Cronenberg, Kafka, and Jewish Horror

The pioneering Jewish Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg has always insisted that his breakthrough horror film The Fly (1986) represents his own version of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915). Indeed, as recently as 2014 Cronenberg reiterated this connection in his introduction to Susan Bernofsky’s new English translation of The Metamorphosis. This lecture argues that a concept of Jewish horror, as central as it is unspoken in Cronenberg’s films as well as in Kafka’s writings, is a lens that sheds light on both artists when they are considered together.

Adam Lowenstein is Professor of English and Film/Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Horror Film and Otherness (2022), Dreaming of Cinema: Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media (2015), and Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film (2005), all published by Columbia University Press. Lowenstein is especially invested in horror studies, and is the Director of Pitt’s Horror Studies Working Group as well as a board member of the George A. Romero Foundation. He played a central role in the acquisition of the George A. Romero Collection for Pitt’s Horror Studies Archive. He has held visiting professorships at Columbia University, New York University, and Tel Aviv University, and received a Macgeorge Fellowship from the University of Melbourne as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.