Shivers and Free Love

During our post-viewing discussion of David Cronenberg’s Shivers someone commented that the film seemed to parody free love, the social movement largely popularized within the United States by 1967’s Summer of Love in San Francisco. I found this observation quite apt, at least inasmuch as the film seems to be poking fun at the public’s often more simplistic understanding of the term, which commonly connotes grossly unrestrained sexual promiscuity more than anything else. I believe Shivers could easily be interpreted as doing more than simply parodying free love, or at least the aforementioned misconception as to what the term entails, and personally saw the film as a commentary on the dangers of such a misconception, a sort of warning against the propagation of and participation in this misinterpreted philosophy.

Said warning, I believe, is extended neither out of prudery or righteous moral indignation (the gratuitous amount of nudity and sexual deviance portrayed in the film would certainly suggest that this is not the case) nor a wish to raise awareness of the spread of venereal disease which is so often inherent in unrestrained sexual behavior (although this could very well be a secondary part of Cronenberg’s agenda as the film does revolve around the transmission of an infectious parasite, which could be seen as meant to represent a disease like HIV/AIDS). No, I think Cronenberg’s primary concern is that promiscuity on a massive scale would result in the loss of at least a partial (though certainly substantial) part of our humanity.

While it is debatable whether or not humans are the only species to engage in sexual intercourse simply for pleasure (when this point was put forth in class several people simultaneously and emphatically responded “Dolphins!”), as far as we know humans are the only members of the animal kingdom to imbue sex with a complex range of emotional meaning and significance. In most (if not all) cultures, sex is, ideally, far more than a means of reproduction and even a source of physical pleasure; viewed as an expression of love, trust, and commitment, it is a deeply meaningful act that brings people together spiritually as well as physically, and intercourse that lacks this sense of connection, such as that misconstrued as being condoned by the free love philosophy, often leaves participants feeling empty and unfulfilled. As Gil Grissom sagely states in an episode of CSI entitled “Ending Happy”, “Sex without love is just sad”.

In the context of Shivers, the influence of the parasites terrorizing the residents of the Starliner apartment complex has the same degenerative effect as promiscuity on the emotionally meaningful nature of sex, rendering it completely devoid of the significance discussed in the previous paragraph. The sexual desire of the infected is entirely instinctive, reducing intercourse to nothing more than a mode of transmission for the parasites, and under these conditions sex not only loses its emotional importance but becomes a violent and terrifying (not to mention disgusting) act perpetrated against the as yet uninfected. Once infected, the characters in the film lose their humanity, which I define as the ability to function and operate based on something more than pure instinct, like reason and emotion, to the parasite. The unrestrained and indiscriminate sexual behavior associated with free love essentially produces the same effect (albeit minus the gore and more aberrant sex acts like incest and pedophilia)- sex becomes a source of pleasure removed from emotional attachment, the one aspect of human sexuality that separates us from other species, and thus we lose an important component of our humanity.

Dr. Emil Hobbes engineered the parasite because he believed that man had become too rational, inhibited and out of touch with the instincts nature provided him in order to reproduce and ensure the species’ survival, and I agree that people should feel comfortable with their sexuality as opposed to ashamed by it. I believe it is healthy to explore one’s sexuality, but only, as Austin might say, under the appropriate circumstances. It is true that American societal taboos often result in an unhealthy repression of sexuality, but I think these taboos are so ingrained in our culture for a reason. If sexuality were a completely acceptable topic, if there were absolutely no lines drawn by society, everyone would be completely uninhibited, which could conceivably lead to a Shivers-type situation. Well, probably not quite that extreme, but there would certainly be serious repercussions that I’m sure most people would rather not have to deal with. Hobbes realizes this, as evinced by his attempt to kill the parasites, and I think Shivers is ultimately Cronenberg’s attempt to convey this message to us the viewers.