4 posts tagged “symbolism”

I just listened to a radio show from one of my friends on Facebook on the topic of Gnosticism and the Hymn of the Pearl.  I get a lot out of myth and the resulting analysis of them, and so this section of his talk was very interesting to me.

Basic story:

"The Hymn of the Pearl tells the story of a prince sent by his father, the grand King of Kings, down to Egypt to fetch “the one pearl which resides there near the ravenous dragon.” His Father promises him that once this is accomplished, he could “put(back) on that jewel-studded garment” which was made out of love” for him and would become a herald for the kingdom along with his “well-remembered brother.” Leaving his kingdom in the East, he arrives in Egypt and hurries “directly to the dragon and camps near his den.” In order “to guard against the Egyptians and against intercourse with their impurities,” he puts on their “style of dress” in order to go undercover as well as to shun any suspicion that he was a stranger in their land. As fate would have it, the Egyptians become aware that he is a stranger, form a plot to snare him and knock him into a slumber with their matter-laden food. With a taste he succumbs into forgetfulness, no longer remembering he was “a child of the king” and so becomes subservient to their king. Then he sinks “into deep sleep under the heaviness of their food.” Meanwhile, his parents recognize that he is suffering and also “suffer” over him. So the King of Kings sends a letter, exhorting him to “arise and become sober out of sleep,” since he had “fallen under the servile yoke.” He is instructed to “call to mind” his garment full of gold and his mission regarding the pearl. Heading back home toward the light, he encounters “a female being” that lifts him up and helps guide him on his return journey. Finally he is reunited with his beloved garment and “perceived in it” his “whole self as well.” From here he enters the royal realm of peace."

The basic explanation was that the Prince represents the soul.  It starts in the heavens, then is encased in bodily form in order to blend in while on its search for the pearl.  The soul then forgets its purpose, forgets that it even had another home.  Once a message from above comes to wake him up he is finally able to complete his mission and return to the fullness.

The interesting part of the talk comes in the discussion of what the pearl means.

"With this, the pearl can be isolated as “part of the divinity lost to darkness” which can only be reached if the prince retrieves it. In this sense both the prince and the pearl are the soul. He goes further in asserting that the “interchangeability of the subject and the object of the mission”(savior and soul/prince and pearl)”is the key to the true meaning of the poem and to Gnostic eschatology.”

Nice.  We are both searching and waiting to be found.  I love the subject/object ambiguity. :)

And then the meaning of the cloak:

"The pinnacle moment to understanding the cloak’s purpose is when the prince states that while they derived from “one and the same,” they were “partially divided: and then again” they “were one with a single form.” When he saw the garment, he saw in it his “whole self.” From this one may suppose that whatever the prince is so is the cloak and could even haphazardly guess that they are both soul. But they can be one form and yet fulfill different functions and even identities."

Awesome.  I just love the multi-faceted explanation.  The intricacies you can get through this sort of complicated myth and symbolism are what really excite me.

Mulholland Drive

Taken from Lost on Mulholland Drive:

Pay particular attention to the beginning of the film: at least two clues are revealed before the credits.

1. Jitterbug contest: Betty wins. Irene and her companion cheer her up.

   • The dance contest had been a stepping stone for Diane to move to Hollywood and pursue an acting career. We hear again of it at Adam's dinner party.

   • Betty is shown bathed in the spotlight as the scene fades into Diane's bedroom. We see images of dancing pairs while Betty, aside from the two old people, is seen without a partner. Irene and her male companion are apparently a manifestation of Diane's good/innocent side.

   • In order of appearance, the credits list Betty well before Diane. This means that the partner-less jitterbugger we see is Betty. This fact is supported by someone shouting "Betty, Betty" off-screen right before the scene fades into Diane's bedroom. Does this mean that Diane is spinning a yarn when she tells us that she won a jitterbug contest? Or was the contest real, but just represented to us differently than how it happened?

   • Though people still jitterbug today, those are clearly supposed to be people from back in the day. Everyone is wearing vintage clothes. At present day nostalgia type sock hop most people would be wearing current clothing and maybe a few would be wearing contemporary versions of typical jitterbug attire. Are we supposed to believe this is all a throwback to the good old 50s or before (the time when Aunt Ruth was young) and not a jitterbug contest that Betty/Diane was at? (Also consult clue #10 F)

   Related: Jitterbug Contest

2. Right before the camera zooms in on the pillow it seems to focus on the area of the floor where the blue box later disappears at Havenhurst.

