SOURCE: “The Camara and the Speculum: David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers,” in Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 106, No. 3, May, 1991, pp. 459–70.

In the following essay, Frank discusses the portrayal of male identity and the representation of women inDead Ringers.

I expected somebody who looked like a combination of Arthur Bremmer and Dwight Frye as Renfield in Dracula, slobbering for juicy flies. The man who showed up in my apartment in New York looked like a gynecologist from Beverly Hills.

Martin Scorcese, describing David Cronenberg

In the domain of film, the problem of looking alike is often presented as the problem of being alike, for film techniques can create resemblances where none exists. For example, crosscutting can establish parallels between different scenes or locales, and camera angles can make different compositions look similar. Likewise, the camera can depict one actor in two roles. In this sense it...