Cronenberg Connected: Cameo Acting, Cult Stardom and Supertexts

Abstract

Between the late 1960s and 2010, David Cronenberg appeared in twenty-five mostly small roles in films and television shows directed by himself and others.¹ Each of these roles can be defined as a ‘cameo role’, and, in each, Cronenberg utilizes a distinct acting style that contributes to the film’s meaning and, as a consequence, its status. In one of the only discussions of Cronenberg’s acting performances, Adam Lowenstein (2004) has described these roles as emphasizing ‘murderous embodiment or bureaucratic disembodiment, often to reveal a combination of both’. Indeed, Cronenberg is mostly cast as distanced, detached, cold and dispassionate, faculties the figures of the serial killer and the bureaucrat share (and which characterize the objectifying impersonal address both are infamous for). It is the double bind between the reception components of the cameo and the particular acting style of Cronenberg that this chapter addresses, and it is my contention that within this double bind, and its management, we can discover the reason why Cronenberg’s cameos should be regarded as a cult supertext: a string of moments stretched across films that, together with the films themselves (both his own and others) and the ancillary materials that circulate around those films, offer a compelling way of understanding his oeuvre’s comments on the world.