NEMANJA: SMIRENOUMLJE

BEHIND THE VELVET CURTAIN

THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM



Ne bih volio da imam pravo: zapravo, volio bih da sam u krivu, ali rijetko se kada u stvarima politike varam ma koliko one po definiciji spadale u ono što može biti i drukčije.
Volio bih da sam u krivu, jednostavno zato jer mi Zoran Milanović - priznajem to otvoreno - kao političar imponira.
Nije sada važno zašto mi Milanović imponira, jer ionako je najvjerojatnije sasvim svejedno: mislim, naime, da je Milanović napravio katastrofalnu grešku, grešku karijere.
Ali, ako je tako, ako mi je zaista na neki način do te karijere stalo, zašto s Milanovićem ne porazgovaram nasamo i ukažem mu na ono što ga ugrožava?
Najkraće rečeno, zato jer tu grešku nisam uočio prvi, a na onoga koji jest nemam nikakvoga utjecaja!
Dapače, ono što je meni kazano, ionako je res publica, javna a ne naša stvar, cosa nostra. Stvar koju mogu tek komentirati, ni manje ni više.

Ili, možda ipak nešto mogu učiniti: možda upravo javnim komentarom mogu ublažiti neželjene posljedice.
Bilo kako bilo, o ovome je riječ:

Zoran Milanović očit je izbor Ninoslava Pavića.
Novi "Globus", primjerice, donosi wanabee self fulfilling prophecy:

ROĐENJE NOVOGA VOĐE SDP-a: Samo je mladi Zoran Milanović spreman za izborni ultimate fight s Minotaurom iz Dugobaba.

Na stranu sada ovaj perifrastičan stručak cvijeća za Ivu Sanadera, kojemu se čovjek nikada ne može dovoljno zahvaliti za oslobođenje Dalmacije i relativno malu cijenu koju smo za to platili, ali ono što ovdje prije i nakon svega smeta, nevjerojatna je uporna i usamljena volja Europapress holdinga* da nametne svoga izabranika na čelo SDP-a: EPH toliko intenzivno nastoji oko instaliranje novog vođe socijaldemokrata, da je to već neugodno i članovima stranke i kandidatima za to mjesto i malobrojnoj publici, pa i novinarima koji te tekstove moraju (pot)pisati!
O legitimnosti ovakvog novinarstva ne treba trošiti riječi, jer zaista je degutantno do koje se mjere Ninoslav Pavić trudi sabotirati demokratske procese ovo zemlje: još se nije pravo zaboravio skandal Pavićeva harangiranja po diplomatskom koru protiv drugog predsjedničkog mandata Stjepana Mesića, a Nekretnino je odlučio na čelo moderne, neoliberane socijaldemokratske partije dovesti svoga čovjeka, ma tko on bio!
Zoranu je dakle dobro krenulo: taman ga je Ninoslav počeo u svim svojim izdanjima oglašavati kao već izabranog, novorođenoga Vođu Partije - dok je Hudelist opisivao Račana u potrazi za Higgsovim bozonom - kadli je stranački vrh SDP-a, što u ovom trenutku znači tout Zagreb, primio neveselu vijest o Milanovićevim vizitacijama Vampire State Buildingu: Ninoslav se Pavić jako naljutio na Milanovića, koji je osobno morao potegnuti do Koranske, na noge Voldemortu, i u proskinezi objašnjavati da nema ništa s - Turekom!

I mada "Jučerašnji list" tvrdi da i Stjepan Mesić misli kako je Zoran Milanović logičan, solidan i, na kraju krajeva, Račanov izbor, jasno je k'o sunčan majski dan da Stjepan Mesić ne prašta ovakve zajebancije: koliko ja znam Stjepana Mesića, on svaki dan po povratku kući može izlemati Tureka, ali ako samo i pomislite da sami nešto dobacite na Franjin račun, brzo ćete zavezati; jasno, ovaj primjer valja shvatiti krajnje, vjerujte krajnje općenito.
Hoću kazati: Ninoslav se Pavić iz samo njemu poznatih razloga s vremena na vrijeme uživi u ulogu predsjednika Regije ignorirajući činjenicu da bi to samo jedan čovjek, da to doista poželi, uistinu mogao postati, barem s ove strane Drine. Možda Mesić tu i tamo odglumi loše odnose s Pavićem, možda tu i tamo odglumi i zatopljenje odnosa, ali behind the velvet curtain stvari su neobično jasne: kad god se dečkima iz Krajačićevog intelektualnog kružoka digne kurac (Kuljiš dixit: ispričavam se čitateljstvu, ali ovako govorim zbog vjernosti političkom dokumentarističkom idiomu), Ninočka, kako to oni vele, biva "neutraliziran". I tu nema pomoći: tu nemre pomoći ni Todorić.

U svakom slučaju, Zoran Milanović, očito još uvijek ne sasvim svjestan konteksta u kojem živi i radi - zapravo, to me i iznenađuje i razočarava, priznajem - kao kandidat za predsjednika SDP-a odlazi Ninoslavu Paviću pravdati se zbog navodne bliskosti s (Mesićevim) Turekom! Ostavljam vama da sami izbrojite koliko je to grešaka u jednoj jedinoj rečenici i posjeti.

Meni ta vizita nije neprihvatljiva samo zato jer za šefa SDP-a ne želim osobu kojoj je Ninoslav Pavić nadređen, osobu koja vlasniku EPH polaže računa o bilo čemu.
Meni ta vizita nije neprihvatljiva niti zato jer pokazuje da Milanović zapravo na razumije stvarne odnose u hrvatskoj politici, logiku povijesnih zbivanja u ovoj zemlji, istinske protagoniste tih događaja i njihove realne relacije.
Meni je ta vizita neprihvatljiva ponajprije zato jer pokazuje da Zoran Milanović ne shvaća zašto bi trebao biti predsjednik SDP-a i što bi kao predsjednik SDP-a prvo trebao učiniti: trebao bi naime onemogućiti samog sebe, tj. onu društvenu situaciju u kojoj medijski monopol izigrava bazične demokratske procese zemlje: bilo bi zanimljivo od Milanovića čuti misli li on da njegova posjeta Ninoslavu Paviću ima ikakve veze sa stranačkom demokracijom i njenom procedurom?
Ili se i Zoran Milanović, kao nekoć Ivica Račan, doskora kani sastajati s Ninoslavom Pavićem po Mokricama, dogovarajući ono isto što je u terminu prije već dogovorio Ivo Sanader?

Ne znam što bi sad Zoran Milanović trebao učiniti.
Što se mene tiče, nadam se samo da neće nastaviti grješiti i otići Paviću i pitati: A kaj sad?
Ali, nije problem ni u prvom ni u trećem prigovoru ovom već gadljivom običaju ovdašnjih socijaldemokrata da se muvaju oko EPH kao oko Kubrickovog monolita.
Pravi problem nije u tome naime što o tome mislimo javnost ili ja: problemi nastaju s drugim prigovorom - Milanović je, po svemu sudeći, napravio katastrofalnu grešku u izboru crkve u kojoj će se molit'.
Bog te crkve, starozavjetni je, ljubomoran bog.
Zar ne vidite što je snašlo Jonu Granića?
Zar ste slijepi za patnje Ester Kosor?
I, koliko god to bilo neshvatljivo, taj bog nije samovoljan. Ima tu neke nadosobne logike, koja Milanoviću sasvim izmiče.

Jer, Milanović, ovaj posjet to bjelodano pokazuje, uopće ne razumije tko već 17 godina vlada ovom zemljom.
A htio bi biti jedan od tih!

Možda još ništa nije izgubljeno. Možda i ovaj tekst posluži Milanoviću kao poticaj za razmišljanje.
Konačno, to je njegova najveća prednost: još je relativno mlad.

Iako se ta prednost svakim danom sve više topi i nestaje.



________________

* Holding, to će kazati: tvrtka čija je osnovna svrha zadržati informaciju, a ne objaviti je. Uostalom, to je ono što Pavić najbolje zna raditi, to je i radio u socijalističkom novinarskom predživotu, što drugo?

HIGGSOV BOZON ili Combien de royaumes nous ignorent!

EPH SE OPROSTIO OD IVICE RAČANA

«Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie»
Pascal, Pensées, 206.



Bila je točno 45-ta minuta 1. ožujka ove godine kad sam na Patologiji, ničim izazvan, pejstao tekst o Higgsovom bozonu. Ne znam zašto sam to učinio: bit će da me je ponukao tekst u "Jučernjem listu" (Jutarnji+Večernji, kad je već ionako riječ o istoj firmi) kao i potraga za Higgsovim bozonom koju sam promptno poduzeo... ali, zašto sam objašnjenje objavio u komentaru Patologije, pojma nemam. Pogleda li se sam post, kratko 'Nagradno pitanje' o unutarnjoj strani šake (kao i okolni preostali komentari), zaista je nejasno što me je zapravo navelo na tako neshvatljiv čin. Sve u svemu, kao što čestica naizgled ex nihilo poprima masu, tako se niotkuda i nizašto pojavio i ovaj tekst:

"Higgsov bozon je trenutno jedan od najvećih izazova u fizici uopće. Kako se nalazimo na pragu otkrića, upoznat ćemo vas pobliže sa tom famoznom česticom: Higgsov bozon je hipotetska čestica koja, ako postoji, daje mehanizam po kojem čestice stječu masu.
Materija je izrađena od molekula; molekule od atoma; atomi od oblaka elektrona veličine sto milijunitog dijela centrimetra i jezgre veličine sto tisućitog dijela oblaka. Jezgra je građena od protona i neutrona. Svaki proton (i neutron) ima oko dvije tisuće puta veću masu nego elektron. Znamo mnogo o tome zašto je jezgra tako mala. Ono što ne znamo je kako čestice stječu masu, Zašto su mase takve kakve jesu. Zašto su omjeri masa upravo takvi. Ne možemo tvrditi da razumijemo konstituente materije ako ne možemo dati zadovoljavajući odgovor na ovo pitanje. Što određuje veličine objekata koje vidimo oko nas ili čak i našu vlastitu veličinu? Odgovor je u veličini molekula i prema tome i atoma koji tvore molekule. Ali što određuje veličinu samih atoma. Kvantna teorija i atomska fizika nam daje odgovor. Veličina atoma je određena stazama elektronskog kruženja oko jezgre. Veličina tih orbita je, pak, određena masom elektrona. Da su elektroni manje mase, orbite (a prema tome i sami atomi) bi bile manje te bi kao posljedica toga sve bilo manje. Zato je razumijevanje mase elektrona ključno za razumijevanje veličine svega oko nas. Moglo bi biti teško shvatiti porijeklo jedne veličine – a ta veličina je masa elektrona. Srećom, priroda nam je dala više od jedne elementarne čestice i te čestice dolaze sa širokom raznolikosti masa. Najlakša čestica je elektron, a najteža je, vjerujemo, čestica po imenu t kvark, koji je barem 200 000 puta teži od elektrona. Sa ovom raznolikošću čestičnih masa, možemo imati trag za individualne mase čestica. Nažalost, ako pokušate napisati teoriju čestica i njihovih interakcija, tada najjednostavnija verzija zahtjeva da su sve mase jednake nuli. Dakle, s jedne strane imamo različite mase čestica, a s druge strane teoriju po kojoj bi sve mase trebale biti nula. Takva zagonetka daje uzbudljivost i izazovnost znanosti. Postoji jedno pametno i vrlo elegantno rješenje problema, rješenje koje je prvi predstavio Peter Higgs. On je predložio da je cijeli prostor ispunjen poljem, sličnom na neki način elektromagnetskom polju. Kako čestica putuje kroz polje, interagira s njim i stječe ono što se doima kao masa. Ovo je slično viskoznim silama koje osjete čestice dok putuju kroz gustu tekućinu. Što je veća interakcija čestice s polje, veća nam se čini njena masa. Zato je postojanje ovog polja ključno u Higgsovoj hipotezi za produkciju mase čestica. Higgsov bozon je neotkrivena elementarna čestica, za koju se smatra da bi bila vitalan dio za upotpunjenje slagalice u fizici čestica. Kao i sve čestice, ima valna svojstva srodna onima koja nastaju mreškanjem površine vode u jezeru koje je uznemireno. U kvantnom jeziku analog površini vode koja prenosi valove je polje. Svaki tip čestica ima svoje odgovarajuće polje. Zamislite koktel-zabavu političke stranke na kojoj su uzvanici uniformno raspodjeljeni po prostoriji, svi razgovaraju sa najbližim susjedom. Ministar ulazi i prolazi kroz prostoriju. Svi uzvanici u njegovoj okolini su jako privučeni njemu i nakupljaju se oko njega. Kako se kreće, privlači ljude u čiju blizinu dolazi, dok oni koje ostavi se vraćaju u svoje položaje. Zbog skupine ljudi koji su stalno oko njega, on efektivno dobiva veću masu od normalne, tj. ima veću količinu gibanja za istu brzinu dok se giba po prostoriji. Dok se kreće, teško se zaustavlja i kad se zaustavi, teško se ponovo pokreće."

Moram priznati da sam na Higgsov bozon, kao i na tekst o njemu, u međuvremenu sasvim zaboravio. Pokušavajući se danas sjetiti otkud mi ta čestica, na pamet mi je padao jedino Stephen W. Hawking i "Svemir u orahovoj ljusci". Naravno, ne sasvim krivo, mada to što čovjeku stalno nešto pada na pamet nimalo ne znači da bilo što misli. Tako i ja nisam ni pomislio da bih ga temeljito zaboravio - što je jedan od moda pamćenja, zar ne? - da me na bozon nije podsjetio sljedeći tekst:

"Račan se u posljednje vrijeme zanimao za teme o postanku ljudskog života, ali odgovore je tražio kroz fiziku. Tako je, prema svjedočenju novinara Darka Hudelista, bio do detalja upućen u znanstvenu potragu za “Božjom česticom” u laboratoriju CERN kod Ženeve."

Nisam mogao vjerovati da su novinari "Jučerašnjeg lista" posve sišli s uma: jer, ako je Hudelist u "Globusu" već učinio što se od Hudelista očekuje da će učiniti, naime da i u trenutku Račanove smrti zanemari pokojnika na račun vlastite podrugljive grimase s kojom nevelik prolazi ispod zvijezda, savim mi je nestvarno izgledao ovaj prigodni metafizički falsifikat koji za svjedoka zaziva upravo Darka Hudelista; jer, Hudelist, naime, svjedoči ovako:

"Dakle, sada mogu odgovoriti i na pitanje zašto je onaj naš razgovor na jesen 2006. on počeo pričom o Higgsovu bozonu, a potom ga nastavio storijom o vikendici pokraj Kupe - te smo samo posljednjih nekoliko minuta posvetili temi zbog koje smo se zapravo i sastali. Odgovor na to pitanje ujedno je i odgovor na pitanje tko je i što je, i kakav je Ivica Račan i kao političar i kao osoba. Ali odgovorit ću na njega najprije zaobilazno. Pretpostavimo da je situacija bila ovakva: iz nekih sam izvora doznao (tj. mi smo doznali, u Globusu) da se on, Ivica Račan, iako političar, strastveno zanima za fiziku, a da ga osobito zanimaju nuklearna istraživanja u CERN-u, tj. potraga vrhunskih europskih znanstvenika za Božjom česticom, pa mu predlažem da o tome ukratko popričamo za naš tjednik, kako bi i šira hrvatska javnost doznala što on o tome misli. Pa da se pročuje i o toj, dosad nepoznatoj, dimenziji njegove ličnosti.
Ili: u Globusu radimo anketu među vodećim hrvatskim političarima o tome što misle o postanku svijeta i kako, u tom kontekstu, gledaju na aktualna CERN-ova istraživanja u Ženevi, koja bi trebala odgonetnuti kako je ni iz čega moglo nastati nešto.
Ne znam kako bi me u tom slučaju Račan dočekao u svom kabinetu, ali sam uvjeren kako me ne bi dočekao: taj naš pretpostavljeni razgovor sigurno ne bi počeo s pričom o Higgsovu bozonu, nego bi tu temu, eventualno, ostavio za sam kraj, kao nešto nevažno, tek usput nabačeno, i to samo ako bih na tome čvrsto i uporno inzistirao. Tko zna, možda bi baš u tom slučaju našu konverzaciju odmah na početku striktno usmjerio na otkrivanje SDP-ovih "jurišnika" zaduženih za pojedine izborne jedinice u predizbornoj kampanji koja slijedi - iako k njemu nisam došao da razgovaramo o izborima i kampanji, nego o fizici i Higgsovu bozonu.
Ono glavno bacio bi na marginu, kao nešto sporedno i beznačajno, a istaknuo bi upravo ono sporedno, što nije tema koja je, službeno, na dnevnom redu.
Jer, to je i takav je on, Ivica Račan. Nažalost, odgovor na pitanje što sam ga maločas bio postavio vrlo je banalan, gotovo neizrecivo banalan, da banalniji ne može biti: Račan je prethodne večeri ili noći (od nedjelje na ponedjeljak) naprosto čitao neku knjigu u kojoj se spominje švicarski istraživački institut CERN (npr. "Anđele i demone" Dana Browna, o kojima se tih dana dosta govorilo i pisalo u našim medijima) ili je, na TV-u ili videu, gledao film o toj temi - ili se, što je u ovome slučaju najvjerojatnije, toga vikenda čuo ili vidio s tim svojim znancem, našim čovjekom, koji je angažiran u istraživačkome projektu o kojem je riječ - pa kako je time bio obuzet i kako mu se u biti baš previše i ne radi ono što spada u uži djelokrug njegova zanimanja, a to je profesionalno i odgovorno bavljenje politikom, nije odolio a da sa mnom ne popriča o onome što s njegovim poslom i njegovim profesionalnim obvezama nema ama baš nikakve veze.
Nije taj naš razgovor, u biti, uopće bio iznimka - kad je o njemu, Račanu riječ. Tako je on funkcionirao i kao premijer, u doba kad je koalicija bila na vlasti. Gledao bi filmove, čitao krimiće ili surfao internetom (ovo posljednje, vjerojatno, najmanje) do kasnih noćnih, odnosno ranih jutarnjih sati, onda bi zaspao, na posao bi došao nepripremljen, svojim najbližim suradnicima prepričavao bi tu knjigu ili taj film koji je prethodne noći gledao ili čitao - a državu bi za to vrijeme vodio Goran Granić. Radni stol u Račanovu kabinetu bio bi pritom sav u neredu, s naokolo razbacanim papirima, fasciklima i novinama. Ništa neobično - on drukčije nije ni mogao funkcionirati, upravo se u tom neredu najbolje snalazio. Jer je po formaciji bio čovjek beskrajne, gotovo nemoguće neurednosti i nesistematičnosti. A u svojoj je dubini, držim, bio u stanovitom smislu podvojena ličnost - frustrirana, neizgrađena dokraja, nedovršena i nesigurna u sebe."



I tako se EPH oprostio od Ivice Račana.

IN MEMORIAM

IVICA RAČAN, 24. veljače 1943. - 29. travnja 2007.



O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won...



Hvala!

R.

ULTIMATE PERVERT ART

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA

ZA DERZU FANISTORI

The art of cinema consists in arousing desire, to play with desire, but at the same time keeping it at a safe distance. Domesticating it. Rendering it palpable…
The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire? There is nothing spontaneous, nothing natural about human desire. Our desires are artificial. We have to be taught to desire.
Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire. It tells you how to desire.

Slavoj Žižek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, 2007

Ineffability*

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



To say that something is "ineffable" means that it cannot or should not, for overwhelming reasons, be expressed in spoken words (as with the concept of true love). It is generally used to describe a feeling, concept or aspect of existence that is too great to be adequately described in words, or that inherently (due to its nature) cannot be conveyed in dualistic symbolic human language, but can only be known internally by individuals.
In Zen it is often said that (by analogy) the finger can point to the moon but is not the moon; likewise words and actions can point towards what is ineffable but cannot make another know it.
Quotations
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." — Ludwig Wittgenstein
"What can't be said, can't be said. And it can't be whistled, either." — F. P. Ramsey
"If a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." — Tom Lehrer
"What cannot be spoken in words, but that whereby words are spoken." — Kenopanishad
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." — Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Things said to be ineffable
N.B. This list may include things whose ineffability is controversial.
Things said to be essentially incommunicable
• The nature of qualia (sensory experiences), such as colors or flavors
• The nature of spiritual experiences, e.g. Sřren Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham in Fear and Trembling, Problemata III, and in particular the mystic's realization of nonduality.
• The human soul (see also sentience and the Hard problem of consciousness)
• The musical experience, following Theodor Adorno, Vladimir Jankélévitch, among others.
• The psychedelic experience is largely considered ineffable to psychologists, philosophers and psychonauts alike.
• The composure of Jeeves, described by P G Wodehouse as "that subtle master of prudence, good taste, and ineffable composure" (in 'Carry on, Jeeves).
Things said to be incommunicable due to incomprehensibility
• The pre-big bang universe (as it was "nothing" to a much greater degree than a human being could understand)
• A universe which has five or more dimensions (our universe being four dimensional, three spatial and one temporal).
Things said to be too great to be uttered
• The Tetragrammaton, or Yahweh (by orthodox Jewish tradition)
• The "Will of Bob" in Mostly Harmless, part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Things said to be too disastrous to be uttered
• In C.S. Lewis' novel The Magician's Nephew, there is a word, referred to as the deplorable word, which ends all life on the planet on which it is spoken.
Things said to be unutterable because of fear
N.B. These may only be alleged to be unutterable in order to impress others, but not truly ineffable.
• In the Harry Potter Universe, Lord Voldemort's name is not uttered by almost all witches and wizards, because they fear him.
• The god Yawgmoth of Phyrexia, part of the multiverse of Magic: The Gathering.


__________________________

* Ovaj post ima dvije svrhe: istaknuti ono neiskazivo, jer prečesto se ovdje spominjemo 7. teze Tractatusa a da se za to ne bi iznašao nekakav tehnički termin, dok s druge strane kratkoća posta omogućuje pradah: eto, Hero, ne moraš dugo skrolati do komentara!

A MULTI-LAYERED ANALYSIS OF MULHOLLAND DRIVE



OVERVIEW

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.

Because of how thick and richly textured this movie is, most reviews of it focus on explaining the plot twists and how the characters are interwoven with one another so that they can make sense of the basic story line. And by doing this, the reviews often de-emphasize the need to understand how to decipher the symbols and metaphors that are major driving forces in the movie. However, that approach can be problematic because without a method for interpreting the symbolism, the basic story line is easy to misread. For instance, two of the major symbols in the movie are the blue key and the blue box. But you cannot totally understand these symbols without understanding why they are blue since symbolic colors are a major device running through the entire movie. Even blonde, brunette and redhead hair colors have special significance. And there are scores of other symbols as well. Names, references to other films, artwork, plot devices, special props, ordinary items like telephones, and certain articles of clothing among other things are also important to deciphering the context and the subtext.

With that said, I think there are many different depths to which you can go in an analysis of this film. In my attempt to be as thorough as possible, I have written an analysis that digs very deep, and in doing so, I have probably gone into more detail than most viewers of the movie would care to attempt. So, like Lynch, I have decided to provide a multi-layered work for those who are interested in better understanding the film. In this review, I will begin by presenting a surface level contextual interpretation of Mulholland Drive which I believe is very approachable for the casual viewer. In it, I will make very little mention of Lynch's abstract symbolism and his extensive referencing of other works, and I will not dig into the philosophical subtext of the film. Next, in a more detailed way, I will describe my method of reasoning through the meaning of the symbols in this movie after I describe what I believe is some of the background and motivation for this work. In my view, looking at the background and motivation give important clues concerning how to unlock the symbolism, and this will require that I touch on some relevant historical details. After doing this, I will present what I believe to be the chronological life story of the protagonist, which is obscured and hidden in the complex narration. I will then go over the scenes in the order that they are presented in the movie with a fuller explanation of how I interpret whatever symbolism I believe is involved. And then, after all that, I will address David Lynch's "10 clues to unlocking this thriller." Finally, my conclusion will attempt to pull together a coherent interpretation of the heart and soul of this masterpiece, explaining why I believe the film can move a viewer so powerfully even if that viewer does not fully understand the logic of the core narrative.

AN INTERPRETATION OF THE BASIC NARRATIVE

Mulholland Drive is a story about a woman named Diane Selwyn who is experiencing an extreme mental and emotional breakdown. For reasons that become progressively clearer, her life has reached a point of desperate crisis that has driven her into a suicidal depression. The most apparent cause of her deteriorating condition is guilt over a horrible incident she recently set in motion. Diane is a Hollywood wannabe who fell in love with another aspiring starlet. However, after the two of them become involved with one another, at some point Diane is jilted and humiliated by this woman, and so she hires a hit man to murder her estranged lover. Once the deed is done, Diane descends into a downward spiral of guilt and despair. The first three-quarters of the movie explore a dream that Diane has soon after she has learned about the death of her lover. The last quarter of the movie occurs after Diane wakes up and then explores her memories of the weeks and days leading up to the killing in the form of flashbacks. Diane's flashbacks reveal to us actual events that occurred in her life, while the fantasy story line takes characters from her real life, gives them new identities in most cases, and weaves them into a fanciful and passionate conceptualization of her internal conflict. Because of the fact that the fantasy occurs before the reality segment, the two may seem distinct, but you need to see the end to understand the beginning. And yet, in many ways, the fantasy explains the reality as well. As we see the fantasy and reality story lines played out, we come to realize that there are many complex issues involved that are quite mysterious and that are profoundly important to understanding the forces that shaped Diane's tragic life.

In Diane's mind there are so many conflicting emotional crosscurrents that she is having trouble sorting everything out. Indeed, if we were to look into her mind and give these different crosscurrents personalities of their own, it would be like entering a society full of strange and enigmatic characters battling over what to do with Diane Selwyn's life. And in fact, that is what we do by entering the fantasy world that Diane dreams up after falling asleep in the beginning of the movie. We enter her mind at a point during which various characters--or more precisely various personas--in her mind are trying to kill off one of the major personas who is patterned after a woman whom Diane loved in the real world. This woman has played a central role in Diane's life, and the woman's persona in Diane's mind is now seen as the source of all of Diane's problems by some of Diane's other personas. To some of these personas, Diane's life is like a movie production, because in the real world becoming a movie star in Hollywood is very important to Diane. The persona that the others hate represents a woman that Diane had loved so deeply that her persona had been the star of this production for some time now, and the personas that attempt to assassinate her are interested in replacing her with someone else. We enter Diane's fantasy world at a point right before the assassination attempt, when the hated persona is traveling up Mulholland Drive, the fabled road that leads up a hill where important personalities in the movie business live. The hill is almost like Mount Olympus to Diane, because the people who live on that hill are like gods in the movie business, and now the hated persona is heading up there to try to become one of them.

This is where the fantasy begins, and from there the plot thickens. The assassination attempt fails because of a car accident, but the hated persona is driven down the hill, injured and unable to remember anything. The other personas are now able to go on with their movie making without her, and as they begin to fight over who to re-cast as the next lead, some nefarious personas are still out looking for the hated one to try and finish the job. And a couple of other personas are curiously drawn to a place called Winkie's where there is some kind of monster living in the alley behind the store. We do not learn about the nature of this beast and why it is behind Winkie's until near the end of the movie.

As the fantasy gets underway, it turns out that the personas in Diane's mind are about to have a visitor. Right before the real Diane Selwyn fell asleep, she was struck by an important memory that is now inserting itself into her troubled fantasy land. Her memory had to do with her younger years when she was the winner of a Jitterbug contest in Deep River, Ontario. At that time in her life, she had an innocent and somewhat naďve personality that is all but gone now in her current disturbed mindset. However, somewhere deep inside Diane's mind there is the desire to bring back this innocent persona, because it is seen as the key to survival for the suicidal Diane. In the real world, Diane has bought a gun and placed it in a drawer next to her bed, and she is considering using it on herself if she does not find a reason to live again. In contrast, the innocent persona of her past was enthusiastic about life because she was filled with a passionate dream about becoming a Hollywood movie star. And perhaps even more importantly to the current day Diane who feels bitter and unloved, this innocent persona of the past who was so full of hope, also felt deeply loved by Diane's dear departed aunt. Therefore, in a last ditch effort to resolve her distress, Diane inserts the innocent persona who feels hopeful and loved, into the mess of a world that her mind has become. But will this innocence be able to survive as it comes into contact with all of the other forces at work within Diane's mind? This is a difficult question for a viewer to ask, because it is not necessarily clear to the viewer that Diane's innocent persona is even in danger until the fantasy is just about over. This is because some of the forces that threaten to destroy that innocence cannot be completely understood until the end of the movie. But the fantasy itself plays out the question for us anyway, showing us what the result ultimately is of bringing the innocence of the past into contact with the jaded world of the present.

The innocent persona of Diane is given the name Betty for reasons that again do not get explained until the end of the movie. It is important to note that the first thing that Betty does when she arrives in the airport, which is her doorway into this fantasy world, is separate herself from two individuals who show up with her. I believe these individuals represent her grandparents who were there with her when she won the important Jitterbug contest of the past, but she acts like she does not know them very well in this fantasy. Although they say many nice things, they seem to show a sinister side to themselves as they leave the airport laughing maniacally. Like the monster behind Winkie's, we don't see them again until the end of the movie.

The next thing Betty does is head straight to the former home of her aunt, which is the place where she felt so deeply loved as a child. It is from there that she wishes to make her mark on the world, and in this case, the world of the current day Diane Selwyn's mind. However, when she gets there she discovers the fugitive persona that other personas have just attempted to kill. This is an unexpected turn of events for her, but it intrigues her. She does not know who this persona is, but she believes the persona has some connection to her beloved aunt, so Betty immediately begins to trust her. It turns out that the persona did see Betty's dear departed aunt as the aunt was leaving on a trip to the north, and by complimenting the aunt's red hair, the persona makes a good impression on Betty. This is a very significant point. There are many clues that later hint at the fact that the aunt’s red hair made a strong impression on Diane as a child. And as we shall see, the fugitive uses an association with the red hair to become associated with the aunt. Betty loved her aunt deeply, and in this dream the fugitive persona has been allowed to enter the aunt’s home, which is like a sanctuary of love in Diane’s mind. Allowing the fugitive into that sanctuary is a way of telling us early on that Diane’s innocent Betty persona is connecting her love of her aunt with her feelings for the fugitive.

However, the fugitive persona actually has no relationship with the aunt. In fact, the persona’s fake association with the aunt is somewhat parallel to the type of fake association that the fugitive makes by taking the name of the glamorous Rita Hayworth. The fugitive pretends to be Rita Hayworth, and Rita Hayworth was a Hispanic starlet who pretended to be a red head. The famous Rita Hayworth dyed her naturally black hair red to create a more glamorous image for herself. I believe that both the fugitive's and Rita Hayworth's pretense of a connection to the red hair is related to the fake image-making Hollywood enterprise that ultimately dupes Diane and her innocent Betty persona. But eventually Betty does find out that this Rita persona is not who she says she is. Betty further discovers that Rita has amnesia caused by an accident she was in and for some reason she feels that her life is in danger. Also, Rita's purse is filled with money and a blue key, which causes a fearful reaction in her.

Although Betty does not know what she is getting in to, she decides to help Rita. We begin to see the dynamic where Betty/Diane is drawn to Rita/Camilla almost like a moth to a flame, with no knowledge of the history involving the Rita persona that has made the other personas in Diane’s mind so upset. And this means that Betty tries to embrace a version of Rita that is as innocent as is Betty herself. Furthermore, Rita's mystery gives Betty a chance to connect with her goal of becoming a star in more ways than one. She says to Rita, "It'll be just like in the movies. We'll pretend to be someone else." This statement is also one of Lynch's many hints about the nature of the events in this portion of the film, because just about all of the personas are pretending to be someone else.

While Betty is protecting Rita, other various characters are engaging in some bizarre activities. I believe all of the activities make sense when you look at the symbolism involved, but that is a discussion I only take up in my more detailed analysis below. Suffice it to say that Diane's mind is filled with many other important personas, such as: certain legitimate and illegitimate Hollywood powerbrokers; two movie directors; a few actresses; a sleazy actor; a maternal apartment manager; a seedy hotel manager and club MC; a hit man; a prostitute; various pimps; a monster; a midnight cowboy; a female mystic and a male magician; among others. Betty does not interact with most of these personas, but she does with some of them, and most of those that she does interact with like her immensely. In fact, Adam, who is one of the two director personas, was quite captivated by her. So much so, that it is clear that he wanted to make her the star of the movie production that many of the personas are so focused on. However, he could not do this because of the intimidation and coercion he was being subjected to by some of the unsavory personas who had not met Betty. So ultimately, Betty's goal of becoming the star persona in the world of Diane's mind gets sidetracked, and instead Betty focuses on trying to protect and redeem the Rita persona. As it turns out, this will not be easy, because she and the Rita persona discover another persona that represents the dead body of Diane Selwyn. Rita instinctively knows this is why so many other personas are against her, and she is terrified by the implications. So Rita decides to change her image. With the help of Betty, Rita is transformed into a doppelganger of Betty. By merging with the innocence of Betty, the Rita persona hopes to escape the fate of being eliminated from Diane's mind.

Betty has always had the desire to embrace the Rita persona. Rita is like a glamorous Hollywood starlet, and Betty has always wanted to become like one of them as well. So after Rita has put on a blonde wig to make herself look like Betty, Betty tells Rita to take it off and come into the bed with her. She wants to connect as deeply as possible to the glamorous Rita persona by making love to her. As they proceed to do just that, Betty professes to actually love Rita for real. Unfortunately, silence is Rita's only response. And it is this silence that triggers a set of realizations that begins to bring an end to both the Rita and the Betty personas in Diane's mind.

The Betty persona had been brought into the world of Diane's mind because she represented a certain time when Diane felt loved by her aunt, and she embodied a zealous hope for a Hollywood career, and she personified a certain type of innocence. But all three of these rationales for Betty's existence are now falling apart. First off, Diane's aunt was never around when Betty was present during the entire fantasy and so Betty never succeeded in reconnecting with her aunt's love. And since Betty was also unable to get Rita to say she loved her just like Diane was probably unable to get Camilla to profess love for her, Diane was still stuck in an unloved state. Secondly, Betty did not succeed in getting the other personas to make Betty the star of the central movie production in her mind. Even though the other personas got rid of the first Camilla, they choose another Camilla-type of persona instead of the Betty persona to be the one that they believed could be a star. Again, this was ultimately just like the real life of Diane who had lost confidence in herself long ago, so she did not believe that a person like her could ever become a star. In fact, that is why she wanted so much to become like Camilla. And thirdly, there is a growing realization that Betty's innocence has been lost as well. There is something about Betty engaging in sexual activity to win Rita's love that brings back a horrible memory. There are hints of the issue throughout the fantasy, but the most obvious one comes up when Betty is doing an audition with the lecherous actor named Woody.

In the script for the audition, Woody, an older man, plays the part of a character named Chuck. Betty is much younger than him, something that becomes clear when he wants her to do some unspoken terrible thing and she threatens to tell her dad about it. However, apparently she has done this thing with him before, because she is disgusted with herself, saying, "I hate you... I hate us both!" And whatever she did with this man named Chuck, the fact that the man was her father's "best friend" just makes it even worse. The clear implication is that she was involved sexually with "Chuck" at a very young age, and this represented clear sexual abuse because the script says "Chuck" would have been arrested if Betty had told anyone. We don't know much about Chuck, other than the fact that he wasn't the father, although he was a man who was very close to the father. Later, when we see the grandmother and grandfather appear as demons who chase Diane into her bedroom tormenting her until she commits suicide, we can deduce that Chuck may well have been the grandfather, with the grandmother siding with him in order to cover it up. Thus, the images in the beginning of the film that show the grandmother and grandfather characters being loving and supportive in the Jitterbug scene and in the airport scene may have been misleading. Since Diane distances herself quickly from these figures and never revisits them after Betty arrives in the fantasy, their relationship to her was ambiguous at best. And their bizarre laughter as they left the airport without Betty hints at a more sinister reality in their relationship with Diane. And this means that the Betty persona's innocence was just an oversimplification of her traumatic history. And Diane's attempt to repress the reality of the past trauma, although understandable, was a complete failure.

Betty and Rita come to realize these awful truths during the Club Silencio scene. A magician who performs at Club Silencio tells them in many different ways that what they experienced during the fantasy wasn't real, it was all an illusion. The chance to reconnect with Aunt Ruth, the chance to become a star, and the idea that Betty had not already lost her innocence, were all false truths. Aunt Ruth's name may even be an indication of this because if you just remove the first letter it becomes "untruth". At the end of the magician's performance, he emphatically tells us to "Listen!" Then, as flashes of lightning and peals of thunder fill the theater, Betty's body gets tense and starts shaking uncontrollably. While she does this, the magician's face looks like he is straining, and he is somewhat tense as well. And then, suddenly there is the sound of a man making a grunting sound, like he is releasing something pent up inside of him. Then the magician relaxes with an evil grin on his face, as Betty also relaxes finally, looking unsure of what just happened. Next, in a cloud of smoke the magician vanishes. I believe that this last revelation from the magician was sexual in nature. The magician was forcing Diane to relive how her Betty-like innocence was lost long ago when she had been raped as a child.

All that is left now is the tears, and so Rebekah del Rio comes out to sing the Spanish version of a song called "Crying," written by Roy Orbison. Before singing the song, Rebekah del Rio is introduced in Spanish as "The Crying Lady of Los Angeles." This title is also the name of a legendary Spanish woman who was jilted by her husband who left her with their two children for another woman. Overwhelmed by the loss of her lover, she kills her two children and herself. In a certain sense, this is a hint that Diane's grief in the real world has made her homicidal as well as suicidal. And later we find out that Diane is in fact responsible for a homicide. So, even before her song is done, Rebekah del Rio collapses, probably in death, as if to emphasize to Diane that death is all around, and all hope is lost.

With all of this information, Betty and Rita discover that Betty now has a blue box in her purse that they assume the blue key in Rita's purse will open. So the two of them rush back to the aunt's apartment where Rita's purse is located, so that they can get the key and open the box. But when the key and the box are in the same room together, Betty disappears before the two of them can even open the box. It appears that Diane's mind experiences an extreme feeling of guilt when the key and the box are in the same room. The guilt involved forces her to abandon any more pretense of innocence. And since Betty is that pretense, she cannot remain any longer, and so she vanishes. The guilt I am referring to here is the guilt that causes Rebekah del Rio to collapse while being associated with the Crying Lady who killed her two children. It is the guilt that Diane probably had in real life when she found the blue key that signified that the hit man had killed Camilla. Just by finding the key, Diane was forced to confront her guilt. We saw the same kind of collapse that Rebekah del Rio experienced when a character known as Dan faced the beast behind the Winkie's. Dan was a character from Diane's real life who looked at her at the same time that the hit man showed her the key for the first time. Thus, the Dan persona's relationship to Diane involved the key in her mind, and this is the primary reason he is in her fantasy. So, since Dan was afraid of finding something behind the Winkie's, then the key that the hit man left for Diane was most likely found behind the Winkie's. It killed off Dan when he went back there to face it in a way analogous to the way that the Betty persona cannot face the moment that the key and the box are finally present together. Together they represent the knowledge of the horrible act that has condemned Diane to a guilt-ridden existence.

