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Erniesam (32)
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Do you think we should post under a new thread or post, because the writing space is getting very small.
Have you seen Inland Empre yet? Are you familiar with the work of David Lynch in general? I recommend this movie, though it is somewhat a different beast than MD. The first time I saw it, like with many of Lynch´s movies, I simply hated it. It took me about three or four times to finally finish watching it for the first time. I started thinking about it, talking about it with friends, searched explanations and theories online. Gradually I came to love it. Storywise it follows a similar line as MD, though way more cryptic I would argue. It is shot on handheld dv and it takes time to get used to. Now I actually love this style, cause it gives the movie an immediacy and directness.
Anyway, I hope you have seen it or will see it. Here we can discuss MD which is moreb than enough.
"Well stop for a lil' second and think about it."
To me it seems the Cowboy is speaking directly to the Dreamer. The Cowboy says that YOU determine to a large extent how your life will be. Adam / the Dreamer agrees, but since the life of the Dreamer is such a mess (or at least her mental health) it seems she doesn´t care about the good life. The Cowboy places the responsibillity of the Dreamer´s state with her (inactions).
Adam reacts very nonchalantly probably imitating the real attitude of the Dreamer. The Dreamer (or conscious) doesn´t want to face her troubles, so she is snarky about taking advise that encourages her to do exactly that. The Cowboy, some part of the subconscious that `knows` what´s the right thing to do tries to get the Dreamer to face these problems. I view him as the symbol of a ´man´s man´ saying the dreamer should `man up.`
About Aunt Ruth: you don´t believe that the woman we see leaving at the Sierra Bonita apartments is Aunt Ruth? She looks the same and is played by the same actress. Who do you think she is?
My question is: is their chronology in dreams the way we understand it rationally? Is their a system to our subconscious? It seems to me that what´s the most pressing in one´s subconscious at a certain moment, that will come out in dreams and thoughts. In the conscious it would be in the form of pondering or talking about it alot. In the subconscious through dreams. Now, would dreams depict the most pressing thing and than the next pressing thing and so on? Or...the most pressing thing and than make associations? And than associations based on what?
The one thing we can all agree on is that dreams take a certain amount of time. So...we can conclude that there is an order in the depiction of aspects. With this I mean one at a time with a certain overlap due to the mixing of aspects. They have to be one at a time otherwise we could not remember, recognize and interpret our dreams.
My point is that I don´t see the need nor the opportunity to connect scenes in dreams in place or time. You can argue about that when considering the reality of the Dreamer, but a dream follows it´s own logic outside of reality as we experience it.
That said I don´t consider that MD follows dream logic, but rather the mental process of the Dreamer. So here we have to consider that one aspect of the conscious triggers another aspect of the subcobscious and on and on. I see a conscious effort of the Dreamer to lose herself in her own fantasy, while her subconscious or reality is catching up with her.
---I know she becomes Rita after the accident, but I'm still not sure who she was before the accident.---
You state that you consider Rita and Betty related as two sides of a coin representing an aspect of the Dreamer, while you are not sure about Camilla and Diane. Here is where our views differ slightly, yet this difference leads to a huge one when our overall views are concerned.
I see a direct connection between ALL the characters in the dream sequence and the ones in the second segment. So I view Betty as the fictionalized version of Diane and Rita that of Camilla. That way I see a direct correlation between the murder attempt in the car and Diane orchestrating a hit on Camilla. You see, I view the woman in the car as being Camilla. So when Diane is taking her ride on Mulhollan Drive in the second segment, she in fact is taking the place of Camilla. And it is Camilla who meets her and is taking her `up the garden path.` She is manipulating and using Diane, just like Diane has experienced it in real life.
Was Camilla indeed an actress? Was Diane indeed trying to make it in Hollywood? We don´t know, because all the info we get is through the Dreamer´s eyes. We only can interpret what the Dreamer let´s us see and we cannot make any certain statements about reality.
---I would place this event at the same time the hitman shoots three people in the Ed's office.---
Interesting. You really make very different connections than I do. I can see your points about guns and looming threat, but I can´t see why this makes you think these two scenes play out simultaneously. When you consider this to be a dream different scenes can depict the same emotion or aspect of the Dreamer´s trauma. So different aspects out of the subconscious are ´visualized,` but can we conclude WHEN certain scenes played out? We can establish different connections between scenes.
I have to say that I´m enjoying this conversation. Not only do I learn another way of looking at the movie, but it also makes me think about my established view. Well, it keeps evolving with each new interesting aspect that somebody points me to that I haven´t thought of before. It is difficult to discuss different views, because they represent paradigms. Moreover, each paradigm has it´s own language, while we are conditioned in our own way of thinking and seeing the world. Despite this we can however discuss the validity of certain interpretations by looking for the logic in the overall view. Everyone has their own interpretation of the movie and we should encourage people to come to their own conclusions and enjoy the movie the way they see fit. The joy in the discussions for me is to find out new things and learn different aspects and perspectives.
---Lynch gave the cards one last shuffle, as if the plot wasn't already convoluted enough.---
Do you think that this ´one last shuffle´ has a point to it? Personally I consider the second part to be of integral importance to the story of the movie. Not only does it she dlight on what went before, it culminates in a logical and satisfying emotional conclusion. Since you view it as a dream from start to finish, do you see any progression in it?
