Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

What Have You Done?

First published on Opera, Thur 6th May, 2004.

Here’s a slightly different take on the theme of nameless dread in my last post. But before you read any further I must preface this post with a warning in the form of a SPOILER ALERT. I shall be discussing The Cronenberg film Spider and giving away vital details of the story. So if you intend to watch the film, and don’t want to know what will happen beforehand, read no further:




I noticed this film because it is the work of one of my favourite writers – Patrick McGrath – and one of my favourite directors – David Cronenberg. Now that’s an interesting combination, I thought to myself. McGrath writes downbeat Gothic novels set in Britain in the ‘forties and ‘fifties, usually exploring the inner worlds of the mentally ill. Cronenberg I tend to see as more often concerned with biological taboo and with J.G. Ballard-type interfacing of sex and technology.


In the film Spider, Dennis Clegg aka Spider, has recently been released from an asylum and is now staying at a halfway house in London’s East end, near where he grew up. I won’t attempt to describe the plot in detail. Suffice it to say, there are many reasons why the main character is called Spider. He seems to be weaving a web of memories, and at the same time, he is trying to unravel the puzzle that the web has become for him. The whole film seemed to me at first as slow and tortuous as actually watching a spider spin a web. At the very end, however, the design of the web became clear. The whole film seemed to hinge – to me at least – upon one line. “What have you done? What have you done?” Spoken twice, but softly, the whole power of the film is contained here. Such was the power of this line, in fact, that it moved me to tears. The line is addressed to Spider, and on hearing it he realises at last that he has been lying to himself and understands the terrible truth – that in trying to avenge the death of his mother, he has actually become his mother’s murderer. Somehow he has become trapped in the web that he himself has spun. This truth proves insurmountable, and he returns to the asylum.




I have a feeling that we all deceive ourselves in these ways, that we all spin our webs, not realising that one day they will trap us, and we will awake to the truth of our own madness only when it is too late and we hear a voice saying, “What have you done? What have you done?”