However, the Rita persona did not represent innocence, so Rita does not disappear initially like Betty. But Rita does represent Camilla, the person that Diane paid a hit man to have killed. The blue key was the secret token that would be left for Diane to find, probably behind the Winkie's, when the deed was done. This means that the secret inside the blue box that is opened by the blue key, involves the realization that Camilla is no more. This follows because the box represents the truth that is opened up by the key, and the key revealed Camilla's death to Diane. So, when Rita opens up the box and sees nothingness, she seems to be sucked into it. Then when the box falls to the ground, we see that it is still empty. Thus, Rita follows Camilla's fate as she is finally eliminated. The box has taken her out of the picture of the fantasy world in Diane's open mind.

Needless to say, Diane's fantasy failed to resolve the issues with which she was struggling. She wakes up, interacts irritably with her neighbor, sees the key, and then begins to have flashbacks showing what led up to her current deteriorating state. By in large, these flashbacks involve the cruel break up of her relationship with Camilla, and the fact that she went to a hit man to have Camilla killed in the aftermath of the breakup. Once the flashbacks have ended, she imagines that her grandparents are demons now released from the blue box in her fantasy, and that they have now come to get her. They chase her to the bedroom while she is screaming hysterically. After they have caused her to fall onto the bed, she pulls a gun from the dresser drawer and shoots herself in the head. As she is dying, we see the monster's face again, the one that was behind the Winkie's. It fades into her face because the monster was part of her, representing a twisted persona that drove her to do something for which she could never forgive herself. Next, as she is dying she also sees the Betty and Rita personas, and the Rita persona has on the blonde wig. It is as though the two personas have finally successfully merged and they are truly happy at last. A merger of the past innocent persona that Diane desperately wanted to hold on to with the passionate starlet persona she had always wanted to become. Ending her own life seems to have been a type of retribution for the murder, since she is now free of the guilt and finally able to embrace both the Betty and the Rita personas in her dying moments.

The final scene we see is at Club Silencio, and a blue haired lady is there who we also saw in the earlier Club Silencio scene. She has the final word, "Silencio," which simply means "silence" in Spanish. Whereas before the idea of silence involved the notion that there was only the Hollywood pretense of stardom, love and innocence for Diane when none of it was real, now the idea of silence seems to instead involve the concept that nothing more can be said. Here at the end of the movie I believe that Lynch pays homage to Shakespeare, as we are reminded of Hamlet's dying words to Horatio, "The rest is silence."

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION

However, as it turns out, there is still much more that can be said about Lynch's movie. In fact, the above interpretation is just scratching the surface of some the movie's thematic content, its enigmatic characterizations, its intricately threaded, multi-layered story line, and its complex symbolism and rich texture. And this is quite remarkable, because in some ways the film Mulholland Drive was really a fortuitous accident. It was originally intended to be a TV series like Lynch's Twin Peaks before it. And in some sense, the accident that produced Mulholland Drive was eerily similar to the accident in the one of the opening sequences of the film, where a beautiful vehicle with a beautiful passenger is in a terrible crash during an assassination attempt. Mulholland Drive is the cinematic vehicle that would not die even after the terrible accident it suffered along with other attempts to kill the project. The majority of the movie was filmed as a pilot for the proposed TV series, and, as such, it was structured to open up story lines that would take an entire season, and perhaps multiple seasons, to resolve. Not many filmmakers would intentionally embed so many subplots and complex thematic devices in a work that they believed viewers would only have the limited amount of time to engage that we get in the movie theaters. Thus, as I said, it was an accident that brought this movie into being, because before Lynch knew what form the final cinematic vehicle would take, he certainly did pile into the film complexities and plot devices galore.

Inevitably, Lynch had to wrestle with the question of how he was going to transform his vision for a TV series into a concept suitable for a movie of only two hours and twenty minutes. How would he resolve all of the many loose ends he created without having the time to develop their individual threads in the manner that he had originally intended? His most uncharitable critics will tell you that he just decided not to resolve everything. But in my opinion, they are wrong. Instead, he decided to trust the artistry of his craft and the power of his medium to allow the resolutions to come from the subtext of the story communicated through a rich language of metaphor and symbolism. Such a decision also required Lynch to have a good deal of trust in his audience as well, since now his work would become more difficult to interpret. And I think this trust was well placed, because I believe that those that give it a chance often find the film to be no less gratifying than an extremely challenging but richly rewarding novel. I was one of Lynch's many viewers who accepted the challenge to sift through his movie carefully.

In many ways, Lynch's film is an expression of issues that have a very long history within his works. Like the works of many other unconventional filmmakers, Lynch's films deal in themes that force us to examine our assumptions about entertainment and our habit of viewing films as just another form of entertainment. Are we in the theater to escape from our problems, or are we there to examine other lives on display so that we may reinterpret our own? Can we say that we are not putting ourselves into the position of the protagonist when we watch a film, especially if that film deeply explores issues from the point of view of the protagonist? And if we admit to some degree that we do in fact see through the protagonist's eyes, then to what extent does this help us to resolve our own conflicts and to what extent does it simply confuse us all the more? It is a question that concerns playing out one's issues within the context of a different persona. This is not just about walking in someone else's shoes, but it is also about living within someone else's head and seeing through her or his eyes. "Persona," the groundbreaking film by Ingmar Bergman, is one the most regarded classic films to seriously address this question using profound symbolism and cinematic techniques that are still innovative almost forty years later. A more contemporary film that approaches this question using instead light-hearted literalism and shrewd humor is "Being John Malkovich," directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman. But Lynch takes the issue farther than Bergman, Jonze or Kaufman. Throwing caution to the wind, Lynch asks us what would happen if we were not just in one head at a time? What would happen if our complex motivations and conflicted hearts were represented by a cast of personas in conflict with one another, and all struggling for control over the direction that our life will take? If you are willing to think of the main character in Mulholland Drive in this light, and envision her fantasy as a journey to determine the ultimate fate she will face after the fantasy is over, then you begin to understand the enormous trust Lynch puts in his audience. He wants us to take the journey with her, seeing her life through the eyes of multiple personas. And in so doing, Lynch wants us to learn to love her and to be angry with her, to be impressed and unimpressed, to be filled with hope and to be filled with dread. In essence, he wants us to engage her conflict with her, and to come away without any easy answers. And in the end, he wants us to learn some very heart wrenching lessons. But I am jumping ahead without laying a proper foundation. I think a deeper exploration of the background to the film is in order.

A Lament for Fallen Angels

In my opinion, it is important to view this film as an ode to those young women whose lives are destroyed during their pursuit of a Hollywood career. In fact, the film is explicitly dedicated to one such woman named Jennifer Syme, who had previously worked with David Lynch on some of his films. She was 29 when she was killed in a tragic car accident the same year the movie came out. Interestingly enough, I believe that the film is covertly dedicated to another young woman who also aspired to make it in Hollywood. That young woman died at the age of 22, at about a week from the day one year after David Lynch was born. The woman's name was Elizabeth Short, although she was nicknamed Black Dahlia because of her arresting beauty and her stylish black hair. The real Elizabeth Short was called Betty by some as a shortened version of her name. I believe this is one of the many possible allusions which explains why there is a major character named Betty in Mulholland Drive. Lynch has had a longstanding interest in the life of Elizabeth Short, and it is even rumored that he owns the movie rights to a story about Black Dahlia's murder written by John Gilmore. Betty, who is also Diane in Mulholland Drive, is not the only one with something in common with Black Dahlia. Rita, who is also Camilla in the movie, is also a very beautiful woman with an impressive mane of long black hair. Not only that, but like Black Dahlia, this second character's life will also end with a murder.

But Betty and Rita are only associated with Black Dahlia in the background motivation of Lynch. The connection between them is not very explicit. However, I think it is important to note that both of the female protagonists in the movie were actresses whose lives become associated with a woman who is destined to die following her dream to become a Hollywood actress. Indeed, even though both of the protagonists' circumstances are different from that of Black Dahlia, they will both follow her into her ultimate fate. In fact, if you step back and look at the essential arc of the movie, in the beginning the main character, Betty/Diane, arrives in Hollywood full of zeal and passion, but by the end she is a broken woman whose life energy has been beaten out of her. The opening Jitterbug dance sequence, among other things, offers us a metaphor for her bubbly energetic persona at the beginning, while a group of dirty dishes falling and breaking near the end symbolize her final fallen, broken and unclean state. I believe that Lynch is driving home the message that the Hollywood dream is an extremely dangerous dream. But more subtly Lynch is also dissecting for us the inner dynamics of the fall that the main character experienced. What I think many miss when watching the movie is the nature of the inner conflict that pursuing the Hollywood dream establishes in both the heart and the mind of those who are not especially guarded and careful.

Where many see the movie as a condemnation of the potentially sinister nature of the impersonal and corrupt Hollywood machinery, I believe the movie is more of a poignant expose of internalized forces that work to overcome and destroy those who are attracted to the blue neon glow of Hollywood's glamour. It is not the movie making enterprise that Lynch targets, for he himself is an accomplished devotee who gives honor to those in his craft in spite of his critiques. But Lynch does shine a penetrating light on the flawed human element within that enterprise which is prone to believe too deeply in its own fanciful artifice, and by so doing lose touch with the more meaningful relationships that are disconnected from the business.

One Architect of LA's Conspicuous Consumption

A case in point is William Mulholland, the man who was honored by having a major street in Los Angeles named after him. What did he do to deserve the honor of becoming the namesake for Mulholland Drive? He was an Irish immigrant with minimal formal education who taught himself the craft of engineering and then rose to the top to become superintendent and chief engineer of the Los Angeles water department. In that position he oversaw the construction of the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct, which was finished in 1913 ahead of time and under budget. The aqueduct brought much needed water from the Owens River into Los Angeles. The water was critical to the city's dreams for the exceptional growth and glory that it enjoys today. Yet deceit and corruption were involved to take away water rights from Owens Valley farmers and other residents who had different plans for the River. Mulholland's financial backers became rich off of the water bonanza while members of Owens Valley suffered complete financial ruin. Some called it "The rape of Owens Valley." At the opening ceremony for the aqueduct, Mulholland uttered his most enduring quote, "There it is. Take it." I believe a form of this quote echoes repeatedly throughout Lynch's movie as character after character repeats Diane's infamous words, "This is the girl." Each time those words are uttered, the context is such that the character might as well continue on and say, "Take her," since like William Mulholland they appear to be delivering a type of commodity who is being given over for some type of momentous consumption. However, when the commodities are human beings they do not always survive the consumption.

William Mulholland's commodity trafficking only involved water, but even his star ultimately failed to survive. Tragedy struck as Mulholland sought to bring into the city more and more water. The St. Francis Dam was one of the dams he had built for this purpose, but it collapsed in 1928 killing almost 500 people in the resulting flood. He resigned under criticism that he had filled the reservoir too quickly and that he had not sought after any independent expert opinion during the entire project. In essence, the claim was that he had gotten too cocky and his own hubris brought him down. Whether or not Mulholland was at fault for the collapse is still under dispute, but he took full responsibility saying, "If there is an error of human judgment, I am the human." Like Mulholland, we are all only human, and Lynch makes us take a very intimate look at how human judgment is prone to flaws and errors, and especially when it comes to engaging in the dream and the legend that is Hollywood.

City of Dreams and Nightmares

Lynch's movie is replete with images of the legendary Hollywood. There is the cowboy who looks like he's from the Roy Rogers era. There are the musical numbers that seem like they could have come from the 50's and 60's. Then there is the true veteran starlet from the musicals of the 40's, Ann Miller. And many other symbols of nostalgia stand out, like the poster of Rita Hayworth, the vintage car from the mid 40's, the frequent references to Sunset Boulevard, and the Jitterbug dance sequences that had that 60's psychedelic feel to them. Even the scenes with the mobsters felt retro with their colorful bigscreen atmosphere that is somewhat distinct from the mobster images that are still very contemporary on television.

But perhaps most significant to Lynch in terms of establishing that mythological Hollywood ambiance was the place where the Betty and Rita characters lived during the first three-quarters of the movie. Lynch's screenplay describes this place as "an ancient, gorgeous courtyard apartment building, built during the golden age of cinema." Yet was that age really all that golden in Lynch's view? Not if you take seriously the symbolic importance of the dog excrement left in the middle of the courtyard of this apartment complex from those good old days. And not if you take seriously the name of the street on which this complex is found: Havenhurst. It does not taken any leap to figure out that Lynch wants us to be somewhat balanced in our thinking about legendary Hollywood. It may have been a haven for some like Rita Hayworth, but it was a hearse for others like Elizabeth Short.

THE DIANE SELWYN STORY TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY

With this as a backdrop, I can begin to outline what I believe to be Diane Selwyn’s chronological story line in Mulholland Drive as revealed with complex plot devices and veiled imagery throughout the movie. Interestingly enough, I believe it begins like the story of the rise of William Mulholland, with someone who lived through a difficult childhood trying to overcome it by creating a pathway leading out of a deep river that will flow triumphantly into Los Angeles. This is what happened with William Mulholland in a literal sense. Yet it happens metaphorically with Diane Selwyn, the protagonist who is the dreamer in Lynch's film. She comes from Deep River, Ontario, and she too tries to rise above a childhood that was tragic by forging a pathway to Los Angeles. In an interesting twist on the parallel between Mulholland and Diane, Mulholland helps to perpetrate a metaphoric rape when he gets older, while Diane suffers from the real thing when she is just a child. However, both are responsible for extreme tragedies at the twilight of their lives.

Both the mother and father of Diane Selwyn died when she was very young, so she went to live with her grandparents. Tragically, at some point during her childhood she was sexually abused by her grandfather. When the abuse happened, he and Diane could have been as much as fifteen or twenty years younger than the age we see them at in the film, so he was not necessarily an elderly man at the time. Diane's grandmother eventually found out about the abuse and she made Diane the scapegoat, and told her never to speak of it again. The damage this did to Diane was enormous. From that point on, Diane always believed there was something wrong with her. However, she had an aunt named Ruth who still believed in her. Her aunt lived in Los Angeles where she had a successful career working in the movie business. Her aunt became an inspiration to her, giving her hope that she could one day escape her circumstances and make it in the same world in which her aunt lived. And because her aunt knew that she had this goal, her aunt set aside money in her will for Diane that would go to help Diane pursue her dream.

Although Diane tried to repress the memory of the abuse, Diane's relationship with her grandparents never recovered, and Diane did not feel loved by them. But when she got older, something happened that helped to produce a new and more pleasant dimension to their difficult relationship. When Diane was a young adult, she won a Jitterbug contest in Canada. Her grandparents were very happy about this and they seemed to suddenly believe in her again. It was as though she could win their love back as long as she was a star. They even encouraged her to pursue her dream to go to Hollywood. And then her aunt died, and Diane flew to Los Angeles with the money she received from the will.

Her aunt had worked as a casting agent, but Diane wanted to be an actress. Her childhood had been so horrible that she fell in love with the idea of being able to become someone else during a film. This led her to decide that in principle her focus was on becoming a great actress, instead of a star. But deep down she also hoped that stardom would follow, because that was what held the secret to making people love her. However, as an unknown all alone in Hollywood she had trouble getting any acting roles, big or small. After a period of time, Diane was becoming very discouraged and her Aunt's money was beginning to run out. So she moved into room #16 at the Park Hotel. It was a cheap hotel in a rundown area of Los Angeles. She also got a job as a waitress at a Winkie's diner. But the money from Winkie's was not enough even though where she was living was not very expensive. When she could no longer pay the rent, Cookie, the manager of the hotel, visited her one night and let her know that she was going to have to pay him somehow.

She became desperate, and someone told her that she could make some fast money by joining a call girl operation. Whenever a wealthy client wanted a call girl, they would phone a middleman at a certain fancy hotel, who would then phone the pimp of the call girls. The pimp would find out what type of girl the John wanted and then he would consult his black book full of phone numbers and other information concerning his call girls. This black book allowed him to send to the John at the fancy hotel whichever call girl would best match his request. This arrangement allowed the customer to deal solely with the fancy hotel and thus never deal directly with anyone who did not appear legitimate. The call girl would simply be waiting in the hotel room at the fancy hotel when the John got there. One thing led to another, and Diane agreed to be placed in the pimp's black book. She gave in because her previous abuse as a child made her feel like there was something inevitable about being treated like a sexual commodity. Her self-esteem was devastated by this turn of events in her life. She began a habit of smoking when she was going out with her Johns. Yet, her bills were finally being paid. Eventually she quit working at Winkie's and moved out of the Park Hotel into a nicer place at 2590 Sierra Bonita, Apartment #12.

Even while she remained in the call girl business, Diane continued to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. And finally it seemed like she might get her wish. Someone named Wally Brown, who was an old friend of her aunt's, agreed to let her tryout for the lead part in a movie he was having made. The movie was called "The Sylvia North Story" and it was not a major production, so lesser known actresses were being given an opportunity to audition for the lead. The film was about a young woman who had suffered through sexual abuse in her childhood. Getting the part meant everything to Diane since it had a connection to her own life story. And, of course, finally becoming an actress would give her some deeply needed validation and it might even free her from her dependence on the call girl business. Sadly, the director of the movie, Bob Brooker, was not impressed with her so she did not get the part. The woman who got the part was named Camilla Rhodes, and she won the audition by playing the role more seductively than Diane. Diane was impressed with Camilla's ability to heat up what she thought was "such a lame scene." With a glow of admiration in her eyes, Diane told this to Camilla, and the two became good friends.

Even though Camilla had gotten the part, it was a low budget movie and Camilla was still struggling financially. So Diane and Camilla decided to become roommates to share their living expenses. At some point, while living together, they went from being friends to becoming lovers. For Diane, who had only had extremely bad relationships with men, Camilla became a fixation. She loved Camilla deeply and to some extent, because of her low self-esteem, she began to want to become like Camilla. Camilla got good reviews for her sexy portrayal in "The Silva North Story," and was eventually offered starring roles in other low budget movies. Unlike Diane's career, Camilla career was actually moving forward. And although she did not love Diane, she thought of Diane as her number one fan and enjoyed living with her. However, Diane's fixation was growing into an obsession.

Because of their relationship, Diane asked Camilla if she could try and get her roles in some of Camilla's movies. Camilla said she was willing to do this, but there was a catch. Diane would have to sleep with some of the movie executives. After all, Camilla reasoned, Diane was a call girl, and even Camilla was willing to do this once in a while. In this way, Camilla revealed that she was an opportunist and she became like a pimp to Diane, arranging for her to sleep with important men in order to promote Diane's career in small ways, while in more serious ways also promoting Camilla's career. Although unhappy about this, Diane would do anything to be in a movie and she would also do anything for Camilla. Diane continued to profess her love for Camilla, but Camilla never reciprocated.

This arrangement went on for more than one movie. Then Camilla finally got a lead role in a more mainstream film being directed by Adam Kesher. Because it was a mainstream movie, Camilla finally had enough money to pay for her own place. So she moves out of Diane's apartment, although Camilla does not officially break up with Diane yet. However, Diane is still devastated, and she begins to get very depressed about being alone in Apartment #12. At some point, Diane begins to see a psychiatrist because of her depression. Since Diane is so depressed in #12, the psychiatrist hoped that maybe moving to another apartment would help. Diane had a friend who was a neighbor named L. J. DeRosa, who is living in Apartment #17. DeRosa had witnessed how depressed Diane had become after Camilla moved out. And so when Diane asked DeRosa if she would be willing to switch apartments with her, DeRosa agreed to do so out of compassion. However, DeRosa was not entirely happy with the apartment switch because she saw that Diane was still in a relationship with Camilla, and she thought that was really the cause of Diane's problems.

Camilla was still actively pimping Diane, and she got Diane yet another small part in the film Adam was directing by having her sleep with an executive named Luigi Castigliane. Adam had recently gone through a difficult divorce and he and Camilla hit it off. Moreover, Camilla and Adam began seeing each other, even while Camilla and Diane were still in a relationship. At times, Adam and Camilla would show affection for each other even on the movie set. Diane could not help but feel jealous about this, but she was hopeful that her relationship with Camilla would survive. After all, Camilla had stayed with her for a long time even though they both had been involved sexually with various men during that time. However this logic did not turn out to be sound. Camilla began giving Diane hints that she was ready to break up with her. And then one day when Camilla was visiting Diane at Apartment #17, while the two of them were making love, Camilla told Diane that they must end their relationship. Diane got upset and then tried to force herself on Camilla. That just made things worse and Camilla became more insistent that it was really over. Diane got hysterical and then threw Camilla out.

Soon after the breakup, Camilla tried to repair the friendship for reasons that were not entirely clear to Diane. Camilla invited Diane to come to a dinner party at Adam's house, and she told her that Luigi was going to be there. Diane wondered if this was just more of Camilla's same old stuff, pimping her to the movie executives. Yet, Diane was still in love with Camilla, and she could not help but want to see her again, even though she was afraid of how she would feel when she saw Camilla with Adam. Diane's fears made her very hesitant, so even though she said she was coming to the party, when a limousine came to take her to the party she could not get herself to go to the car. After a while, Camilla called her and once again convinced her to come. As we learn later, Camilla planned to use the party to announce her engagement to Adam, one of the big shots in Hollywood, and she wanted people like Diane there who were in her circle of devotees, so they could see her latest moment of glory. Camilla probably also wanted her devotees there so they would talk positively about her to the other big shots at the party, since Camilla was always focused on using others to promote herself.

In fact, Camilla was so interested in having someone like Diane there, who she still thought of as her number one fan, that Camilla waited outside to escort Diane to the party herself. She wanted to surprise Diane, so she waited behind a tree a little bit down the hill on the road that leads up to Adam's house. She had arranged for the limousine that was taking Diane to the party to stop there and to let Camilla walk Diane the rest of the way up through a secret pathway. When the limousine stopped on an empty stretch of road on Mulholland Drive, Diane was initially afraid. But when she saw Camilla come to her from behind a tree, she was intrigued. All of the drama only served to make Diane begin to believe that maybe Camilla was interested in reconciling with her after all. Diane did not know about Camilla's surprise announcement for later that night, and so she went in to the party wearing her heart on her sleeve, desperately hoping that she and Camilla would soon be back together.

Camilla and Adam were extremely affectionate toward one another at the party, and Diane became increasingly uncomfortable. Then Diane saw Luigi, w ho noticed her as well. Luigi stared at her, clearly thinking about getting together with her again. And then, unexpectedly, a woman that looked somewhat like Diane, walked over to Camilla and kissed her on the lips. And worse yet, Camilla kissed her back passionately. Up until that moment, Diane had been able to hope that even if Camilla stayed with Adam, it was possible that Camilla and her could still have an intimate relationship with each other. But Camilla's kiss with this other woman showed Diane that Camilla was not coming back to her. Camilla had replaced Diane with this new woman in her life. Diane was stunned. And then, Camilla and Adam announced their engagement, while giggling and laughing. Now Diane was completely devastated. In her heart, Diane feels that she should never have come. She should never have picked up the phone when Camilla called earlier that night. But she did and now she is unable to cope with her feelings for Camilla any longer. At that moment, Diane's love for Camilla turned into hatred.

Soon after the party, Diane contacted a hit man. She arranged to meet him at the nearby Winkie's. She brought a picture of Camilla and thousands of dollars for the payoff. Apparently she was able to save the money while working as a call girl. The hit man told her that when the deed was done he would leave a blue key for her somewhere in an alley behind the diner, since this is where the contract on Camilla's life was arranged. Diane's anger had driven her to this, and her mind was becoming unstable. She kept getting fixated on different things that she saw at the diner. From the hit man, to the money, to the blue key, to the nametag of the waitress who served them. She even gets fixated on the face of a man who appeared to be a customer at the cash register. He just happened to look in her direction after she stares at him as she was shown the blue key.

Some time later, Diane found the blue key behind Winkie's in its appointed place, and she brought the key home and placed it on the coffee table. Camilla was dead. Grief overcame Diane and she went into the deepest depression she had ever experienced. She began sitting or sleeping in her apartment for extended periods without answering the phone or the door. At some point she is told that two detectives wanted to question her, so she became extremely afraid. Overwhelmed by both grief and fear, and becoming suicidal, Diane takes some type of drug while in her bedroom, and then fell into a deep sleep. While asleep, she entered into a remarkable fantasy that revealed how her mind was trying to cope with everything that had happened. Unfortunately, the fantasy ultimately failed to help her deal with her misery and she woke up no better off than when she went to sleep.

As the fantasy came to an end, she was awakened by the sound of someone knocking loudly at her door. This time she opened it and found that it was her neighbor, DeRosa, who had come to pick up the rest of her things that were left there after they had switched apartments. When DeRosa saw her piano ashtray on Diane's coffee table she picked it up, returning Diane's thoughts back to the blue key that was also on the coffee table. When DeRosa leaves, Diane can do nothing but think of Camilla. She begins remembering the passion and excitement that Camilla brought to her life, and she started to experience flashbacks of the events that led up to the those last fateful days. It had only been three weeks since she moved into Apartment #17, and now Camilla was dead, and everything seemed more messed up and tragic than before. Camilla was gone forever and Diane had gone from simply having a poor self-image to now completely despising herself. She felt that she did not have any reason to live anymore.

At some point Diane again hears someone knocking at the door, very forcefully this time. She imagines that it is her grandparents who are the ones who started all of her troubles in the first place, coming now as demons to haunt her. She hears someone screaming in horror. She gets terrified, and the demons begin chasing her. They are chasing her to the bedroom, the place where her childhood abuse took place. Screaming, as she is completely losing her mind, Diane takes a gun out of her dresser drawer and finally kills herself.

DECODING MULHOLLAND DRIVE'S LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM AND METAPHOR

If it is difficult to see how I've arrived at the above narrative of Diane Selwyn's life, it should not be surprising. This is a very difficult movie. However, when you understand my approach to interpreting how the movie is organized and how its rich language of symbolism fits together, I believe that my narrative will seem very logical. It's all there, the evidence of the parents being dead, the grandparents being abusive, the aunt being the only positive family relationship Diane remembers, the importance of the Jitterbug contest, the move to Hollywood with the aunt's money, the money running out while the creditors were coming after her, the movement into becoming a call girl prostitute, the last hope of stardom with the audition for The Sylvia North Story, the disappointment after losing the part, the renewed hope that Camilla would help her reclaim her dream, the obsession with Camilla that followed, Camilla's focus on self promotion, Camilla's exploitation of Diane, Diane's pact with the hit man, Diane's inability to cope after the hit has been done, Diane's last hope in a flight to a world of fantasy, Diane's surrendering to the harsh reality of the flashbacks, and finally Diane's last confrontation with the demon's that her grandparents had become to her. The logic is there, and the scenes unveil the logic progressively throughout the film.

I must admit that there is certainly room for different interpretations of the movie, and I acknowledge that I have not discovered or incorporated all of the symbols and metaphors that Lynch has hidden within it. However, be that as it may, I believe that my interpretation respects the artistry and the power of this film even as it puts it into a coherent light. And that is what I believe is most compelling about my interpretation. In my view, most of the interpretations that I have encountered that are not similar to the one that I have laid out above either argue against the movie's artistry or they disavow its fundamental coherence. I believe that my approach does not fall into either of these traps and it can therefore serve as a useful analytic resource to those who are looking for a narrative understanding of how each of the scenes fits together, and a philosophical exposition of the movie as a whole. However, my analysis should not be seen as an indication that I believe that there is only one way to interpret this work. It is first and foremost intended as an artistic expression, and you must keep an "open mind" with any artistry that is flowing from something deep within the artist. But I believe it is also important to trust that the artist sincerely wants to communicate with his audience. So we must look for any hints of this effort at communicating with the viewer and study whichever ones we find. If we do this, I believe that we can find Lynch's hand guiding us to better understand the way that his film is structured and helping us to see how he intertwines imagery that tells very connected story lines at the subtext of the film.

Internal and External Structures

To begin with, I think it is important to note that this film has both an internal structure and an external structure. The internal structure is the most complex, and it involves the way that the movie provides material that refers back to itself, creating overlapping dramatic constructions that can be linked together like puzzle pieces into a coherent whole. Some call this Lynch's Mobius Strip in reference to a strange object that is a strip that loops back on itself with a 180 degree twist in one of the ends. The end of the movie is connected to the beginning of the movie with some type of twist that you must figure out. With this type of structure, you cannot really understand one fundamental part of the movie without the other, however they each follow different logical paths that meet up in more than one strange way. For instance, in Mulholland Drive there are three opening sequences to the fantasy portion of the movie that make very distinct and very dramatic connections to scenes near the end in the reality portion of the movie. These different connections work together to help us understand the movie's internal structure. The scenes that I am referring to are: the accident scene, the scene with the two men at the diner, and the scene with the chain phone call. I will explain their connection to scenes near the end of the movie at a later point below, but it is important to understand that to view the movie this way, you must have a theory about what type of puzzle pieces are involved in this movie. And, as it turns out, I think you must have a particular view of the external structure of the movie to develop a consistent theory about the puzzle pieces that make up its internal structure.

The external structure involves primarily how the movie paces itself and how it references other works. In some cases the parallels with other works provide a type of superstructure within which the internal dynamics can be placed, and then independently developed. Clearly, Lynch references his own past works in this film. Yet, since those references are so deeply integrated into the whole film, I believe that they are best seen as features of the internal structure. However, his references to the works of other artist are more instructive concerning what I am calling the external structure. The work of Stanley Kubrick is involved with his meticulous set designs, and his focus on surrealism, the nature of obsession and non-linear story lines. There are also examples of both Ingmar Bergman's and Federico Fellini's existentialist use of dream sequences and flashbacks, along with their explorations of violence, sexuality and humor. We also see hints of Akira Kurosawa and his intellectual spiritualism and artistry. And we find Krzysztof Kieslowski's use of the doppelganger and color themes to examine the psyche and intellectual moralism. Indeed, there are also many other artists and films to which Lynch pays homage, but I believe Bergman is one who bears mentioning a second time to honor the importance that his focus on the struggle with duality in the psyche has become in Lynch's work. His pivotal film, "Persona," lays the foundation upon which Lynch builds the idea that you can answer questions about your own identity by exploring another individual's projected persona. Moreover, there is the character Elisabeth Vogler in Bergman's "Persona," and she is one more possible source for the name Betty, the protagonist in the fantasy portion of Lynch's film. And yet, even the influence of Bergman is still secondary to that of a particular historic film that has had perhaps the deepest of impacts on Lynch. As far as the broad outline of the superstructure to Lynch's film goes, no other work is more influential to Mulholland Drive than Victor Fleming's movie, "The Wizard of Oz."

The Importance of the Wizard of Oz to the External Structure

Questions about which parts of Mulholland Drive are dream sequences and which parts represent reality can be answered when you take into account Lynch's intentional homage to the Wizard of Oz format in this film. The parallels are dramatic. In Lynch's film, the opening scene reveals to us that there is a conflict. The idealized happy and loving time of the Jitterbug sequence is juxtaposed with the blurred vision and clear tension of someone who appears to be having trouble focusing and breathing as they are passing out onto a bed. Dorothy's story started similarly, with loving relationships in Kansas that are interrupted by an evil that threatened to destroy Dorothy's happiness and that seemed to extend into a storm that literally knocked Dorothy unconscious onto her bed. On the bed, in both cases, a vision begins. In Dorothy's case the vision starts off with a continuation of the terror of the storm. The tornado that Dorothy sees out of her window is no longer real, but it is clearly a representation of the real tornado that was responsible for Dorothy's injury. Out of her window, before her house lands in Oz, she even sees her antagonist transformed into a horrible and ugly witch, and the sight of her scares Dorothy so much that she throws herself down and hides her head in her bed. Similarly, as we shall examine more closely below, the first part of the vision that happens when our subject in Lynch's film passes out on the bed is also a reflection of a terrible trauma that was very real, although the resulting vision is not exactly like the trauma itself. In this opening sequence there are three parts to this trauma: one that involves an accident in a limousine; another that involves a person seeing the face of a horrible beast and then collapsing; and a third that involves a chain of calls being made through a number of phones, although the last one is not answered. All three events are especially traumatic for our subject for reasons that we shall examine later, but the parallel between these traumas and the terrible trip in the tornado that Dorothy experienced should already be clear.

When Dorothy's house lands, she steps out into a wonderful land of beauty and promise. It is the land of Oz. The people she initially meets are sweet and supportive, and although she gets a brief scare from her antagonist again, she finds out that her antagonist is powerless to hurt her in that particular location. So all is well as she sets off down the yellow brick road. Similarly, Diane, our protagonist from Mulholland Drive, also lands in a wonderful land of beauty and promise. It is the land of LA. She flew by plane instead of in a house, but her landing is analogous to Dorothy's nonetheless. The people she meets are very friendly. And even though she gets a scare when she thinks someone has stolen her suitcases, she finds that her suitcases are safe and there is nothing to be afraid of as long as she is in this airport. So all is well, and just like Dorothy, she sets off down the road, although now it is in a yellow cab instead of on yellow bricks. Furthermore, as both Dorothy and Diane move down this road that involves something yellow, they both are driven by the memory of an aunt who they dearly loved and with whom they are trying to reconnect.

These intentional similarities with the story of Oz are there for a reason. Many reviewers note that Mulholland Drive makes use of the Oz-like device of incorporating characters from a person's real life into their fantasy world to work through issues using a surreal duality that this technique allows. But not many reviewers look much closer into other parallels with the Wizard of Oz. Yet there are other parallels that are very telling in helping us understand a larger framework that holds together Lynch's film. Just as Dorothy could only get home after she had discovered the fraudulent nature of the wizard in whom she had put her trust, so too does Diane only leave her dream after she has been to the wizard-like magician at Club Silencio who acknowledges that everything is a fraud as well. If we take this parallel further and note that the scene in Oz with the wizard also identifies the characteristics inside of Dorothy that are genuine, we can argue that the Club Silencio scene should also hold deep truths about Diane's character. As we shall see later, identifying the truth is just as important as finding out what is an illusion in Lynch's film.

Furthermore, one of the most important thematic devices in the Wizard of Oz was the way in which Dorothy's journey allowed her to personify some of her own questions about her character using the exaggerated characterizations of the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Lion. Questions about her intelligence, her emotional priorities and her courage were on her mind as she went into her fantasy world, and her trio of strange companions helped her to resolve those questions. In Lynch's film we have a similar but darker use of this device in the characterizations of the Cowboy, Mr. Roque, and the Castigliane brothers.

Like the Scarecrow, the Cowboy was definitely the one most interested in questions about intelligence. In his opening scene he says, "Well, just stop for a little second and think about it. Will ya do that for me?" And he follows this up by saying, "No. You're too busy being a smart aleck to be thinkin'. Now I want ya to think and quit bein' such a smart aleck. Can ya do that for me?" It is from the mouth of the Cowboy that we get a statement that touches a core philosophic underpinning to Lynch's film, "A man's attitude goes some ways toward how a man's life will be." We shall look at this statement in greater depth at a later point, but it is clear that the Cowboy comes off as the wisest of the bunch, as did Dorothy's Scarecrow. Not only that, but in his own eerie way, he is certainly the most scary of the three as well, inspiring fear in a way that the Scarecrow could never hope to match.

Mr. Roque, on the other hand, is like the Tinman. He has a difficult time moving, physically and otherwise. Sitting in a wheelchair with a paralyzed body, Mr. Roque presents us with the quintessential example of what it means to be frozen and unyielding. He is exactly like the Tinman when Dorothy first meets him. Rusted and rigid, he is capable of only a few words at a time. This physical state has a moral equivalent which we see in Mr. Roque when he would rather "shut everything down" then allow himself to be flexible. This character trait is extremely dangerous and can even be suicidal in certain circumstances of life, which is a point on which Lynch elaborates throughout his film.

And finally the Castigliane brothers are a more somber version of the Lion, with their focus on intimidation and bravado. In their opening scene they enter a conference room with moody attitude and one of them, Vincenzo, quickly gets into a staring down contest with Adam, another central character in the movie. Ultimately, Adam loses this contest when he must divert his eyes. Meanwhile, Luigi, the other brother has the others in the room terrified over whether or not he will approve of the espresso that they have brought to him. Needless to say, he does not and they try to put a good face on the fact that they must cower and grovel in response. Vincenzo then literally roars in front of them all saying something like, "Stop It!" After which, this mean ol' lion sends Adam packing. And what's Luigi doing during Vincenzo's outburst? He's focusing his attention on getting some lint off of his jacket. In other words, he's grooming himself just like any good feline would be doing at that moment.

These three characters have been conceived as ominous versions of Dorothy's lighthearted companions, and as we shall see, they are there to help Diane resolve a dark struggle raging inside of her. The fact that Lynch is able to appropriate benign cinematic characterizations from Oz for his more foreboding purposes in Mulholland Drive, is quite an accomplishment. Another, more obvious appropriation that Lynch has made from the Wizard of Oz, is the name Winkie's. In Oz, the Winkies were the people who lived in the west and were ruled over by the Wicked Witch of the West. In Mulholland Drive, Winkie's is the name of the diner where a wicked creature from behind the diner exerts some terrible power. This wicked creature is in LA, and that makes it from the west, just like the Wicked Witch of the West. And there is even a parallel for Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. It is Aunt Ruth, who has red hair like Glinda, and who left on a trip to the north. Like Glinda, Aunt Ruth has given Diane help in her journey through the Oz-like land of her dreams, which in Diane's case is Hollywood. But unlike Glinda, Aunt Ruth dies before Diane gets there, and this turns out to be tragic, because it means that Diane's story cannot end like Dorothy's.

Since we have parallels in Mulholland Drive for Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, the Lion, the Good Witch of the North, Auntie Em, the Wizard, and the Wicked Witch of the West, you might suspect that we should be able to find the Wicked Witch of the East as well. And it is pretty obvious who fits that bill when you consider that Dorothy’s fantasy essentially begins with the death of the Wicked Witch of the East, and Diane’s fantasy begins essentially after Camilla’s death. In fact, in the Wizard of Oz the Wicked Witch of the East had been an oppressive force in the land of the Munchkins until Dorothy accidentally killed her. Similarly, Diane has Camilla killed in part because of the oppressive nature of Camilla’s relationship with her, and that death is ultimately expressed through an accident in the beginning of the fantasy. The Rita persona survives what is both an assassination attempt and an accident, but her Camilla identity is stripped away and in a sense killed off during the accident. Camilla dominated Diane because Diane was obsessed with her, and it is only after Camilla’s death that the old innocence of Diane’s Betty persona is allowed back into Diane’s fantasy world. With the Betty persona’s relationship to the Rita persona, Diane is trying to hold onto the glamour of Camilla without associating it with the malevolent identity of the real Camilla, because the glamour is connected to Diane’s long lost innocent dream to become a movie star. However, unlike Dorothy’s journey to regain her lost sense of hope in her struggle to find the right direction for her life through her dream, Diane’s quest in her fantasy ultimately fails.

