It’s been a little over two weeks since I saw David Cronenberg’s latest body horror release, Crimes of the Future, and I still can’t stop thinking about this weird, wild, and gorgeous masterpiece. But more importantly, I cannot stop thinking about how the film absolutely screams transgender rights.
I mean, with a tagline like “surgery is the new sex,” can the film really be advocating for anything other than human beings exercising autonomy over their own bodies? I think not. But in order to understand its surprisingly progressive ethos, it helps to break down the basic (albeit quite complex) plot. (Consider this your warning that spoilers lie ahead.)
As evident from the title, Crimes of the Future is set in a distant time when, thanks to climate change and other factors, most humans can no longer feel pain or become infected by disease. Some people can, however, rapidly generate new body parts, and those new organs—as well as the people growing them—are closely regulated and monitored by the government in order to police human evolution. Enter Kristen Stewart’s Timlin and Don McKellar’s Whippet, who work for the National Organ Registry. Meanwhile, performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) has this “accelerated evolution syndrome,” which means he is constantly growing new organs, which he registers with the government before having them surgically removed by his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) in public as part of their performance act.
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Tenser’s sense of self and his allegiances to the government get tested when he meets Lang (Scott Speedman), a grieving father who leads a group of people who have transitioned into evolved humans with an internal organ system that allows them to process toxic materials such as plastic. Lang’s son, who is killed in the opening act of the film, is the first person born with these evolved internal organs, making him one of a kind. Lang asks Tenser and Caprice to perform a public autopsy on his son to show the world that people with evolved organs can be born that way and that this is the future of humanity, and so his people can finally come out of the shadows. However, the government is there every step of the way to eliminate the evolved humans—along with those who support them—and deter the public from learning the truth about how humanity is progressing.
It’s wild to think that a movie Cronenberg wrote 20 years ago has such a powerful message relating to one of the most dire issues we are facing today, transgender rights—especially when it comes to gender-affirming care.
In fact, the writer/director himself has even addressed that the film has these very messages in it. “It has, strangely and sadly, huge political repercussions right now,” Cronenberg told Vanity Fair in a recent interview. “When I wrote it 20 years ago, I wasn’t thinking of that specifically, but this is always a go-around about who controls the bodies of citizens. Who controls women’s bodies, who controls the bodies of transgender people. It’s like, are you allowed to do that? Can the government actually tell you what to do with your body or not, even if it doesn’t affect anyone else? It becomes a kind of a hot button.”
Cronenberg’s movie couldn’t have come at a better time, as the idea of the government policing human bodies is extremely topical. This year alone, we’ve seen hundreds of terrifying anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ pieces of legislation introduced in this country. Much of the legislation targets trans youth and, in particular, their access to gender-affirming care and surgeries. And as if that wasn’t terrifying enough, the U.S. is on the brink of rolling back abortion rights by decades.
The role of capitalism and its aversion to progression is also fascinatingly explored in the film through two characters who supposedly work for a biotech company that sells highly technical machines that, in this bleak future, help humans perform such basic functions as sleeping and eating. Tenser and others suffering from “accelerated evolution syndrome” often have discomfort and trouble digesting (this comes up again, so remember it!) brought on by their new organ growth, so they are heavily reliant on these machines. However, the machines also prevent those with the syndrome from realizing that they are evolved humans, and the technology ends up doing more harm than good.
As the story continues, you see that the two biotech workers have a much bigger role than just helping maintain machines for their customers. They are also diabolical agents that eliminate, with a deadly drill, anyone who is pushing for the progression of evolved humans. It was never completely clear, at least for me, whether these two characters actually worked for the company or were merely undercover agents of the government sent to infiltrate Tenser. Either way, the commentary on capitalism remains unmissable.
In fact, Crimes of the Future pushes the anti-capitalism sentiment even further by showing how government and capitalism work in conjunction to control people in order to keep themselves relevant and remain in power. It was especially poignant to see this take during Pride month, when corporations diligently send out their obligatory Pride posts and launch their “Pride collections” while ignoring the fact that many of them bankroll politicians who regularly try to strip LGBTQ people of their rights.
All in all, using surgery as performance art and a form of rebellion is a hell of a statement by Cronenberg. As someone who had gender-affirming surgery a few months prior to watching the film, there was something satisfying about seeing people come together to watch someone get something surgically removed from their body—and not just out of curiosity or fear, but out of reverence.
Trans people and trans bodies are constantly put on display for judgment, but in Crimes of the Future, Tenser owned that operating room. Everyone wanted to be near him, be with him, or just be him. It was a brilliant display of how something so completely personal can be a statement on society. And that statement seems to be, “my body, my choice.”
Not only is Crimes of the Future a beautiful transgender allegory, but it portrays the LGBTQ community’s struggle in a beautifully humanistic way, especially in its final moments. Throughout the film, you’ve watched Tenser struggle to eat a proper meal; early on in the story, Lang suggests that his inability to eat is because he is an evolved human who can no longer ingest regular food. However, finding out whether that is true or not will come at a high cost: Either Tenser truly is evolved, or he’ll die from the toxic elements of the plastic in a synthetic bar manufactured by Lang and his group of evolved humans.
Again, this is much like the trans journey of acceptance, when sometimes the fear of being considered “different” can be all-consuming. In the film, being labeled as “evolved” meant the government would try to persecute and eliminate you. Sadly, that’s not too far off from how politicians treat transgender individuals in this country.
After finally reaching his breaking point, Tenser is at last ready to accept who he is and tells Caprice to feed him the synthetic bar. When he is finally able to swallow food again, he sheds a tear.
Self-acceptance is often the hardest stage of any queer journey. And in this moment on screen, that is exactly what I saw: someone accepting who they really are and finding complete relief and joy in that. It was simply beautiful.
