepest denial isn’t moral, it’s structural.
Context matters: Cronenberg’s work (from The Fly to Crash to A History of Violence) repeatedly shows modernity’s attempt to outsmart flesh through technology, desire, or violence, only to discover that “transcendence” is just another bodily event with side effects. His intent isn’t to preach nihilism; it’s to expose why we reach for fantasies of control. If non-existence is literally unrenderable, then anxiety isn’t a personal failing. It’s the price of being a mind trapped in a body that will end.
The quote’s pressure point is the collision between biology and narration. “Embrace the reality of the human body” sounds like a wellness slogan until he follows it with the real invoice: mortality. Cronenberg isn’t romanticizing death; he’s describing a cognitive limitation. The self-conscious mind can picture pain, loss, even apocalypse, but it can’t stage its own absence without smuggling in a spectator. The imagination keeps a little camera running. That’s the subtext: our deepest denial isn’t moral, it’s structural.
Context matters: Cronenberg’s work (from The Fly to Crash to A History of Violence) repeatedly shows modernity’s attempt to outsmart flesh through technology, desire, or violence, only to discover that “transcendence” is just another bodily event with side effects. His intent isn’t to preach nihilism; it’s to expose why we reach for fantasies of control. If non-existence is literally unrenderable, then anxiety isn’t a personal failing. It’s the price of being a mind trapped in a body that will end.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
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