On a less consequential note, I believe that Lynch has also been successful at including a more subtle tribute to other well known characters of Oz. In my view, his inclusion of a little person, Michael J. Anderson, in the prosthetic body of Mr. Roque is a nod to the inhabitants of Munchkinland. Because of how comprehensive they are, Lynch's many tributes to Wizard of Oz provide for us certain structural elements and thematic content that we can use to unlock some of the mystery to the meaning of Mulholland Drive.

By understanding where the structure of Lynch's movie parallels that of the Wizard of Oz, we can be sure of where the beginning and ending of Diane's fantasy life occurs. Furthermore, if we compare Diane to Dorothy, we can intuit that the major characters in Diane's fantasy life are struggling through issues with which Diane herself is struggling. And we can assume that each and every scene in the fantasy portion of the film will have characters in them who represent some aspect of Diane's psyche, or some context concerning the crisis in her life that she is facing. Even the Cowboy, Mr. Roque, and the Castigliane brothers represent certain questions about character running through Diane's inner trials. This is an important point to note because most reviewers see the fantasy portions of this movie as chiefly reflecting the struggles Diane is having with others. While this is the surface truth to some degree, I believe that when you dig deep enough you find that the most significant issues she is trying to address are those that involve her struggle to come to terms with herself.

Inside of the cast of characters within Diane's fantasy, most of the main characters are aspects of Diane's personality. This is not to say that she has a multiple personality disorder, but it is to say that she is struggling with discord within her heart and mind and is in need of some type of resolution. And some of this discord can be traced to her troubled past, while other aspects of it can be blamed on the difficult inner conflict associated with the hubris that is often involved and perhaps required to some degree when pursuing the Hollywood dream of stardom. I will be explaining later how I see a connection between the three dark Oz-like characterizations and Diane's tragic history of child abuse, but I also see them as connected to the conceit fostered by the Hollywood enterprise with which Diane is struggling. In this context we can say that the Cowboy, Mr. Roque and the Castigliane brothers represent Diane's pride, stubbornness, and arrogance. Yet because of Diane's poor self-image and because of her obsession with Camilla, these three characterizations have become twisted and they are no longer promoting Diane's career, as they probably originally were when Diane first arrived in Hollywood before she met Camilla.

The Conflict and Color Symbolism at the Core of the Internal Structure

Diane's is a conflicted soul. One part of her loves Camilla. One part of her hates Camilla. One part of her is trying to love herself. One part of her is trying to become a different person because she hates herself. One part of her came to Hollywood to become an actress. One part of her came to Hollywood to become a star. One part of her is an innocent girl. One part of her is a wayward woman. One part of her is full of life, while another part of her is focused on death. With the severity of the inner struggles she is dealing with, Hollywood does not turn out to be a very positive experience. Although her aunt was probably a positive force in her life, the aunt's success became something unattainable to Diane because the aunt was not around to help guide Diane, and because Diane did not leave Deep River with a sufficiently healthy image of herself. Diane's poor self-image led to a desperate and obsessive quality in her relationship to Camilla precisely because Camilla was a part of the Hollywood image-making machinery that Diane believed could recast her into a different, more appealing person. The tragedy in this is that the Hollywood enterprise doesn't deal with reality, and so it could never help Diane with issues that were more than just skin deep. Yet even in Hollywood, real people did exist in Diane's life who were not so explicitly connected to the show-business world and who may have been willing to offer authentic love to Diane, as I will explain in the conclusion. Yet Diane spurned them to her own misfortune.

I believe this becomes clear when you follow the logic of the structure and symbolic language of the film. I have already outlined how the Oz story line provides an outer framework for this story. The inner framework of Lynch's film make's it crystal clear that Hollywood and Oz are very different places, just as Dorothy and Diane have very different outcomes. In Oz there were real allies of Dorothy who really cared about her and loved her. But in Hollywood, most of the people around Diane were more concerned with image and what they could get from her. Hollywood's primary focus on women as sex objects created different types and categories of women. Diane was seen as the pink-type, where the color of pink represents a girlish type of sexuality. Women like Camilla were seen as the red-type, where red is a more hot and womanly form of female sexuality. Yet, the red image has to be tempered with black or white to make women more glamorous, sophisticated and less slutty in their sexuality. The red-light district is a common term for the place where prostitution flourishes, and as such, red by itself can send the wrong message, which is important to remember when we see a red lampshade. And pink is also often tempered with black, white or even blue to take some of the edge off of its girlishness and present a little more maturity. The primary difference between Dorothy and Diane initially is that Dorothy was happy with her girlish and innocent image, while a part of Diane was actively attempting to reject her pinkish qualities.

In this description of the context that Diane found herself in and the tensions that were at work within her, I am making the case that Lynch puts a heavy emphasis on using color to help tell his story. If you interpret the colors correctly, portions of the plot are revealed to you that would otherwise be missed. It becomes clear just how important decoding the color symbolism is when you observe how the distinctions between the use of red and pink are so critical. For example, our initial introduction to Diane is in her Betty persona, where she is wearing a pinkish top that she has on throughout many subsequent scenes. Early in the film there is a continuing contrast being made between this color of hers and the red and black that Rita wears. In a scene that represents the morning after the first day in her fantasy, she is wearing a very ordinary looking bathrobe that has the same pinkish color, while Rita is wearing a fancy red and black bathrobe. Pink is clearly the color of the Betty persona, but we see a different dynamic when Diane is in the room with the red lampshade. As I alluded to before, there is a red-light district connotation to the red lampshade that I believe is meant to indicate a situation involving prostitution, with a telephone being present to further explain that the context is a call girl business. To bolster the evidence for this interpretation, I believe Lynch intentionally chose to make Diane's bed sheets red because she is the one involved in the prostitution. And all throughout the film telephones are conspicuous, whether by site or by their ringing sound, because they are there as symbols of the call girl business.

Yet, due to Diane's pink image it is difficult to believe that she would engage in prostitution, and Lynch understands that we will have this difficulty, so he adds stronger clues to help us see how this follows from the nature of her internal struggle. In an early scene that comes after Lynch has established that Diane has a pink persona, we see a prominent sign for a hotdog establishment called "Pink's." It follows that the name "Pink's" is intended to represent to us Diane's girlish, almost Dorothy-like sexuality. However, the full message on the sign says "Made Special For" and then there is a hotdog and then the word "Pink's." The hotdog, also called a wiener, is a clear phallic symbol, and therefore we are seeing a more ominous message. The message is that Diane's pink personality has been used for something very sexual.

If this sign is not enough to bring that message home, then what immediately follows it should be. We see three people walking away from the general direction of the sign, one of whom is clearly a prostitute who looks like a doppelganger of Diane, especially because of the color and style of her hair. And what is right behind her as she walks away from the Pink's establishment? It is a long red pole or rod that is being carried by a man that has been conspicuously placed into the scene. The way the rod hangs down and the way it is pointing to her behind make it another clear phallic symbol, indicating that some man has engaged in some sexual activity with Diane that has led her away from her pink persona and into prostitution. This is a color narrative that describes an initial state of pink that is then left behind during a movement toward a red state that involves prostitution. There is even another red lampshade in this scene in the store window the prostitute is walking by while coming around the corner. The scene ends with the prostitute getting into a blue van, which confirms that a major change has taken place. This will be clearer below when I explain what the color blue symbolizes. In the absence of the color narrative, only the hit man in that scene appears to have any connection with the rest of the story, yet both the prostitute and the pimp dressed in black next to her are vital clues to Diane's inner battle. We will discuss both of these characters in more depth in the scene by scene analysis below, but it is important to note that without an understanding of the meaning of the color symbolism you cannot completely decode this subtext.

The Importance of the Broken Home as the Source of Diane's Inner Struggle

This becomes even clearer when you follow the logic of the sequence of the scenes, which I shall do more thoroughly below. But in this case let us let us examine what immediately follows the scene at Pink's. The next scene begins with Betty in her pinkish top saying, "That money … you don't know where it came from?" There is more to this dialogue which refers to other plot lines, but it is important that Betty begins with those words. We had just witnessed a scene with a prostitute and now we are being asked if we know where the money has come from. One answer that we find out later is that Diane is the source of the money. Another answer that comes from recognizing the connection between the two scenes is that the money is the result of prostitution. These two answers are not in contradiction to one another if we accept the multiple symbolic references to Diane's involvement in prostitution, references that continue throughout the fantasy potion of the film. But Lynch leads us deeper into understanding the cause of Diane's movement from being pink to being a prostitute by examining Diane's struggle with a broken home in the subsequent scene, a scene that is also rich in color symbolism.

In the next scene we find Diane's Adam person under distress, announcing repeatedly that he is "going home." Adam represents the part of Diane that is supposed to be in control of the direction in which her life is going. We know this because he is the primary director in the fantasy, and since the name Adam means "man," his name could be taken to mean "The Man," as in the head guy. But in Diane's conflicted mind, the part of her that is supposed to be in control gets challenged immediately. The challenges made to Adam's control cause Adam/Diane to wish that he/she could somehow go back home. In playing this idea out, Adam/Diane is forced to examine what life was like for Diane at home, even though the fantasy's story line projects Diane's truth onto the broken home story in Adam's real life.

Before we get to Adam/Diane's home we go back to a scene with Betty and Rita, and Betty asks, "I wonder where you were going?" And Rita answers, "Mulholland Drive." That is in fact where Adam's home was and it is also where a great big accident happened that changed everything. In this context I believe the accident becomes a metaphor for a terrible thing that happened in real life to Diane when she was still a girl. And what was the terrible thing? It is revealed when Adam gets home. He discovers a terrible infidelity. In his real life it was between his wife, Lorraine, and Gene, the pool man. But what does this mean in Diane's life. The first clue is that Lorraine is a blonde, and this means she may have some connection to Diane. But who does the pool man represent who had sex with her. The next clue is that Adam takes the family jewels and pours pink paint all over them. The "family jewels" is a slang term for the testicles of the man of the family, and pink paint represents Diane's innocent sexuality. So, by pouring pink paint over the family jewels Adam is showing us that it was the father figure who had sex with Diane. When you place this idea into the context of the infidelity that Adam has discovered, we can deduce that what Adam is told when he comes into the bedroom may have been what Diane was told when the incest was discovered. Because of that dialogue we can assume that Diane was probably blamed for what happened by her mother figure and told to keep it quiet by the father figure. "Now you've done it," Lorraine says. "Just forget you ever saw it. It's better that way," says Gene. I believe that Adam's subsequent beating and nosebleed is a metaphor for Diane's lost virginity.

Lorraine, the person caught in the infidelity, is also the person indignant about the actions of Adam in the situation. I believe that this is because Lorraine is a very complex symbol, alternating between representing Diane in her guilt and representing Diane's mother figure in her indignation. Her blonde hair is longer than Diane's and so, although I believe that a relationship to Diane is being indicated, Lorraine is not like other blonde doppelgangers in the film who have short blonde hair. The longer hair is probably indicative of greater age, like the mother figure. And I believe that there is more color symbolism involved. Black and blue come up in many contexts, as I will describe more fully in the next section. For this reason, I believe that Lorraine's black underwear indicates that she represents a person with power in Diane's life, again, like the mother figure. But when Lorraine puts on a blue dress Lorraine, the symbolism changes. The blue dress tells us that Diane is experiencing a terrible transition from innocence to a more victimized and traumatic state. Lynch reinforces this interpretation by having the pink paint splatter on both Adam and Lorraine because they both were affected by the trauma suffered by the pinkish Diane in different ways. But the pink paint stays on Adam for quite awhile to indicate that the experience left a mark on Diane that would not go away. This color narrative tells us that Diane was forever scared by a traumatic incident involving incest as a child. However this is not the only evidence of this event in Diane's history. Other clues make reference to it as well, but the fact of the matter is that the color narrative shows us this information once we have learned how to read Lynch's language of symbolism.

Incest between a father figure and a daughter puts the child in a difficult spot of being both the daughter and the alternative to the spouse for the father figure, creating a potential conflict with the mother figure. That's why I believe Lorraine is such a complicated symbolic character. The terrible middle ground between daughter and mother figure after the incest occurs makes the abuse even more devastating because if the trust between the two of them is lost, then the daughter loses both parental figures. A child is supposed to find a source of unconditional love in her parents, but when this is denied to the child she may be led to believe that she must earn love from others by somehow selling herself. There was only one person who could have saved Diane from this mindset, and that was Diane's aunt. Diane's aunt appears to have been her one source of comfort and love during her childhood, but unlike Dorothy during her fantasy, Diane cannot go back to her aunt because she is dead. Diane has only her dubious grandparents in the end. Diane's grandparents have a cheerful pretense in the beginning of her fantasy but they are soon shown as ominous figures whom she quickly separates from before even leaving the airport. The sinister smiles on their faces as they are driven off are not dissimilar to the scowls on their faces at the end of the movie when their connection to the incest theme is more obvious because a bed is involved, although it is still only an implicit connection. And this is not the first of Lynch's films to deal implicitly with the issue of incest. Most notably because of the parallels involved is the film "Blue Velvet." In that film we find a character whose name is Dorothy Vallens. The Dorothy of that film lives in the Deep River apartments, similar to the way our Diane is from Deep River, Ontario. And while living in Deep River, Dorothy Vallens also suffers through sexual abuse, and her abuser wants her to call him "Daddy."

Other Important Color Symbols

Even without references to Lynch's other films, one can read a story within the story of Mulholland Drive. However, reading it requires that we take any potential symbolic device within this film very seriously. The way this is done is by examining multiple instances of whatever we believe may be a symbol, and then trying to determine if there is a connection between those different instances. By doing this I have determined that pure red does not always indicate prostitution. At other times red can indicate danger or death, especially when red lights are flashing in a way similar to police lights or ambulance lights as in the aftermath of the accident scene or the scene with the bum just before the end of the movie. And red can indicate tension or drama when connected to a stage or curtains as in the Club Silencio scene. Moreover, when red is a hair color it is connected to Diane's Aunt Ruth, who is herself associated with being successful in Hollywood. It is an important symbol, because it is involved in some of Diane's deepest pain. The successfulness that Diane's aunt represented was what brought Diane to Hollywood in the first place, yet it was a prize that continued to elude her at every turn. And just as red haired characters are symbolic of the aunt and everything she represented, more than one major brunette character is connected to Camilla, while blondes are often important representations of Diane's life circumstances. However, there are some exceptions to these rules.

Black is not always used simply to temper the color red or the color pink. When characters appear in completely black outfits they are generally powerful people. They exercise excessive influence over others and as such they tend to have questionable motives. The strength of these types of influences suggests that they represent powerful inner forces in Diane's psyche that are trying to sway her in one direction or another. However, they can also represent outer forces in her life that, through temptation or coercion, have persuaded her to submit to them in the past and present.

Pink, red, and black have a powerful thematic import throughout the film, especially when they involve clothing. On the other hand, other colors are more neutral although they cannot be completely discounted. When gray or dingy white is worn by Diane near the end of the movie, it is a sign that she has lost both her girlish and her womanly sexual persona. In essence, she is fading out of the Hollywood scene. Unfortunately, she turns out to be unable to embrace a life without any connection to that glitter and glamour that is personified by Camilla.

The Critical Importance of Blue and the Concept of a Transitional Object

The last color symbol that I think is essential to the subtext of the film is the color blue. It is perhaps the most difficult one to interpret because it isn't connected to a single image or state that Diane is experiencing at any one time. Instead it is involved in the movement from one state to another. Duality is a critical element in Mulholland Drive, and it is important to understand that there is always the possibility of transition between connected twofold expressions throughout the film. From pink to red, from life to death, from truth to fantasy, from rationality to insanity, in each case we see the appearance of some type of vehicle for shifting in the domain between the realms. Movement in that domain is called a "blueshift" in the science of optics when you are going from a lower energy state to a higher state. Perhaps this is why Lynch uses the color blue to symbolize fundamental transitions in Diane's inner and external reality. But another reason may be that the domain between states is one of mystery and the surreal. It is where things like illusion can reign, and so it is where Hollywood finds its center. And from Lynch's point of view, one could argue that the essential color of Hollywood's mystique is blue. Just think about the cinematic technique of the blue screen. Or think about the blue glow of the neon lights that Lynch loves to show with the city as a backdrop. Or consider the blue shimmer in electricity that Lynch alludes to as Hollywood's power source.

To Lynch, I believe that blue is a color that is all around us when we are in that middle ground between day and night. Dan, the man who collapsed in the early scene behind the Winkie's, whose name sounds a lot like Diane, described it thusly, "It's not day or night. It's kinda half night." That's where blue is and that is where the mysterious is found. Near the beginning of the movie, when Betty is leaving the airport, she has blue luggage. I believe that this luggage is there to represent Diane's transition into this surreal fantasy because the luggage is blue and it represents a container just like the blue box that will transition her out of her fantasy much later. The two older people in that scene, who I believe represent memories of Diane's grandparents, enter the fantasy with Betty, but they are quickly transitioned out of the fantasy with a different blue transitional object. The object, which we see in front of the limousine that takes them from the airport, is a blue van that the limousine is following, which again is like a big blue box. That being the case, the next time we see them coming into Diane's world they must transition into it again using another transitional object. And in this last case they come in through the blue box itself. However this time they are anything but sweet and encouraging, as we learn that they are associated with the beast behind the Winkie's and that there is something sinister in their nature.

In the Club Silencio scene near the end of the fantasy, we see a number of different types of blue transitional objects. I believe this is because Diane is being transitioned from the fabrications of her fantasy into the harsh truths of her real life in stages that lead to her ultimate reawakening. But the transitions do not get completed at the club. The magician at the club leads the first transition by revealing the illusive nature of the fantasy, and then initiating a routine where blue light and electricity transmit a truth to Diane about her childhood abuse. This truth that Diane confronts is related to why Betty begins shaking with uncontrollable spasms, and I will discuss how I interpret those spasms in the scene by scene analysis below. Next comes the blue smoke, which serves as a transitional exit for the magician, and so he disappears. The focus then turns to the woman with blue hair.

The woman, who is a special type of transitional guide because of her blue hair, was first visible to us just before the magician began his blue lightning and blue smoke number. Then once the magician is gone and after the smoke has cleared and the blue lights have faded back to the normal lighting, we see her prominently again. I interpret this to mean that the truth she is there to guide Diane through is related to what the magician was doing, but it goes beyond that into a completely new revelation. In fact, this second truth is more of a consequence of the magician's truth and it concerns one of the reasons why a theater scene was necessary to impart this truth. As far as the magician was concerned, the theater is involved in his message because it is a place where entertainment happens that is filled with illusion, but his lesson might also have been pulled off in a movie studio. But the lady with the blue hair needs an old theater with a box seat that overhangs the stage to impart her particular truth. This is because her truth involves death, and in particular death by assassination. It was in a box seat like this, in a theater like this, that Abraham Lincoln, who had a prominent mole in the same place as the woman with the blue hair, was assassinated.

To really understand this connection, we must remember that Diane's fantasy starts off with a scene that involves the attempted assassination of Rita. Rita survives that assassination because of an accident that was lucky for her, but her left ear is wounded and bloodied because her pearl earring was torn off. These details are significant due to the fact that Lincoln was shot right behind his left ear, and the gun was a small Derringer which some reports maintain had a white pearl handle. Moreover, the limousine that Rita was in at the time of the assassination attempt and accident was a Lincoln, even though the detectives who later investigate the scene call it a "Caddy." Other movies of Lynch also make veiled references to Lincoln's assassination as an important symbol of murder and its horrific consequences, like the movie "Blue Velvet" where Lynch's use of the color blue is also sublime. In Blue Velvet, Lincoln Street continuously plays a conspicuous role, and the insane antagonist is Frank Booth who drives a black Ford. This is a clear connection to the fact that Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in D.C. Furthermore, the horror of Frank Booth's murderous ways are revealed to us by the fact that he cuts off the ear of one of his victims, pointing to the symbolic importance of the ear due to its involvement with Lincoln's assassination, as I mentioned above.

Like the magician before her, the woman with the blue hair shows up to uncover a reality that Diane has repressed. Camilla, like Lincoln, did not survive the assassination attempt. So the implication is that Rita's miraculous survival is just yet another misleading illusion. I describe in the scene by scene analysis below how the song that follows explores this even further, and it all ultimately leads to Betty's discovery of the blue box within her purse. Like the other issues that require more space to discuss, I shall also describe the truth of the blue box in more detail below. But clearly it involves the reason that Diane needed to come to the fantasy world, and it also explains why she must leave it as well. Diane's confrontation with the truth is not as rosy as Dorothy's and so the blue haired lady is a grim guide, and since she is a messenger of death, we shall meet her again at the end of the movie.

This leads us to the issue of the symbolic importance of blue as it regards to the mystical key and box within Diane's fantasy. It is important to note that the key and box represent a transitional object, but in this case they are a two-part transitional object. As a two-part object, they must be brought together for any resolution of the transition. I believe the fact that Diane had two blue suitcases when she came out of the airport at the beginning of her fantasy is connected to this issue because that was a two-part transitional object as well. Diane's fundamental tension involves her need to bring together conflicting components of her psyche. This struggle is expressed as the duality of Betty and Rita while she is in the fantasy, so the suitcases stay in the picture until her Betty and Rita personas finally meet. Her attempt to resolve the struggle in her mind and merge the two is an attempt at repairing the insecure self-image inside of her that led to her obsession with Camilla and ultimately to her murderous act of revenge. Again, we will explore this more thoroughly later when I will address why the Betty persona disappears when the two-part transitional object of the box and the key get close to one another, and why Rita disappears when they finally are completely connected together. Yet at this point it is important to note that Diane attempts to use Betty and Rita in the fantasy to recast the truth about her relationship to Camilla, and this attempt fails once the blue transitional objects expose what she is trying to repress. This in turn makes it clear that the rift within her psyche is still in place, and that the essential quest of her fantasy was a failure.

The Importance of the Structure of the Fantasy and Reality Narratives

Before I begin the scene by scene discussion I think it is important to state something explicitly, because some reviewers disagree on the issue, and it is a very important determining factor in how the film is interpreted. I believe that the fantasy portion of the film is filled with fabricated but symbolic details that have illusive connections to real events, while the flashbacks in the reality portion of the film might be emotionally colored at times, but they are filled with very accurate details. The fantasy sequence begins when Diane goes to bed in the opening scene, and it ends when she gets out of the bed after the Cowboy has told her that it is time to wake up. Some reviewers question how reliable Diane's flashbacks are after the fantasy portion of the film is over because it is clear that her mind is unstable at that point. However, I think that it is important to the flow and consistency of the film to few these flashbacks as reality. I believe that Lynch is pointing out to us that there are connections between Diane's truth and fantasy that involve bizarre Mobius style twists as I described above. So even if the truth can seem stranger than Diane's fiction at times, its purpose is to become a guide for us that can help us return to that fiction and examine it in more depth. This means that I believe that Diane did in fact hire a hit man to kill Camilla, a person that she loved like no other. And that event was so traumatic that it inevitably destroyed her mental and emotional stability. Is it any wonder then that she is the one who had that "God-awful feeling?" And is it any wonder that she can no longer think of herself in the way that she used to, or that her mind attempts to reestablish her lost self-image by deconstructing the various aspects of her psyche and then putting everything back together again?

There are four main arguments against the veracity of the reality sequences that I feel can be resolved with reasonable considerations. The first argument claims that Diane could not have hired a hit man as she remembers doing in the reality portion of the film. This is because some reviewers assume that Diane moved from Apartment #12 to Apartment #17 after Camilla's murder to hide from the police. And since she also remembers meeting Camilla in Apartment #17, they assume this proves she could not have done both, so neither probably happened. But at no time is it stated that she moved from #12 to #17 after the murder. In fact, the neighbor who switched from #17 to #12 acts like she knows why the switch was made, yet this neighbor knows nothing about a murder. In the fantasy, when the neighbor says she switched apartments with Diane she seems to be thinking about the reason with some concern, and then she looks at Rita with an unfavorable emotion in her eyes. Later, in the reality portion of the film, the neighbor looks at Diane in a sad and concerned manner when she mentions that it has been three weeks since the switch. What was the reason the neighbor believed the switch was made? We are never told explicitly, but we are given numerous clues about it, which I will discuss in the conclusion.

Does it really make sense that someone on the run from the police would really think she could get away by moving five doors down? No, I believe the police were looking to interview her about the murder because she was one of Camilla's known friends. I don't believe they necessarily thought of her as a suspect, although Diane certainly must have been afraid that they did suspect her. Yet, Diane did not move from #12 to #17 because of her fear, since, as her flashbacks show us, Camilla was still alive after the switch and she even visited Diane in #17. The flashbacks also show us that Camilla broke up with her during a visit to #17 and later called Diane at #17 to invite her to the fateful party at Adam's house.

A different but related argument that some make against the veracity of the flashback scenes is that some say three weeks was not enough time for everything she remembered to have happened. But I believe that this type of argument is missing the point and it is a misreading of the scenes as well. It is precisely because things proceeded so quickly after the breakup that Diane never had a chance to cool down and think things through before turning to the hit man. But the timeline is not unrealistic anyway. The flashback of Diane watching Adam kiss Camilla during a rehearsal could have happened months before the move from #12 to #17, so it does not play a part in this issue. And the different flashbacks about the argument between Diane and Camilla in #17, including when Diane throws Camilla out and when she masturbates afterward, could have all happened on the same day. So the flashbacks that concern what happened after the apartment switch represent just a few important days in the three-week period following the switch. One day, perhaps right after the switch, Camilla visited Diane at #17, and they argued and broke up after making out at first. Later, Diane goes to a party at Adam's house after she gets a call inviting her from Camilla, who then calls a second time when she hesitates. Certainly the party could have been planned long before this period and Camilla's invitation to Diane could have been something of a last minute thought on Camilla's part. Then soon after the disaster of the party, Diane talks to the hit man once, maybe over the phone, before then meeting him while she is still angry at Camilla. This could easily have happened even within one week in my opinion, but for the sake of argument, lets just say that it took two weeks. Then two days later Diane finds the key, and she begins to get emotionally unstable. The next day, detectives who want to interview Camilla's friends stop by DeRosa's apartment looking for Diane, and all she tells them is that Diane doesn't live there anymore. Then DeRosa sees Diane walking by her apartment the next day, and she tells Diane about the detectives. DeRosa might also have told Diane that she wanted to get her stuff from Diane at that point. But Diane was probably a little panicky after being told about the police, and so she could have told DeRosa she would have to get her stuff at another time. Then for three days, Diane goes off the deep end, hiding in her apartment, not answering the phones or the door. During this time she falls into a deep sleep and has the dream. On the third day she awakens and finally opens the door when DeRosa is knocking. That's when they have the following dialogue:

DeRosa: Where have you been?
Diane: What do you want?
DeRosa: My lamp and dishes.
(there is a pause as Diane doesn't answer)
DeRosa: Come on, Diane, it's been three weeks.
Diane: (sighs and lets her in) I put your dishes in that box.

DeRosa's mention about "three weeks" does not mean it has been three weeks since they have talked about the visit of the detectives, it only means it has been three weeks since the apartment switch. In Diane's dream, DeRosa tells Betty and Rita that she has been trying to get her stuff from Diane, and right before that DeRosa says, "But she hasn't been around for a few days." The dream seems accurate here because of the mention about DeRosa wanting to get her stuff from Diane. So it seems reasonable to assume that Diane and her talked just a "few days" before Diane had her dream. And within this scenario it is easy to see how three weeks was plenty of time for all of the sad events to have happened that are referred to in the flashbacks. In fact, it could easily have happened in less time.

When we take these issues seriously, we can understand why Diane's fantasy involves a death occurring in #17, and not #12. She is living in #17 when her fantasy begins, and she already knows that Camilla is dead and she has already begun contemplating suicide. And we can understand why that death seems to have affected Rita in the fantasy more than it affected Betty. Just as at the beginning of the fantasy, the death of the person that the Rita persona is connected to is was what preoccupied Diane's mind. In my view, the body that Betty and Rita discover in the fantasy doesn't look like Diane, but it looks more like a combination of Diane and Camilla, because it has a little longer and a little darker hair than Diane's. And the screenplay says that the holes in the bed around the body are shotgun holes. I discuss this further in the scene by scene analysis, but it clearly requires that a real murder took place for this to make the most sense. And if there was a real murder, then the other events in the flashback to Winkie's really happened.

The second major argument against the accuracy of Diane's flashbacks in the reality portion of the film concerns what happens in the scene right after Diane's neighbor leaves a little bit after Diane has awakened from her fantasy. When she is about to make coffee she clearly hallucinates that Camilla has returned to her. Some feel that this should not be seen as a reliable flashback because clearly Camilla did not return to her. But I don't agree. This hallucination is the first in a series of flashbacks she is just about to have at this point in the film. The first thing these flashbacks deal with is Camilla coming over, making out with Diane, and then the two of them breaking up. Camilla certainly could have been standing right where we see her in the flashback at some point during her real visit to Diane. And this may have logically proceeded the moment the two of them went to the couch. So I see no reason why Diane's initial vision of Camilla cannot be seen as just the entry of Diane into the longer set of flashbacks of real encounters that she had experienced. So because this just represented her first flashback, although it is only a partial flashback, I believe that there is nothing in it that suggests that her memories are inaccurate.

Another contentious flashback is the one where Adam kisses Camilla in a car on a movie set. The scene ends with Adam shouting, "Kill the lights." But some have argued that he would not have said that in reality because it indicates he wants to go on making out with Camilla with the lights off in the presence of other actors and the stage hands who are dealing with the lights. However, I believe that Adam considers his order to be a part of his explanation and demonstration of what is supposed to happen at that moment in the scene. The lights would go off to end the scene, and then they would come back on immediately thereafter.

The last major objection that I have encountered is to the scene where another woman kisses Camilla. Some have argued that Adam would never have put up with another woman kissing Camilla, his fiancé, in the party scene when he had recently broken up with his last wife over her indiscretions. However, the double toast right before that scene makes it clear that Adam has been made aware of Camilla's bisexual past before that kiss, and yet he still allows Camilla to invite her old girlfriend (or girlfriends) to his party. I think that we are supposed to believe that he is not as threatened by her relationship with other women as he would be if she were kissing another man. And he probably sees the kiss the same way that Diane sees the kiss, as just another implicit way for Camilla to say to Diane that their relationship is really over. If he knows of Diane's adoration of Camilla, as it seems logical that he might, then it would seem likely that he would understand the reason that Camilla would feel the need to send Diane that message. And the look Camilla gives Diane after the kiss certainly seems to communicate that message.

In my view, the logic behind the fantasy and reality portions of the movie are completely sound, but you must pay close attention to the dialogue and to certain specific issues in their context to unravel the meaning. By seeing these two portions of the film as distinctive fantasy and reality sequences, we are given the keys necessary to unlock the truth of her past and present life, and to learn how Lynch views the inevitable tragedy.

The Loss of Diane's Aunt and the Loss of The Sylvia North Story

For instance, by understanding Diane's emotional response to her aunt we can understand what moving into 1612 Havenhurst meant to Diane. Diane's dream had always included becoming a success like her aunt had become. We don't really know if Diane was right about the aunt's level of success, but we do know that Diane never achieved whatever she thought was at that level. We see this first represented in Diane's mind by the fact that Camilla got to Aunt Ruth's place first. Then we get plenty of clues that tell us that Camilla's life fits more into Diane's idea of what her aunt's success was like than did her own life. For instance, Camilla is given the name Rita after Rita Hayworth, who had been honored with a picture in the aunt's home. Rita Hayworth was an extremely glamorous and successful actress that had red hair in most of her movies, so Rita Hayworth represents one of those red haired symbols of the aunt's success. Yet, in reality, Rita Hayworth's hair was naturally black and her ethnic identity Hispanic, just like Camilla, so Diane was unlikely to ever measure up to that standard the way Rita/Camilla did. Another clue to which of the two women actually lived up to the mantle of the aunt's glory is expressed in a robe that Diane's aunt left to Diane. It was almost regal and it was clearly meant for Diane/Betty, but only Camilla/Rita wears it. Diane/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. But for some period of time Diane had probably ignored the negative feelings associated with this issue because of her love for Camilla. Later, after bringing about Camilla's death, Diane's mind cannot deny any longer that she was jealous of her. It is in teasing apart what this rivalry meant that we begin to understand that there are complex issues involved in what she was describing as her love for Camilla.

The last symbolic construction that I will mention before beginning the scene by scene analysis is the movie within a movie called "The Sylvia North Story." Once you realize that everything in her fantasy is really about Diane in one way or another, it should not be too hard to accept that that is also the case with "The Sylvia North Story." As far as I can tell, there has never been an actual film made called "The Sylvia North Story." But interestingly enough, in 1965, during the possible time period of the songs sung during the audition, there was a movie called "Sylvia." The title character's full name was Sylvia West, and the movie recounts how the title character was raped by her step-father at the age of 14, and how she became a prostitute when she was older. She survived her ordeals while she was a prostitute through her close friendships with other women, and she ultimately leaves prostitution and goes on to become a successful poet. Except for the ending, the story is amazingly like the life story of Diane, who you could say was the Sylvia who came from the north. Thus, we get Sylvia North.

Another connection between Diane and Sylvia North is found through the etymology of Diane's last name, Selwyn, and the name Sylvia. Selwyn comes from a Latin word meaning "of the woods," while Sylvia comes from the Latin for "forest maiden." And not only that, the last name of Betty, Diane's chief persona in the fantasy, is "Elm," another reference that has something to do with the woods. Then, of course, Diane's first name is associated with Diana, the ancient Roman Goddess of the forest and of the moon. And in Roman legends, Camilla was one of Diana's favorite warrior princesses. Furthermore, when we review the scene where Betty auditions for "The Sylvia North Story," we find a character whose name is "Woody," which further emphasizes this connection. From all of this it should be clear that there is a strong connection between Diane Selwyn's name and Sylvia North's name, and that there is some context that connects them involving the woods. When I come to Betty's audition for "The Sylvia North Story" during the scene by scene analysis I will discuss more fully what the references to wood imply.

Other reviewers have found parallels to the name Sylvia from other films, and there may be some truth to that because Sylvia North may be a composite character to Lynch. But I think it is clear from the context of her fantasy that "The Sylvia North Story" is about Diane Selwyn's life. When she was offered a chance to audition for the lead of this movie in real life, I believe she really wanted it because she identified with the character so deeply. Yet the part was given to Camilla, almost as if the image-over-substance Hollywood dream machine was saying that Camilla would make a better Diane than Diane herself. Diane was clearly hurt by losing the part, but she was also intrigued by how Camilla played the role. This mixture of competitiveness and fascination with a woman who literally encourages Diane to recast her life in Camilla's image led to an obsession on Diane's part that was based on an unhealthy self-image and an inaccurate understanding of Camilla's motivations.

To such a difficult situation, Lynch then adds the complicating fact that Diane had feelings for Camilla's boyfriend, Adam. Since he was a director, both Camilla and Diane were probably interested in having him pay attention to them and show interest in their careers. But he only had eyes for Camilla. Yet, deep down it seems that Diane entertained thoughts of him choosing her over Camilla. Perhaps her interest in him was not sexual if Diane was unable to love men as some have argued, unlike Camilla. But whether or not there was a sexual interest, any claims of love between Diane and Camilla could not help but be poisoned by their dual Hollywood aspirations. So the question becomes how much of Diane's obsession with Camilla was love, and how much of it was a fixation on Camilla's rising Hollywood stardom? I believe that the symbolism answers this question by the end of the fantasy, and Diane does not like the answer that she gets. The truth is illusive, but I believe the answer lies within the Mulholland Drive's symbolism, and it provides an important lesson for those who are drawn to the blue glow of Hollywood's beacon.

As we go into the scene by scene analysis, remember that duality plays an important role in this film. So anytime something is done, said or seen twice or more, you should assume that it represents an issue that is especially important. Another important issue to consider is Lynch's emphasis on the point of view of the dreamer. Rather than thinking of the fantasy as the retelling of a story of Diane's past, we need to think of the fantasy as Diane rethinking the past by reliving it from multiple points of view. The different points of view are personified as characters that work together or are in conflict with one another. Diane has deeply conflicted issues going on inside of her, not the least of which is the question about why she hired a hit man to kill someone that she loved, and what she thinks about herself in the aftermath of that event. To survive the conflict within her, she's trying to keep alive the connection to her past innocence and her future aspirations. So, of course, there are personas representing both of these central parts to her identity. Yet, as we shall see in the fantasy, it is in the persona of Diane's childhood innocence that she places her greatest hope. It is the hope that Diane can still find the refuge that she sought in the past by returning to the guiltless image and personality that her aunt so greatly loved and adored.

The crisis that the fantasy is addressing concerns Diane's inner struggles with her own life experiences and her various conflicting responses to them, even when it appears to be about someone or something else. For instance, when the Rita/Camilla persona has amnesia, many reviewers assume that this is because in recovering her memory Diane wants to explore issues concerning who Camilla was in real life and why Diane was in love with her. However, when Betty and Rita began to investigate who Rita was, all Rita can remember are things about Diane's life, such as the disastrous trip up Mulholland Drive that Camilla never really took and the name "Diane Selwyn." These clues lead to an understanding about what happened to Diane, not to Camilla. And when a person named Dan is in Winkie's talking to his therapist, some believed that he was talking about his own dream, when he was referring to Diane's dream within her dream. In fact, I believe that Dan's death that occurs when he sees what is behind the diner, mirrors a type of death Diane experienced when she went behind the diner for reasons I discuss in the analysis of that scene. Furthermore, "Dan's" name is a play on the name Diane, just as I believe the name "Ryan" is chosen because it rhymes with Diane. The Ryan Entertainment company is just a fancy name for Diane's vivid imagination. And even when Adam from the fantasy confronts an infidelity that the real Adam faced in his home, we are shown how Diane associates this with the infidelity that she was involved in during her childhood, as I explained above when I discussed the metaphor of the family jewels. This is all just to say that to understand Diane's fantasy, you have to accept that deep down it is really all about Diane.

