From an interview by Damon Wise with David Cronenberg on his 1991 film "Naked Lunch" in the first Shock Xpress book:"DC: Well, [insects] are fascinating. Interestingly enough, the two writers that always, I felt, were my major influences were Nabokov and Burroughs, and insects play a major part in both their writings. No, I hadn't thought of that connection before, but it's true. But I was always, as a child, sort of an amateur entomologist and enthusiast.
It's just such a potent life force on this planet - and it is a life form - and yet it seems so alien to us. And also, I think, I'm fascinated by it because of the element of transformation that is, really, a major part of almost any insect's life. They don't start small and grow bigger. Some of them do. Incomplete metamorphosis - you know, they start, like, small crickets and then they get to be bigger crickets. But there are other insects that really transform from one kind of life to another - the caterpillar to butterfly, I suppose, is the common example.
And that kind of metamorphosis is really quite fascinating to me and it seems to have a great potency. And the personality of an insect does not seem to be an individual thing, it seems to be a sort of species thing. (...)
Anyway, it all seems to have resonances and seems to illuminate human life, somehow. That's part of my fascination. I mean, in the same way that some people are totally obsessed with the possibility of life on other planets, in outer space and so on. We have life forms more alien than you can ever imagine, right here on Earth, it's just that some people tend not to notice them."
Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991)
Post scriptum
Please allow me to draw your attention to Tim Lucas' soon-to-be-published book on David Cronenberg's Videodrome.
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