3. We here a noise that distinctly sounds like cocaine being snorted followed by the sound of someone breathing hard, falling into the pillow.

   • Somebody is falling into a (drug-induced?) sleep - a dream is about to begin.

   • We later see the same green blanket and red pillow when Diane wakes up. It's her dream.

Notice appearances of the red lampshade.

Another clue to the viewer that we have at least two alternate realities.

1. In Diane's dream the red lampshade appears at the end of a phone-call chain, in the middle of Hollywood's Byzantine conspiracy. The call is not being answered. Possible interpretations:

   1. It's a visual clue to us, the viewers, that Betty/Diane is the last in this pyramid scheme of Hollywood behind the scene operators. This is reality poking its head in Diane's dream reminding herself that it was she who arranged the accident, both literally (when she arranged the hitman to kill Camilla), and figuratively (when she created a better version of Camilla in her dream). The phone goes unanswered because Diane is unwilling to acknowledge that she is, indeed, the one and only creator of such machinations; the viewers themselves only make the connection hours later, when we see another shot of Diane's phone. 

   2. The call is meant for Diane Selwyn in the fantasy sequence, but it remains unanswered as her body lies decaying at Sierra Bonita.

   3. They call for real Diane Selwyn. Since the Hollywood underworld controls the movie business, Diane would idealize acceptance in this world. "The girl is still missing" refers to Diane holing up in her apartment for weeks, imagining Hollywood to be clamoring for her.

   4. It's a replay of the call to attend the dinner party, only with Mr Roque as the initiator and Diane avoiding the call. It's her pathological way of dealing with reality. Diane feels that she should never have come. She should never have picked up the phone when Camilla called that night.

   5. Mr Roque's line "The girl is still missing" is referring to Rita. There is a shot of her sleeping under the kitchen table before the phone call sequence starts, establishing that she is the girl who's still missing... from the crash scene. Was she on her way to a liaison with Mr Roque?

Related: Phone call chain

2. When Diane Selwyn wakes up and thinks of Camilla, we learn that the phone by the red lampshade is actually her own home telephone. When she answers it, Camilla invites her to 6980 Mulholland Drive.

3. More red lampshades:

   1. inside the corner shop at Pink's. In connection with the prostitute who looks like a doppelganger of Diane it could symbolize Diane being subjected to prostitution. Is she a call girl living a double life?

   2. another red lamp shade is visible at Havenhurst on first floor above Aunt Ruth's apartment. 

   Related: Red Lamp Shade

There's a blue lamp shade on the table in Mr Roque's room. Blue/Red as a yin/yang symbolism? 

Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?

Another hint that we deal with alternate realities.

1. We hear on the set that Adam Kesher is auditioning for the leading role in the "Sylvia North Story"
   (stagehand saying "The Sylvia North Story, Camilla Rhodes, take one." just about when Blond Camilla walks in). 

2. This movie title is mentioned again by Diane at Adam's dinner party. Wilkins tells that Bob Brooker directed the "Sylvia North Story" and Camilla was great in it.

Judging from the title, "The Sylvia North Story" is presumably a tragic story of a fallen starlet, for which both Diane and Camilla were auditioning. Irony to their tragic ends.

An accident is a terrible event... Notice the location of the accident.

On the way to 6980 Mulholland Drive, at Adam Kesher's house. It is the place where Diane is picked up by Camilla following her hand in hand up through the secret passage. Diane thought maybe Camilla was interested in reconciling with her after all, but did not know about Camilla's surprise announcement for later that night. The party turned out to be a horrible humiliation for Diane, so in her rage and jealousy she orders a hit on Camilla. Later she feels remorse about it. 

In Diane's dream Rita is getting high-jacked on her way to Adam at the same place, but she escapes hit & accident.
Possible interpretations: 

1. The messed up hit both prevents Camilla from reaching her destination (the dinner party?) and allows Diane's guilt to be assuaged as the hit fails. This way Diane wants to undo her terrible crime.

2. If an accident is to be taken figuratively and not literally, then the dream accident of Rita on Mulholland Drive is just a stand-in for Diane's accident - an unexpected and traumatic event (dinner party) where her illusions shattered. 

3. In Diane's dream the hit on Camilla was initiated by the shady consortium of producers who decided to not have her in their movie. They ambush Camilla on her Mulholland Drive ride in the same way as Camilla set Diane up, bringing her to the party.

Watch for the reprised line "What are you doing? We don't stop here!" by Rita and Diane.

Who gives a key, and why?

• Coco: from Aunt Ruth to Betty...to enter the "dreamworld".
• The Hitman (blue key): To confirm the deal is done.

Who gets the key?

• Rita: in her bag with the hit money. Diane wants to transfer her guilt; there is no way Betty would carry it in the dream.

• Diane: on her coffee table. Probably she retrieved it from somewhere else.

Observations: 

Only one key is given in the film. The key that Coco gives to Betty. The hitman doesn't give a key. He *leaves* it for Diane. Moreover Betty doesn't touch Rita's blue key either.

There's a sleight of hand going on here. The viewers are lured to focusing on the blue keys. But neither is ever "given". Betty is given the key to Aunt Ruth's apartment because Aunt Ruth is dead, just as Diane is given another key because Camilla is dead (see clue #10). So if the Coco key is a clue, then Coco's relationship with the two main protagonists needs further examining.

Notice the robe, the ashtray, the coffee cup.

These are chronological narration elements used for time references in the "real time" scenes. 

Robe:

• Ruth's: (precious, purple) at Havenhurst, with the note for (Bitsie) Betty. Betty uses it to cover Rita.
  Rita is wearing it the first day around. »here
  It was almost regal and it was clearly meant for Betty, but only Rita wears it. Betty is never able to put it on. When you look at these clues you begin to see that Diane envied Camilla because she was enjoying the success that Diane had wanted and had been dreaming of since her days in Deep River. 

• Rita's: (distinctively red robe with a black collar) on second day during the rehearsal scene with Betty. »here

• Betty's: (hot pink) at rehearsal. »here

• Diane's: (shabby, white) when Diane remembers the flashbacks in her apartment. It looks like a faded version of her dream robe. »here
  When Diane is wearing the bathrobe we are in 'realtime' (neighbor scene, suicide), when she is wearing hot pans it's a flashback (couch scene, masturbation).

Related: MD Costumes

Piano ashtray:

• When the piano ashtray is there it is a flashback (love scene on couch with Camilla), when it is gone it's the present (neighbor picking up, Diane alone on couch having flashbacks, suicide).

• The piano ashtray is there with Diane and Camilla on the couch. Diane obviously swapped apartments before ordering the hit on Camilla (respectively prior to the dinner party).

Ashtray with cig butts:

• On the table by the red lamp we see an ashtray filled with butts of filter cigarettes. One of them has a mark of red lips stick. Since Diane is not shown to be a smoker, those butts could be from Camilla or her neighbor.

Related: The ashtray

Coffee cup:

• Diane brews herself a coffee in a cup similar to those at Winkie's. This could be a clue
    - to her being employed at a diner (waitress Betty/Diane?) respectively being a kleptomaniac
    - a clue to Diane's dream incorporating personal objects. If so, are we to take the hitman scene at Winkie's likewise as fantasy and not based on a real-life event?

• The cup changes into a glass of Whiskey in the couch scene with Camilla. 

• At the Ryan Board conference Luigi orders a cup espresso.  

• At the pool party Diane sips coffee from a cup that has SOS written on it. This echoes the "help me" cry of Vincenzo Castigliane at the meeting. The cup sports the same colors but different style and pattern as Luigi's espresso cup earlier.

What is felt, realised and gathered at the club Silencio?

• Felt: Love, unreturned love, pain, tears, spasm, loss, fear, compassion.
• Realized: All is an illusion. The Dream wasn't reality. Lies. Hollywood is fake. The dream is over.
• Gathered: Betty gets a Blue Box with a triangular keyhole in her bag.
  

Did talent alone help Camilla?

Which one?

• Blond Camilla Rhodes is pushed by the Castigliane brothers to get the lead in The Sylvia North Story.

   

  Possible interpretation:
  The  conspiracy is Diane's rationalization for why she never became famous in real life. She believes that she's done everything right, played by the rules, yet outside forces have plotted against her, resulting in her failure. Bottom line, Diane refuses to accept responsibility for losing the lead part.

• Raven-haired Camilla

  1. Camilla had an affair with the director. She probably used her sex appeal and was willing to sleep around to get ahead. Note the look Coco is throwing over at Camilla and Adam, when Betty said at the dinner party: "Anyway, Camilla got the part", seemingly knowing of how Camilla used to further her career.

  2. Or did Diane and her money helped too? The assertion here is that the money seen ready to be handed over by Diane to Joe in the Winkie's scene is not a payoff for a contract to kill Camilla, rather it is money paid to Joe to in some way influence the casting of Camilla in a film – starting her off on the road to stardom.

Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind 'Winkies'.

• Dan meets the face of this God-awful feeling. He dies from an heart attack after seeing the "monster".

• Near the end of the film, after the hit on Camilla is settled at Winkie's, we see the monster again. Only it's not a monster anymore. It's a pathetic bum, stripped of everything, sad and disheveled. We see that he is just one more person transformed into something else by Diane's dream. But wait! The homeless man is a monster in her reality too. He is unleashing the miniatured couple of old people who then drive Diane to commit suicide. Though Diane wished she'd never have seen his face outside of her dream, he has been there all along.

• After Diane's death, we see the monster superimposed on top of the smoke. And then we see his face fade out while Betty's/Diane's face fades in. This last appearance of this "man" is especially instructive because with the connection between his face and Diane's face we are being told that this monster is yet another persona of Diane. 
  And so we realize that it is not a "man" at all. He is a she.

Where is Aunt Ruth?

• In Diane's dream Aunt Ruth is redeemed and shots a film in Canada. She is letting Diane stay in her apartment.

• In reality, as we learn from Diane at the dinner pool party, Aunt Ruth is dead, but left her an inheritance. Clue? There's a  black hat popping up in Aunt Ruth's bedroom, resting on the bureau in the scene where Rita gets undressed. Does is belong to a funeral outfit? Note: There is an old joke in movie business, "acting in Canada" is "being dead".

• Ruth shows off in the Havenhurst apartment right at the end of the dream, after Rita vanishes. She is dressed the same way as she left in the beginning. Possible interpretations: 

  1. It's Aunt Ruth's ghost, somehow interacting with Diane's fantasy in the same way that Louise Bonner and Dan at Winkie's could.

  2. In her lucid dream state Diane tries to rewind the dream. It has broken down with the disappearance of Betty and Rita. But her mind apparently doesn't want to let go of the fantasy. Its almost like she's picked up the story from the point of aunt Ruth coming back to her apartment for something at the beginning of the film. The message we are being given is that Diane is not looking forward to going back to her real life.

  3. Diane dreams of her aunt coming home from Canada to find her (Betty) disappeared. Just as in the beginning when Ruth and Betty missed another at Havenhurst, it symbolizes Diane's yearning for her beloved Aunt that can never be resolved because Ruth died before Diane arrived in L.A.

  4. Ruth comes into the room to separate dream from reality. It substantiates for us that there is no blue box on the floor, or in other word that is was a dream, or that the dream is ending. So, her presence is sort inaugurating reality, even if we are still in the dream. Further, if this scene reflects actual reality, then, can we even consider this woman to be Diane's aunt? Aren't we let to believe this apartment is rather owned by somebody else and merely served as a canvas for Diane's dream? It was all... an illusion.

  5. That final scene is a flashback to the time Aunt Ruth was still living. She is hearing a ghostly disturbance of her own.

  6. The movie is actually placed in the 50s. Betty/Diane is Aunt Ruth in her young years. It's her story. Thus about when Rita opens the blue box Betty disappears. She rematerializes as Aunt Ruth an instant later as to indicate that her dream is over. »more

• The last of David Lynch's clues asks "Where is Aunt Ruth?" and the last scene of the movie presents us with the Blue Haired Woman. Is she Aunt Ruth in her afterlife? »more

Mulholland Drive

First off, let me say that virtually none of this was discovered on my own.  I greatly admire those of you who put in the time and the thought to figure it all out on your own, because as soon as I turned off the TV I went straight to the computer to research. :)

"Like so many others, I thought the movie Mulholland Drive was an inspired work. The power of it does not just emanate from its eerie and mysterious atmosphere, its taste for conspiracy and intrigue, and its poignant love story which ends tragically in betrayal, murder and suicide. The force of the movie comes across in the way most scenes are able to communicate on many different levels at the same time. This, in effect, challenges you to tease apart the significance of the multiple layers if you are to really understand the message at the subtext of the story. And just as the metaphorical structure at the subtext of the story is difficult to grasp, the context of the story at the surface level is also a complicated and puzzling challenge. As in other works by Lynch, there are serious plot twists and shuffled timelines that force the viewer to do some work to decide what the chronological sequence of events in the story really was. But this movie doesn't stop there. Even with a reasonable chronological story line, the logic of the events is still very illusive. The true genius of Mulholland Drive is in the way that it employs an intricate language of symbolism and metaphor that would give even a complex novel a run for its money."

The most popular theory is this:

"Diane Selwyn is a struggling actress in Hollywood. She moved to L.A. from Deep River, Ontario after winning a Jitterbug competition that inspired her to become an actress.

We descend into the pillow at the start of the film from Diane Selwyn's point-of-view. From now, until the moment we see her wake from the bed, Diane is dreaming. She dreams that she is Betty, a fresh-faced actress arriving in Hollywood. She dreams that Rita stumbles into her apartment after an accident, having lost her memory. She dreams that she wows the various assembled showbiz people at her audition. The dream climaxes with the haunting Club Silencio, the disappearance of Betty, and the opening of the blue cube back at Havenhurst. 

A knocking on the door awakes Diane from her bed, and she raises herself from her slumber to answer the door. The scenes that follow are intended to illustrate the breakdown of a relationship between Diane and Camilla and subsequent mental collapse of Diane. Tricky thing is that Lynch presents them to us in a non-linear style.

It's up to you to decide the chronological order of these scenes (help here), but the crux of this interpretation is that it is inferred that Diane hires a hitman to kill Camilla. So from this point of view, the flashbacks can be seen as Diane's attempt to justify the murder in her mind, and the dream as an attempt to re-live and re-imagine Diane's life since her arrival in L.A."

That said, here are some other common theories (out of 27 that exist!), divided up into a few different categories.

Dream/Reality

Camila is not dead.
Diane was sexually abused.
Diane didn't kill herself.
Diane was murdered.
Diane had an abortion.
Schizophrenia.
Drug trips.

All Dream

A dream within a dream.

All Real

The dream was a movie.

Metaphysical

Afterlife Theory
Mobius Strip
Parallel Universes
Deal with the Devil.

And that's just some of them.  Find more here.

And if you're really willing to put in the time, here's a very well written (and quite long) essay from Alan Shaw.

Stay tuned for a common explanation of Lynch's ten clues!

Here we go! First up, this month's movie is Mulholland Drive by David Lynch:

Mulholland Drive

From wikipedia:

Mulholland Dr. is a 2001 Academy Award-nominated psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch. It stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux.

The plot is structured around an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts), who befriends an amnesiac (Harring) whom she finds hiding in her aunt's apartment when she arrives in Los Angeles, California. The film includes several other seemingly unrelated vignettes, which eventually connect in various ways, as well as other surreal scenes and images which are all involved in the cryptic narrative.

Strongly acclaimed by many critics, but only a moderate box-office success, the film has achieved the status of a cult classic.

David Lynch:

Lynch has received three Academy Award for Best Director nominations for The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001). He has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. Lynch is probably best known for Blue Velvet and for being the creative force behind the successful Twin Peaks television series. In 1992, Lynch was named "the Most Influential Filmmaker" by Time Magazine. Producer Stuart Cornfeld once called Lynch "Jimmy Stewart from Mars", due to his peculiar style and focus on the American psyche. Over a lengthy career, Lynch has employed an unorthodox approach to narrative that has become instantly recognizable to audiences and critics worldwide. Lynch's films are known for surreal, nightmarish and dreamlike images and meticulously crafted sound design.

*****

And for our book, we'll read both Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard (since they're both relatively short and build upon each other).  You can buy them separately, or you can buy the Annie Dillard Reader (pictured below).

Annie Dillard Reader, An

Annie Dillard

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