A SCENE BY SCENE ANALYSIS

Scene 1
The first scene opens with the Jitterbug dance sequence. The dance sequence is a mixture of images that are full of energy and that have a powerful impact. We are clearly supposed to be impressed with the quality of the dancing, and so when it ends with Diane being the winner, we can imagine how much she felt like a star at one point in her life. Some have argued that it is not likely to have been a scene from reality because we don't see her dance partner, but I think that couldn't be farther from the truth. She's remembering what was important to her from that time of her life, and her dance partner wasn't very important to her. What was important is that she beat all of those other great dancers, and that her grandmother and grandfather were there to celebrate the occasion with her. In fact, it is extremely important to her that they seem to be proud and happy for her, because as we find out at the end of the movie, she is incredibly afraid of them. But she is not afraid of them during this happy moment of her life. Everything is perfect. Her face is shown shining in the lights. We can see in her eyes that at this point she believes in herself, and she believes that her star can shine even outside of Deep River, Ontario. However, it is important to note that all of the images of her grandparents that show up in this scene quickly get fuzzy and unsteady. And I believe this suggests that there is something unclear and unstable about her relationship to them that keeps getting in the way of this perfect picture.

As these images fade out, we see a fuzzy scene and hear what seems to be a person--who we later find out is Diane--deeply inhaling from some device like a drug pipe or a bong. After the inhalation the scene gets clearer and we see that we are looking from her point of view while she is on a bed. Her bed sheets are red, and as we continue to hear her breathing in and out, we see that she is moving her body further onto the bed and placing her head on a pillow. Then the scene fades to black as the dream/fantasy begins.

Even if a viewer cannot be expected to understand what is happening initially, the vibrant energy of the Jitterbug sequence is contrasted effectively with whatever is happening on the bed. So it is hard for the viewer not to feel that something is wrong as this scene ends, as Lynch obviously intends. Some reviewers believe that the Diane has just shot herself in this scene and she is dying. I think that is wrong. There is no blood and when she does shoot herself at the end of the movie things progress much faster and her eyes never face the pillow. At this beginning point in the film, I believe that it is important that Diane is still trying to cope with what has happened in her life. In fact, I believe that the fantasy world that she creates is a powerful coping mechanism.

(Note: For those who are not convinced that the initial sound is somebody breathing in from a pipe or a bong, it is interesting to note that later in the fantasy portion of the film a bong appears to be in Aunt Ruth's living room. This is significant because Diane did not come to LA until after her aunt's death, so her vision of what would be in Aunt Ruth's home is coming from Diane's imagination. If there is a bong in Aunt Ruth's living room, it is there because it is something to which Diane had a connection. The first time we can see the bong is when Betty first enters Aunt Ruth's home with Coco. As she looks to the shelves on the opposite wall, you can see what appears to be a bong on the set of shelves to the right, on the third shelf down, in a corner in a shadow right beside a fancy magnifying glass. The next time we see it is right after Betty has been sitting on the couch speaking on the phone with her aunt and she has just learned that her aunt does not know anything about Rita. From Betty's point of view the camera leaves the couch and then passes by the shelves much closer than the first time. Now you can see the magnifying glass very clearly with the bong in the corner right next to it still in the shadows. It is near some pink flowers, a fact which I believe is an indication that the bong belongs to Diane due to her pink persona as discussed above. Although I do believe the object to be a bong, I will grant that there may be other meaningful interpretations.)

Scene 2
This scene opens with a shot of a street sign for Mulholland Drive late at night. There is eerie music playing in the background and lights are reflecting off of the sign in a jittery fashion. The mood established is a haunting one as the fantasy begins. We see the blue lights of the city from above, establishing that Mulholland Drive goes up a hill. Next we see that a limousine is moving up Mulholland Drive and there is a woman sitting in the back. We don't know her name or anything else about her, but after the fantasy is over we find out that she is the real Camilla Rhodes. At some point the limousine pulls over and stops and the woman says, "What are you doing? We don't stop here." We see some drag racers coming down the street some ways up ahead. The driver turns around, pulls a gun on the woman and tells her to get out of the car. A third person who was sitting with the driver gets out, opens her door and then reaches in to pull her out. Just then, one of the cars that was drag racing slams right into the limousine creating a devastating accident. Blue smoke slowly covers the whole scene. And then, with only minor injuries, the woman steps out of the car, apparently the only survivor. She looks around, and then begins walking down the hill toward the city below, no longer knowing who she is.

It doesn't become clear what this accident in the fantasy signifies until later when we see that in the real world, Diane Selwyn was the one in the limousine. We know that this is an altered version of the trip that she took because of the words that came out of her mouth during her late night drive. Diane also said, "What are you doing? We don't stop here." But no one pulled a gun on Diane, and no car accident occurred. So why has she changed events in this way during her fantasy? One reason is that what happened after Diane's trip up Mulholland Drive was as traumatic as a car crash. And certainly she felt like she ran into a lot of threatening figures that night. But why does Diane replace herself with Camilla in this part of the fantasy? Although there is more to it than this, I believe that the reason involves the idea that the part of Diane that wants to be like Camilla went up Mulholland Drive that night. In other words, part of Diane was fixated on Camilla and would do just about anything to make it the way Camilla has made it. And if that is not possible, then this part of Diane at least wants to be a part of Camilla's life as she becomes a star. This is the part of Diane that is the Camilla persona. And from Diane's point of view, the party on Mulholland Drive involved an assassination attempt against this persona. It was as if those who invited her to the party wanted to kill off Diane's hopes of ever getting back together with Camilla. And, without Camilla, all of her Hollywood hopes and dreams were threatened. A parallel issue that is represented by this scene is the fact that Camilla has been murdered, and Diane is having trouble coping with that truth. Even as she is protecting her own Camilla persona, she is repressing the memory of the fate of Camilla Rhodes from her real life.

Because of the complexity of the issues involved in this film, I will examine certain issues not found in this scene to establish the context needed to understand why it is important to view the characters as Diane's personas. I mentioned earlier that the structure of the fantasy parallels the Wizard of Oz, particularly at the beginning and the end of her fantasy. But in the Wizard of Oz Dorothy continues to use her real name and she remains the central character throughout her fantasy. Yet in Diane's fantasy, there is only one place that a character with Diane's name shows up in the fantasy. And that Diane Selwyn is a dead person, lying on the same bed where she is sleeping while this fantasy is going through her mind. This is one reason why some reviewers believed Diane had shot herself prior to the fantasy and that she was dying during the fantasy. As I said before, I don't agree. This is not a dream of someone whose mind is blacking out and shutting down. In fact, this is quite a vibrant and active mind at work. But one thing is clear because of the nature of Diane's sole reference to herself in her fantasy. Diane is contemplating her death and maybe even becoming suicidal. In fact, it becomes clearer as we start to unravel the state of her psyche, that if Diane is not able to resolve the struggle that is going on inside of her, she just might "Shut everything down." That is a phrase used in the fantasy that is probably a metaphor for suicide, and it is a real issue that is being contemplated in the subtext of Diane's fantasy.

Diane does not want to be Diane anymore. She has had a bad self-image since her childhood trauma, but it is now becoming impossible to live with herself because of what she has recently done. As one of the characters in her fantasy, Robert Smith, tells her Adam persona, "You're in the process of re-casting your lead actress." A person might think that he was referring to re-casting Camilla's role in Adam's latest movie, because we just saw Camilla in the car crash and they don't know where she is. But Robert Smith gives us a double clue explaining why that is not the issue to which he is referring. When Adam asks him what he is talking about, he says, "An open mind." And then to make it a double clue, he says again, "We're asking you to keep an open mind." Diane's mind is the one that is open, and she is trying to replace herself as the lead actress in the movie of her life. Furthermore, the company that is responsible for this movie that Diane's Adam persona is directing is called Ryan Entertainment. As I mentioned earlier, I believe Ryan is short for "rhymes with Diane." So this is a Hollywood production managed by the mind of Diane, and Adam is the one she has chosen to be the persona who is her director.

Some reviewers have suggested that the Camilla persona suffers through the bruising experience in the car accident because Diane is dreaming about how to repay her for the pain she caused Diane in real life. But nothing could be further from the truth. Camilla has played an important part of Diane's self-image in the past, and so she has been brought into this production of Diane's mind to play an important role. Camilla represented the sensual and glamorous side that Diane hoped to foster in herself, Diane's more red than pink image of herself. Camilla had the glamour and sexual presence that Diane envied, and the fact that Diane and Camilla were in a relationship gave Diane hope that she could one day embody that as well.

But Diane's life is a little bit more complicated than the role that the one-dimensional Camilla could play. She chooses a whole cast of characters to play her various personas. It is important to note that she has chosen Betty to play her central persona, even more central than Rita, who is her other key persona. Apparently, Betty represents the pink and innocent part of her life, the kind of innocence that Dorothy represented in the Wizard of Oz. I believe Betty represents this to her because the real Betty worked at Winkie's, a place that is not associated with the sins of Hollywood, and a place at which Diane herself probably worked before she entered the call girl business. But no matter what the reason she chose her, it is revealing that the innocence of her Betty persona still plays such a key role in her psyche, even after all that has happened in her life. Adam, on the other hand, is all about Hollywood. She is entrusting him to direct everything because Hollywood is still at the center of her dreams. We already mentioned that the Cowboy is the part of her that is trying to be smart, Mr. Roque is the part of her that is very unyielding, and the Castigliane brothers are the side of her that try to be tough. These three are also Hollywood insiders, and as we will see soon, they probably also embody aspects of her abusive father figure that she has internalized. Coco is another Hollywood insider, but she embodies more of her mother figure's qualities, flawed, but protective and sophisticated. Diane also has a persona that is full of fear, one that is whorish, and of course, she has one that has the capacity to kill. And there are a couple more, as we shall see as we go through the different scenes.

Diane's Camilla persona will later adopt the name Rita. The accident that Rita experienced is a metaphor for how Diane felt that night she took her ride up Mulholland Drive. She felt like it was a setup, and although she survived it, she left battered and confused. Rita leaves the accident in this same state and makes her way to the home of Diane's aunt, who in the fantasy is Betty's aunt. The state of crisis and the danger that the real Diane is in can be seen in Rita's expression as headlights shine into her face. And then a police car drives by emphasizing that this is an emergency. Outside of Aunt Ruth's complex, Rita hides in the bushes and falls asleep. Rita will fall asleep three times in these early scenes hinting at the sleeping state of the real Diane while at the same time showing an image of the dead state of the real Camilla.

As Rita sleeps this first time, the police arrive at the scene of the accident and they seem sadly struck by all of the death and destruction they find. They also find a pearl earring that they know does not belong to any of the bodies at the scene. "Could be someone's missing, maybe," one says. "That's what I'm thinking," the other replies. Sure enough, an earring did come off of Rita's left ear during the accident and I discuss the significance of this above when discussing the assassination references, but the most important character missing at this point in the fantasy is Diane herself. It is the fact that she is missing and the need to find her that becomes a background motivation for some of the main characters.

Once Rita awakens, we see her sneak into Aunt Ruth's home literally right under her nose. This fact introduces us to yet another background motivation of Diane. Searching for Aunt Ruth is a quest that Diane has been on since before she came to Hollywood. In fact, it probably started in earnest as things in her family fell apart after the abuse she went through. Aunt Ruth is her only notion of family anymore, as the picture of Aunt Ruth with Diane as she was a child in her fantasy seems to attest. Yet, as we will see repeatedly, the Aunt Ruth of Diane's dreams never connects with Diane's various personas, as though she is just out of reach. And this represents a tragic truth that she cannot escape, that Aunt Ruth died before Diane made it to Hollywood. And without Aunt Ruth, Diane has been afraid and alone, unable to find the right path on her own. When we begin to understand the weight of this issue in Diane's life, we begin to understand what Lynch's darker version the Wizard of Oz is all about. Dorothy realized the lesson in time to reconnect with her Aunt, but Diane did not. You cannot run from your problems and find a promised land "somewhere over the rainbow." Your problems will just follow you. In the subtext of Lynch's film, we learn that almost from the beginning of Diane's quest, her dream was becoming a nightmare.


Scene 3
This scene begins with the sound of a siren outside of a Winkie's diner. Even though the siren is an indication that something is wrong, when we go into the diner we see two men sitting peacefully and talking. Dan is talking to Herb, telling him that he wanted to come to that particular Winkie's for a reason. Herb appears to be a therapist and he listens as Dan talks about a dream he has had two times that involved that particular Winkie's. The dream occurs during something Dan calls half-night, the transition point between night and day. In his dream, the lighting is weird and Dan notices Herb by the cash register. He says Herb is scared in the dream and that scares Dan as well. Then Dan realizes that there is a man behind the Winkie's with a horrible face who is controlling whatever is going on in the Winkie's. Dan is terrified of ever seeing that man's face outside of his dream. Once Dan has finished recounting his dream, Herb decides they should go outside and look behind the Winkie's to see if there is anybody out there, because he thinks this will help Dan. Dan says he is willing to go look because he wants to get rid of the "God-awful" feeling he has. However, when they go behind the Winkie's and come to a walled area, a horrible face looks out at them from behind the wall and Dan is literally scared to death.

This is an example of a dream within a dream, just as we later deal with "The Sylvia North Story" as a movie within a movie. Both the embedded dream and the embedded movie give us important clues in the form of metaphors about the life of Diane. What is happening in this scene doesn't become clear until after the fantasy has ended and Diane's flashbacks have revealed to us the relevant information. Diane was sitting in that same diner when she paid the hit man to have Camilla killed. The hit man showed her a blue key that he said would be at a place he had previously told her about when he had finished the job. As soon as he shows her the key, she notices the man she calls Dan in her fantasy, looking at her. Although this man probably did not know what they were talking about, she remembers him because he too saw the key. He therefore becomes connected to her fixation on the key. And, as the hit man told her, Diane was going to have to go and get the key to find out if Camilla was dead. So the key becomes associated with the point of no return for Diane. Once she has retrieved the key, the horror of what she has done will finally become clear to her. And the man she calls Dan in her fantasy witnessed the moment she first came in contact with the key.

Dan's name sounds very much like Diane, so it should be clear that he is one of her personas. It also should be clear that he is the part of her that is terrified of confronting the truth of what she has done. And where does that truth get confronted? At the place where she will find the blue key when Camilla has been killed. So when Diane's Dan persona has a "God-awful" feeling about going behind Winkie's and seeing that horrible face, we can surmise that that is where Diane had to go to find the key. We can also assume that the horrible face is the face of Diane's own guilt. Somehow a dirty and disgusting part of Diane drove her to have Camilla killed, and the day she went to get that fateful key, something died inside of her as she realized that something awful within her had won out. That the beast behind the diner is something within Diane is borne out at the end of the film when we see the beast's face fade into Diane's face after she has killed herself. This beast within her has probably tormented Diane for awhile before she finally gave in to it. Diane probably struggled with the terrible feelings she was experiencing with her therapist, who is probably the man Dan is talking to in the dream. However, the therapist was not able to help her, perhaps because he didn't believe her issues were as drastic as they had become.

This scene has an important relationship to the scene right before it. Earlier we found out that Diane does not want to be Diane anymore. Now we know one reason why. The next scene reveals to us yet another reason. Even before we get to that scene, it is worth pointing out that Diane's subconscious is sending warning signs and important messages to herself even during this fantasy in an attempt to save herself. We can see one example of that when Dan noticed an arrow pointing in the other direction as he was walking to the back of the Winkie's. If he had turned and followed the arrow maybe Diane's death could have ultimately been avoided. Another thing that caught Dan's attention as he walked towards his darkest fear was a telephone. The reason that the phone caught his attention comes to light in the next scene.

Scene 4
In this scene we see Mr. Roque calling someone in the lobby of a fancy hotel and he says, "The girl is still missing." The person in the fancy hotel calls someone else in what looks like a very beat up looking apartment kitchen. The person who answers says, "Talk to me." And the person who made the call says, "The same." Then the person in the beat up apartment hangs up and makes another call. His call goes through to a phone on a wooden telephone and lamp stand. The phone is next to a lamp with a red lampshade and an ashtray full of dead cigarette butts. The phone rings three times, and then the scene ends.

In an earlier discussion, I talked about how the call girl operation that Diane was involved in probably worked. We learn these details from this scene. A call would be made by a client, also known as a John, to a middleman in a fancy hotel. The John would arrange to rent a room from the middleman in most cases and have a call girl sent to that room. But the John might also have the call girl sent somewhere else. The John would explain what type of call girl he wanted and then the middleman at the hotel would call a pimp to have him send over someone who fit the bill. The John would then never have to deal with people like the pimp. Call girl pimps would not have their girls on the street. Instead they would just need the phone numbers of the call girls, allowing the call girls to hide their involvement in prostitution from the rest of the world. Call girls can live a double life, as can their Johns. Because it was Diane's phone that rang at the end of the chain of calls, we learn that she is a call girl living a double life.

In the chain of calls, Mr. Roque is Diane's John this time around. In the logic of the dream, Rita, Diane's sensual persona, was in a limousine heading somewhere. She never makes it there and goes into hiding. However, Mr. Roque was expecting her, as if her limousine was headed to a liaison with him. We find out later that Mr. Roque is working with others who are trying to replace Camilla Rhodes with a blonde haired woman, and we shall discuss this more below. But this fact means that Mr. Roque was most likely involved in the assassination attempt against Rita, and is now trying to find out what happened to her.

In Diane's fantasy, Mr. Roque represents a type of power in the movie making business, and Diane's Rita persona was heading to a liaison with him. This hints at the fact that Diane probably saw her attempt to make it in Hollywood in much the same terms as she saw her call girl activity. She had to be willing to promote the sexual side of herself to make it, and the Rita/Camilla persona helped her do this. In fact, we see her do this again during her audition with Jimmy "Woody" Katz. We will look at that audition very closely because the dialogue and the context indicates that this willingness to perform sexually for men is related to her childhood abuse from a father figure. Therefore, by being one of her Johns, Mr. Roque is associated with her father figure. And this tells us that the father figure was probably an unyielding, dark Tinman-like personality that we see in Mr. Roque. Later, we find out that both the Cowboy and one of the Castigliane brothers is also connected to her sexual abuse, so they give us further insights into her abuser's character. However, in her fantasy world, she is no longer willing to do tricks for the likes of Mr. Roque. In fact, in her Camilla persona she hides from them, in her Adam persona she fights them as best she can, and the sleeping Diane will not answer the phone when they call.

Another important thing about this scene is that it gives us insights into the nature of the third character in the phone chain. He is the one in the grungy, beat up apartment or kitchen who knows Diane's number. In the film's credits he is called "Hairy-Armed Man." We never see his face, so we don't know who he is, but we do learn something about him. We see that even though the place where he is located is not being taken care of very well, he has a phone that is very important to him. In fact, the round neon light that is shining on his phone encourages us to think that the phone is the most important thing in that room, as it would be for a pimp in his profession. This makes this character very similar to another character who shows up later in the film. Like that other character who I will discuss later, Hairy-Armed Man must have access to a lot of phone numbers because he has to have a direct line to all of the call girls. This issue will provide us with an important revelation later in the film.

This is not the only thing that we learn about the Hairy-Armed Man. We also see that the place he is in is similar to the apartment Adam rented from Cookie at the Park Hotel, because of its run down state. When Adam shows up at the Park Hotel, it is difficult to understand why a man of his prominence would choose such a seedy hotel when he still thought he had access to all of his money. However, the logic of the dream suggests that this was where Diane ended up at one point in her life. And when the Hairy-Armed Man calls Diane, he doesn't use a normal phone number. It seems more like a number that connects him to an extension within the same building. This is very telling because we know the Hairy-Armed Man is calling Diane. However, rather than calling her at her current location at 2590 Sierra Bonita, he seems to be calling her at a place where she lived at some time in the past, at some place like the Park Hotel where perhaps she first became involved in the call girl business. In her dream, we see many elements of her past and her present merge together and by decoding which is which, we begin to understand her state of mind better. So the phone chain makes an important connection between where she was and what she is doing now. Yet, as the Hairy-Armed Man dials her number and the call causes her present day phone to ring, the scene ends with Diane apparently being no longer available to answer that call.

Scene 5
As this scene begins the mood shifts to a lighter and more upbeat note. In the scenes before this we saw the promise of Diane's Jitterbug contest lost to a spirit of despair. Then in the logic of her dream world we saw an assassination attempt against Diane's Hollywood hopes embodied by Camilla. This led to a horrible accident that I believe hints at the real Camilla's death while showing the Camilla persona of Diane desperately attempting to survive. Then in the next scene, we see, through the Dan persona of Diane, how terrified Diane is of facing a horrible truth that is hidden behind Winkie's, and this is a horror that again involves death. And finally, in the fourth scene we get an inkling of Diane's double life because of her phone being the last in a chain of calls that hint at a call girl business in operation. As I mentioned much earlier, this sequence follows the pattern of the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy enters Oz only after she sees her troubles displayed in a window while she dreams of her house being carried away in a tornado. Having now seen a synopsis of the issues with which she is struggling, Diane, like Dorothy, finally lands and her quest begins with her Betty persona on an apparently happy note.

I believe it is significant that Betty is wearing a pink sweater that looks too small for her. It seems clear that the sweater is something Diane may have worn when she was younger, perhaps when she was Dorothy's age. This means that Betty represents an almost childlike innocence in Diane's past. It is also important to note that the elderly couple who leave the airport with Betty and say goodbye to her never show up again in her fantasy. You might even say that they are dispatched quickly and with finality. Their reason for being here at the beginning of Betty's entrance into the fantasy is probably because in Diane's mind the incident is similar to the same two elderly people dropping her off at the airport in her real life when she left Canada for LA. I believe this couple to be Diane's grandparents and I believe that there is something unsavory about them as hinted at by their sinister laughter as they are driven off after parting with Betty at the airport. Yet, since part of the point of Diane's Betty persona is that with her everything is seen in idealized innocence, only positive images are allowed to surface at this time. And Diane struggles to keep it that way for Betty for as long as she can.

Betty's Oz is LA, and although Diane's mind doesn't treat the two elderly people like she is very familial with them, she does make them into her munchkin-like welcoming committee to make her feel right at home. Betty's yellow brick road is the yellow cab, and 1612 Havenhurst and a successful Hollywood career are her destination. The Hollywood sign in the distance shows up prominently to set the context. But after things start off on such a positive note, the Oz analogies become much more complex and much darker. It turns out that Havenhurst is where her Aunt used to live and she believes it is the place from which she can enter the movie business. Unfortunately, she has no red haired Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, to give her guidance because her red haired aunt, who represents Glenda, is on a trip to the north. However, a motherly figure named Coco, dressed all in black to signify her influential status, is there to greet her.

Coco takes charge of everyone in this apartment complex which is associated with Betty/Diane's Hollywood aspirations, much the same way the real Coco appeared to take charge everything at Adam's party with his Hollywood insiders. Yet Coco's last name in the fantasy is Lenoix, a French name the same as "le noix," which means "the nut." The symbolic significance of this is reinforced later when we see the Coco of the real world at Adam's party eating nuts during a conversation about Diane trying to make it as an actress. There is definitely something strange and "nutty" about the wannabes in Coco's Hollywood "haven." There is dog excrement in the middle of the courtyard, and Coco tells a story of how a kangaroo at one point made even a bigger mess. In telling the story Coco mentions the word "kangaroo" and court in the same sentence, and we begin to realize that the powerful ones in Hollywood run the place like it's a kangaroo court. Thus, we can surmise that talent is not always the determining factor in Hollywood. But Coco approves of Betty in the fantasy and gives her the key to her aunt's apartment. By giving her the key that the aunt wanted Betty to have, Coco is opening a new door for Betty. And like the door that was opened by the key that the hit man gives Diane later, this new door in Betty's life ends up involving Rita/Camilla.

When Betty explores her aunt's home she quickly finds that the naked Rita was there first, and so it turns out that Diane cannot play out her Hollywood dream with only the simple innocent Dorothy-like persona of Betty. She becomes linked to the sensual Rita/Camilla persona even before Betty can unpack her blue suitcases, because in truth her aunt was never there to show her any other way. The fact that Betty's first sight of Rita during her fantasy is when Rita is naked in a shower emphasizes how much Diane connects the Rita persona with the image of her naked body. Betty also opens the shower door when she first sees her, which is an important detail we will come back to and deal with in a later scene when the metaphor of "opening the door" is addressed. It is Diane's mind that is the source of this image of Rita, and that is an important thing to focus on here. Later in this scene, Betty says, "And now I'm in this dream place," to give us yet another clue to the fact that we are in Diane's dream. I believe that she brings into the dream the nakedness of Rita to reveal to us that the issue of women being seen as sex objects is why the Rita persona is so important to her quest to make it in Hollywood. With no Aunt Ruth around to give her any other advice, Betty eventually embraces the Rita persona trusting that it will not lead her in the wrong direction.

As I mentioned before, Betty's Aunt Ruth is the one she looked to as a guide, just as Dorothy looked to her Aunt Em. However, Betty's aunt is always just out of reach in Diane's fantasy, always leaving just before Betty gets there, or in the end, arriving just after Betty has left. Dorothy had hope that she could find her way back to her aunt, but Diane's yearning for her Aunt can never be resolved because Diane's aunt is dead. So Diane, unlike Dorothy, has "no place like home" to which she can return. With this as her reality, Rita/Camilla becomes Diane's only hope to help her navigate the road to success in Hollywood.

I've mentioned before the symbols we see in this scene which show how Rita is more an embodiment of the aunt's success than is the innocent Betty, with her pink sweater that is just a little too small. It is Rita who got to the house first. It is Rita who becomes the red haired Rita Hayworth's namesake from the beginning. And it is Rita, with her red towel, who is the one who gets to wear the aunt's majestic looking red and black robes. Therefore, by the end of this scene Betty wants to help Rita. In fact, since Rita is so closely associated with the quest that brought her to Hollywood, Betty wants to protect Rita from those who are out to get her. The partnering of the Betty and Rita personas becomes a central component to the resolution of Diane's identity crisis. However, that is not the only thing going on in her head.

Scene 6
In this scene we are introduced to the character of Adam Kesher and the Hollywood big shots who are involved with a movie he is directing for Ryan Entertainment. He is re-casting his lead actress and two of the big shots are trying to force him to accept a replacement actress that they have chosen. He angrily resists them, even to the point of smashing the windshield of the limousine within which the two were driven to the meeting. I have already discussed much of the symbolism in this scene. I have argued that the movie Adam is re-casting the main actress for is about the life of Diane Selwyn, our dreamer. I have already explained that she is going through an identity crisis and so she has created this elaborate fantasy world to rethink her life, and hopefully find a new outlook that can convince her to keep on living. I have claimed that the name "Ryan" in the movie company's name is really short for "Rhymes with Diane," because after all, the company is really just a metaphor for Diane's active imagination and her "open mind." And I have argued that Adam is an important black clad persona of Diane's that is trying to direct her life, as are the two Castigliane brothers and Mr. Roque. I have also mentioned that the character traits of the Castigliane brothers are a twisted version of the Lion in the Wizard of Oz, just as Mr. Roque is a twisted version of the Tinman, and that they have a certain association the twisted character of Diane's father figure. What I haven't discussed is what is the nature of their conflict with Adam.

Adam embodies the belief that the Hollywood enterprise is on the level. He has the naiveté of Betty in that he thinks everything is about great actresses and glamorous movie stars. He believes that there is "no way" that corruption and manipulation can be involved in his movies. Like Betty, he doesn't perceive that image is often more powerful than talent, and that images can be manufactured, bought and sold. To Adam, his work is about real talent. His integrity is not for sale and he will not be manipulated. This is the somewhat idealistic side of Diane that Adam represents.

On the other hand, Mr. Roque and the Castigliane brothers see things differently. They represent Diane's jaded and disillusioned side. To them movie making is all about manipulating people with images that can be corrupt. Here we see the attitude that had taken over Diane when she decided to have Camilla killed. No longer did she believe that Camilla was a glamorous star whom she should emulate. Instead Camilla was a successful manipulator who had used her sensuality to make both Diane and Adam fall in love with her. Her stardom was a sham and she deserved to be eliminated at all costs. The words that came from Diane's mouth during this angry state of mind were, "This is the girl." So those words echo to us over and over again from one of the Castigliane brothers, and later from the Cowboy. The words reinforce Diane's angry condemnation of Camilla and by extension, the Hollywood dream as well.

When Diane said, "This is the girl," in real life to the hit man, she was doing more than just identifying Camilla as the one to kill. She was identifying Camilla as the one in whom she had put all of her hopes. The one who took the place of her aunt as her only family and her guide in her attempt to navigate the Hollywood dream. Yet, Camilla was also the one who had betrayed Diane by replacing her with another woman in Camilla's life. Camilla's relationship to Adam could be forgiven because it was probably just a move to advance Camilla's career. But when Diane saw Camilla kissing another woman, it seemed to Diane that Camilla was definitely breaking up with her for good. Camilla's commitment to Diane was no deeper than the type of commitments that Hollywood makes. If Camilla could replace her so easily, then Diane would get rid of Camilla and turn the tables, replacing Camilla with the same person whom Camilla was using to replace Diane. This is why the Castigliane brothers show Adam a picture of this other woman with the name Camilla Rhodes. The Castigliane's are trying to destroy the image of the old Camilla Rhodes, because in their image over substance view of the world, destroying Camilla means getting rid of the old image of her and replacing it with a new one. "This is the girl," is the statement that tells us that the part of Diane that wants to kill Camilla is at work, and the Castigliane's are attempting to do that in this scene.

Yet Adam reveals to us the conflicted nature of Diane's world. Part of her does not want Camilla killed, and in fact this part of her is still interested in becoming like Camilla. This is the Betty part of her that is trying to protect Camilla at the same moment that Adam is meeting with that part of Diane that is committed to putting an end to Camilla. This tension causes something of a replay of what happened when Camilla was in the limousine at the beginning of the fantasy. Part of Diane's mind tried to kill her, while another part created an accident to smash up the limousine so the Camilla persona could escape. Now, after Adam has met with the Castigliane brothers and realized their intent, he goes outside to their limousine and smashes it in a way reminiscent to the first limousine being smashed up. And then he flees in a way reminiscent to Camilla's flight. In all of this, Adam's defiance connects him to the Betty persona, even as the real life Adam's love for Camilla connected him to the real life Diane. We see this especially clearly during the double toast at the beginning of the party scene at Adam's house. These two people are both in awe of the image that Camilla embodies, and so they both fall under its spell. But not everyone falls under Camilla's spell in real life or in the fantasy as we shall see.

Scene 7
In this scene, Betty checks up on Rita as she sleeps. This demonstrates how protective the naďve Betty persona is of the Camilla persona.

Scene 8
In this scene, Ray Hott goes to speak with Mr. Roque. The first thing we notice is that Ray has to speak to Mr. Roque from behind a glass wall with a speaker in it. Mr. Roque is sitting in a wheelchair and he is in the dark until Ray begins to speak with him. Mr. Roque does have an assistant in the room with him, but the assistant does not move. And Mr. Roque does not move much either, or say many words. He let's Ray do most of the talking, but somehow his silence is ominous and we know that Ray is afraid of him. Ray tells Mr. Roque that Adam doesn't want the fake Camilla Rhodes, and Ray wants to know if Adam should be replaced like the Castigliane brothers suggested. With just a few words, Mr. Roque indicates that he is on the side of the Castigliane brothers, and Ray realizes that this means they should "Shut everything down."

I have discussed already how Mr. Roque is like a rusted Tinman, unable to talk much and paralyzed. But why does he sit in the dark behind a glass wall? I believe this has to do with the fact that it is his persona in Betty that is driving her to "Shut everything down," which is a metaphor for withdrawing from life and ultimately ending it altogether. Mr. Roque's name is similar to the word "rock", which is a simple lifeless object. Everything about Mr. Roque is lifeless. This is why he is sitting in the dark and keeping people at a distance with his glass wall. Later we see that Diane is becoming like this as she descends into a suicidal depression, sitting alone on her couch in her living room. Whereas the Castigliane brothers show the side of Diane that is threatening to others, Mr. Roque shows the side of Diane that is most threatening to herself. The next scene picks up on this theme of the dangerous currents running wild within Diane's psyche.

Scene 9
In this scene we see two men, Joe and Ed, who seem friendly to each other. Joe is a blonde with short hair, and Ed has long dark hair. As they talk in Ed's office, all of a sudden Joe pulls out a gun and kills Ed. When he tries to make it look like suicide by putting the gun in Ed's hand, he accidentally fires a shot through a wall and the bullet hits a heavyset woman in the next room. As the woman screams, Joe goes over to that room and struggles with the woman, finally dragging her back to Ed's office. A janitor with a vacuum cleaner notices Joe dragging the woman, so Joe calls to the janitor telling him that the woman is hurt and he is just trying to help her. He asks the janitor to come to Ed's office to call a hospital for the woman because Joe needs his help. Then Joe goes into Ed's office, and positions the woman by the wall that the bullet went through. And then he shoots her twice in the back. Just after that the janitor walks in and Joe shoots him and then positions his body next to the woman's. When the janitor was shot, the vacuum cleaner turned on and so as Joe puts the gun back in Ed's dead hand, he next shoots the vacuum cleaner. This causes it to short out, which causes a problem to the building's electrical circuits, which causes an alarm to trigger in the building. Joe wipes away all of the fingerprints he thinks he has left, and then he grabs Ed's black book and heads out the window and down the fire escape.

I believe Joe is Diane's assassin persona, just as the Joe from real life is a hit man Diane employed. Her murderous rage is driving this persona, and he is interested in killing everything that is connected to Camilla in Diane's life. However, to understand the connection to Camilla here, it takes following a number of clues. The first clue is the hair. Joe's is short and blonde, like Diane's, and Ed's is long and black like Camilla's. Another clue is the black book, which Ed calls, "the history of the world in phone numbers." This black book makes Ed a likely candidate for the pimp of the call girls because that business is run by the one with all of the phone numbers. More evidence of this comes from a particular interpretation of the discussion Joe and Ed have right before the shooting. The two of them are talking about an accident which they say was something "unreal" which no one could have foreseen. It seems clear that they are referring to the "unreal" accident that Rita had at the beginning of the fantasy. Then Joe says to Ed, "Gee, I hope you're not going to get in any trouble." At which point Ed says, "Oh that was just a thing man." And a little later he mentions explicitly that it was a car accident. So the question is why would a car accident involving Rita make Joe think Ed might get in trouble? Some reviewers have suggested that Ed was involved with the drag racers, perhaps even being in the other drag racing car that was not in the accident. But certainly that would be a bigger deal than the "that was just a thing" that Ed describes. If Ed had a relationship to any of the dead people at the scene, wouldn't he acknowledge that it was a bigger deal than he seems to be indicating? However, if Ed was a pimp sending the Rita persona to a John, like Mr. Roque at the beginning of the fantasy, then the problem Ed would be facing would mainly amount to an unhappy client whose call girl never showed up. And in that case it makes sense for him to say, "that was just a thing," because he has many more numbers in his black book. Losing Rita does not hurt his business that much.

However, if you interpret the conversation the way that I just have, you can see why Ed is in deeper trouble than he knows. Joe is trying to track down Rita/Camilla, and he has come to a pimp to find out if she was one of his girls. Since Rita/Camilla is associated with Diane's sensual persona, which is what Diane embodies when she is involved in her call girl liaisons, the pimp was connected to Rita/Camilla. Ed confirms this when he tells Joe the story about the accident and so Joe now realizes that Rita may be somewhat bruised and hiding out in the streets, as he indicates in what he says in the next scene in which Joe shows up. For now, Joe decides that it may help him locate Rita/Camilla if he has Ed's phone book. Ed doesn't know that Joe is an assassin who is after one of his girls, so Ed doesn't realize he has told Joe too much. Since Joe needs the book, and Joe's goal is to kill Rita/Camilla without anyone knowing it was him, Ed must die, as must any other witnesses in the building who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The assassin with his short blonde hair, kills his a friend with his long dark hair in another parallel to Diane and Camilla, because they were also friends once. And if Camilla and the pimp are connected, just as Diane and the hit man are connected, this raises the question about whether Camilla was engaged in fixing Diane up with Johns? I believe this was in fact the case, but Camilla would have been more likely to focus exclusively on powerful Hollywood men. This issue also comes up because of the way a man Diane believes to be Luigi, one the powerful Castigliane brothers, looks at Diane in the real world of Adam's party much later in the movie. Luigi, in a way similar to Mr. Roque at the beginning of the fantasy, is acting like one of Diane's Johns showing interest in her on the same night that Mr. Roque does in the fantasy. We later see a hint of the same type of sexual relationship with Diane concerning the Cowboy. They could all represent powerful Hollywood men in Diane's life who are her Johns, and they may all be forcing her to relive the abuse she went through as a child? This would explain some of the intensity of the anger Diane feels toward Camilla. Did Camilla become a symbol of the abuse, corruption and betrayal Diane experienced as a child? The next set of scenes presents compelling clues that this was in fact the case.

Incest is a betrayal from someone a child loves and so it is the worst type of betrayal. It can often lead a child into a life of sexual promiscuity, which I believe is the story behind why the call girl business is so often lurking in the shadows of this film. Ed's character assumes the role of Diane's pimp mainly because he has a black book that Diane saw Joe with at the time Diane was arranging the hit on Camilla in her real life. To Diane, a black book represents phone numbers, and phone numbers represent the call girl profession. So since Joe is her ally against Camilla, she creates a scenario in her fantasy for how Joe came to have this book. Yet as Joe becomes Diane's agent to lash out at the abusers like Camilla and the pimps in her life, we see the innocence of Diane being further destroyed. And this is why I believe the two innocent people are killed by the hit man in Diane's fantasy. Diane is trying to hold on to some of her innocence, as most clearly represented by Betty, but she is losing that battle. The actions of the hit man kill off the innocent as well as the guilty characters by the end of this scene, and similarly we will see how the innocent character of Betty is lost by the end of the fantasy.

Scene 10
The next three scenes are important to understand in parallel to some degree because each focus on the childhood abuse to some degree, and I believe that they all illuminate one another. So I will try to discuss them together as much as possible, drawing conclusions from scenes that build upon the points from the other scenes. This series begins with Betty talking with her aunt on the phone about an audition that her aunt has arranged for her. While describing how hard she will work at learning the lines of the script so she can try to be like a movie star, Diane then tells her aunt about how she found Rita, naked in the aunt's shower. The aunt says she doesn't know Rita and this is a shock to Diane because she thought Rita was the aunt's friend. This dialogue is very significant because it shows us that Diane realizes that Rita was not the Hollywood connection that her aunt would have chosen for her. In fact, Betty says that she "opened the door," referring to the shower door, which led to Rita, while "Coco unlocked the door" to the aunt's apartment. I believe this is a cryptic way of saying that even though Coco was trying to help her go in the path that her aunt wanted her to go, she mistakenly opened the door that led to Rita/Camilla. While Betty is still discussing this on the phone with her aunt, the camera pulls away from Betty and begins literally following the path that leads to Rita. In this way, Lynch is saying to us that we are now going to learn what doorway Diane went through and where that path led her.

