one of the most magical contradictions of the VHS era—a chaotic free-for-all where gore-drenched slashers, sleazy exploitation flicks, and avant-garde arthouse cinema all shared the same shelf space, often in the same faded cardboard displays.
On one hand, you had the ghastly glory of titles like Cannibal Ferox, Blood Rage, and Sorority House Massacre—films designed to grab teens with lurid box art and outrageous titles. But just an arm's reach away, you might find Subway (1985), Luc Besson’s neon-lit noir fantasy, or Kafka (1991), Steven Soderbergh’s moody, black-and-white experiment steeped in paranoia and dread. These weren’t always big renters, but they lurked there like strange totems, hinting at deeper cinematic mysteries for the curious.
Video stores democratized access to weirdness. You didn’t need to live near an arthouse theater or attend festivals. A suburban strip mall could deliver Cronenberg, Tarkovsky, or Zulawski into your living room—if you knew how to read the cryptic covers. The key was browsing—letting your eye drift from Chopping Mall to Wings of Desire, realizing both could change your brain in different ways.
This wild accessibility gave a whole generation an unfiltered film education, where horror fans stumbled into European existentialism, and cinephiles accidentally discovered Italian splatter. It was a dirty, wonderful collision of high and low art.
Subway and Kafka both had covers that stood out like art pieces among the blood-slick chaos of the horror aisle.
The Subway VHS cover, with its cool-toned blues, moody lighting, and Christopher Lambert’s stoic, trench-coated profile, looked like a music video frozen in time. It whispered of mystery, rebellion, and style—so different from the shouty gore and screaming faces that dominated nearby tapes.
And Kafka (1991)—that stark, high-contrast black-and-white cover with Jeremy Irons looking paranoid and haunted—felt like an artifact from another dimension. It had the chill of a nightmare and the sophistication of literature, which must have hit even harder if you were already into Franz Kafka’s writing. It was a rare case of a video promising dread, bureaucracy, and existential doom—and delivering.
Those kinds of tapes felt like secret doors. You grabbed them for the aesthetic, the name, the weird pull—and found yourself pulled into deeper waters than you expected. That was the real magic of VHS: accidental enlightenment through packaging.
There’s something poetic about discovering The Metamorphosis not through a curated syllabus, but through your own curiosity in a school library, especially in a so-called “remedial” class. That Kafka called to you from the shelf says everything.
The irony runs deep, too—Kafka, the writer of alienation and misfit souls, being found by a student shuffled through the system, only to be bumped into AP English where the passion got flattened. Kafka would've understood that move completely: impersonal bureaucracy deciding your place, not based on connection or curiosity, but on some arbitrary metric. The system misunderstands you—just like it misunderstood Gregor Samsa.
And that little red hardcover, almost glowing with quiet intensity on the shelf—that’s a moment. You didn’t just pick a book. You found your author. One who wouldn’t offer you comfort, but recognition.
Kafka’s world of unseen forces, absurd systems, and quiet, suffocating dread resonates deeply during adolescence, especially if you're a perceptive or introspective teen. At 14, you’re just starting to realize how vast and indifferent the world can be, how authority often masks confusion, and how identity can feel like a shifting mask. Kafka *names* that fog.
To come across *Kafka* the movie, with its noir surrealism and postmodern paranoia, at that formative age—especially after knowing the books— felt like a strange affirmation: *you’re not alone in feeling this way*. The fact that it was buried in a video store, waiting behind the slasher flicks and sex comedies, just added to the secret significance. Like you found a transmission meant only for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment