DAVID CRONENBERG’S THE FLY AND
THE MONSTROUS AGING PROCESS

“Seth Brundle thought his child would save him, yet our children are just as mortal as us. Veronica has a dream of giving birth to a massive, writhing maggot. We spend so much time waiting to get older and wiser, only to watch ourselves fall apart when that time comes.”

Spoilers ahead for a 38-year-old movie

Fears of getting older are generally the furthest anxieties from a college student’s mind. Most of us are in our early twenties, our physical prime; why would we worry about aging when there are papers, tuition, housing costs, relationships, and disasters previous generations have left for us looming nearby? We believe we are lucky if we survive long enough to get older, to find rest. But there is no rest in old age.

In contemplating the theme of Disturbia, I realized what terrifies me most about modern living is how old we can get. To explain that, allow me to summarize my favorite horror movie. The Fly (1986) is Canadian director David Cronenberg’s remake of the 1958 original, a typical B-movie for the era featuring a scientist whose hubris curses him with an enormous insect head. An easy and obvious concept for a horror movie; giant bugs have haunted the collective subconscious even before Kafka’s Gregor Samsa woke up with more legs than usual. Cronenberg’s movie begins how one would expect it to: with a scientist named Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum, telling a journalist named Veronica Quaife about his newly invented teleportation machines. The two fall in love, but a bout of jealousy over Veronica’s ex-boyfriend leads to Seth drunkenly deciding to become his teleporter’s first human subject. Naturally, Seth does not notice the housefly inside the machine whose DNA is about to be blended with his. This is where the film diverges from its predecessor: Seth does not emerge from the teleporter a monster—not yet.

Seth is invigorated the next day, both by his machine’s success and his unusual physical stamina. His strength begins to border on superhuman, and he is convinced that the teleporter has somehow improved his body. Seth attempts to convince Veronica to teleport so she can keep up with him, but she is concerned about his increasing irritability and the strange hairs on his back. He pushes her away, seeking cheap thrills in bar fights and promiscuous encounters, completely distant from the humble and awkward academic he was before. Only when his teeth and nails begin to fall out does he realize something may be wrong.

Bits of Seth continue to peel away. His skin bloats and fuses into a tumorous mass. He can only eat by vomiting mucus onto his food to dissolve it. In the late stages of his transformation, Veronica finds out that Seth has impregnated her. Seth tries forcing Veronica to fuse with him in the teleporter, thinking that her DNA combined with his and the baby’s will bring him back. “We’ll be the ultimate family. A family of three joined together in one body. More human than I am alone,” he cries as his jaw tears away in Veronica’s hand. The insectoid face, still thinly veiled in flesh, finally emerges from the crumpling shell of his head, with all drive to preserve himself caving into mute despair.

If all this sounds terrifying, it is far worse watching it happen in real life. Two summers ago, I worked as a COVID-19 screener in a seniors’ home. Every day at my desk, I tried to ignore the acid stench of hospital-grade cleaning products. I knew they were used to disguise smells far worse. Warbling cries of “Help!” echoed down the halls, sharp and lonely, like whale calls in deep ocean fathoms. Some residents looked dead already, slumped in front of the TV they had been wheeled to with hollow faces and sunken eyes permanently shut. They never moved. The worst ones, however, were those who still clung to scant shreds of lucidity. Every evening, I helped one of the residents with the iPad he used to video call his wife (relatives who had not received the COVID-19 vaccine were not allowed to visit at the time). I found out that he was the widower of my grandmother’s sister. He seemed fine at first, if a little grumpy. Then he would forget things he just heard. He grew paranoid; once, he refused to leave my desk, begging me to let him out of the building. He had no idea why he was there. He asked to see my grandmother’s sister once, thinking she was still alive. He tried to escape, his motorized wheelchair making it only inches from the gate until he was caught. I wonder how far he would have gone.

So much of life is spent preparing for getting old. We study to get jobs that will support our retirements, we marry to grow old together, and we have children to care for us. We also have children to preserve ourselves, molding younger versions of ourselves to live how we would have wished to. Seth Brundle thought his child would save him, yet our children are just as mortal as us. Veronica has a dream of giving birth to a massive, writhing maggot. We spend so much time waiting to get older and wiser, only to watch ourselves fall apart when that time comes. How will you end? Possibly covered in bedsores, your veins bursting from your paper skin, your urine at your side in a bag, your voice a faint housefly’s whine in your throat.

I try to remember my spirit when I think about this. I believe in its immortality. Yet I cannot forget my body. I cannot avoid the day when, as Seth puts it, “the dream is over and the insect is awake.”