When the camera moves away from Betty while she is on the couch talking on the phone to her aunt, at first it is not clear why the camera has left her. Then as it moves forward we realize we have suddenly changed to the point of view of Betty, and we are seeing through her eyes as she walks from the couch to the bedroom where she finds Rita. This is an important detail because when the camera adopts the point of view of Betty we are being told to look from her eyes and see what she sees as she walks. It is a short walk to the bedroom that Camilla is in, and there are a couple of significant things that Betty sees as she walks there. The first thing we notice is the pink flower, representing Betty, Diane's innocent persona. And then we see a shelf with a picture of Betty's aunt on it. There are other things on the shelf as well, such as a magnifying glass, which encourages us to analyze the many clues that Lynch leaves for us, and there is also a bong on the shelf, whose relevance I discussed earlier. But the picture is the most important thing on that shelf in this context, because Betty is also in that picture as a little girl with her aunt. The picture tells us that a loving relationship existed between Betty/Diane and the aunt that extended back to Betty/Diane's childhood. And now we are aware that a picture and Betty/Diane's childhood are something on which Lynch wants us to focus while the camera continues to move.

The next significant thing that we see is another picture, which this time is a painting on which a special light is shining. As the camera moves, it lingers a little on this painting, and then it continues on to the bedroom door. The door is closed at this moment, and from Betty's point of view we linger at this closed door briefly as Betty "opens the door" that leads us to Rita. The scene continues, but we must understand what the reference to the painting was all about in order to really understand what the path was that led Betty/Diane to the Rita/Camilla obsession. The painting is a famous one called "Beatrice Cenci" by Guido Reni, although some argue that it may have been painted by Elisabetta Sirani, a protégé of his. Beatrice Cenci was a young Roman noblewoman who lived from 1577 to 1599. She was a victim of the incestuous advances of her father and so she hired two hit men to kill her father and then make it look like an accident. Even though she was caught and executed for the crime, along with other family members, the sympathies of the public were with Beatrice. She became legendary as a symbol of the lost innocence of victimized daughters, and she has inspired many works of art, books, plays and even a few movies that attempt to capture her story. One author, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who wrote a play about the tragedy called, "The Cenci," said Beatrice's story is about "the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart."

We see the "Beatrice Cenci" painting right after seeing a picture of Betty/Diane as a little girl and right before seeing Rita/Camilla on the bed. Later in this scene we see both Betty and Rita sitting together on the same couch where Betty was talking with her aunt over the phone at the beginning of this scene, and the painting is in the background right between the two of them. It is clear that Lynch wants us to probe the connection between this picture and Diane's relationship to Camilla. And I believe the only logical conclusion is that Diane's sexual abuse as a child led her into an unhealthy image of herself, which then led her into a relationship with Camilla. Camilla's role in Diane's life comes after the abuse, but by encouraging the view that Hollywood success comes from exploiting a sexual image, Camilla pointed Diane down a path that led her to continually relive the abuse.

After moving down the path leading to Rita, Betty opens the door to question her. But Rita is in tears because she doesn't know who she is, she has amnesia. As I mentioned before, this is the Rita/Camilla persona of Diane, not the real Camilla. So as Betty begins to help Rita discover her identity, the real issue that is being investigated concerns Diane's identity crisis. When Betty picks up Diane's purse to see if Rita's identity is somewhere inside of it, Rita has a look of fear on her face. When Rita opens the purse they find stacks of money and a blue triangular key. The money is very ominous, while the key is very intriguing. I think its triangular shape relates to the three-way triangle between Diane, Camilla and Adam, but we know it also signifies Camilla's death at the hands of the hit man. Rita is afraid of these objects because they inevitably lead to the issues which are making her a target to be killed. Even without her memory, Rita instinctively knows that the truth can be very dangerous. Yet, Rita faces her fears and holds up the blue key. As she does this, the scene shifts to a scene at "Pink's" hotdog establishment, where we see three people who will help us to understand why the path that Diane chose ultimately led to that blue key.

Scene 11
I've already described how this scene with the hit man, the prostitute and the pimp, shows us the movement from the pink persona of Diane to her state of prostitution. I've explained this by discussing the meaning of the two phallic symbols of the hotdog and the red rod. There are also other red symbols that appear in this scene, such as a red lampshade, a red fire/emergency truck and a red rose, that we see before the three characters make it around the corner near the beginning of the scene. And there is a red trash can that appears a little later. The red lampshade is symbolic of prostitution as we have already discussed, the fire truck here probably is symbolic of the danger that Diane is in, and the red rose is indicative of the lost love involved. The red trash can is a reference to the dirty, fallen state in which Diane ends up. I believe that the fact that red is reemphasized so much in this scene is to hammer home the connection to prostitution just in case the profession of the woman is not entirely clear to anyone for some reason. And, as I've mentioned before, anytime something is emphasized twice or more in this film, it is very important. That Diane has fallen into a state of prostitution is a difficult but critical component of this film's subtext. While I have tried to make these points before now, what I haven't described yet is why the hit man is in this particular scene.

While the prostitute talks to the hit man and the pimp stands behind her, we see bruise marks on her arm. As the prostitute gets a cigarette from the hit man, we see the pimp's hand move to her bruised arm as he offers to light her cigarette. She looks suspiciously at him while his hand actually touches the bruise, but she then looks relieved to see that he only wants to light her cigarette. This shows us that Diane has been injured by her pimps in a way I think is analogous to the way that Beatrice was injured by the abuse of her father and Diane was injured by her father figure and by Camilla's betrayal. And both Beatrice and Diane turn to the hit man for their justice. The pimp is unaware that the reason the abused woman is drawn to the hit man is because he can kill off the pimp, as the hit man has already done with Ed, the call girl type of pimp in an earlier scene. But now the hit man expects the prostitute to connect him to another target, a brunette who is "maybe a little beat up." By repeatedly returning to the scene with Betty and Rita, we know that this scene with the hit man, the prostitute and the pimp is happening at the same time that Rita holds up the blue key in front of Betty. Clearly, Rita/Camilla is the target of the hit man. But we also see in this scene that Diane and the prostitute have a similar connection to the hit man. This is because in real life the hit man showed Diane the blue key after taking it from his shirt pocket, and in the fantasy the prostitute reaches into that same pocket to get a cigarette. Other than just indicating for us that Diane and the hit man smoke the same type of cigarettes, this scene also shows us that the hit man supplies what the prostitute wants in the same way that he gives Diane what she wants, by going into his shirt pocket. Then the prostitute gets into a blue van that is apparently owned by the hit man. So now the association with the hit man brings both Diane and the prostitute into contact with a blue object that cause some type of movement or transition in their lives. However, they are going in a dangerous direction because as Beatrice's life show us, the hit man's justice will not lead to a happy ending.

As the prostitute gets into the van, the scene shifts back to Betty and Rita in the bedroom. It is here that Diane asks Rita about the money and the key, and as I mentioned before this scene's close association with the scene before it give us the answer to Diane's question. The money came from Diane's work as a call girl prostitute, and the key came from the hit man. Together they are the payoff for the hit and the signal indicating that the hit had been successful. As Rita struggles with these questions we switch to a scene where Adam learns that Ray from Ryan Entertainment is shutting down the movie. Adam is having trouble resisting the forces at work that ultimately want to replace and kill off the Camilla persona, and so he just says he is going home. Earlier I mentioned how his "I'm going home" statements are a clue that explains that we need to go to Diane's home to understand the source of her childhood trauma that in some ways is the beginning point of all of her later troubles.

The scene shifts back to Betty and Rita, and now they are both on the couch. And Diane is wondering where Camilla was going when the accident happened. Camilla remembers that the location was somewhere on Mulholland Drive. Diane gets excited because this is a clue. She suggests that they call the police and find out about any accidents on Mulholland Drive. But Rita looks worried. So Betty says, "It will be just like in the movies. We'll pretend to be someone else." This is Lynch giving us another hint that we are in Diane's dream world right now. The story of Diane's life is being told in this dream, "just like in the movies," and the characters in her life are pretending to be "someone else." The scene ends with Betty and Rita agreeing to try to find out whether or not there was an accident on Mulholland Drive. As they make this agreement the camera moves to a new position so that we can see the painting of "Beatrice Cenci" centered right between the two women as they hold hands.

Scene 12
We now go to the scene with Adam in his car finally arriving at his home. As I have described before now, he walks in on an infidelity that destroys his family. I explained at length earlier how this infidelity relates to Diane's sexual abuse, although on the surface the scene appears to be only about Adam's break up with his wife. Yet, as I have already stated above, when Adam pours pink paint over the family jewels he is telling the story of Beatrice Cenci's abuse all over again. When Adam is thrown from the house beaten and bleeding we get the impression that he is finally starting to realize that the part of Diane that wants to pay back Camilla for the suffering Diane has gone through will inevitably win this internal struggle. And that's bad news for the Rita/Camilla persona. Even though the Betty persona has not given up yet, and is in fact shaking hands with Rita to signify her allegiance to Rita, we see that Adam is losing the fight that was in him. To emphasize this point, a thug working for the Castigliane brothers later shows up at Adam's house with music in the background playing the words, "Baby, I'm going to bring it on home to you." Then the thug proceeds to beat up the guilty parties in Adam/Diane's home, meeting out a type of justice that Diane would like to see, although it is short of the hit man's justice, which is ultimately what Diane's vengeful side wants.

Scene 13
Meanwhile, Betty has decided to try to save Rita from the ultimate retribution. Betty and Rita hide the money and the key in a hatbox in the closet. Then they head to Winkie's to call the police from a pay phone. Once again we see the arrow from Diane's subconscious pointing away from the back of Winkies where the beast and the God-awful feeling are found. The Betty and Rita personas obey the sign and, unlike Dan, they stay away from the back. But Betty does call the police and she does find out that there was an accident on Mulholland Drive. Then they go inside of the Winkie's and there they see a waitress with "Diane" on her nametag. This triggers another memory in Rita. She remembers the name Diane Selwyn. They go back to the aunt's apartment and look up the name in the phonebook. There is only one entry for "D. Selwyn" and so they call the number. An answering machine picks up and they hang up without leaving a message. The voice on the answering machine is not Rita's, but she does recognize that it is the voice of someone she knows. So they are not sure if Rita is Diane Selwyn or not, but they believe that they are getting close to unraveling the mystery of Rita's identity.

There are many issues in this scene which help us unravel the mystery of Diane Selwyn's dark struggle. For one thing, the waitress at Winkie's is yet another short haired blonde, who, like the prostitute, might be a true doppelganger of Betty. In her real life, Diane saw this woman at the Winkie's while she spoke with the hit man. At that time the woman had "Betty" on her nametag, so we know that it is from this waitress that Diane gets the name of her innocent persona in her fantasy world. But why does a person like this represent innocence to Diane? She does where a pink blouse, but I think the connection to innocence goes deeper than that. Later, in Diane's real life, we see Diane drinking from a coffee mug that looks suspiciously like the coffee mugs at Winkie's. This indicates to me that Diane may have worked at Winkie's in the past, bringing one of their mugs home with her at one point. If this is the case, then it was during a time that Diane now sees as an innocent period of her life. Which would mean it is a period of time before she got involved in the call girl business and before she met Camilla, in my view. But if Diane did work at a Winkie's before meeting Camilla, this means that her aunt's money didn't last very long.

Later, when they are back in Aunt Ruth's apartment, as they are calling the number they found for "D. Selwyn," Betty says, "It's strange to be calling yourself." And even though at this point in the film we think she means it's strange for Rita to be calling herself, later we figure out that it is Betty, who is the primary and central Diane persona, who is calling herself. This is reinforced when Rita responds to Betty with, "Maybe it's not me." With this initial exchange, I believe we are being told that we should pay close attention to this dialogue because it will contain truths that even the speakers themselves may not understand. After hearing the answering machine message from Diane Selwyn's number, Rita says, "That's not my voice. But I know her." To this Betty says, "Maybe that isn't Diane Selwyn's voice. Maybe that's your roommate. Or if it is Diane Selwyn, maybe she could tell you who you are." As we find out later, it certainly is Diane Selwyn's voice, as Betty was quick to allow for, but here is the only time someone tells us that maybe Diane and Camilla may have been roommates once. I think this is the important truth that we are supposed to hold onto from this conversation. It explains how close Diane and Camilla had once been in the real world. And since we find that they are no longer living together when Diane moved to apartment #17, we are getting a hint that a gradual break up was probably occurring between Diane and Camilla before she left apartment #12. And in fact, we will find that Rita hints at this later in the reality scenes when they are on Diane's couch together probably for the last time.

Scene 14
In this scene a thug, named Kenny, working for the Castigliane brothers dishes out some retribution at Adam's house. We've discussed this scene already. The way Lorraine and Gene treated Adam was so outrageous, that it is nice to see Adam getting help dealing with them from some corner, even if the help is coming from other enemies of his. But what this shows us is that the two conflicting sides of Diane, the side that wants to love her and the side that wants her dead, both hate the memory of the incest from the past. But this is ultimately a setup for how the Adam persona is finally won over to the other side. In the scenes to come, the argument is made to the Adam persona that you can either be a victim of the scars of the past, or you can dish out some scars of your own.

Scene 15
In this scene, a growing darkness is descending upon Adam. It is nighttime now and the Adam persona is learning just how far he has fallen. Like Diane, he has fled from the abusive family, but he soon learns that even though he used to have money, he is now broke. And people who he is afraid of know where to find him. He has one hope. Go to see the Cowboy, and learn how to play ball with corruption.

When you look at this scene as a picture of Diane's life at one point, it is not hard to guess where that point was when a similar situation confronted Diane. Like Adam, Diane thought she had a lot of money when she first arrived at LA with her aunt's inheritance. But, I believe, she found herself broke and living in a seedy hotel before finally giving into someone like Ed, the pimp of the call girls. In the end, her only way out of the situation that she and her Adam persona were in was to follow the path of the Midnight Cowboy, another reference to prostitution. This link to the movie "Midnight Cowboy" is made because of the late hour that Adam and the Cowboy meet together. The movie "Midnight Cowboy," involved prostitution between a younger man and older women who were his Johns. So, for Diane we can assume that as a younger woman she was dealing with older male customers. Older like her father figure.

Scene 16
In the next scene, we are back with Betty and Rita in the Aunt's home at night. They are on the floor near a coffee table looking at a map. Betty is convincing Rita that they should go to the address they found in the phonebook for "D. Selwyn." Rita is very nervous about this idea, and as she hesitates, someone comes up to their door in the darkness and knocks. As they get up, we see the Beatrice Cenci painting shown prominently again, and the camera lingers on it telling us to be prepared for more references to sexual abuse as Betty goes to answer the door. When she opens the door we see a woman with long blonde hair named Louise Bonner. She is dressed all in black, and as her face is shrouded in the shadows she appears to be some type of psychic or spiritual medium. She says to Betty, "Someone is in trouble. Who are you? What are you doing in Ruth's apartment?" Some of Betty's face is also in the shadows now, and she replies, "She's letting me stay here. I'm her niece. My name's Betty." To this Louise responds strongly, "No it's not! That's not what she said. Someone is in trouble. Something bad is happening." Coco interrupts soon after this. And Louise says to Coco, "Oh Coco. I've been trying to get a hold of you since 3 o'clock this afternoon. That one is in my room and she won't leave. I want you to get her out. I want you to get her out now!" Then, after Coco gives Betty a script for an audition the next day, she tries to escort Louise away. But Louise pulls free for one last premonition. Louise says, "No, she said it was someone else who was in trouble." After all of this, when Betty closes the door and turns back to Rita, she sees a look of absolute terror on Rita's face.

To understand this scene we have to understand the identity of Louise Bonner. To do that we need to unravel her symbolism. Since she is wearing all black she has power of some sort. Since she is acting like a medium, she must be a powerful one. Who then is she channeling? It's not Aunt Ruth, because she came to the apartment expecting to speak to Aunt Ruth. Since Louise is in a dream world, the other world to communicate with would be the real world of Diane Selwyn. Like the arrows on the side of the Winkie's, I think Diane Selwyn is trying to give important information to our characters, but this time through Louise. "Someone is in trouble," refers both to the Rita persona and to Diane Selwyn who is descending into a suicidal depression. Clearly when Louise says, "No it's not" she's referring to the fact that Betty is not Diane's real name. You might say that Diane realizes that the fantasy is taking a turn for the worse, and she is trying to wake up before the things end horribly. There is a truth waiting to be discovered that would destroy the innocence of the Betty character, perhaps for good, and with Betty gone, any hope of holding on to something to live for would be gone as well. Of course, Betty still thinks her hope lies in connecting with the Rita persona, even though that was never the right path for her. And the Rita persona's doom is coming, as we can see by the look of terror on Rita's face after Louise has delivered her premonition. Just as the grandmother probably wanted Diane out because of the infidelity, so too does Diane's vindictive side want to completely erase Camilla and Rita from existence because of Camilla's betrayal of the love-struck Diane.

When Coco interrupts them, Louise snaps out of her trance and then begins to represent someone else. When she says that there is a female in her room who she wants out now, she refers to 3 o'clock. When Adam discovered his wife in her room having an affair, there is a clock on the shelves next to the door as he walks in that show it is just before 4 o'clock. This means that the incest that that infidelity represented had probably been occurring since 3 o'clock. In my opinion, this is why we saw the Beatrice Cenci painting again right before Betty came to the door. Louise is now referring to the incest, and I believe she is taking on the role of Diane's mother figure, like Lorraine did. And Louise is wearing black, like Lorraine was before putting on the blue dress to symbolize the transition forced upon Diane that I talked about early. In the Beatrice Cenci story, the mother's name began with an "L," Lucrezia. So I believe that both Louise's and Lorraine's name begins with an "L" for that reason, and I believe that their long blonde hair is to show you that they are related to Diane, although they do not entirely represent her character. And the mother figure's anger ultimately drives out Diane, just as Adam was driven out of his home when he was representing Diane trying to go back home. Louise Bonner is unhappy that Betty is there, because as Diane's mother figure she had always wanted her out ever since she found Diane in her bedroom.

Moreover, I believe the complex character of Louise Bonner also represents a third person. In my view, the name "Bonner" comes from the Sam Peckinpah film, "Junior Bonner." I believe Lynch is making an ode here to the Peckinpah's use of psychologically intense character confrontations, with often violent endings. The scenes with the hit man and with Kenny the thug show the violent direction that Peckinpah is so well known for, but here we have the non-violent thread developed in the "Junior Bonner" film. The main character in the film was a rodeo cowboy who rides bulls and is past his prime. Louise Bonner is an actress past her prime in Coco's court of Hollywood hopefuls. What happens to actresses in Louise's state? If they have no life outside of Hollywood to return to, as Diane did not, they become a shell of their old selves, as Coco indicates that this "happens sometimes" with Louise. So Louise also represents the state of Diane's acting career, which was contributing to her depression. This reference to "Junior Bonner" becomes clearer as we head into the next scene, where we come upon an old rundown corral, just like where a rodeo might take place, with the skull of an old steer hanging from the gates entrance. The corral, like Diane's hopes for an acting career looks like it has been abandoned.

Scene 17
Adam arrives for his meeting with the Midnight Cowboy at the old beat up corral. It is a difficult meeting for Adam because the Cowboy is there to make him give in to the corrupt personas in Diane's mind that want Rita/Camilla dead. The Cowboy ridicules Adam by telling him things like, "You're too busy being a smart aleck to be thinkin'." At one point he says, "A man's attitude ... a man's attitude goes some ways to the way his life will be." Then at another point he says, "There's sometimes a buggy. How many drivers does a buggy have?" "One," Adam replies. To which the Cowboy says, "So let's just say I'm drivin' this buggy and if you fix your attitude, you can ride along with me." It becomes clearer what he is getting at when he says to Adam, "You must be a person who does not care about the good life." Adam, knowing that he wants the "good life," inevitably capitulates saying, "What do you want me to do?" What the Cowboy wants more than anything else is for Adam to say, "This is the Girl," when the fake Camilla Rhodes girl shows up for the part during auditions the next day. This will indicate that he agrees that she will play the lead in Diane's life story, instead of the old Camilla Rhodes character, who had the lead role before. If Adam gives into this, he can go back to living the "good life." Finally, the Cowboy says his most mysterious statement, "Now, you will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad. Good night." And then he walks off and disappears into the night.

It is both a very difficult scene and a very illuminating scene. The Cowboy seems to be a calm, soft-spoken type, but he has a dark malevolence to him that finally breaks down Adam's resistance. The Cowboy has the same type of no-eyebrow, death-like presence as the Mystery Man in Lynch's "Lost Highway." But the Cowboy is not Death personified. I've discussed before how the Cowboy is like Dorothy's scarecrow in a darker sense, the same way that Mr. Roque is like the Tinman and the Castigliane brothers are like the Lion. But in some ways, the Cowboy is more central than the others. He explains what is going on at a level that none of the others even attempt. As I mentioned before, Adam, like Betty, represents a side of Diane that is still somewhat innocent. A side that believes in the Hollywood enterprise so much, that, like Diane, he falls in love with a person like Camilla who so personifies the image-over-substance Hollywood conceit. But Adam is being told that if he wants the good life, he is going to have to let the jaded and darker figures in Diane's life take over. The personas who want to be rid of the real Camilla want to be in the driver's seat. When you connect this to the idea that Diane probably chose to get out of poverty and embrace the "good life" by becoming a call girl, then the same corrupt thinking is convincing her director persona to agree with the "this is the girl" statement that spells doom for Camilla.

Yet, in a malevolent way, the Midnight Cowboy and his ominous partners are only doing what they think is in the best interests of Diane. The Cowboy explains that he believes Diane's sad life is the result of a sad attitude. Since Diane believes more in Camilla than in herself, Camilla is the one becoming the star. To them, the logical solution to this is to get rid of Camilla. In their view, if Camilla stays, then Diane is doomed. The Cowboy's last statement about one or two more visits explains this when you look at what happens at the end of the fantasy. He enters Diane's room smiling, saying to the "Pretty Girl" in the bed that it is time to wake up. But it is not Diane in the bed, it is Rita/Camilla. In the Cowboy's logic this is bad. Or, more to the point, something bad happens because of it. Diane is still obsessed on Rita/Camilla because she is in her bed. The wrong woman is in the room, just as Louise Bonner had told us earlier. There are going to be terrible consequences because of this. The scene fades out, and then back in. The Cowboy is now appearing for the second time and he is no longer smiling. As he leaves the second time, we now see on the bed the image of the Diane Selwyn from the dream, and she is dead and the fantasy comes to an end. I will explain in more what the implications of this later scene is and what it was that caused the Cowboy to be seen twice when we get to that scene below.

Scene 18
In this scene it is morning time, and the Hollywood sign shows up once again very prominently. Betty's quest for stardom is in full swing as she rehearses her lines with Rita for her big audition. The script they are reading is very revealing in more than one way. Because of her fantasy's logic, The Sylvia North Story script is really about Diane's life story. Initially, we get subtle clues in the script about the relationship between Diane and Camilla. Later the same script gives us clues about the relationship between Diane and her grandfather who we finally learn must be the abusive father figure, the called her father's best friend.

The first line is from Betty. She says, "You're still here?" To which Rita replies, "I came back. I thought that's what you wanted." In an angry voice Betty answers back, "Nobody wants you here!" At this point in the scene the camera moves to a position to show you that Camilla is reading a script. Before that point, it was not clear that they were rehearsing lines, and it would have been possible to think they were actually in a real conversation. By putting on this brief but fake conversation, Lynch is asking us to think about those lines. They are coming from somewhere. Although they are not the words that the Betty persona would like to be said between the two of them, other aspects of Betty's mind would very much like this conversation to happen between Betty and Rita. They want to be rid of Rita/Camilla, and through the script they have found a way to briefly show themselves.

Another issue that I have alluded to earlier is that the scene shows that Betty takes acting seriously, while apparently Rita does not. Yet, once again, it is Rita who is wearing the glamorous red and black robe, while Betty is in a cheap pink one. Even though Rita says that Betty is very good, that hasn't made a difference in the real Diane's life. Camilla will always beat Diane out for big roles because image is more important than talent. And this fact is not lost on Diane, or her Betty persona, because Betty will take a chapter out of Rita/Camilla's book when she performs in the audition.

Next, the scene jumps a little bit ahead in the morning. Coco, comes to the door and notices Rita for the first time. When Coco asks Rita who she is, Rita says, "Uh, Betty…" In the context of her response, she is calling Betty to have her deal with Coco. But in a literal sense Rita is Betty, since they both are just personas of Diane. When Betty comes out of the kitchen, Coco is frowning. She does not approve of Rita. Coco asks Betty to go outside so that they can talk. In the conversation Coco let's Betty know that she spoke with the aunt on the phone and the aunt doesn't want Rita there. Betty tries to cover for Rita, saying that the aunt misunderstood in their earlier conversation about Rita. And besides, Betty further argues, Rita is "very nice." To this Coco says, "Honey, you're a good kid. But what you're telling me is a load of horse puckey, even though it comes from a good place. Now I'm going to trust you to sort this thing out." This allows Betty to keep Rita from being kicked out, but Coco does add, "Don't make me out to be a sucker. Louise Bonner said there's trouble in there. Remember last night? Well… Sometimes she's wrong, but if there is trouble - get rid of it." With that, Coco leaves, and Betty goes back inside to reassure Rita that she is not abandoning her.

The message in the dialogue with Coco is clear. Coco does not believe that Betty is right about Rita. She thinks she's trouble and that means she should get rid of her. That puts Coco in line with all of the other personas that have been out to get Rita. But Betty is holding out. She still wants to protect Rita from an increasingly hostile dream world.

Scene 19
In this scene, we see men driving around who appear to be undercover police or undercover mobsters who are searching for Rita. Betty has her safely inside of Aunt Ruth's apartment, and so she heads off to her audition in a yellow cab. When she arrives at the office of her aunt's friend, Wally Brown, she finds that he has invited the director and many others to come see her audition for the part. The director's name is Bob Brooker, and the actor who has been hired to play opposite her is named Woody Katz. Among the others there, there is a red head woman named Linney James who is a very successful casting agent, with her black clad assistant named Nicki. Before Betty and Woody do the scene, Bob at first says he has nothing to say, and then he offers some advice nevertheless. He says, "It's not a contest. The two of them with themselves … so don't play it for real until it gets real." Everyone looks confused and unimpressed at this. Then Woody says with a smirk on his face, "Just tell me where it hurts, baby." And then he looks at the director and says, "Hey Bobby, I want to play this one nice and close. Like we did with that other girl, uh, what's her name? The one with the black hair. That felt kinda good. Whaddya think?" The director then says, "That's good, Woody. Just don't rush that line again. I told you... the line where you say, 'Before what?'" And Woody responds, "Bobby, acting is reacting." Then after explaining why it is always the other person's fault when he rushes the line, Woody says to Betty, "Betty, look, you don't rush it, I don't rush it, okay? Now, we're gonna play this nice and close, just like in the movies. Okay? … Dad's best friend goes to work."

Even before the acting starts, there are many issues to learn from this scene. First off, we find a red haired successful Hollywood agent. In my view, this is Diane giving us our closest look yet of how she remembered her aunt when she was alive. The woman is described by Wally in glowing terms, "Now our surprise guest, Linney James. Alas, we can't afford her to cast our show. But, well, as casting agents go, she is the best." Wally emphasizes her successfulness twice, explaining that she gets paid more than they can afford, and stating that she is the best. We know that this is what Diane probably believed about her aunt, and it seems a little bit over the top and not necessarily true. Another interesting feature of this scene is Linney's assistant, Nicki. She is dressed completely in black like a person of power, although she is only an assistant. The reason for this becomes clear when we notice that her jet-black hair and the way it is styled along with her thick black glasses, makes her a female double of Adam. Adam is the one whom Diane has chosen to be the persona who directs the re-casting of her life story, so we know that Diane admired Adam in real life and probably thought she would have chosen to be like him if she had not decided to become an actress. So it seems evident then that she is identifying with Nicki as well. Nicki is where she might have been if only her aunt had lived and Diane had been able to work with her aunt. The fact that Diane is using such an idealized image of her aunt and her assistant should warn us that the outcome of the audition will not be a true to life account. Instead, this is the audition as she would have wanted it to be, since we do find out later from the party conversation in the reality portion of the film that in real life this audition was a flop for Diane.

The next character that appears to have some important symbolic significance is Woody. Like the family jewels in an earlier scene, with Woody we again have a slang term for the sex organ of a man. And when you add this to the fact that Woody starts off his interaction with Betty with let's-play-doctor jokes like, "Just tell me where it hurts, baby," it should come as no surprise that with Woody, we are entering into Diane's sexual abuse territory. This means that when Woody says things like, "you don't rush it, I don't rush it," we have to consider that maybe this is what Diane's father figure said during the acts of incest. And when Woody says, "Dad's best friend goes to work," we have to consider that maybe he is saying that the best friend of a father figure is his penis. As I said earlier, the script gives us clues both about Diane's relationship with Camilla and her relationship with her grandfather. And this audition scene especially focuses on her the issue of her relationship with the father figure who is her grandfather.

There is one other issue in the subtext that we should consider before we look at what is in the script. There is a clear implication being made when Woody says, "Hey Bobby, I want to play this one nice and close. Like we did with that other girl, uh, what's her name? The one with the black hair. That felt kinda good. Whaddya think?" The girl with black hair that liked playing it really close was probably a memory from Diane's real life. And during the real life dinner scene, Diane told us that Camilla won the role instead of her. So the clear implication is that Camilla was the one who liked to play it close. In fact, she seems to have been the only one who wanted to play it close since the issue stood out in everyone's mind, and this tells us a lot about Camilla. As we see when Betty has to play it close, it turns into a hot sexual scene, and this is the first time we are getting a clear indication that this is how Camilla gets parts. She plays it very hot and very sexual, and she is very successful. No wonder then that when Diane revisits this traumatic event in her life through her fantasy, Betty decides to play the scene the way Camilla did. And sure enough, she gets the same reaction. The scene that Betty called "lame" when she rehearsed it with Rita in Aunt Ruth's apartment, now has become hot and heavy. As we have seen all along, Diane's innocent Betty persona believes in Camilla passionately. And so she cannot help but try to relive her life in Camilla's image.

The following is how David Lynch's script describes the scene:

Betty and Woody start the scene. It is very difficult for
Betty as Woody has her in an absurd clench now.

BETTY
You're still here?
WOODY
I came back. I thought that's what you wanted.

Woody plays this with a big lecherous smile. He gives the
last part of the line across her cheek up to her ear.

BETTY
Nobody wants you here.

Betty uses the anger of this line to push herself away from
Woody. Woody reaches out and grabs her wrist.

WOODY
Really?

Betty pulls her hand away and stands her ground.

BETTY
My parents are right upstairs! They
think you've left.

Woody smiles broadly and moves again toward Betty.

WOODY
So ... surprise!

Betty pushes him back.

BETTY
I can call them... I can call my dad.

WOODY
But you won't.

He grabs Betty by the wrist again and pulls her in to him.
He puts his hand on her waist and it accidentally slips and
keeps going down her hips. He jerks his hand back. Betty
looks down and sees Woody's hand hovering above her thigh.
Betty takes her hand and gently presses down on Woody's hand.
She slowly looks up with the most seductive smile. Woody
lets his hand rest more firmly on her thigh, and squeezes her
thigh as he sees her smile. With his other hand Woody gently
pulls her closer. Something has started coming over Betty
and she catches the drift of this scene in a different way.
She's surprising herself.

BETTY
(almost a hot whisper)
You're playing a dangerous game here. If you're trying
to blackmail me... it's not going to work.

Woody now surprises himself. He becomes almost tender and
genuinely worked up from the heat coming off Betty.

WOODY
You know what I want...it's not that difficult.
Where the scene should turn to anger from Betty it can't now
and Betty plays it as she feels it. She stays in very close
to Woody - looking him right in the eyes.

BETTY
(whispering desperately -
slowly)
Get out... Get out before I call my dad.
He trusts you... you're his best friend.
(her arms go around him)
This will be the end of everything.

Woody gets lost. He doesn't know where he is anymore. He
can only see Betty's eyes.

WOODY
What about you? What will your dad think about you?

Betty still playing it in a dreamy whisper... lost in heat.

BETTY
Stop... stop it. That's what you said
from the beginning. If I tell them what
happened... they'll arrest you and put
you in jail. So get out of here… before...

WOODY
(caught by her transfixing,
sultry eyes, and almost
breathless ... he finds himself
taking an extra long pause)
Before what?

As scripted Betty pretends to pull the knife from behind her
back, but wraps the knife around behind Woody and pulls him
into a kiss.

BETTY
(as she kisses him - whispers)
Before… I kill you.

Woody panics and pushes Betty away with his hands on her
shoulders as if forcing himself to come out of a trance. He
finally is able to say his line.

WOODY
Well, then they'd put you in jail.

As scripted Betty is supposed to cry now and it is very easy
for her to do this because she's ashamed at how the sex of
the scene took her over. Tears begin running down her
cheeks. She backs away.

BETTY
I hate you... I hate us both!

She pretends to drop the knife. The scene ends.

At the end of the scene, everyone is amazed with Betty's performance, except Bob, the director. In fact, the director may not have been paying too close attention because he appears to have been reading the script during the audition. He starts off by saying, "Very good. Really." But then he adds a more ambiguous comment, "I mean it was forced maybe, but still humanistic. Yeah, very good. Really. Really." Like everything else he has said up to this point, his comments don't appear to be especially insightful. But when we deal with the content of the dialogue, the director may have a valid point after all. When you take the script somewhat literally, the scene seems to be about a girl who is sexually involved with someone who is sneaking into the house under the nose of the parents. The person seems to be the best friend of the father, and could easily be a relative. And the person seems to have kept the girl from telling anyone by convincing her that if she does tell, her relationship with her father will be destroyed. The girl has become unstable because of the sexual abuse, and she is becoming both suicidal and homicidal.

The literal reading by itself is an indication that Diane is remembering some type of sexual abuse in her past when she plays out this scene. But when we deal with the symbolism involved, we learn even more. In the dialogue we are told that the mother and the father are upstairs, and I believe this to be a reference to the two of them being in heaven. And her threats to call on the father I believe to be an indication that the father was very close to her abuser and so calling on his memory would be damaging to the abuser. And since the grandparents' persecution Diane at the end of the film involves forcing her onto her bed, the grandfather is the most likely one who would have been close to the father, and who would have become the father figure after the mother and father's death. If the grandfather was the abuser, we can assume that he was the biological father of her father because of what is implied here. Yet, calling on the father's memory was a risky move for Diane because the grandfather could claim anything he wanted to about his son. He says to her, "What about you? What will your dad think about you?" If he is implying that her dad would think of her as a slut, he could be arguing that her biological father would have engaged in the same sexual assault on her as the grandfather, thus destroying her connection to him even in death. To her the abuse rose to the level of being the "end of everything." So she threatens to kill her abuser, which we know actually happened in Beatrice Cenci's story where the abuser was the father. But Diane goes further, and threatens even to kill herself.

With this as the backdrop to Diane's life, we can argue that Bob's, "it was forced maybe," could be seen as a comment on the sexual abuse and not on Betty's acting. But we do know from what Diane says in the reality portion of the film, that Bob was not impressed with her acting. And we know that she did not get the chance to play the lead in The Sylvia North Story, which I believe so closely mirrored her own life story. This was devastating to her, and now she seems to be rewriting that portion of her life by using Rita/Camilla's sensual performance instead of her own performance that we saw in Aunt Ruth's kitchen. Linney, the stand-in for Aunt Ruth, is so impressed she immediately recruits Betty for her latest casting project. But before she takes Betty to this new project, she takes a few digs at Wally's production, saying, "God, that was awful." Betty is stunned, thinking that she was referring to her audition. But Linney explains that she was talking about Wally's production of The Sylvia North Story. Linney says that Wally is past his prime and the film will never get made. And Nicki adds, "And the cast I hear so far is terrible." Which Linney agrees with by saying, "Oh, God, terrible!" And she even goes so far as to say, "That poor old fool Wally." In the reality portion of Lynch's film we learn that the film was indeed made, so we know that these digs most likely represent what Diane would like to believe rather than the truth. In Diane's mind, the movie would have been done better had Adam been the director, and, of course, if she had been the star. And so, as they leave one audition that represented Bob Brooker's incompetent casting of The Sylvia North Story in a little office, Linney takes Betty to Adam's casting of The Sylvia North Story. Adam's audition happens on a glamorous movie set in a wonderful sound stage, the way it should have been done, as far as Diane is concerned

As Linney walks Betty over to Adam's audition, she says, "Now we want to take you across and introduce you to a director who's a head above the rest. He's got a project that you will kill!" Since The Sylvia North Story is all about Diane's life, this is a premonition that Diane will kill herself, and we will see a premonition like this again. But Betty is a little startled by the use of the word "kill" and so Linney rephrases her statement by saying, "Knock it right out of the park."

Scene 20
This scene starts off on the set of Adam's version of The Sylvia North Story. Clearly, he's making Diane's life story a musical, with the lead actress in a sparkling pink sequined top in this scene. Perfect for the pink clad innocence of Betty with her musical Jitterbug claim to fame. The actress auditioning now is someone who we were told earlier is one of the six top actresses. Her name is Carol, and she's lip-synching to the song "Sixteen Reasons" by Connie Stevens.

This is all much more impressive than what we saw in Wally's office, and I think it is important to state once more that this has very little to do with how The Sylvia North Story movie was really made. In the reality portion of Lynch's film, we are explicitly told that Bob Brooker was the director of The Sylvia North Story, and we are told this while Adam is sitting across the table and he doesn't complain. He had nothing to do with The Sylvia North Story. But after Camilla starred in The Sylvia North Story, we are told that she apparently got a number of other leading roles, and in some of them she helped Diane get small parts. It is in one of the last of those later films in which Camilla stars, that Adam directs. We find this out in one of Diane's reality flashbacks. And in that flashback we see the same props and background scenery that we see in Diane's fantasy of how Adam would have made The Sylvia North Story. Some reviewers have mistakenly suggested that this means Adam really did direct The Sylvia North Story, or that Diane's reality flashback was mistaken. But on the contrary, Diane's flashback was accurate, but her fantasy's depiction of The Sylvia North Story is not. She brings into her imagination things that come from the more current events in her life, and that includes some of the props from the show Adam is currently making. Clearly she is impressed with Adam, having used him so prominently in her fantasy, and so she wants all of his impressive sets to be in her fantasy's recreation of her own life story.

In Diane's fantasy, as Carol continues to pretend to sing "Sixteen Reasons," Betty walks into the set with Linney and Nicki. As she walks in, Adam turns and looks at her from his director's chair. As their eyes meet, there is clearly a strong connection between them. The music in the background goes through the following verses as the connection lasts:

(Thirteen) The way you thrill my heart
(Fourteen) Your voice so neat
(Fifteen) You say we'll never part
(Sixteen) Our love's complete
Those are all of the sixteen reasons why I (why I) love you

It is as though Adam immediately recognizes that she is the one who is right for this part, and possibly for his life as well. Yet since he represents the persona that is directing Diane’s fantasy version of her life story, we can say that this important part of Diane’s psyche really loves the Betty part of herself and wishes she could bring that aspect of herself into the limelight. But for terrible reasons this cannot happen, and the show must go on, so Adam does not do anything about this reaction. As the singing stops he goes and talks to Carol, who loves the role and really wants the part. He compliments her nicely but is noncommittal and then he goes back to his chair. While lighting a cigarette, he asks who's next, and is told, "Camilla Rhodes." He is briefly shaken, remembering what the Cowboy told him from the night before. He asks them to bring her in, and then blows a circular ring of smoke as the following announcement is made over the sound system, "Sylvia North Story, Camilla Rhodes, Take One."

As the fake Camilla takes the stage, this time the song being lip-synched is "I've Told Every Little Star" by Linda Scott. Adam tells someone to get Jason, an official involved in the casting who had told Adam to go see the Cowboy. After making Jason wait a little while, Adam tells Jason, "This is the girl." Ray, the one who reports to Mr. Roque, is listening as he stands behind Jason somewhat in the shadows and very close to Jason's shoulder. After Adam says the required line, Ray comes out of the shadows and out from behind Jason as he says, "Excellent choice, Adam." Adam looks somewhat saddened, and right at that moment Betty begins to look worried. She looks disappointed, and as she looks at her watch she says, "Oh my goodness." At this point Adam turns around and they look into each other's eyes again. This time there is sadness in both of their eyes as the following lyrics play in the background:

Maybe, you may love me too
Oh my darling, if you do
Why haven't you told me?

This is a question for Diane in her Adam persona, and the question is why hasn’t she been true to her Betty persona if it is so important to her? After this, Diane says to Linney and Nicki, "I have to be somewhere. I… I promised a friend. I'm sorry, I must go now." And then she turns and literally runs out of the studio with Adam's eyes still on her. His expression is especially regretful now.

This scene is a momentous one for the Betty persona. She had been intending to be the new one to play the lead in Adam's production, and clearly Adam wanted her to do so as well. But Adam, who seemed to be her ally at the beginning when he resisted the corrupt personas, has been intimidated and no longer can fight the dark forces in Diane's life. Diane's mind is still conflicted, but it does ultimately choose a substitute for Camilla Rhodes to play the part instead of Betty. In a sense, the part of her that is angry at Camilla and that had her eliminated is still obsessed with Camilla Rhodes, but now the obsession just involves replacing her with another version of Camilla Rhodes. And since Diane's mind is ruled by her obsessions, Betty is also obsessed with Camilla in a defensive way that is focused on the persona of Rita. The "This is the girl" personas want to remove and replace Camilla with someone who looks more like Diane, but who is not a sweet innocent persona like Betty. On the other side stands the innocence of Betty, which portrays her obsession as true love for Camilla. Yet, at the audition, Betty clearly loses, although the director feels terrible about it. Diane has essentially chosen the corrupt path over the path of innocence. The path that leads to murder over the path that was supposed to lead to love. However, both paths also included a desire to incorporate Camilla's sensual power into Diane's life, so in the end, neither path was completely innocent.

Scene 21
This scene begins with Betty and Rita both getting into a yellow cab and heading over to where "D. Selwyn" lives, at 2590 Sierra Bonita. As they get there Rita sees two men with dark glasses on in a car who she thinks are looking for her so she ducks down and Betty tells the cab to drive them around to the back. They get out and go in the back entrance. They come to a board that lists all of the residents of the apartments, and it says that D. Selwyn is in Apt. 12. It also says that L. J. DeRosa is in Apt. 17. So they head to apartment 12. As they are walking there Rita sees another man with dark glasses and so she hides behind some bushes and pulls Betty down with her. Then they see that the person was just a driver for a woman with red hair that looks like yet another image of Aunt Ruth. Just like Aunt Ruth at the beginning of the fantasy, the woman is loading luggage into her car to go on a trip. We see the numbers 2904 nearby her car.

I believe this encounter with an Aunt Ruth doppelganger is significant in that it tells us that Diane still wants her aunt there to guide her. Unfortunately, like the woman in this scene her aunt has already packed and left. In Diane's fantasy the Aunt just went north, and I believe the 2904 near her car is showing that her car is headed to a higher number than the 2590 where Betty is. The higher number in this case would represent the northern direction. Or if we consider that Diane may be coming to terms with her aunt's death, the direction north and the higher number here might represent that Diane understands her aunt to be in heaven.

After seeing that there is no danger, Betty and Ruth proceed on to Apartment 12. There, Diane knocks on the door, although Rita doesn't want her to do so. At first it seems that no one is home, but then the door does open and a woman comes out. Betty asks her if she is Diane, and she says, "Number 17." To this Betty replies, "But it said Number 12?" The woman looks off for a moment like she is thinking about how much to tell them, and then she just says, "I switched apartments with her. She's in 17." At this point Rita looks at the woman as though she recognizes her. And the woman, who we now know must be DeRosa, looks back at Rita like she too recognizes Rita but she disapproves. Because of the disapproval Rita looks down, and Betty looks at her as if she's trying to figure out what's going on. DeRosa says, "It's down at the end, on the left… But she hasn't been around for a few days." To this, Diane says, "Oh. We'll leave her a note." And DeRosa replies, "I'll go with you... She's still got some of my stuff. " To this idea both Betty and Rita look a little uncomfortable, but there doesn't appear to be anything that they can do about it. And then a phone rings inside of DeRosa's apartment. So DeRosa says, "You go ahead, I got to get that." And Betty and Rita proceed on alone.

I've explained in my chronological telling of Diane Selwyn's life story, that I believe DeRosa was a neighbor who switched apartments with Diane out of compassion. I believe she saw Diane get depressed after Rita moved out as Diane's roommate while Diane was living in Apartment 12. The therapist that Diane was seeing may have suggested she get a new apartment to distance herself from the painful memories in #12, or Diane may have just decided this on her own. But either way, DeRosa probably agreed to the switch for Diane's sake only. This then would explain why DeRosa looked at Rita with some disdain. It would also explain why DeRosa wanted to go with them, because as I see it, DeRosa could be reaching out to Betty and trying to protect her from Rita. But Betty/Diane does not want to be protected, so Diane, the dreamer, causes the phone to ring.

As Betty and Rita proceed to number 17, Betty takes Rita's arm as if to signify that she will not let DeRosa come in between them, just as she has been protecting her from other personas. When they knock on the door for Apartment 17, there is no answer at all this time. So Betty walks around to a side window to see if she can open it. One window is unlocked and Betty opens it and then asks Rita to help her in. Reluctantly Rita helps her, and Diane gets in and opens the front door so she and Rita can go in. Once inside they are forced to hold their noses because there is a terrible smell. As they make their way to the bedroom they find a corpse there which they assume to be Diane Selwyn. The dead person was killed by what appeared to be shot gun blasts, which left many holes in the mattress. Rita is extremely distraught, and after DeRosa comes back and looks for them for a little while out in the courtyard and then finally leaves, Betty and Rita run out of the apartment with Rita terrified, silently screaming and hiding her face in her hands.

The dead body was in Diane's bedroom but the hair is a little too long and too dark for it to be Diane's hair. I am convinced that the Diane Selwyn who is dead we see in the fantasy is something of a mixture between Betty and Rita. And although Betty doesn't yet accept this, Rita certainly seems to. And the thought that she is headed for death terrifies her.

Scene 22
In this scene, Rita has her head in a sink as she is trying to cut her hair while she's crying. Betty grabs her hand and says, "I know what you're doing." She takes the scissors out of Rita's hand and puts them on a blue book called "Tout Paris: The Source Guide to The Art of French Decoration." Then she looks Rita in the eyes and says, "I know what you have to do… But let me do it." Rather than cutting her hair, Betty creates a new look for Rita by putting a blonde wig on her. The wig's short blonde bangs transforms Rita into a doppelganger of Betty/Diane.

The issue that the Rita persona feels so desperate about is that she is going to be killed, or more accurately, eliminated. Rita has been worried about this issue throughout the entire fantasy. In fact, the fantasy started with an attempt to assassinate her. And it seems to have become progressively clearer that she is a dangerous persona that has been leading Diane into a self-destructive state. In some ways the Rita persona is the opposite of the Betty persona, and in some ways she is just the natural progression from the one to the other. Since Betty represents Diane's innocence, in some ways Rita represents the darker sexual side of Diane that is willing to be a corrupted commodity that is bought and sold, filled with selfish ambition. In this, Betty and Rita are opposites, and Rita is seen as a force leading to Diane's destruction. In another sense, Rita is just the more womanly and glamorous sexual persona that the girlish Betty persona aspires to grow to become. This is natural because, as indicated by Betty's pinkish sweater that was too small, the Betty persona is a representation of Diane's childhood innocence, it she must inevitably seek to mature in an uncorrupted form of sexual expression. The confusion of the two sides of the Rita cause extremely different reactions from Diane's various personas. Some see her as the negative force in Diane's life that must be eliminated. Coco represents these voices when she says, "If there is trouble - get rid of it." On the other hand, Betty sees a Rita who has no memory of Camilla's negative behavior. In Betty's mind she is uncorrupted and a persona worthy of Betty's love and admiration. However, Betty's view is not a very popular one when it comes to Rita.

All the other personas that Rita has come into contact with want to get rid of her, except Betty. Betty thinks like Diane did at first, that she can embrace Rita/Camilla and become the kind of success at Hollywood that a mature woman like Rita can become. But will Betty's naiveté last if she is exposed to what the real Camilla was like? The Rita persona knows that the reason she is a target has something to do with her Camilla image, and therefore she is looking to change her image before it is too late. That is why we see the French blue book on redecorating, because after all, it offers a discussion on how to transform an image. The book is also a blue object, so it indicates some type of transition from one state to another. However, Rita/Camilla is Spanish, while Betty/Diane is from Canada where the French language and culture is more accessible. So the French book seems to suggest that Betty/Diane would have Rita/Camilla change her ethnic and cultural identity as well as other more external attributes, like the hair that Rita initially was going to cut shorter. Betty and Rita both understand that there needs to be a change in image if Rita is to survive, but when Betty offers to help what she does is focus on using makeup and a wig to create only a cosmetic change, and therefore not making the change permanent. Even though Betty understands why Rita has to change and how to do it, she still wants the same Rita to survive underneath it all, as we shall see in the next scene. But even if the change is only an illusion to some degree, it is a dramatic one. Rita becomes a doppelganger of Betty. The Betty and the Rita personas appear to be merging. And this is happening in more ways than one, because even as Rita is changing to look more like Betty, Betty is also changing. Betty is losing some of her innocence as she is being influenced by what Rita represents. Examples of the changes to Betty include her lying to Coco, her willingness to get sexual with Woody, and even her breaking into Diane's apartment. Apparently, Betty is learning to stop at nothing to achieve her goals.

Scene 23
In this scene we find Betty in bed by herself with her pink pajamas on as Rita comes in to say good night. Betty immediately asks Rita to take off the blonde wig she still has on. Rita has nothing else on except a red towel that she has wrapped around herself, apparently after taking a shower. Rita had been planning on sleeping on the couch, but Betty convinces her that they should share the bed. As Rita comes over to the bed, she takes the wig off and looks at herself in the mirror fixing her hair. There are a bunch of hats hanging around the mirror, one of which is a cowboy hat. Then Rita comes over to the side of the bed and takes off her towel. She is totally nude as she gets under the covers. The sheets of the bed are blue.

I think it is best to make some comments at this point in the scene. Right before this scene we saw that Rita has begun trying to become more like Betty in order to protect herself. This is a switch from the real life situation where Diane has been trying to become more like Camilla in order to be more successful in Hollywood. However that strategy led to obsession and corruption in Diane's life, which caused her to grow homicidal when Camilla begins to leave Diane behind. The reverse strategy must be understood to be in the context of the real life Diane whose mind is coming up with this fantasy. Diane understands that she has gone too far with her obsession over Rita/Camilla, and so she is trying to reform the Rita persona back toward the innocence of Betty. However, there are obvious questions about how successful that approach can be when the Betty persona is clearly still so obsessed with the Rita/Camilla persona that she cannot let it go altogether. In fact, in this scene, the Betty persona is asking the Rita persona to take off the wig and get in bed so she can get back together with the Rita persona who looks like Camilla whom she loves so much.

Another interesting issue to note in this scene so far is that there is a cowboy hat over the mirror in the bedroom. This is where we get our first indication that the Cowboy has some relationship to Diane's bedroom. We shall see another example of this issue before the end of the fantasy, and it apparently indicates that the Cowboy, like Mr. Roque and the Castigliane brothers, plays the role of some type of John for Diane. The last thing we should note here is that the blue bed sheets indicate that some type of transition will be occurring in this scene.

Once Rita has entered the bed with Betty, she looks at her lovingly. Betty who has invited Rita into her bed keeps her eyes off of Rita's eyes. Then Rita says, "Thank you Betty." And Betty replies, "It's nothing. I shouldn't have let you sleep on the couch last night." Then Rita explains that Betty misunderstood, "No, I mean thank you for everything." To which Betty answers, "You're welcome." Clearly Betty's mind is on the fact that Rita is in bed with her, while Rita's mind was initially on all of the ways that Betty has helped her. To me, this is first indication that it is Betty, not Rita, who is the most focused on the issue of the two of them being in bed together and what that means.

After looking at Betty for a little while, Rita says to her, "Good night sweet Betty." Then Rita leans over and kisses Betty on the forehead. Immediately Betty moves her face over to attempt to kiss Rita on the lips, and then she hesitates. It is as though she realizes that Rita's kiss on the forehead wasn't necessarily an attempt to make out with Betty, it may have just been another attempt of Rita's to show her overwhelming gratitude to Betty. But as they look each other in the eyes, it is now clear that Betty wants to go much further and Rita is willing. Betty says, "Good night," as their lips come even closer together. Then Betty goes ahead and kisses Rita. Rita responds and they begin to make out. As their passion grows, Rita takes off Betty's top. There is some more kissing, and then Betty says, "Have you ever done this before?" "I don't know," Rita responds, "Have you?" The kissing continues as Betty says, "I want to with you." They continue to make out, caressing each other now, and increasing the passion still further. Finally, Betty says in a heated whisper, "I'm in love with you." And after more passionate kissing she says again, "I'm in love with you." As they continue to make love, and the scene begins to fade, Rita is silent. She never claims to feel a reciprocal love for Betty.

Scene 24
As the scene fades back in with Betty and Rita in bed together, we notice that they are holding hands. The camera moves up to where we see Betty's head behind Rita's head. The camera is positioned so that we see the left half of Betty's face in the background out of focus but on top of the right half of Rita's face. Their features are lined up almost perfectly. The perspective makes it appear that the two faces have merged together into one face, in a technique reminiscent of a similar shot from Ingmar Bergman's "Persona." Then suddenly, with her eyes still closed, Rita says softly, "Silencio. Silencio. Silencio." Then she says, "No hay banda. No hay banda. No hay orchestra." As she is saying this, her eyes open in a trance-like state. Then her voice gets louder as she goes back to repeating, "Silencio," over and over again. This wakes up Betty. Rita seems to be talking in her sleep, so Betty says, "Rita. Rita. Rita wake up." "Huh… No," Rita replies, her eyes still looking up entranced, and not looking at Betty. "It's okay," Betty says. "No, it's not okay," Rita replies, still not looking at Betty. Betty then asks, "What's wrong?" Rita answers, "Go with me somewhere," still not looking at Betty. Betty says, "It's 2 o'clock. It's 2 o'clock in the morning." Finally, Rita turns and faces her, and then she says emphatically, "Go with me somewhere." Betty relents, "Sure… Now?" There is a wild look in Rita's eyes as she says, "Right Now!"

I believe it is important to note that this scene begins with the image of the two of them merged together, and then Rita enters into some type of trance that creates a tension that interferes with the image of their merged personas. It was Betty who invited Rita to bed. It was Betty who professed love for Rita. Rita has not been the force primarily behind the merging of their personas, but yet here she is the one who begins to challenge it. Ever since Betty meets with Rita in the fantasy, there is a type of energy between them that seems directed toward their ultimate union. Yet Betty makes statements about the depth and sincerity of this union that we never hear from Rita. The same probably can be said about the relationship between Diane and Camilla before their breakup. So, as this scene comes to an end, we have found that even after one of the implicit goals of the fantasy has been reached, namely the merging of the Betty and Rita personas, some unresolved tension still exist. Although it is still unclear why, the tension must have something to do with the Spanish words Rita was chanting. Translated, what Rita said was, "Silence," "There is no band," and, "There is no orchestra." And, whereas Betty pushed for the merger between the two of them, it turns out to be Rita who demands that the issues involved with the tension be addressed, even at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Scene 25
In this scene we first see Betty and Rita outside on a street corner flagging down a cab. They are not on the beautiful street where Aunt Ruth lived anymore. And the cab that picks them up isn't yellow this time. It is much darker. And Betty isn't wearing pink, or even light blue, anymore. In fact, her blouse is red for the first time. Rita has on her blonde wig, and she is wearing all black. In fact, Rita's dress is reminiscent of the all black dress she wore at the beginning of the fantasy, although it is a different style. The cab ride to Club Silencio is a gritty affair. Betty and Rita sit silently and they seem sad. They see the lights and buildings of the city from strange angles, they see unfinished areas of the city, and most of all everything is dark and not very Oz-like any more. When they finally arrive at the front of the club, the camera shot is from far off in an empty parking lot, and we zoom in on them as they enter the door. The camera focuses in on blue lights just inside the door as they step out of view.

By hailing a cab from a street corner, by using a cab that is not yellow, and by viewing the city from grim and unflattering points of view, we become aware that something fundamental has changed. Betty's innocence is not so obvious in her red and black outfit and Rita does not look as lost in her sleeveless black gown. Clearly, reality is beginning to force its way into Diane's fantasy, even before they get inside of Club Silencio.

Inside Club Silencio is a grand theater with a large stage and tall red curtains. The seats and some of the walls of the theater are also red. As Betty and Rita walk down the aisle to their seats, a performance begins. A man dressed in a black suit with a silver shirt and tie walks on stage, saying, "No hay banda." These are some of the same words that came from Rita. As he speaks, he motions with his hand and a wand appears. Clearly the man is a magician. He goes on to say in English, "There is no band!" Then in French he says, "Il n'y a pas d'orchestre" (There is no orchestra). Then using English again he says, "This is all a tape recording." Now in Spanish, "No hay banda." Then in English, "And yet… we hear a band."

All the red in this theatre indicates that there will probably be sexual themes addressed during the performance. Also, the fact that we see the Magician freely moving between English, Spanish and French, tells us that he has something to do with the merger between Betty and Rita, in the same way that the "Tout Paris" book raised those issues. We should also be aware of the fact that the nature of a magician is very similar to that of a wizard, and so, as I've mentioned before, we should be looking for parallels between this magician and the great wizard who lived in Oz.

The magician continues to speak with using all three languages. In English he says, "If we want to hear a clarinet… Listen." We hear the sound of a clarinet, although we see no one playing a clarinet. Then in French the magician says, "Un trombone a coulisse" (A slide trombone). And we hear the sound of a slide trombone playing. Next he says in Spanish, "Un trombone con sordina" (A muted trombone). And we hear the sound of a muted trombone playing. And now in French, "J'aime le son du trombone en sourdine" (I love the sound of a muted trombone). He throws his wand into the audience in excitement as he says in French, "Je le sens!" (I feel it). Now using English again, he says, "A muted… trumpet." We hear the sound of a muted trumpet as a trumpet player walks onto stage from behind the curtains. He looks like he is playing the notes we hear, but at some point he throws up his hands while still holding the trumpet, and yet the music continues. So we know that he was never really playing. "It's all recorded," the magician reemphasizes. "No hay banda! It is all … a tape," he goes on to say. Then the magician throws out his left hand to the left and a trumpet note sounds. Then he throws out his right hand to the right and a trumpet note sounds. Again, he does this with the left hand, and then he says, "Il n'y a pas d'orchestre. It is … an illusion." At this point he is standing close to and below a box seat in the balcony section and we notice for the first time that a woman with blue hair is in that seat. Then the magician says emphatically, "Listen!" As he puts he stretches his hands up, we hear thunder and see the flashes of apparent lightning. Then Betty starts shaking in her seat like she is out of control. She has a terrified look on her face and Rita tries to help her by putting her arms around her. But nothing helps. And when we see the face of the magician, there is a strained expression on his face as his body is tense and his hands stay stretched upward. Then, if we do what the magician told us to do and listen very carefully, we hear a grunt noise as he suddenly gets a relieved expression on his face and all the tension ends. At this same moment, the thundering stops and Betty is released from her spasm of shaking. After this, what can only be described as an evil grin comes over the magician's face and he crosses his arms over his chest like a body in a casket as blue smoke comes up from the ground and covers him. Then he vanishes.

The magician's performance was anything but subtle. He emphasized again and again that something was not what it seemed. The message was clearly a warning that you must not believe in appearances. It may sound like a clarinet, but it is not a clarinet. It may sound like a trombone or a trumpet, but it isn't one of those either. It is only a tape, a recording, an illusion. Don't believe in it. But what is the thing that should not be believed? The easy answer would be that it is the fantasy itself which should not be believed, or perhaps it is the Hollywood enterprise which is deceitful. And although these are both certainly part of the answer, they are peripheral to the central truth to which the magician is hinting. The key clue to his revelation is that the false thing should not be believed whether it is speaking in English, in Spanish or in French. Two scenes before this one, we saw the blue French book symbolically point out that an effort was being made to hide Rita’s ethnic identity. Rita is Spanish, and now she is trying to use Betty’s connections to English and French culture in an attempt to remake herself so as to hide the fact that she still represents the Spanish Camilla who is so hated in Diane’s mind. But the magician is revealing that the change is not going to work, because it is just a change in image and not in substance. The Rita persona cannot escape the fact that she is only inside of Diane’s fantasy because Diane is obsessed with Camilla. And that fact leads to some very dark consequences.

Camilla, whom Rita is a link to in Diane's mind, is the one who actually got the part for The Sylvia North Story in real life by turning on fake passion with which everyone was impressed. Camilla is the sensual seductress that has convinced some people that she is a great actress when in fact Diane sees that Camilla's sexual image is beating out better actresses because image is more important than substance in Hollywood. And it is Camilla who has made people like Diane and Adam fall in love with her because of her seductiveness even when it is clear that she is running around with other people at the same time. So if seduction is simply a performance to Camilla, then love must be an illusion. When Betty expressed her love for Rita, what was her response? Silence. Silencio. No matter how much the innocent persona of Diane tried to believe in the Rita persona, the truth is that the Rita persona is a lie.

The truth is that Camilla was never devoted to Diane the way Betty was devoted to Rita. Camilla's primary focus had always been on her career, she never cared about Diane's career. But Camilla did enjoy seeing how much Diane revered her. She enjoyed having Diane see her get big parts. She enjoyed having Diane see her seduce her leading men as their leading lady. And she enjoyed having Diane see her seduce the recently divorced director named Adam. And then when Adam fell in love with her like so many others did, Camilla wanted Diane there to see Adam fawn all over her and then announce their engagement. Camilla did enjoy having sex with Diane, but unfortunately for Diane, she could get that thrill from so many other fans of hers, men and woman. She never really needed Diane, she just needed an audience. Diane was simply Camilla's favorite member of her audience, and even that distinction could not last. By the end of the dinner party at Adam's house, it appeared that Camilla had found another favorite devotee.

The magician, like the wizard in Oz, ultimately revealed that it was all a fraud. Because Diane believed in the hype of Hollywood she was not prepared for the fact that it is filled with self-promoting Camillas, so she walked right into the trap of the first one that took an interest in her. "Somewhere over the rainbow" for Dorothy was Oz, and she found out that it wasn't the promised land that she had seen in her dreams. For Diane, the place that she had dreamed of was Hollywood, and it also failed to be that land of her dreams. But, unlike Dorothy, Diane could not go home, and the magician makes this all too clear. When the lady with blue hair shows up, and he shouts, "Listen," another sad truth confronts Betty/Diane. The innocence of Betty was not what it seemed either as indicated by the lightning that seemed to be electrocuting her when the magician's arms were raised. And what caused that innocence to be illusive? Well, when we "listen" carefully, we hear what sounds like a man grunting at the end of Betty's paralyzing shaking. At the same time we hear that grunt, we see the magician appear to have released some tension he was feeling while Betty was shaking. With the context of the magician being relieved by the grunt after her body and his body are tense at the same time, it is simple to deduce that this incident was a symbol of sexual intercourse. A man of power, having sex with the Betty persona, destroyed her innocence. Again we see the echo of the Beatrice Cenci story, and sadly it tells us that Betty, unlike Dorothy, has no wonderful home to which she can return.

As the magician makes his exit after revealing how terrible Diane's situation really was, blue lights continue to flood the theatre for a little while symbolizing that a transition is occurring. In my view, the transition has to do with the Betty persona absorbing the truth of what she has just seen. As the blue lights fade out, we see that the blue haired woman is still there to serve as a guide, I believe, into yet another terrible truth. I have described above how the blue haired woman bears witness as a symbol of death, and death by assassination. She sits in the seat of Abraham Lincoln, who had the same mole as she does on his cheek, and he suffered a terrible death that symbolically reverberates throughout many of Lynches films. Like the magician, the blue haired woman is yet another witness to the loss of Diane's innocence because she is being shown that she actually was successful in her assassination attempt against Camilla, although the first scene in the fantasy tried to repress this truth.

But the tragic revelations are not over. Out comes Cookie with a red suit on, serving as the MC now that the magician is gone. In Spanish, he announces the following, "Senoras and senores, el Club Silencio les presenta… La Llorona de Los Angeles, Rebekah del Rio." This translates to, "Ladies and gentleman, the Club Silencio presents… The Crying Lady of Los Angeles, Rebekah del Rio." As Rebekah del Rio comes out, we see that she has on a dress that is a mixture of red and black. Her eye shadow is a mixture of red and yellow, with black eyeliner. Her earrings are red and she has a black tear painted on her cheek under her eye. When she gets to the microphone, she begins singing the Spanish version of "Crying," written by Roy Orbison.

I think it is clear with all of Rebekah del Rio's red and black motifs that she is representing the new red and black state of Betty's new wardrobe. Now that the magician and the blue haired lady have revealed that Betty's innocence has been lost, the fact that she is no longer in pink makes sense. But what her new state means is only explained by Rebekah del Rio. As Cookie introduced her, he called her "The Crying Lady of Los Angeles." There is in fact a legend about a lady by that name. She was jilted by her husband who ran off with another woman and left her with their two children. She could not bear losing him. So, because she believed the children to be the reason he left her, or out of revenge against him, or out of pure madness, she drowned the two children, and then she killed herself in the same way. This is who Betty/Diane is becoming like as the grief at her breakup with Camilla, a woman who jilted her, is starting to take hold of her. The song, "Crying," gives voice to her grief. The following are the English lyrics of the song:

Crying:
I was alright for a while
I could smile for a while
But I saw you last night
You held my hand so tight
As you stopped to say hello
You wished me well
You, you couldn't tell
That I've been crying over you
Crying over you
Crying over you
And you said "So long"
Left me standing all alone,
Alone and crying, crying, crying, crying

It's hard to understand
But the touch of your hand
Can start me crying

I thought that I was over you
But it's true, so true
I love you even more
Than I did before
But darling, what can I do?
For you don't love me
And I'll always be crying over you,
Crying over you

Yes, now you're gone
And from this moment on,
I'll be crying, crying, crying, crying
Yeah, crying, crying over you
Lyrics and Music by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson
Sung by Rebekah del Rio

Both Betty and Rita are transfixed by Rebekah del Rio's singing. A tear falls down Rita's cheek. Betty is also in tears. Then Rita puts her head on Betty's shoulder, crying even more now. Betty also is getting more distraught. And then, all of a sudden, Rebekah del Rio stops singing, but the music and the words of the song continue, proving that once again it was all an illusion. Rebekah del Rio then falls to the ground, either dead or unconscious. Betty and Rita are still sad but no longer touching as Cookie and another man carry Rebekah del Rio off stage. At this point, Betty looks into her purse and takes out a blue box. Then the singing stops. Betty and Rita look at each other, and they are both afraid.

Diane never got over Camilla, even though she became aware of Camilla's narcissistic and corrupt nature. And like the Crying Lady, once Diane was jilted, her love led her into a murderous rage. Most of Diane's personas have agreed to eliminate the Rita persona. The question is will Betty continue to protect her? Somehow the answer is connected to the blue box. Perhaps when it is open they will find out what is deep inside of Diane's soul. If Diane has managed to hold on to the Betty persona's innocence and love, then certainly Rita still has a fighting chance. However, if all that is in that box is Diane's guilt and her hatred, then how can even the Betty persona survive? And without Betty, all hope for the Rita persona is lost.

Scene 26
In this scene we find Betty and Rita rushing back through the front gate at 1612 Havenhurst. Betty is holding the purse out in front of her like it is a bomb. Both women are walking extremely fast. As they enter Aunt Ruth's apartment, Betty takes the blue box out of her purse. When they get to the bedroom, Betty lays it on the bed while Rita reaches into the closet where the blue key is hidden in a hatbox with all the money. When Rita picks up the hatbox and turns around, Betty is gone. However, it is not until Rita has opened the hatbox and pulled out her purse with the key in it, that Rita finally notices that Betty is gone.

If Betty is gone, what hope is left for Rita? Rita doesn't give up. She calls out, "Betty? … Betty?" Then after a little pause, her voice gets meeker and she says, "żDonde estás?" (Where are you)? Now she begins to worry. She puts the purse down and goes to the hallway to call out her name into the rest of the apartment, "Betty?" Slowly she returns to the bed. She is really getting scared now. There is no way for her to avoid her fate anymore. She picks up her purse, opens it up and takes out the blue triangular key. Then she picks up the box, putting the key into it and slowly turning it. All the while, she has a look of fear and hopelessness on her face. After turning the key all the way, she opens the box, and we are looking down into it from her point of view. All of a sudden the camera zooms into the darkness of the box, and then the box drops and lands on the floor, and Rita is gone. There is no trace of either Betty or Rita. Then slowly the camera moves up to the door of the bedroom and we see Aunt Ruth walk into the hallway and then look into the room. It is as if she heard something and has come to see what it was. However, she sees nothing. Not even the blue box. It is as though Betty and Rita were never there. And so, satisfied that there is nothing there, Aunt Ruth leaves the room.
To understand this scene it is important to remember that in the last scene two of the most horrific facts that Diane was forced to confront within the metaphor and symbolism were that she was sexually abused during her childhood innocence, and that she had Camilla assassinated. These two facts have especially dreadful consequences for her two favorite personas. How can Betty and Rita survive such revelations? And a similar question confronts Diane's real life existence as well since she has realized that she now shares a kindred spirit with the Crying Lady. She is brokenhearted and she has been given over to a murderous rage. Yet, as terrible as all these realities are, there still remains the mystery the blue box. Betty and Rita can only hope that its contents can transition Diane into a better place and save their existence before it is too late. So this scene opens with their frantic quest to get back to the safety of Aunt Ruth's place, which represents the love and supportiveness of the aunt, so that from there they can open up the blue box.

But their hope that some answer can be found inside of the blue box is misguided. This hope is connect to the naďve question Diane asked the hit man when she was shown the blue key for the first time in her real life existence. She asked the hit man, "What's it open?" And the answer to that question is the same as the answer to what is in the blue box. And what did the key open? Well that becomes clear when we look at the circumstances surrounding her discovery and subsequent possession of the key. Even though this issue involves later scenes, I will address it now because of the importance of this mystery.

Diane did not have the key delivered to her house and placed on the coffee table after the murder, as some reviewers suggest. That doesn't make any sense because the hit man is trying to use the key as a secret signal between the two of them whose significance only they will understand. The reason he is doing this is because both of them want to have no contact with one another after Camilla turns up dead or missing. Either one of them might get caught if they are seen with the other person after the killing. So then with that logic, why would the hit man go into Diane's house and put the key on her coffee table when for all he knew, the house might have been under surveillance. Instead, I believe that the hit man left the key somewhere away from the house and Diane went to that place periodically to see if it had shown up yet. When it did show up, Diane took the key home and placed it on her coffee table herself. But the fact of the matter is, when Diane saw the key, that moment changed her life. The existence of the key told her that Camilla was dead, and Diane's innocence had died along with Camilla. This is why I believe that the key was behind Winkie's, because Dan, an innocent bystander who saw the key earlier when Diane saw it for the first time, died when he saw the horror that existed there. Seeing the key led to the complete destruction of any innocence still left within Diane's life. The key opened Diane up to an existence like the one the Crying Lady experienced after killing her children. It opened a door to a life of utter guilt and shame. Diane could never again be like that innocent girl that her aunt had loved, and in addition to this, she would never again see Camilla. The key opened up a life of desolation, loneliness and ruin for Diane.

That is what happened in real life, and it explains what happened to Betty and Rita in the fantasy. Betty, who represents Diane's innocence, cannot survive this truth. Certainly opening the box which represents this truth would have destroyed Betty. But the innocence of Betty was destroyed even before the moment the box was opened. This is because when she brought the blue box into the bedroom she immediately put it onto the bed. This connection to the bed forces Betty to confront the other awful truth that was exposed in Club Silencio. The electrifying scene of her going through spasms as she is being raped as a child is what destroyed Diane's innocence long ago. It is that early childhood abuse which was the reason that Diane's innocent persona had been absent from the magical world within her mind until she started this fantasy. If you remember, Diane's innocent Betty persona has been transported into her "open mind" because she has a memory at the beginning of the film of her long lost joy when she won the Jitterbug contest. The Betty-like innocence had to be reintroduced into her mind by the memory of her younger years because that innocence had been wiped out long before the murder of Camilla. So, after the scene in Club Silencio where Diane finally confronts all of this, when the Betty persona later makes contact with the bed Diane simply cannot hold on to her any longer.

With Betty gone, Rita has only enemies left in the world of Diane's fantasy. To her, there is no real alternative to opening up the blue box, because there is no other place to go, and her only hope is that the blue box will show her something that might save her. But, as I said before, what was in the blue box was the reality that the key opened up for Diane. Simply put, it was empty because Diane's life had become empty, desolate, and lonely. There was no Camilla in Diane's life anymore, so Rita's existence was wiped out when she sees the black emptiness inside of the blue box. And now that both the Betty and Rita personas are gone to Diane, all that she loved has been lost. Diane now has no hope of being the person her aunt had believed she could become. To her, that person had always been some kind of mixture of Betty the innocent, and Rita the star. But now all she has is a state of self-loathing. This is a realization of the final lines in the audition script for the story of her life. "I hate us both," was how that script ended, and it is how her fantasy is ending as well.

The scene ends with Aunt Ruth coming in to the house after Betty and Rita are completely gone. And we must understand that this is a scene in Diane's mind that is saying that she is still missing her aunt. To Diane's terrible misfortune, their lives never came to overlap in Diane's adulthood. And when Diane tried to make it in Aunt Ruth's world without Aunt Ruth, in both her real world and in the world of her fantasy, she failed completely.

Scene 27
The fantasy is now just about completely over but Diane still must wake up. The camera tries to fade out of Aunt Ruth's apartment in the fantasy and fade into Diane's apartment in real life. But apparently the camera is having trouble making the transition, because Diane's mind apparently does not want to let go of the fantasy. However on the second try the scene successfully switches. I believe that this technique is a device that Lynch uses to warn us that the character involved in the previous scene is having trouble dealing with the issues that will come up in the next scene. And so, since there is some resistance, the camera represents this resistance by fading in and out twice while trying to make the transition. Here the message we are being given is that Diane is not looking forward to going back to her real life.

But the fantasy is not entirely over yet, and that is clear when the camera moves toward Diane's bedroom and then goes inside. There we see the back of a woman lying in the bed. The woman is in a black dress that looks like the dress Rita wore in the limousine at the beginning of the fantasy. The woman also has black hair so it seems clear that this woman is supposed to be Rita or Camilla. She appears to be sleeping, and the sheets are in disarray, but there are no bullet holes in the sheets, which is significant as we shall see presently. We hear the sound of a door opening. Then the Cowboy says, "Hey pretty girl." We see him at the bedroom door now. "Time to wake up," he says. He's smiling. Then the scene quickly fades to black. When it comes back, we now see a brown clad woman with brown hair on the bed, and there are the bullet holes we saw when Betty and Rita discovered the dead Diane Selwyn of the fantasy. Then we see the Cowboy again, and he is not smiling this time. He leaves the room, closing the door behind him and it clicks shut. Then the scene fades out. We then hear knocking after a pause. Then the scene fades back in and the woman on the bed is a blonde and she has a dingy white nightgown on. The knocking continues. The woman gets up and we can finally see that it is the real Diane Selwyn. She slowly gets out of bed. Her bed sheets are not messed up and there are no bullet holes. She puts on a dingy white robe as she finally gets completely out of the bed.

With this final exit from the fantasy world of Diane, we again see that the Cowboy seems to be familiar with going into and out of Diane's bedroom. Since we saw a Cowboy hat in the bedroom of Aunt Ruth when Betty was there, we have to consider the idea that if this issue has come up two times, then he may be yet another person who should be thought of as one of Diane's Johns. At this point we have now had hints of four older men who have had some type of interest in Diane sexually. There was Mr. Roque, Luigi Castigliane, the Cowboy, and the magician. Since they are all older men, taken as a group they present us with more evidence that sexual abuse as a young girl is what started Diane down the path of engaging in exploitative sexual relationships with older men.

With the Cowboy being the last image of Diane's fantasy, he becomes associated to the harsh reality or rude awakening that forces her out of her dream world. What he says and does brings her back to her world of despair. This leads me to believe that we can connect his actions very closely to the actions of Diane's grandfather, because he is the one associated with her harsh reality. He came into her bedroom one morning saying "Hey pretty girl. Time to wake up." What he saw was the young Diane who, while still a girl, was now starting to express a womanly sensuality, much like that of the Rita persona. This caused a terrible "accident," which is to say, something overcame the grandfather and he sexually abused Diane. Then when he leaves, the girl's image has changed to the bullet-ridden image of the dead Diane Selwyn, the one that is some terrible mixture of the Rita and Betty personas. And from thereafter, her girlishness and womanliness were never able to merge in a healthy way. This is the harsh reality that greets Diane as she awakens from her fantasy.

Now we can finally interpret the Cowboy's words to Adam about the significance of seeing him one more time or two more times. Of course, his words were meant for the Diane in her Adam persona, not for the real Adam, so like everything else in the fantasy, the words apply to Diane and not to Adam. In this scene there is a strange fade to black that happens after we see the Cowboy one time. This means we are seeing him more than once if you count seeing him before and after a fade out as two times. When the Cowboy, like the grandfather, saw Diane the first time in her bed, he saw her growing sexual persona and she was still whole and undamaged. But the second time he sees her, it is after the sexual abuse and it has left her destroyed. In one sense, the Cowboy is saying that if Diane's mind just remembers the first part of the her grandfather's visit to her bedroom, the sexual abuse can stay a repressed memory and she can continue to keep the innocent Betty persona and the Rita persona in an uncorrupted form. But if she remembers the entire incident, then her Betty and Rita personas will be destroyed by the misery and the corruption that followed that trauma. In the Cowboy's logic, remembering too much is the "bad" thing of which Diane is ultimately guilty.

