David Cronenberg’s The Fly is an appropriation of an adaptation. Where the original adaptation of The Fly follows the short story of the same name, Cronenberg uses to send a very different message.
Cronenberg portrays the side effect of the transporter accident as a gradual end for our hero. The fly aspects become a metaphor for disease, and so does the entire movie. It becomes more about testing the love between Veronica and Brundle, rather than about correcting the mistake itself.
I’ve always liked the dream sequence for Veronica, and how it’s never really resolved (well, till the piece of shit sequel). Rather than being used as a shock ending, it becomes more like a terrifying inevitability, and I think that sets the tone for what kind of movie it is.
The important thing to remember is that as this disease slowly mutates our charming, witty protagonist, it is against his will. Rather than being a Godfather type story where the main character is paying for his sins, Brundle is portrayed as a good person that something bad happened to, just like real life. How’s that for a concept?
Tod Browning’s Freaks is an appropriation, but also an adaptation. See the difference? Fly = Appropriation of an adaptation, Freaks = Adaptation that appropriates.
Anyway,now that we’ve got that out of our system, let’s look at what it appropriates.
It’s interesting that the message of the movie is that the “normal” people in the movie are cruel, and the Freaks are not, but at the same time the Freaks are exploited by the director just by being in the movie. In the end they are also the entire reason the movie is classified as “horror.”
In “Spurs,” the story it was based off of, the main character is still a midget marrying a normal looking person, but that’s about all that remains.
I like that this movie definitely implicates the audience, but it also implicates itself. By having a name like “Freaks,” and featuring actual deformed people playing the roles, it feels cruel, but we are dealing with a movie about the cruelty and ugliness within, so maybe that just makes the story more compelling.
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