So much Valentine’s Day iconography is treacly—roaring fireplaces, erotic chocolate, embroidered teddy bears, etc.—that the necessary counterbalance of sardonic and gross-out Valentine’s Day iconography has itself become a little overdone. (We have all given or received the card with a realistic drawing of a human heart. It’s hilarious.) That being said, these disgusting Cronenbergian Valentine’s Day cards, featuring puns and images from Videodrome, The Fly, The Brood, Dead Ringers, and more, manages to be truly, impressively gross, especially when you consider their context.
All housed (and ready to be emailed to your special someone) at Cronenberg Valentines, the cards feature shots from a variety of early films from the body horror auteur, who explored with pitch-black wit and unshakeable verve the intersection of technology, sex, and death. They make a tasteful reminder to your significant other that you are both but flesh machines, organic matter carrying out essential biological impulses, and that even your so-called “love” is but an insignificant, fleeting impulse when compared to the the vast mysteries of the human unconscious mind and the cosmos itself.
There are many more cards at the site, which claims they were discovered in a warehouse and are a genuine promotional item from 1992. There is even a photo of their original packaging and an earnest request for more info from anyone out there who can provide it. Realistically, it is just an attempt to make Valentine’s Day gross again, and a charming, successful one at that. Send a tender missive to the fleshy organism with which you intend to procreate today.