---It's the ego, represented by Adam, that tries to repress things. The subconscious, represented by Mr. Roque, is the part of the psyche that wants to bring the truth to light.---
We seem to be in agreement here. I too see a struggle bewteen two opposing sides; you call them the ego and the Id, I would call it the conscious and the subconscious of the Dreamer. I guess we are talking about the same things.
---After the events at Club Silencio, the dreamer moves further into the past,---
---Rita's demand may simply reflect her desire to be the center of attention---
You say that the segment after the opening of the blue box is further into the past. I have a couple of questions about this.
1. If it´s Rita´s desire to be at the center of attention and indeed be Camilla, does this mean that she at one time was Camilla but became Rita due to the resurgence of the trauma? Does this mean that the ending of the movie is in fact the beginning of the resurgence of the Dreamer´s trauma?
2. The Cowboy says to Adam that he´ll see him two more times when he does bad. Well, we know that Adam doesn´t see him anymore, so the Cowboy must have been talking directly to the Dreamer. My point is that we DO see him a second time, but it´s in the second segment. How can this segment precede the first when a `prediction` come true in the second?
---This event corresponds roughly to the point in time where Rita showed up in Aunt Ruth's apartment, just when Aunt Ruth was getting ready to leave. The man and woman that Betty and Rita saw correspond to Aunt Ruth and the cab driver.---
You don´t think that the woman Betty and Rita see leaving IS Aunt Ruth? You take this `leaving` event the key to place the corpse right AFTER the murder? What is the reason these two scenes are so far apart in the movie?
What do you think is the significance of this woman / Aunt Ruth walking out of this apartment and Diane living in apartment no. 17?
---I agree. There's the dreamer---
You believe the Bum represents the Dreamer self? I s it because you presume the Dreamer is depressed due to the witnessing of the parents having sex? Or because of the loss of the Ego? The Bum represents the Dreamer´s actual state of mind?
---The trauma is caused by the child's instinctive desire to have sex with her own father.---
Instinctive desire? So because she had this desire she is so shocked to find her parents having sex? Than the real culprit is this desire and not the trauma and henceforth you put the blame in and all of itself on her. Is it this trauma that is bothering her OR does she blame herself for `causing` this trauma?
---The blue box magically appears just after the magician finishes 'mind fucking' Betty. So, somehow the blue box represents birth, perhaps Rita's birth.---
Why do you think it is Betty that the magician is `mind fucking` and not Rita? Do you consider the magician and Betty recreating the actual act of the Dreamer´s Parents and Rita watching it? Now, when it is the Dreamer´s instinctive desire to have sex with her father, than why does she imagine her father to be the perpetrator and her mother to be the victim? Would,´t she imagine these roles to be reversed?
---So, it's as if Rita somehow got split into two people. Just like yin and yang, they go together as a matching set.---
This suggestion indicates that there is a positive and a negative Camilla. How do you consider them in this light and how do you view the kiss at the party?
---Betty/Diane who seems to be the 'odd man out'.---
Well, Blonde Camilla also didn´t have a partner, at least none that we know off.
---On the other hand, she's Rita the movie star, who slept with more than one director on her way to the top.---
So you assume that Rita is indeed Camilla?
---We can't tell which of the two girls is Diane, if either one actually is, and we don't know who answered the phone.---
What do you mean by we don´t know who Diane is? We indeed don´t know who answered the phone, but the importance in this scene is that Rita believes she recognizes the voice, whether it´s Diane or not. I believe it´s left ambiguous on purpose in order to highten the mystery and not to reveal who the corpse in no. 17 is.
---Basically, junior witnesses his parents having sex. Since Junior does not understand sex, he things Daddy is beating up Mommy.---
With this in mind, how do you interpret the audition scene?
---If it's provactive, it's object a. Lacan's point is that object a is not really what you want.---
Is it possible to have more than one Object A´s? Is it inherently linked to the loss of the Ego and can this Object change over time? Or rather that when you think you´ve found it, got disappointed and ´create` another Object A? Isn´t it essentially an eternal search just for searching sake? Just to have a goal on a subconcious meta-level? To occupy once mind in order to avoid the unbearable emptiness of being?
La Llorona is indeed an interesting folk tale. In what way do you think it is relevant to the Dreamer and the trauma?
Notice also the lyrics of the Orbison song. It´s about a loss of love which I believe is very pertinent to the overall story of MD.
What do you believe the meaning of the use of Spanish is? And what about the colors red and blue? Do you think they have a particular function?
Just curious how you view all these aspects.
You stated that the Boogie man represents the black dot and the headlights of the car causing the crash the white dot in the yin and yang symbol. Yet this symbol is about polar opposites, right? How do you consider the headlights to be positive?
---At Winkie's, Rita's mind is split into conscious and subconscious divisions, represented by Dan and Herb, respectively.---
I think that this is the commonly accepted interpretation of them. Indeed the patient with his psychiater is a real life symbol of this. This Boogie man you could call indeed the Shadow within the Dreamer´s subconscious. But is the Dreamer really afraid of this Boogie man or rather the content of the Blue Box? I mean this Boogie man represents the thing the Dreamer is trying to suppress, which we only come to find out at the very end. To me it seems that there is a progression from denial, to partial denial to reality. Do you agree with this?
---Adam has been repressing the image of Camilla Rhodes for far too long---
Why would Adam repress this image? Don´t you believe it is the Dreamer who is repressing this and that Adam is just the persona the Dreamer is using for this?
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