SOURCE: “Grafting David Cronenberg: Monstrosity, AIDS Media, National/Sexual Difference,” in Stanford Humanities Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 7–21.

In the following essay, Parker explores sexuality, AIDS, and national identity in Rabid. He theorizes that the horror genre and other “narrative systems” contributed to a popular conception about the nature of AIDS and about how it is transmitted. In addition he compares the struggle for male identity to Canada’s struggle for national identity.

Q: What is the symbolism of the lesbian agents with penises grafted onto their faces, drinking spinal fluid?

A: Oh, just a bit of science fiction, really.

William S. Burroughs, The Job

1965 was the year that, travelling on vacation with my family from profoundly suburban New York to Montréal, I first crossed a border into a foreign country, a border I came to associate with sexual transgression. What remains impressed in my memory from...