Scene 28
We are now in the real world. Diane gets out of bed and goes to the door to let her neighbor, DeRosa, in to get things that she had left there after the apartment switch. DeRosa says that she has been waiting three weeks to pick the stuff up. Diane tells her what box she put her things in, and DeRosa goes and gets the box. Before she leaves, she notices that her piano ashtray is on the coffee table. Diane says, "Take it." As DeRosa gets her ashtray, we notice a blue key on the coffee table. Then, after looking the place over one more time, DeRosa leaves, but she does remember to warn Diane that two detectives came by again looking for her.

By having DeRosa focus our attention on the coffee table, Lynch has given us some important details that we will need to remember soon, namely what was on the coffee table and when. Later, we find out that the fact that the blue key is on the coffee table tells us that the hit man has already killed Camilla. This fact helps explain why Diane is so depressed and unresponsive to DeRosa. Some have argued that DeRosa's personality is somewhat combative in this scene, but I disagree. DeRosa clearly wants to help her when you look at the way DeRosa looks into her eyes at the beginning and end of her visit. However, Diane is simply refusing to be helped.

When DeRosa is gone, Diane goes into her kitchen to make coffee. While she is standing over the sink she believes she sees Camilla alive, in a red dress, standing in the kitchen with her. Smiling, Diane says, "Camilla, you've come back." This line is suspiciously similar to what Dorothy said when she thought Toto had been killed but then he returned to her, "Toto, Darling! Oh I got you back! You came back!" Unfortunately for Diane, it was just a vivid flashback to a memory of Camilla standing in the kitchen at that spot sometime before their breakup. Diane's face contorts as she realizes that she is letting memories of Camilla invade her mind and take over her thoughts. She's upset with herself. Then we skip forward in time and see Diane in a different location, looking back at the spot where she had the flashback. She seems to be thinking of how pathetic she has become. After this, she continues to make her coffee.

She pours her coffee into a cup that appears to have come from Winkies. Then, with coffee cup in hand, she heads for the couch. As she gets to the couch, she suddenly sees a topless Camilla lying on the couch looking up at her. And then we suddenly see that Diane is topless as well, climbing over the couch with a glass in her hand instead of a cup and none of the nightclothes that she had on are anywhere in sight. In fact, she is wearing cutoff jeans now. So it is clear that this too is a flashback. On the coffee table, DeRosa's piano ashtray is still there, and there is no blue key. In this flashback Diane and Camilla are making out. Camilla says to Diane, "You drive me wild." But then her mood changes, and she tells Diane, "We shouldn't do this anymore." Diane is very upset when she hears that. She gets very serious and seems a little unstable as she replies, "Don't say that. Don't ever say that." And then Diane tries to force herself on Camilla. But Camilla pushes her back saying, "Don't Diane. Stop it! Diane, stop! I've tried to tell you this before." Diane pulls away and says, "It's him isn't it." Then the scene switches to a different flashback on a movie set.

In the above flashback, we see what has occurred during one of Camilla's visits to Diane's new apartment within the last three weeks. It probably occurred later on the same day that Camilla was in the kitchen in the flashback that Diane had a little earlier. At some point Camilla took her red blouse off while Diane and her were making out. But it appears that her real purpose for the visit was ultimately to break up with Diane, because she has a relationship with Adam that is turning serious, and she may be worried that Diane will try to interfere. Diane has already seen signs of this relationship with Adam, and so she has been afraid of this possibility, as her subsequent flashback in the next scene reveals.

Interestingly enough, at this point I think it is possible to answer a mystery that never gets resolved explicitly in the film. Why did Diane and DeRosa switch apartments? Some reviewers have suggested that it was because Diane was trying to hide from the police after Camilla's murder, but I have already discussed why that theory is unsound. It is clear that Camilla was not murdered until after the apartment switch. Other reviewers have suggested that Diane and DeRosa were lovers who had broken up, and DeRosa had just moved out of #17 into #12 because of their breakup. This does not make sense either because we clearly see that Diane has some of her own things in boxes as well. We know this because Diane has placed all of DeRosa stuff in one box, and when DeRosa is holding that box she looks at the other boxes in the room that are full of things just "to make sure" that none of them contains something that belongs to her. And Diane would not have things packed in boxes, as she clearly does in that scene, if DeRosa was the only one who was moving. I believe we must accept that Diane and DeRosa really did switch apartments.

In my view, the secret to understanding why they switched apartments comes from clues that hint at what happened while Diane was in Apartment #12. In the fantasy we are told that Camilla might have been Diane's roommate in the scene where Betty and Rita have tried calling the "D. Selwyn" in the phone book. "Maybe that's your roommate," Betty speculates. And since Rita and Betty essentially became roommates in the fantasy, this most likely was the case for Diane and Camilla in real life as well. Yet the two of them did not seem to be roommates by the time Diane moves to Apartment #17, so Camilla must have moved out before the switch. And Camilla had not just moved out on Diane while they were living in #12 together, but Camilla says she tried to tell Diane something, perhaps around that time, that had to do with why she later breaks up with Diane. "I've tried to tell you this before," Camilla says while on the couch with Diane as they are dealing with why Camilla wants their sexual relationship to end. We are not told why Camilla moved out, but it probably had something to do with what she is talking about in this quote. Since Camilla and Adam are probably secretly engaged at this time, Camilla may have moved in with Adam, although Adam or Camilla preferred to try to conceal this from others until after the party for some reason. But even though Camilla has not told Diane the entire story, when Camilla moved out of #12, Diane was most likely devastated.

Diane's obsession with Camilla was extremely unhealthy emotionally for Diane. In fact, now that we see Diane having flashback images of Camilla visiting Diane in #17, it does not take much of a leap to consider that Diane may have begun having flashbacks of Camilla in #12 after Camilla moved out. If she was traumatized by Camilla moving out and having flashbacks in #12 of her old roommate, Diane certainly may have thought that she too ought to move out of #12 so as not to be haunted by the memories of their former togetherness. Or perhaps she began seeing the therapist we saw with Dan in the Winkies in the fantasy, and the therapist suggested that she move out of that apartment. Whichever scenario is the case, Diane probably asked her neighbor, DeRosa who lived in #17, to switch apartments with her to help her distance herself from her obsessive memories about Camilla. Of course, she would not have asked DeRosa if there had not been a friendly relationship between them. And DeRosa agreed out of compassion for Diane, but also with some level of disdain for Camilla, which I believe we see in her eyes when she gives Rita an uncomfortable look during the fantasy when Betty and Rita first meet her. DeRosa probably saw that there were problems in the way that Camilla was treating Diane, problems that we begin to see in the next scene.

Scene 29
This scene is another flashback. In this memory of Diane's she is dressed in character for a bit part in a movie that Adam is directing and in which Camilla is the leading actress. Adam wants to show someone who is probably the lead actor how to perform his make-out scene with Camilla. So Adam orders the set cleared so that he can work the scene out with just Camilla and the lead actor without distractions. Camilla asks Adam if Diane can stay and he says yes. Then he proceeds to show the actor how to make out with Camilla. Camilla starts smiling at him and obviously getting into it. She looks over at Diane, smiling as if to tease her. Adam seems to be really enjoying himself while Diane watches. Diane cannot help but be jealous, and the pain shows in her eyes. At some point Adam yells, "Kill the lights," as he begins giving Camilla another big kiss.

Not only does this memory of Diane's show us that Camilla and Adam have begun flirting openly with each other, and perhaps they are already in a relationship, but the scene also shows us that Camilla enjoys making Diane watch her in this type of situation. This is our first real indication that Camilla may have been subjecting Diane to some type of emotional abuse for her own satisfaction. And it seems clear that Camilla is also showing Diane how she is promoting her career by flirting with the director. It is a self-promotion that is wildly successful, as we find out with the all but certain announcement of her engagement to Adam at the dinner party.

Scene 30
Next Diane is having a flashback that takes us back to her apartment. I believe that the flashback of the last scene went further back in time than the one before it because it explained why Diane believed there was something going on between Camilla and Adam. But this current flashback seems to occur just a little while after the argument on the couch. If you remember, the first flashback showed Camilla in Betty's kitchen with a red blouse on. The next one is when Camilla has taken off the blouse and they are making out. Then there is one that goes back further in time to explain what Diane is thinking during their argument. The flashback we are now in explains what happened on that same day after the argument. We know this because Camilla is wearing that same red blouse that she had in the first flashback, and they are breaking up now, which is what started to happen in the second flashback. And the breakup has been a very emotional one for Diane. As this flashback starts, she is kicking Camilla out of the apartment. Camilla is saying, "Don't be mad. Don't make it be like this." Diane obviously did not want to break up, so she responds, "Oh sure. You want me to make this easy for you. No. No f---ing way! It's not gonna be! It's not easy for me!" She is angry and almost out of control as she slams the door shut on Camilla.

Scene 31
Now we see Diane crying on the couch and trying to masturbate. She has on the same top that she had on while kicking Camilla out, and the same jeans on that we saw her wearing when she was on the couch with Camilla. So once again, we can deduce that this memory occurs on the same day as the argument that led to their breakup and Diane kicking Camilla out. Clearly she is distraught over the breakup, and she cannot handle the idea that she will not be able to make love with Camilla anymore. So she masturbates in an effort to find a way to replace the sexual passion that she still feels for Camilla. However, it is not working. She is not getting any pleasure out of it and she is having a hard time focusing on anything but the misery she feels over losing Camilla. Then the phone rings and interrupts her. She looks over at the phone, but we don't know who called her because she jumps ahead to a new flashback at this point.

Scene 32
It is nighttime and the phone is ringing next to a lamp with a red lampshade and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. This phone is probably the same one that she looked at in the last scene, but we have never seen the wall in her apartment that this phone is up against until now, except for during a brief scene inside of her fantasy. In that scene within the fantasy we saw this same phone ringing at what appears to have been the same time of night, with the same number of cigarette butts in the ashtray, and with those butts in identical orientations. In the fantasy and in this flashback, Diane does not answer the phone during the first three rings. The fantasy didn't show us what happened after that, but in this flashback we find out that the answering machine picked up after the third ring. The answering machine's message is the same one we heard in the fantasy when Betty and Rita called the number for "D. Selwyn" while sitting on Aunt Ruth's couch. After the message is through, Camilla starts talking on the other end and Diane picks up the phone and speaks with her. Camilla wants Diane to come to Adam's party. She tells her that a car has been sent to take her to the party and it is waiting just outside of her apartment. Hesitantly, Diane agrees to come. Then Camilla tells her that Adam's address is 6980 Mulholland Drive.

There are some very important revelations being made in this scene. The first one being that this is not only the same phone as the one we saw in her fantasy near the beginning of the movie, but it is also probably the same call as the one being made in the fantasy because of all of the matching details. The call in the fantasy was the result of a chain of phone calls that led up to the phone of an unknown person at that time who never answered the call. Based on the symbolism and plot line, whoever owned that phone was most likely a call girl. We also saw the arm of the "Hairy-Armed Man" making the call to the call girl's phone. Again, based on symbolism and plot line, we can guess that whoever made that call was the call girl's pimp. Now, both mysteries are resolved with a twist, in the great tradition of the Mobius strip that I explained earlier. Diane turns out to be the one answering the call girl's phone, and Camilla is the one making the call. Diane's involvement in the call girl business has already been uncovered in this analysis, but Camilla's complicity in Diane's plight has not been explored as thoroughly. Because Camilla has made the phone call that was associated with the Hairy-Armed Man, we know that Camilla has had something to do with the pimping of Diane in Diane's real life. I believe this scene tells us that the Hairy-Armed Man is not a real person, but instead a symbol of something hairy that strong arms people within its reach like Diane in some way. The hairy thing is Camilla's beauty, represented by her long black hair, and the strong arming concerns the way Camilla essentially uses her beauty to seduce people like Diane to get them to do her bidding.

This is the smoking gun that points to the abusive nature of Camilla's relationship to Diane. We must now question Camilla's motives in wanting Diane to come to Adam's party. Is there some person that she wants Diane to meet there like "Luigi," a character who shows up later at the party? It is very possible that this is part of her motive, but other dark motives of Camilla become apparent as well. When Diane begins to realize all of this, in her mind Camilla's corruption becomes similar to the filthiness of the Hairy-Armed Man's apartment that we saw in the earlier scene of the fantasy.

Scene 33
In this next scene Diane is in a limousine heading up Mulholland Drive. This scene is exactly like the opening scene in the fantasy, except now Diane is the one in the passenger's seat. As the limousine slows down on an empty stretch of road, Diane says the words that Rita said in the limousine in the fantasy, "What are you doing? We don't stop hear." The driver turns around and this time he has no gun. He tells Diane that it is a surprise. As the person who was in the front seat with the driver opens Diane's door, Camilla surprises her by coming out of hiding from behind a tree. She walks up to the car and says to Diane, "Shortcut. Come on sweetheart. It's beautiful. A secret path." Then she leads Diane up the secret pathway to Adam's home. As they walk hand in hand up the dark path with Camilla exposing her leg seductively, Diane begins to believe that maybe reconciliation is possible between them. At this point Camilla seems to be encouraging Diane to have hope again. Things do not stay that way for long.

Adam meets them near his pool carrying three drinks. Camilla says, "Ah. Perfect timing." Adam then offers a toast just between Camilla and himself, "Well, here's to love." After the two drink to that toast, Diane indicates that she thinks she can have the same relationship with Camilla that Adam now has. She offers the same toast just between Camilla and herself, "Here's to love." It seems clear that Diane is willing to share Camilla in this triangular relationship, identifying herself with Adam in a way that helps explain why she uses him as one of her personas in her fantasy. At this point Coco, Adam's mother, comes out of the house saying, "Ah, here she is!" It seems clear that she is looking at Camilla. While Camilla was waiting behind a tree for Diane, Coco was looking for her and getting impatient because Camilla was holding up dinner. As Coco is introduced to Diane, Coco says she's pleased to meet her, and she sounds very sincere. But Coco still seems irritated about Camilla. So Camilla looks at Diane because she wants Diane to take the blame. And Diane obediently does, saying, "I'm sorry I was late." Coco does not seem to think that that is the issue, but Camilla looks pleased that she has so much control over the situation. Satisfied that Diane is still willing to act as her pawn, Camilla gives Diane another mischievous look as she takes Adam's arm and then leaves Diane behind. As the four of them walk up to the house, Adam and Camilla take the lead, followed by Coco, and lastly Diane walks all by herself, apparently no longer a special guest of Camilla's. At this point Diane looks deflated, her shoulders hunched as she walks to the house. I believe that she is beginning to realize that she was probably invited to the party by Camilla to play the role of one of Camilla's devotees, who will say only good things about Camilla around Adam's high powered Hollywood acquaintances. She's just Camilla's pawn again.

Scene 34
The next flashback involves the dinner scene at Adam's house. The camera is having difficulty focusing on the scene because Diane is having difficulty focusing on it. To her, this is perhaps the most painful memory of them all. The scene begins with Coco asking about Diane's past and, once again, taking a sincere interest in Diane, in my view. Diane tells her how she came to Hollywood from Deep River, Ontario. She tells about the Jitterbug contest and how it led to her desire to be an actress. And she tells Coco about her aunt and about the fact that her aunt left her some money. It is interesting that at the point where Diane mentions how she became interested in becoming an actress, Coco picks up some nuts. I mentioned earlier that in the fantasy, Coco's last name was similar to "the nut" in French. I think the connection between these two allusions to nuts is that in both cases they are references to the Hollywood enterprise in general and the quest for stardom in particular. This is a commentary from Lynch about Diane's dreams of finding something meaningful in the land of image over substance, like the land of Dorothy's dreams that was "somewhere over the rainbow." Within the fantasy Coco represented a caretaker of people like Diane who were on this type of quest. It is a nutty business to put oneself at the mercy of the fickleness of stardom and the deceitfulness of glamour, but those who do so can perhaps survive if they are careful to keep their most precious relationships outside of the deceptive enterprise. Dorothy ultimately realized this, but Diane was never able to.

When Coco asks Diane about how she came to meet Camilla, the conversation gets pretty interesting. Diane says she met Camilla "on the Sylvia North Story," and a man sitting next to her named Wilkins immediately says, "Camilla was great in that." This man is the one whose dog leaves excrement in the Havenhurst courtyard during the fantasy. This excrement may represent what Diane's mind thinks of how sound his judgment is amongst other things. What Diane certainly believed is that Camilla knew how to "sex" the story up, but did Camilla really know how to represent a story that was so similar to Diane's own story? Probably not, and unfortunately, the director and the studio bosses were probably happy with Camilla because a sexy story is all that fans like Wilkins want. However, Diane does try to buy into this logic, as her corrupt personas in her fantasy world show us. And she probably does this because Diane saw Camilla as a person who could love her and help guide her like she had wanted her aunt to do. But by aspiring to follow Camilla's path, Diane left behind the path that he aunt would have chosen for her.

Following Camilla's path apparently meant more than just being seductive on the set. Camilla seemed to be willing to act just as seductive off of the set as on the set when it came down to getting her parts. We know that she became involved with Adam, the director of at least one of the movies she has been in. And when Diane mentions the movie "The Sylvia North Story," there seems to be some insinuation that she got involved with Luigi, and perhaps this is because he may have had something to do with that film. Apparently at this insinuation, Camilla says, "Yo nunca fui a Casablanca con Luigi" (I never went to Casablanca with Luigi). To which some man replies, "Qué lástima" (What a pity). And to this Adam says with what looks like a shrug of disregard, "żQué va?" (What gives? or Who cares?). While Adam says this, we see a look of indignation on Camilla's face toward the person who said, "What a pity." As Diane looks at Camilla during this exchange, her expression indicates she knows something that is not being said. And in the fantasy we find out that Luigi is one of the Castigliane brothers who are power brokers in the movie business, and who try to help the counterfeit Camilla get a role. And in the reality portion of Lynch's film, Luigi happens to be at Adams party. If we allow that the Casablanca could be a house, a hotel, a restaurant, or even the famous movie, then the insinuation may be that Camilla went out with Luigi for reasons that are shameful to talk about. Which means that it seems safe to say that there are rumors out there that Camilla is sleeping around to get her parts. And since this issue comes up while Diane was talking about the Sylvia North Story, we can argue that this had something to do with why Camilla got that part as well. So Diane is being influenced by a person who has denied her a chance at a role with which Diane might have excelled. Thus, the path laid out by Camilla's corrupt ways is the worst possible direction that Diane could be following.


As Diane continues to talk about the Sylvia North Story she says, "Yeah… I wanted the lead so bad. Anyway, Camilla got the part." At this point, Coco gives Camilla a look that suggests Coco sees Camilla's corruption. Diane continues, "The Director …" "Bob Brooker?" interjects Wilkins. "Yes," Diane says. "He didn't think so much of me… Anyway, that's when we became friends. She helped me get some parts in some of her films." To this Coco says, "I see," and she pats Diane's hand in sympathy. The insinuation here is that in Coco's opinion, Camilla's help may have been no real help at all.

As we jump ahead to a later point in the party we see Diane drinking coffee from a cup that has SOS in a decorative design on it's side. Diane needs help right now. Adam is saying at this moment, "So I got the pool and she got the Pool Man. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to buy that judge a Rolls Royce… Sometime good things happen." During this monologue, Luigi looks at Diane in a way that appears to show he is interested in her, but it is the interest of a John. So perhaps the SOS on her cup stands for "Same old Stuff." And if this is connected to Adam's statement about how "Sometimes good things happen," the unspoken issue, of course, is that money and corruption may be a part of the equation. Good things happen in Hollywood for people like Adam, but what about for people from Deep River, Ontario?

At this point a blonde woman comes over and first whispers in Camilla's ear, and then she kisses Camilla on the lips. Lipstick gets onto this blonde woman's lips, and she looks at Diane slyly. And then Camilla looks at Diane with an even guiltier expression, but still defiant. She seems to be confirming that the kiss was meant for Diane to see. It was meant to break her heart. As the blonde woman proceeds to leave the room, she glances back as if to see one more time if the damage was done. And indeed, Diane is beside herself with grief. For a brief moment, this is when she sees the Cowboy appear and walk quickly in one door and out another. Next Adam says to everyone that he and Camilla have an announcement to make. Adam asks Camilla, "Do you want to tell them. Camilla says, "No, you tell them." Adam says, "Camilla and I are going to be …" Then, instead of finishing the statement they start laughing and giggling. The unbearable heartache that Diane is feeling only gets worse with this new development. She is on the point of breaking down when a set of dishes break and Diane jumps in her seat as we switch to another flashback.

In Diane's final memory of Camilla, Camilla is just put a knife into Diane's heart. Making Diane witness Camilla embracing her two new love interests while she leaves Diane behind, is unforgivable in Diane's eyes. She finally realizes that Camilla is yet another important person in her life that has abused has. As dishes are breaking in the background, Diane suffers something of an emotional breakdown, and her love for Camilla turns into a murderous hatred.

Scene 35
In this flashback, we are at Winkies and a set of dirty dishes has been dropped and broken, just like the noise we heard at the end of the last flashback. Diane is jumpy and whirls around when the dishes break. After the waitress apologizes, Diane notices the waitress's name tag. It says "Betty" on it. Diane goes back to her conversation with the blonde man, whom we come to realize is a hit man. She shows the hit man Camilla's photo resume and says, "This is the girl." The hit man tells her not to show him that picture in a public place like Winkie's. Then he asks her if she's got the money. She shows him the money in a black pouch by her side. The hit man then says, "Okay. Now once you hand that thing over to me, it's a done deal. You sure you want this?" Diane replies, "More than anything in this world." The hit man seems satisfied with that remark and reaches into his shirt pocket and produces a blue key. "When it's finished, you'll find this where I told you," he says. After a few moments, Diane notices a man at the cash register who looks back at her after she started staring at him. Then she refocuses on the hit man and his blue key. She asks him, "What's it open?" He just laughs in a somewhat sinister way.

As I have mentioned before, in this scene Diane fixates on different things for various reasons, but that does not mean that there is reciprocal interest being focused on her. Even the man at the cash register did not start looking in Diane's direction until after Diane looked at him. Therefore, unlike a few other reviewers, I don't believe that the man at the cash register is a witness who can turn Diane in to the police. Instead, I think Diane's hit man was careful in what he said so as not to alert anyone who may be listening in or watching. The significance of the scene is to show us that Diane sees things like the man, the waitress and the key as certain types of symbols marking her movement up to the point of no return, and then her passing that point. The key represents the point of no return. The name of the waitress, "Betty," is what she saw before seeing the key, while the man, "Dan," is who she saw after seeing the key. Therefore, the name Betty is the connected to the image of her innocence because it is associated with the time before the key, while Dan is the doomed one who is killed by her demons because he is associated with the time after the key. With this in mind, when Diane asks the hit man what the key opens, her own associations tell us the answer to that question. But so does the next scene in dramatic fashion.

Scene 36
The scene fades to a scene outside behind the Winkie's. It is dark and there is a flashing red light. We see the beast there and he is looking at us. He has a blue box in his hand and is putting it into a paper bag. The image seems to reflect that the beast is telling us "it's in the bag." Diane's doom is a done deal now. The beast has accomplished his goal. The beast then drops the bag and we see the blue box on the ground still inside the bag. After a little while we see tiny versions of the two grandparents coming out of the bag, apparently after having gotten out of the blue box. They are making strange noises and they are walking strangely. They seem quite monstrous even in their small size.

This scene is a prelude to what's to come. The monstrous grandparents are surely demons at this point. And this gives us another metaphor for the blue box. Since the beast is yet another persona of Diane's, clearly being the darkest one of them all, this beast is showing us here that Diane is actually the one responsible for opening this box and letting it's demons out. In that way, the box is a type of Pandora's box, and the blue key was a type of transitional object that opened that box and forced her into a new reality of guilt and self-loathing. By opening up what had been boxed up inside of her, Diane has revealed a terrible truth that had been hidden by her attempts to forget the past. Those two sweet old people that we saw in the beginning of the fantasy were false memories of parental figures who were actually her abusive tormentors. And in this scene we see that her mind is descending back into the fantasy to tell her that their true nature has now been uncovered and they are coming for her again.

Scene 37
We are back now in Diane's living room. We are finally finished with the flashbacks and her brief descent back into a fantasy with the vision that we saw in the last scene. Diane is now in the present again. We can tell this because she is finally back in the nightclothes that she had on right after the fantasy ended. All the other scenes that took place after she was taking the coffee to the couch had her in different outfits, and were therefore flashbacks, with the exception of the last scene, which appears to have been a brief return to her fantasy world again. That return to the fantasy world was not good, because it means that her mind is becoming very unstable now, as it is less able to distinguish fantasy from reality. And in her unstable state, her fantasy world has become a complete nightmare. In the real world the blue key is on the coffee table again. The Winkie's coffee cup is back and the piano ashtray is gone again. The look on her face is that of a person who seems to be mentally unstable. She is just staring ahead, sometimes focusing on the key, and other times looking at nothing in particular. The day is gone and it is now night. She may have been sitting in this one position on the couch all day. Although the flashbacks she was having represented the reality that she couldn't stop thinking about, she has finally begun to make a complete break with reality.

Suddenly, she hears a loud knocking on the door. In her mind, the little demonic grandparents crawl under the door laughing. She hears more loud knocking. Then she hears voices in her head. One of the voices is of a woman screaming. After hearing this she gets up and runs to her bedroom. The scream in her head seamlessly becomes her own scream of horror, perhaps the same scream she cried out during her childhood, as she sees that the demons have grown to full size and are following her into the bedroom. Blue lights are flashing all around as she is backing into the bedroom with the two demons on her heels. Finally, she falls onto her bed, reaches into a drawer near her bed, grabs a gun and then shoots herself in the head. After that we see that we see that her body is alone on the bed and everything quiet. Then blue smoke begins to fill the room.

For an epilogue, first we see the face of the beast in the blue smoke. Then the face fades into Diane's face. This tells us that the beast was indeed a completely corrupted and grotesque persona of Diane. Then the smoke goes away and the city lights of Hollywood at night fade in. In front of these lights we see the Betty and Rita personas of Diane, united and happy again. We know that this is the Betty and Rita personas instead of images of Diane and Camilla because the Rita persona is wearing a blonde wig. As Diane dies, the fact that the Rita persona has on the blonde wig also tells us that Diane finally accepts her own image as the glamorous persona that she believes in and loves. This is clear because when Rita wears the wig she becomes a doppelganger of Diane, thus no longer representing Camilla's corrupt image. It is as if at this twilight moment of her life, Diane has finally made peace with herself.

Slowly the images of Betty and Rita and the city lights behind them fade away, and we find that we are back at the stage in Club Silencio. Then our view switches from the stage to the box seat in the balcony where the lady with the blue-hair is still sitting. She looks at us for a little while and then she says in a deep whisper, "Silencio." No more can be said. Like Hamlet's dying words, "The rest is silence." Diane is dead. And the scene fades to black as the film comes to an end.

David Lynch was compelled to give ten clues to think about when interpreting this film. Like everything else that has to do with this film, Lynch's ten clues are illusive. But I will attempt to address each one since they all focus particular attention on specific issues in the movie that Lynch felt were worth noting. However, I believe a separate conclusion is still necessary as a fitting commentary on this exceptional work. I present that conclusion of mine after addressing the ten clues.

LYNCH'S 10 CLUES TO UNLOCKING THIS THRILLER

1. Pay particular attention in the beginning of the film: at least two clues are revealed before the credits.
The opening scene is the psychedelic dancing of the Jitterbug contest. I believe this is a true memory of Diane's although it is somewhat jumbled because I think that her mind is being affected by some type of drug she has just been taking. Images of herself and her grandparents become superimposed on the scene of the dancing. However, the image of her with her grandparents is hazy and not very stable, while the image of her alone is very stable, as is the image of the dancers for that matter. It is only when she tries to remember that her grandparents were at the event that the image gets blurry. I believe that this is a clue that the grandparents are not very stable, or that their relationship to her is murky. In fact, I believe that this is a clue that she is having trouble dealing with the memory of her grandparents and is in fact repressing some truth about them. She wants to remember them as smiling and supportive of her during this important moment in her life, but she is having trouble doing just that. Therefore, the smiles on everyone's faces are masking some deeper issues.

A second clue to the mystery surrounding the movie is the fact that we are looking from the perspective of Diane right after the Jitterbug scene. Therefore we should interpret the following scenes as coming from her point of view and involving issues that revolve around her state of mind.

A third clue, that might also be considered to be an extension of the second clue, is that when we see through Diane's eyes that she is putting her head down on a pillow, we are being shown that she is entering a dream world. Other clues about the fact that the first three-quarters of the movie are a dream are presented to us from within the dream. But this clue gives us our earliest indication of that fact.

2. Notice appearances of the red lampshade.
There are three appearances of the red lampshade, with the second appearance being very brief and potentially representing simply a look-a-like red lampshade. The first appearance of the lampshade occurs when Mr. Roque begins the chain phone call near the beginning of the film. He is trying to use what appears to be a call girl network to get a particular woman to come to him. The woman he is calling is unknown to us at this time, but the red lampshade is symbolic of prostitution, which gives us some evidence of her connection to the call girl profession. This becomes increasingly clear when we see the second appearance of the red lampshade.

The second time that we see the red lampshade is when a prostitute, a hit man and a pimp are walking around a corner after leaving "Pink's" hotdog establishment. The red lampshade is in the window of an antique store they are passing by. Other red objects are also in this scene, like a passing fire/rescue truck, a red rose, a red pole that acts as a phallic symbol, and a red garbage can. With all of this red symbolism it seems certain that the inclusion of the red lampshade was no accident here. And, as I have mentioned in my fuller analysis, the movement of the prostitute away from Pink's after the appearance of certain phallic symbols in this scene seems to show how the innocence represented by the color pink was lost to Diane after some sexual act during her childhood. This then led to her involvement in prostitution, as indicated by the prostitute in the scene. The red lampshade's presence in this scene reemphasizes that the red lampshade is associated with the issue of prostitution as well, but it is most likely a reference to call girl prostitution because of the earlier scene that shows the red lampshade next to a telephone.

The third time that we see the red lampshade is during one of Diane's flashbacks after the fantasy is over. When we see Diane pick up the phone near the red lampshade, we realize that this is the same phone that was called at the end of the chain call that Mr. Roque initiated earlier in the movie. And in both this scene and the earlier scene there are the same number of cigarette butts in the ashtray and the lamp is turned on and oriented in the same way. The matching details identify Diane as the call girl that was being called in the fantasy, but those same details also identify the one calling her who served as her hairy-armed pimp. And since it was Camilla who made the call in real life, this gives us evidence that she was acting like Diane's pimp at times, setting her up to sleep with important people in the Hollywood movie business. I've explored this evidence in more depth in my scene by scene analysis, but I think it is important to note here that the hairiness of the Hairy-Armed Man's arm is symbolic of Camilla's hairy mane, which she uses so seductively, in essence, to strong-arm those whom she seduces.

3. Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?
The title of the film Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for is "The Silvia North Story," and yes it is mentioned twice. Once during the audition with Adam in the fantasy, and once in the real world by Diane at the dinner party. However, there is also another phrase mentioned twice that is like a title of the movie Adam is directing in the fantasy. The phrase is "An open mind." This title-like phrase was mentioned twice in the fantasy during the boardroom meeting, both times by Adam's manager, Robert Smith. When Adam says to him, "What are you talking about?" he replies, "An open mind ... You're in the process of re-casting your lead actress and I'm... We're asking you to keep an open mind." You can interpret the first time he says "An open mind," to be his giving Adam the movie title as his response. And you can interpret the second time he says the phrase to be his telling Adam that they are trying to keep him on as the director of "An open mind." This second title indicates that "The Silvia North Story" is really just another name for Diane's "open mind," which these different personas are trying to direct. There are also other issues that connect the name "Sylvia North" to the name "Diane Selwyn" as I have explained in other sections of my analysis of this film. And these other connections lead to the same conclusion that "The Sylvia North Story" is really "The Diane Selwyn Story," at least from the point of view of Diane's "open mind" during her dream.

4. An accident is a terrible event... notice the location of the accident.
The terrible accident in the fantasy occurred on Mulholland Drive at around the same location that Diane got out of the car in real life to walk with Rita up the "secret path" to the house of the Hollywood director, Adam Kesher. There are many clues that we can find in the connection between the fantasy and the real life scenes at the accident's location that point to the conclusion that both are about a terrible metaphorical accident that Diane suffered during her trip up the road to a Hollywood career. As I have explained previously, Mulholland Drive is a pretty important road to Diane because it leads up a hill where important people in the movie business live. I have even likened it to Mount Olympus, because the people living on that hill are like movie making gods as far as Diane is concerned. It was during her attempt to travel up this mountain in a symbolic sense that she met Camilla. And that turns out to have been a terrible accident. It led to Camilla putting her on a "secret path," which was really just a path that promoted Camilla's career using Diane as a pawn that Camilla was willing to pimp. In this way, Camilla helped kill off more of Diane's already low self-esteem. Simply put, meeting Camilla turned out to be "a terrible event" in Diane's life.

5. Who gives a key, and why?
Keys open things, and in Diane's life there seemed to have been only one person who was really interested in trying to help Diane open some doors. That person was Diane's Aunt Ruth. In the fantasy, the aunt sent her key to Diane through Coco, a maternal caretaker at Havenhurst, a place for the Hollywood hopefuls. As I mentioned in my analysis, the name Havenhurst indicates that some that came there found a haven while others found a hearse. So the aunt's help to Diane was not a guarantee of success. And it all was symbolic of what happened in Diane's real life. In reality, it was with the aunt's help that Diane came to Hollywood. But because her aunt had died before Diane could get there, Diane had no real support when she arrived. And without her aunt's guidance, the City of Dreams turned out to be Diane's hearse.

The hit man also gave Diane a key that opened something that was disastrous for Diane as well. The hit man's key opened up a Pandora's box of overwhelming guilt and evil demons from her past that Diane could not handle. He had warned her that there was no turning back, but she was unable to understand the nature of the self-inflicted wound she was about to deliver upon herself, even as she lashed out at Camilla.
Keys can also be understood symbolically as ideas or information that enhance or open up a person's understanding of an issue. For Diane, both the aunt's key and the key involving Camilla were connected to a person who was dead. In a sense, both of these keys ended up revealing that Diane's dream was dead because of the tragic course her life took. And in the end, it was only in death that she could finally find peace of mind for her troubled soul.

6. Notice the robe, the ashtray, the coffee cup.
After the fantasy portion of the film is over, Diane wakes up and goes to the door to deal with her neighbor who has been knocking. Her neighbor has come for the stuff that belongs to her that was left with Diane after they had switched apartments. One of those things was a piano ashtray. So the neighbor comes in to collect all of her things, including the ashtray, and then leaves, after which Diane goes into the kitchen to make some coffee. She suddenly sees a vision of Camilla, who is not really there, and we discover that this was a progressively more forceful flashback from what happens next. At this point, Diane is wearing a dingy white robe with a dingy white nightgown on underneath. Once her coffee is ready, Diane heads to the couch with her coffee cup in her hand. But as she gets to the couch, once again she sees Camilla, but this time she is lying topless on the couch, and something strange has happened to the coffee cup Diane was holding, the robe she was wearing and the ashtray that the neighbor took earlier. Diane suddenly has a glass in her hand instead of a coffee cup, she is topless and wearing cut off jeans rather than a robe and a nightgown, and the piano ashtray that the neighbor had just taken is back on the coffee table. The fact that all of these things changed is an indication that Diane is experiencing a flashback to an earlier time that is forcing her to relive that moment. Many more similar flashbacks follow, and it is important to recognize these non-linear shifts in time as memories in order to correctly interpret the narrative.

Interestingly enough, there is some other important information revealed to us by different instances of robes, ashtrays and coffee cups in the movie. The plain pinkish robe worn by Betty is contrasted with the regal red and black robes worn by Rita to show that Diane lacked the glamour and star-quality of Camilla. At different times we see that there is an ashtray full of cigarette butts near the phone and the red lampshade that shows us that whoever used that phone had a perhaps hidden smoking habit. Then when we see the prostitute smoking the same kind of cigarettes in another scene with a red lampshade in it, we realize that since the prostitute represents Diane, it must be Diane who had this smoking habit when she was dealing with her activity in the call girl business. And the coffee cup that is in Diane's house is very similar to the ones being used at Winkie's, suggesting that Diane worked there at some point, probably before her call girl experience, and she took at least one home with her. These are all interesting clues that give us pieces to the overall picture of Diane's history and the situation she faced.

7. What is felt, realized and gathered at the club Silencio?
Diane's Betty persona felt the reality of the sexual abuse that Diane experienced as a child and apparently repressed as she got older. This reality was felt through the Club Silencio magician's thunder and lightning show that caused Diane to go into shaking spasms that seem to mimic what a child might go through while being raped. I explored other evidence of Diane's history of sexual abuse in my in-depth analysis. Another thing that the Betty and Rita personas felt in Club Silencio is the extreme sorrow of the Crying song, which expresses the tragedy of unrequited love, a tragedy that Diane was living through in the real world.

Both the Betty and Rita personas come to realize that everything they were experiencing was an illusion. However, as their realization is focused on the fact that they may not be living in the real world, our realization as the viewer should go deeper. We should begin to understand the bitter disappointment that Diane experienced when she realized that for her there was no aunt, there was no Hollywood career, and there was no love. And because of the symbolism behind the blue haired woman, we should see that Diane is beginning to realize the Camilla did not survive the assassination attempt, any more than Abraham Lincoln survived his. And indeed, it is a signal that a dream is coming to an end when the characters of the dream begin to realize that they are not in the real world. After the magician's performance is done, he vanishes, as the Betty and Rita personas will also do very shortly, after they return to the aunt's apartment.

And finally, what was gathered by the Betty persona was the blue box, which suddenly appeared in her purse. Both Betty and Rita seem to understand immediately that this means they are to get the blue key and open the box. They seem to know that this will clear up a major mystery concerning Rita as well as the one surrounding Betty and her spasms. And they go forward with their plan to open the box even though there is a look of fear on both of their faces as they contemplate what their fate will hold.

8. Did talent alone help Camilla?
Camilla was extremely talented at using her sensuality to seduce others. In the world of movie making this is an especially important talent, because even if "playing it close" is inappropriate at times, as it might have been in a movie about child abuse like the Sylvia North Story, it will still generate a desirable affect on the viewers. Viewers tend to fall in love with the sexy actress, even if she is bad news, as both Diane and Adam can attest, as can Wilkins, the guy who said Camilla was great in the Sylvia North Story. But this was not the only secret to Camilla's success. Apparently, Camilla was willing to sleep with directors and to encourage other actresses like Diane to sleep with movie executives, all in her efforts to make it to the top. And, as her engagement to Adam apparently indicated, her plan was succeeding.

9. Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind Winkies.
The "man" behind Winkie's appeared three times. The first time that we see him is near the beginning of the movie when Dan goes behind the Winkie's diner to find out if he is real. Dan is literally scared to death at the very sight of him. The next time we see him is right before the ending, when he is putting the blue box into a bag. With Diane's fate "in the bag" so to speak, he then drops the bag and after a few moments we see a miniature version of Diane's grandparents coming out of the bag, and apparently out of the blue box, laughing like demons. Then the third and final time that we see the man from behind Winkie's is after Diane has shot herself and blue smoke has covered her bedroom. As the movie is coming to an end, we see the man from behind Winkie's superimposed on top of the smoke. And then we see his face fade out while 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. In fact, the character of this beast is even played by an actress by the name of Bonnie Aarons, which is stated clearly in the credits of Mulholland Drive. This female monster from behind Winkie's is Diane's dark, twisted and baneful persona, and it is ultimately the face of her guilt. This is the side of Diane that was firmly in control of her when, while at Winkie's, she said to the hit man that she wanted Camilla dead "more than anything in this world." Seeing the face of this guilt is what caused Dan to die. And indeed, such a ruinous side to Diane would not be fit to show itself in the regular world. This brooding and vindictive wickedness is more comfortable being shunned and hidden in the back alleys of Diane's mind. There is even an arrow on the side of Winkie's in Diane's fantasy that points away from the alley, warning any who will listen not to venture back there. But even from there the monster was still successful at becoming the persona who was able to direct Diane's life in the end, and inevitably drive her to her doom.

10. Where is Aunt Ruth?
Aunt Ruth represents Diane's hope for a life full of love and success in Hollywood. We can infer this because of what Diane says about her aunt at Adam's dinner party and because we see what appears to be a loving picture of Diane as a child with her Aunt in the fantasy. However, in real life Aunt Ruth had died before Diane came to Hollywood, and in the fantasy she travels to Canada just before Betty arrives on the scene. In other words, Aunt Ruth is just out of reach. Never there to give Betty any guidance on how to make her dream come true. And since Canada is to the north and heaven is up above and up is always north on a map, we can say that Aunt Ruth also represents what Glenda did to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Aunt Ruth is Betty's good witch of the north. However, Glenda actually meets with Dorothy on two occasions in the Wizard of Oz, right when Dorothy first gets to Oz and just before she leaves. However, in Betty's case, Aunt Ruth left right before she got there, and arrived the second time right after Betty left. Diane's was a fantasy that never had much hope because she never had the love and support that Dorothy found on her journey. Like Diane's dreams of love and success in Hollywood, Aunt Ruth was dead before Diane even got there.



CONCLUSION

The tagline for Mulholland Drive is "A love story in the City of Dreams." And love story it is, but in my opinion, Diane's struggle to love herself is what gives the film its poignant power, even more so than her doomed struggle to love the glamorous Camilla. And that is as it should be, because we do not get much help understanding why Camilla is the person whom she is, but Diane's mind is laid open to us. The Jitterbug scene is a great beginning point to discuss how Diane perceived her reality. It may seem absurd to think that becoming a movie star is a natural next step after winning a Jitterbug contest, but that Diane wanted to believe this is what makes it so important. Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, had a similar mindset when she had to battle an evil woman bent on killing her beloved dog. To save the life of her dog, Dorothy runs away ostensibly in search of that magical place she sang about called, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The lyrics to the song seem no more and no less absurd than Diane's connection between the Jitterbug contest and her Hollywood ambitions, but what makes both of these romantic notions so moving is how heartfelt and compelling they were to these sweet young women. Moreover, if we view these young women as being on an epic quest to protect something dear and precious in their hearts, then the lyrics to Dorothy's song effectively sums up both of their mindsets in poetic fashion:

Somewhere Over the Rainbow:
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

"If happy little bluebirds fly ... Why, oh why can't I?" Happiness and the ability to soar are what both Diane and Dorothy wanted, and in their naďve view they thought this could only be possible if they escaped their present reality to go far away to a land of their dreams. We don't know the lullaby from which Dorothy's dreamland took shape, but we do know that Diane's dream was based on her conceptions of her aunt's successful life in Hollywood, and it was triggered by the thrill of her being in the spotlight, probably for the first time. Diane's success in the Jitterbug contest gave her a sense of being valuable in a way that she was not used to feeling. And I believe that she was desperately trying not to go back to her old reality.

While running away, Dorothy tells Professor Marvel, "Nobody cares about me at home. They wouldn't even miss me." And she is adamant about this opinion, as is evident when the Professor expresses his doubts by saying, "Aw, come, come, come." But Dorothy reiterates, "No, they won't - honestly." The fact that her family had allowed her dog to be condemned to death caused Dorothy to lose all hope in them. And I believe that Lynch has developed Diane's character along the same lines, although in Diane's case her angst involving the situation with her family is much darker and more insoluble. This is true even though Diane tries to see the grandparents who raised her in the best light possible, with blurry and unstable images of them embracing her at the Jitterbug contest, and smiley and encouraging faces seeing her off at the airport after arriving in her fantasy land. But the evidence is still there that Diane felt abused and unloved. And the possibility exists that her grandparents may have only embraced her when she was in the spotlight or when she was on the road to Hollywood, implying in a way that they only viewed her as important in that context. This would be yet another slight, devaluing the intrinsic importance of Diane as her potential stardom becomes the focus. If this is the case, then she was simply trading one type of abuse for another, which would not improve her self-image. It is not a bad thing to want to become a star, but it is another thing altogether when you need to become one to feel good about yourself.

In Diane's Betty persona we see a passionate woman and a dreamer. A woman who seems so easy to love, and so determined to find the path that is right for her while she resolves whatever challenges stand in her way. But in Betty we also find the image of a girl wearing a sweater that is too small for her, and who is afraid to face the world without putting herself in surroundings that evoke the loving memory of her dear departed aunt. I believe that deep down Betty was terrified of going it alone, and this is why she would not allow even her aunt's wisdom, in the form of a phone call from her aunt, to convince her to kick out the Rita persona before it was too late. Desperate for love, Betty tried to find in the glamour of Rita a love that would give her a reason to feel good about herself. This parallels the fact that Diane had been looking for love in all the wrong places ever since her brush with celebrity after the Jitterbug contest. Furthermore, Diane stubbornly clung to her misguided quest by embracing Camilla's stardom after she began losing hope of becoming a star herself once she lost the lead for "The Sylvia North Story" to the sultry performance of Camilla. And unfortunately for them both, this caused Diane's desire for Camilla to progress from a passion into an obsession.

One thing we do know about Camilla is that she enjoyed seducing people. And she probably enjoyed it when someone became a devotee of hers as well, as apparently Diane quickly did. So it can be argued that Camilla may bear some of the responsibility for Diane's dashed Hollywood dreams, because she essentially worked to keep Diane focused on doing only bit roles in movies that advanced Camilla's career. As Diane's star remained dim, Camilla's began to shine. And Camilla seemed to enjoy rubbing Diane's nose in this fact as well. Camilla was the star, not Diane. This issue plays itself out in Diane's fantasy world when the personas in her mind seemed bent on believing that Camilla Rhodes should be chosen to be the star of the movie that was to be Diane's core identity instead of a persona like Betty, who represented Diane's lost innocence. And this was true even when the persona who took the name Camilla Rhodes was yet another actress who had harmed Diane by kissing Camilla at Adam's party. This reveals the fact that Diane's self-image was in terrible shape when we see that part of her believes that the people who are harming her are more deserving than her. But Diane would not have been vulnerable to this twisted way of thinking if she had grown up with a healthy amount of love for herself.

At the core of this film is the struggle between love of self and love of the images that we hide behind when we are afraid that others will not love us. This is the tension that is played out between Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla, and in the movie a resolution begins to take shape when Rita changes her image to look more like that of Betty. But the change is only cosmetic, and as such it is simply too little, too late. In the end, Diane is even less able to love herself than she was in the beginning. In fact, she has become disgusted with herself. I think this view is most clearly expressed in the scene that I believe David Lynch would call "the eye of the duck." David Lynch uses this phrase to refer to his idea that to get a sense of the overall state of being of a duck, you need to look at a duck's eye. No other spot on a duck is as good a place to look if you really want to know the duck. And Lynch argues that there are scenes like that in every film. In this film I believe that scene is the extended scene that begins with Diane answering the phone near the red lampshade, then traveling up Mulholland Drive, then meeting Camilla, then following her up a secret path, and then interacting with her at the summit that was Adam Kesher's house. After that interaction Diane ends up walking alone into the party, depressed and defeated, while Camilla leaves her behind and advances to a place of greater success and importance. The arch of Diane's life is all there. Her fear of being abused, her attempts to find love by repressing memories of past abuse, her reentering into abusive relationships, and finally, her growing broken and ruined emotional state after suffering new abuses and betrayal.

The tragedy starts in this extended scene with the look on Diane's lonely face while her phone is ringing. Clearly that look tells us she has suffered at the hands of that sweet voice that begins talking when the answering machine answers the phone. And yet Diane takes the call anyway and hesitantly agrees to trust Camilla with her heart one more time, still trying to be hopeful that the love she is seeking can still be found. Yet, Diane is still very much afraid when she is in the limousine traveling up Mulholland Drive, up the path that represents the road to successfulness in Hollywood. She is all alone, and because of her fantasy where we saw that the driver was an assassin, we know that she doesn't even trust her driver. When he stops unexpectedly, in fear she says, "What are you doing. We don't stop here." However, the fear seems unnecessary, because the driver simply stopped for a surprise meeting that Camilla had arranged. And certainly the context of the story tells us that it is okay for Diane to meet Camilla there, and there is nothing to fear, but the subtext of the film is saying something quite different. Just as when Betty was surprised to find Rita in her aunt's house, Diane's surprise meeting with Camilla ultimately leads her off of the path that her aunt would have wanted her to take. Instead she follows the path that Camilla offers her. In the scene from her real life Camilla says, "Shortcut. Come on sweetheart. It's beautiful. A secret path." Again, the subtext is that Camilla, the picture of seduction, is leading Diane astray, and Diane never gets back on the right road. So it turns out that the fear that she had felt when the car stopped was warranted after all.

With the smile she gives Diane and the sensual air about her, Camilla convinces Diane that there may actually be a chance that their relationship can be resumed. It is as though Diane has already repressed her memories of the pain she suffered in the past because of Camilla. She has forgotten that in reality Camilla just enjoys the art of seduction, the act of "playing it close" with whomever she wants. And true to form, when Diane and Camilla reach Adam's house, Camilla begins to turn her enticing attentions onto Adam. Adam and Diane are both in her web, as the double toast that they make to Camilla shows. When Coco, Adam's mother, walks over and shows signs of being irritated at Camilla, Camilla just looks at Diane who obediently takes the heat off of Camilla by apologizing for being late. It is extremely unlikely that Coco was waiting for Diane, but Camilla wanted her devotee at the party, so she held things up by hiding out while waiting for Diane. Camilla is most likely the one responsible for things starting late, but she needed a devotee like Diane at the party who could constantly heap praise on Camilla around the Hollywood hotshots. This is probably one of Camilla's tactics for creating some buzz about herself, but it requires loving devotees like Diane. Furthermore, deep down, it seems that Diane knows she's just a pawn. As they walk off and Camilla gives Diane a mischievous look, Diane can no longer pretend that Camilla was inviting her to the party because she wanted to rebuild their relationship, or even that she wanted to spend any serious time with her. By taking Adam's arm, Camilla has dropped her pretense of interest in Diane, and in a betrayal that grows throughout the night, Camilla once again leaves Diane behind. As Diane follows Camilla and the others into the party, Diane looks drawn and anguished, with her shoulders hunched and her head down. To me, this is the eye of the duck moment within the eye of the duck scene that shows us how wretched and alone Diane feels on the inside. Brokenhearted since childhood, her pain appears to have only deepened as an adult. And it is the transition from her innocent childlike persona as Betty with her continual yearning to love and be loved, into her twisted and defeated adult personality as Diane that grips viewers no matter what they think the story line is about.

Repeatedly, Diane is rejected and humiliated in small and large ways by Camilla. In the car scene during a rehearsal, on the couch in Apartment #17, right after Diane meets Coco after walking up the secret path, and then most painfully when Camilla kisses another woman during Adam's party. Camilla has been playing abusive games with Diane's heart, and yet still Diane comes running back. Until finally Diane suffers a breakdown, as symbolized by the falling dishes in the Winkie's diner. And when Diane breaks down, her love turns to hatred as she is taken over by the murderous persona in the back alley of her mind. I believe that this is the persona that held on to the terrible memory of the abuse Diane suffered at the hands of her grandparents. And I believe that is why it is this back alley persona that turns that memory--in the form of miniature versions of Diane's grandparents--loose near the end of the movie to haunt Diane and ultimately drive her to commit suicide. In my view, that monstrous persona had existed in Diane's mind for a long time, keeping her too terrified to deal with how the childhood abuse had affected her.

Yet I believe we are given a hint that Diane tried to address the issue of her abuse with a therapist as things were deteriorating faster than she could deal with them. In my view, the therapist that Dan was talking with in the fantasy at the Winkie's diner was probably Diane's therapist. Unfortunately, the therapy was probably too little too late, in a way similar to the fact that Betty's attempts to refashion Rita as a more accurate image of Diane were also a type of therapy that was too little too late. When Diane realized that her relationship with Camilla was unhealthy, she seemed to be unable to walk away. In the scene where she hesitated in picking up the phone and answering Camilla's call, ultimately she answered it anyway against her better judgment. It was only because of a jealous rage that she fought back, and then she went too far, giving herself over to murderous demons. So in the end, even in fighting back, she had allowed her obsession to consume her all the more.

Like the seductive power of Hollywood, Camilla was a force in Diane's life that overwhelmed her. Yet if Diane had any significant love and respect for herself, she certainly wouldn't have let Camilla, or Hollywood for that matter, walk all over her. And there were certainly other less glamorous and more meaningful friendships to be made in Hollywood than the bankrupt one she had with Camilla. Clearly a neighbor like DeRosa, who was willing to switch apartments when Diane was in need and to even cover for Diane when the police were looking for her without being asked, is a person who cared for Diane. And it's possible that she even cared deeply for Diane. Different reviewers interpret the looks in DeRosa's eyes differently, but I saw condemnation when she looked at Rita, and compassion and empathy when she looked at Diane. But Diane couldn't see it, ultimately to her own loss. And clearly Coco showed some sincere interest in Diane's story, while at the same time Coco had many unpleasant looks for Camilla. If Diane needed someone who could give her the kind of advice that her aunt would have given her, a person like Coco would have been the perfect choice. And when Diane's Adam persona was homeless in the fantasy and Cynthia offered him a place to stay and perhaps a place in her heart, he refuses the way Diane refuses comfort from DeRosa. In my view, this is because Lynch is telling us that Diane is unable to desire loving relationships with those who do not reflect Hollywood's glitter and glamour. And this mindset of hers is especially catastrophic because she is so desperately in need of authentic love. Cynthia's response to the rejection says volumes, "Okay, but you don't know what you're missing."

There are many reasons for this film's appeal. And one of them is certainly that Diane's Betty persona is such an easy person to care about and to love. But because of her flawed and negative view of herself Diane was unwilling to receive love from those who were most able to give it to her. And so, as an ode to Hollywood's fallen angels like Diane, this film is a warning to those who would like to fly like bluebirds, but who still need to make a blueshift transition to understand what true love is all about. "A [person]'s attitude goes some ways toward how a [person]'s life will be." If you fall in love with the Hollywood dream, make sure that you have even more love for the person that you are and for the relationships that you have outside of the spotlight. Otherwise, the dream will become a nightmare.


Alan C. Shaw, Ph.D.

LA LLORONA

NO HAY BANDA

REBEKAH DEL RIO



Rebekah Del Rio's performance is an indication that, according to Diane, there is a large game, a large reality, and she is merely a pawn in it. Like an actor she can mouth the words - she might be able to perform the brilliantly, in fact - but they've already been written by someone else, and if she drops out, the larger story will continue."
Wrapped in Plastic #57
"Del Rio has a tear painted on her right cheek as part of her make-up, indication that she is aware of the illusion - this is all fake. Yet she pours herself into her performance completely."
Rebekah Del Rio incidentally mirrors Betty, who is also 'of the river' - Deep River, Ontario - and who is also 'crying over' unrequited love. - (Scott Loren)
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"Seńoras y seńores, el Club Silencio les presenta - la llorona de Los Angeles, Rebekah del Rio."

The female singer is introduced as "La Llorona de Los Angeles". "La Llorona" (The Crying Lady) is a traditional ghost of Mexico City. Legend has it that circa 1550 a mestiza, Luisa de Oliveros, in despair drowns her children in a river, after being despised by her lover, Dom Nuno de Montesclaros, who loved her by preferred to marry a Spanish lady of noble blood. After nights of weeping in remorse she drowns herself. It is said that her voice is still heard in Mexico City, by night, lamenting her children: "Mis hijos, mis hijos, donde estan mis hijos" or something to that effect. - (Braulio Tavares)
In a certain sense, this is a hint that Diane's grief of her breakup with Camilla, a woman who jilted her, has made her homicidal as well as suicidal. And later we find out that Diane is in fact responsible for a homicide. So, even before her song is done, Rebekah del Rio collapses, probably in death, as if to emphasize to Diane that death is all around, and all hope is lost. - (Alan Shaw)
Related: La Llorona on Wikipedia
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Geno Silva (Cookie/EmCee) on the "Llorona" reference
You know that intro I do for Rebekah? I made that up: "La Llorona de Los Angeles." La Llorona in Southwestern legend, is a mythic, spooky character of your childhood. It is a wailing woman you hear at night. She's crying because she lost her two children in the Rio Grande. It is a story you hear all over the Southwest. When she was singing "Crying" I said, "David, how about we call her La Llorona - the crying woman - of Los Angeles, because that's what she's doing." Some people will get it and some people won't.
Wrapped in Plastic #57
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I thought that perhaps Camilla (the real Camilla) used to work as the singer in Club Silencio (hence her knowing the song) and that when the singer fell down it was part of Betty's illusion falling apart. It also reminded her of what she had done (hired the killer) which is why she had such an intense reaction. The reason the music plays on is probably because although Camilla is now dead, they just replace her and the show goes on. - (lokegotcrucified)
Related: Rita Hayworth Connection
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John Neff (MD Sound designer) on Rebekah's performance
"She came into the studio with her agent in November or December of '98. And she walked in, and the guy was telling us what a great voice she had… she's real nice, she's very personable, and very friendly, and Dave just… she's in there 5 minutes and he says 'Well, sing us something.' Meanwhile, I had a beautiful old tube mic heated up in an isolation room, and a Protools system up and running. So she walked in the booth, put on headphones, I had some reverb on it, and she blasts out “Llorando” right there. And except for one tiny edit, just to shorten a note just a hair, what you hear in the film is exactly what she walked in the room and did. No EQ. No compression. No nothing. Just reverb added. She walked in and knocked this out acappella, and knocked us out right off the bat.
David wrote her into the TV Pilot based on that. Now she's in the movie, and it's sort of a pivotal scene. And we're also producing some other stuff with her. We've got one song finished, and a couple of other songs started with her. We'll also have some showcase shows slightly after the film is released."
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Richard Green (The Magician) on Rebekah's performance
When we shot my scene, Rebekah Del Rio was there as well. We shot most of my wide shots first, and then we brought her in. Listening to that recording (of "Llorando") in this big theater was astounding. I mean, it is an astounding vocal rendition. I came back to my studio afterwards and thought, "I can't believe what I just heard. This woman is amazing.That was an amazing recording." I figured they recorded it with a track, and then they pulled the track and decided to use the a cappella version. So when I was at the Cannes Film Festival, John Neff and I were talking, and I said, "What a great performance. Did you record that?" And he laughed and told me the true story.
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Trivia
• Lynch is said to be a fan of Roy Orbison. As in Mulholland Dr. there's also a scene in "Blue Velvet" where Dean Stockwell is lip-synching to Orbison's "In Dreams".

Postscript: Dangling Threads

"The rest is silence," eh? OK, so that was a tidy and clever way to end my essay, but let's face it, silencio only takes you so far. There are some things about Mulholland Drive that I admit I just can't figure out, and I don't mean the paradoxes. There are a few elements that I think should make sense, but don't. This is complicated by the fact that the first two-thirds of Mulholland Drive was intended to be the pilot for an ABC TV series; so it's possible that the film contains a few vestigial threads, meant to be woven into the whole later, but left behind as inexplicable loose ends.

Joe the Hit Man

I have no idea why the hit man had to kill his friend Ed, and can only offer the brief conjecture I outlined above regarding the "car crash" conversation. But still, why was Ed's black book of phone numbers so important? Just because Diane saw it in the diner? Could it just be Diane's fantasy supplying a backstory for the hit man? If so, why go to such lengths? Also, why the scene where the hit man and his older associate question a prostitute regarding the missing girl, Rita? I can see that Diane's fantasy had to conjure up a reason for Rita to be assassinated, but there still seems to be a missing link or two -- who was the "guy" the hit man was working for, and why would anyone want to kill Rita in the first place? Could it just be a film noir trope, or were these plot lines intended to be developed in the TV series?

Aunt Ruth's Final Appearance

In the real world, Diane's Aunt Ruth, who lived in Hollywood, is dead. Yet, she is the last person we see in the "fantasy" narrative, where she is supposed to be filming in Canada. Surely Diane wouldn't hallucinate her aunt returning from Canada? (Though one viewer notes that "acting in Canada" is an old Hollywood metaphor for being dead.) The fact she was dressed the same as when she left adds to the confusion. Did the whole Betty fantasy happen within the space of time needed for Ruth head back into the house before taking her taxi? If so, why add this extra mind-bender -- the fantasy was over, no? Who cares about Ruth at this point? And where did Aunt Ruth live, exactly? Did she really have that delicious apartment? Was she a ghost, somehow interacting with Diane's fantasy in the same way that Louise Bonner and the psychic man at Winkie's could? Or was that final scene a flashback, with a flesh-and-blood Aunt Ruth hearing a ghostly disturbance of her own? In the "10 Clues" provided by Lynch in the DVD packaging, Clue #10 is "Where is Aunt Ruth?" Well, let's see . . . dead? In Canada? In the bedroom? With the Log Lady?

The Cowboy's Final Appearance

Why does the Cowboy visit Diane to wake her up? Was that a genuine flashback, in which Adam's friend stops by before the party but is unable to rouse Diane from her depressed sleep? If so, why is she in her "death" position, and why does he suddenly then see her dead and depart? Perhaps the knock on the door that precipitates Diane's suicide is actually the Cowboy, who was sent to bring her somewhere -- to Adam, to the film set, or even to Camilla's funeral? Remember, we really don't know how long Camilla's been dead, nor do we know who else realizes she's dead. Come to think of it, for all we know, the hit man botched the job and left the key anyway, and the final knock on the door was a very pissed-off Camilla! Anyway, if the Cowboy does walk in on Diane's suicide, this might explain why she morphs from living to dead -- but still, if she just shot herself, she wouldn't be already decomposed. Hm...


The Final Appearance of the Blue Box

As Diane opens her drawer to get her gun, we see a very brief glimpse of what could be the blue box. If so, why is it there in "reality," and clearly within her point-of-view? Is Diane's suicide a dream within a dream? Or does the box really track her down into the real world? Or -- most likely -- does Diane Selwyn have some kind of mundane blue box of her own, perhaps a jewelry box, music box, or a stash box; something that she just incorporated into her fantasy like the address book and blue key? (Perhaps it contains mementos of her affair with Camillia?) And finally, does anyone wonder just what the hell this crazy woman is doing with a gun in the first place? Eek.


Postscript II -- More on Mulholland Drive: Vistor's Comments

Since this review/essay went online, a few visitors have emailed in some ideas of their own, including alternative interpretations, additional allusions, and intriguing artistic precursors. I have collected them here, on the Visitor's Comment Pages. I have also used some of these ideas in my revision of No hay banda. In such cases, I have noted, "As a viewer has suggested...." Repeat readers may also notice that I have revised my opinion of the old couple, now assigning them the role of Diane's grandpartents. I did this after reading the script for the pilot, and I do not believe that it alters their symbolic value as expressed in my essay.

Credits

Thanks to Andrew Duncan and Judie Ryer for discussing this movie at length with me, for pointing out a few clues I missed, and for offering some very insightful suggestions. Thanks also to Bun Zopf, whom I first used as a sounding board for my theory. And a big thank you to Roger Ebert, another fan of this film who pointed out a few of Lynch's more subtle tricks.




Mulholland Drive: A Philosophical Treatise


By Vanessa Long




Mulholland Drive combines elements of suspense, temporal trickery and insight into the human condition to create what is arguably one of the most accomplished works of David Lynch's directorial career. Human fallibility and the nature of subjective reality are Mulholland Drive's shifting points of interest, and the character of Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) is our entry point into them. While David Lynch's first stand-alone female antagonist is a decidedly troubled character, a philosophical study of her actions can reveal just where her character went so wrong.

The progression from beginning to end in Mulholland Drive leads us through two parallel lines of action, divided into how Diane Selwyn wishes her life could have been, and how it actually was. Diane Selwyn's story is suspensefully delivered via time release, leading its audience into a state of false belief about her throughout almost the entire duration of the film.This is effected through the movement of a block of scenes from the beginning of Diane Selwyn's story to the end of Mulholland Drive's plot, so that its narrative ultimately exists of a two hour long flashforward and a 25 minute flashback. It's only once Mulholland Drive comes to a screeching halt that its audience has received all the pieces with which to actively put Diane Selwyn's story together for themselves.

From the point of the great spatial and narrative shift in Mulholland Drive which has become known as 'the last 25 minutes', we view the high point of Diane Selwyn's arrival in Hollywood to pursue what looks to be a promising career as an actress. However, in a relatively short period of time, Diane falls prey to a succession of serious set backs in life. Unable to attain either steady or satisfying employment in her chosen field, nor able to enjoy the support and respect of either her family or her peers, Diane seeks vicarious success through becoming romantically entangled with successful actress, Camilla (Laura Harring), only to wind up being painfully and publicly jilted by her.

In the wake of these set of events, Diane quickly becomes caught within a miasma of depression, paranoia and perceived hurts from which there is no easy exit. Diane begins to view her ex-lover as a living reminder of her failures in life and resolves that she must be rid of her and all that she represents. But there is no final redemption on the other side of such an act for Diane, whose rising guilt, coupled with everything else that's recently gone so bad in her life, finally sends her into the arms of suicide.

Poised within the hallucinatory portal between life and death, Diane is presented with the opportunity to play her life over. Within the all too beautiful world of Diane's imagination, to which the first 2 hours of Mulholland Drive is devoted, Diane rearranges the aspects of her life into a perfect form. Much like Shadow of a Doubt, Diane's world is a charmed one, featuring a hint of mystery around every corner. In this world, Diane, who is now known in the film as Betty, is a beautiful, talented young actress and well loved daughter who will clearly have Hollywood at her feet in no time.

Into this world, Diane also manages to bring her dead lover back to life. Rewriting history to have her escape the attempt on her life that Diane herself staged, Camilla emerges in Diane's life again as a helpless, mysterious stranger with no memory of the past. The note of danger with which Diane re-enlivens the memory of her lover allows Diane to have her all to herself, in secret. This act finally allows the power balance shift in Diane's favour, and the girls are able to fall in love all over again. But this fantasy world can not last forever, as even in her wildest, dying dream, Diane is unable to imagine anyone but herself profess their love first in that relationship. And ultimately, it is her lover who shakes Diane out of her dream world to tell her that her fantasy world is a facade, and that she must now let her dying mind be silent.

On the topic of the perception of reality, philosopher, John Searle asserted that:

... The thesis that there is a reality independent of our representations identifies not how things are in fact, but rather identifies a space of possibilities... External realism articulates a space of possibilities for a very large number of statements.

Into just such a space, a dual scenario film like Mulholland Drive can emerge. Both parts of Mulholland Drive make use of key aspects of fundamental ontology - people, places, events, and reinterprets their external reality through the lens of Diane's subjective reality. While you're watching Mulholland Drive, both of its parallel narratives seem equally plausible, but its only after stepping back from them at the completion of the film that you realise that they are in fact two subjective statements on external reality - paradoxically related, and indicative of the ability that we all have to place broad interpretations on real life events. Mulholland Drive effectively provides both a commentary on the nature of subjective reality as it's depicted on film, and as we experience it in real life.

The idealised first portion of Mulholland Drive's plot reveals just how high Diane Selwyn's hopes for her future in Hollywood were. She clearly believed herself to be an actress of extreme talent, and one for whom a single audition would be enough to launch her career. This leads in a manner of moments onto not only further casting opportunities for Diane, but also the kind of self-confidence that would allow her to turn down auditions at will.

The first portion of Mulholland Drive also reveals the kind of idealised personal relationships that Diane sought in life. It becomes clear very early into the film that Diane didn't just want her parents to support the choices that she made in her life, but actually imagined that they existed to support her. At the start of Mulholland Drive, Diane's parents accompany her at the airport on her big trip to Hollywood, giving her constant encouragement. We don't hear them exchange any conversations between themselves. Diane's parents smile all the time. And when they are finally alone in the cab together, they just laugh, like two great barrels of hot air. We can not imagine Diane's parents having an interior life, because Diane does not envisage it.

In much the same way, Diane also remolds her spirited girlfriend Camilla into the frightened form of amnesiac, Rita. This act reveals Diane's desire to have a partner in life with neither friends, family or a history to distract her. Diane imagines Camilla without either a will to defy her or a memory, and thus the new Camilla emerges, a blank canvas upon which Diane can paint her deepest desires.

Philosopher, Seneca believed that people could avoid the pain of bitter disappointment in their lives by never allowing their expectations to rise above the level of reason, by expecting the unexpected (both good, and more importantly, bad) and by not seeking to find judgments on their character in sets of external events.

The first portion of Muholland Drive clearly reveals to us that Diane Selwyn's expectations in life were highly unattainable, frequently self-centered, and in the latter part of the film, mostly unvoiced. Diane clearly never factored bad fortune into her plans in life, and thus, was wholly defenceless when faced by it.

In the second portion of the film, Diane clearly took the series of disappointments which befell her to heart. When failure on the career and home fronts became entrenched in Diane's life, she interiorised it, and saw it as an inescapably cruel judgment on herself. The best example of this is at the point in the film when Camilla and Adam laugh nervously before the public announcement of their engagement, while Diane stands crying in the shadows, imagining their laughter cruel and derisively directed at her. Diane instantly interpreted those events as a slight against her.

Seneca might say that Diane's interpretation of and reaction to Camilla's engagement was perhaps born of "a certain abjectness of spirit", a deep-seated belief on Diane's behalf that she was not only a public subject of ridicule, but deservingly so. Diane consequently reacted to Camilla's engagement with a frustrated, unfettered rage. Whether Diane's character would have been capable of the destruction that she brought upon Camilla if not for her own suffering is an academic point, but perhaps it didn't have to be that way.

As throughout the history of philosophy and drama, the topic of suffering is not an alien one to the character's in David Lynch's films. John Merrick suffered greatly in The Elephant Man (1980), so too did Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosellini) in Blue Velvet (1986), Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in Fire Walk With Me (1992) and Fred Madison (Bill Paxton) in Lost Highway (1997), to name but a few. Some of these characters managed to learn from their suffering, others did not. In can be argued that Mulholland Drive's Diane Selwyn belongs to the latter variety.

Writer, Hubert Selby Jr once mused on the topic that:

... The function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed. What I'm doing is judging natural events in such a way that I'm creating suffering within myself... (in life) you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur, and if you just say, 'Here I am, I'm going to experience the pain', you don't suffer. (But it is) the resistance, and the degree of resistance, to the natural phenomenon of life that causes tremendous suffering ...

It can be argued that Diane's downfall was caused by her unrealistically high expectations in life, and her inability to adapt to or reassess them amongst a set of changing circumstances. For this, Diane suffered greatly, but even suffering didn't have to be her end.

Philosophers throughout history have emphasised the redemptive qualities of suffering. Friedrich Nietzsche even went so far as to say:

To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, profound self contempt, the torture of self mistrust and the wretchedness of the vanquished.

These words were inspired by Nietzsche's firm philosophy that great happiness could only be attained by those who had also endured great suffering in their lives.

It can be argued that the character of Diane Selwyn in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive is the very antithesis of such a worldview; a picture of unresolved suffering, perhaps born out of what Hubert Selby Jr describes as 'the great American dream of pain avoidance', and the product of a comfort seeking society.

That's not to say that there isn't a hint of redemption in Mulholland Drive for Diane Selwyn, as her dream world exhibits a certain lucid cyncism in relation to the business of acting. It is clear in this world that Diane has realised that the playing field is not even for actors and that actors are not always cast on the basis of their artistic skills; as something as arbitrary as 'a name' can be enough to secure an acting role. The realisation that artistic decisions can very easily be held to ransom by producers and film financiers is also present in the surreal events of the first part of the film. This portion of Diane's dream proves that life experience has taught Diane something about her chosen field- something that perhaps she always knew, but was unwilling to admit to herself, having deferred to the judgments of producers and directors throughout much of her life.

In Diane Selwyn's death and rebirth into a new understanding about her chosen field, she exhibits an ability to find what Friedrich Nietzsche describes in his theories on the experimental subject as "new defences against the fact of pain". The reassessment of her life that Diane undergoes holds out redemptive possibilities for her character.

Schopenhauer once wrote that in the most compelling works of art:

The poet takes from life that which is quite particular and individual, and describes it accurately in its individuality; but in this way it reveals the whole of human existence... though he appears to be concerned with the particular, he is actually concerned with that which is everywhere and at all times.

In a certain light, Diane Selwyn's story can be seen to be both particular to her and representative at the same time of many young actors who have struggled to make themselves known against the somewhat misleading backdrop of money, fame and easy fortune that Hollywood projects.

It can be argued that a broader and more subtle kind of social commentary is also at work in Mulholland Drive. In this day and age, where technological determinism dictates the rhythms of global culture and public sphere debate barely exists outside of television, it serves as little surprise that many of us, much like Diane Selwyn, have grown up with an expectation of instant gratification in our lives. And much like Diane Selwyn, few of us can predict with any certainty what effect our dreams will have on our perceptions, nor can we fully gauge what our reactions will be in times of difficulty. As Schopenhauer also wrote,

We should always be mindful of the fact that no man is ever very far from the state in which he would readily want to seize a sword or poison in order to bring his existence to an end; and those who are far from believing this could easily be convinced of the opposite by an accident, an illness, a violent change of fortune - or of the weather.

Through the character of Diane Selwyn, Mulholland Drive brings to the fore the fragility and the fallibility on which the human condition is based. Lynch's use of two parallel narratives in conveying Diane Selwyn's story well exhibits the effect that perception has on our comprehension of, and reactions to, sets of external events. David Lynch's latest film exploration of the darker side of human existence is well wrought, emotionally charged, and most of all, timely. Mulholland Drive is clearly a film with designs on the philosophical zeitgeist of the new millennium.


REFERENCES

David Bardwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, McGraw Hill, International Edition, 1997.

Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy, Penguin Books, London, 2000.

David Lynch, Mulholland Drive, 2000.

Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. R.J. Hollingsdale, Human, All Too Human, Cambridge University Press, London, 1996.

Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. W. Kauffman, The Will To Power, Cambridge University Press, London, 1968.

Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. D. Large, World as Will and Representation, Dover Publications, 1988.

John R. Searle, The Constructions of Social Reality, Penguin Books, London, 1995.

Hubert Selby Jr., "Memories, Dreams and Addictions", Requiem for a Dream DVD, Artisan Entertainment, 2000.

Seneca, trans. C. Costa, Dialogues and Letters, Penguin Books, 1997.



Ok.

Here's an interpretation from a guy over at twinpeaksgazette. I've read it several times and this totally work for me.

It's very long - and very good I think.

Here it comes:

Alfred Romo


"MULHOLLAND DR. In My Mind - An Interpretation - **SPOILERS**"

What Phil, in an earlier post, didn't mention is that the afterlife idea is mine.
This is my sole interpretation of the most thought-provoking film of 2001, and one of the most complex ever released, MULHOLLAND DR. For years I've felt I can identify with David Lynch's work. I try to study his films, analyze them, and put them together in some way, shape or form that satisfies me.

MULHOLLAND DR. is also my selection for Best Picture of 2001.
Essentially, here's what I think about the whole thing... this is always open to discussion! =)

If MULHOLLAND DR. were a conventional film, we'd see the following scenes in this order:

1) The CAR REHEARSAL SCENE, where Diane watches Camilla and Adam in action, on set, as he directs Camilla and a male lead. "When you kiss her, it's just a continuation of that move...there's no break..." -And they kiss as Diane watches, thin-lipped.

2) Then, we'd have the scene where Diane hops over the sofa onto Camilla's lap. They are both shirtless and kiss lightly. Camilla insists they break it off and Diane is upset. "It's him, isn't it?" - This lets us know she's frustrated with Adam and Camilla's relationship.

3) Next would be Diane shoving Camilla out the apartment, "You want me to make this easy for you! No ****in' way! It's not gonna be! It isn't for me!" and slams the door in her face.

4) Camilla calls Diane and invites her to a party. "Diane, the car is waiting." Diane attends, greets Adam (Justin Theroux) and his mother, Coco, (Ann Miller). As the night goes on, she spills her guts to Koko, speaks volumes in expressions of her relationship with Camilla. She mentions meeting Camilla on the set of The Sylvia North Story and mentions the director not "...thinking much of..." her. "She helped me getting some parts in some of her films." Coco nods, knowingly, patting Diane's hand. "I see". Diane also sees Camilla kissing another actress. Then, comes the engagement announcement. These are all solidifying means to break it off with Diane for good - and Diane is obviously upset.

5) THE DINER. Diane hires a hit man to off Camilla. She mentioned lots of money her aunt left her, here it shows. The black bag. We are also introduced to the line "This is the girl." -referring to Camilla. The hit man is anxious of someone overhearing, as Diane is upset and loudmouth. Waitress BETTY is noted. The Hit man insists Diane be sure of her intentions. Once money is exchanged, the job is as good as done. Paid, he tells her of the blue key. "When it's finished, you'll find this where I told you.” Diane notices Dan, the Man With A Dream.

6) In THE ACCIDENT, Camilla is killed.

7) The next sequence would be Diane's neighbor knocking at her door to collect her things. Diane wakes, opens the door, the neighbor gets her stuff, and we see the Blue Key and Diane's neighbor warns her of snooping detectives. "Oh, by the way, those two detectives came looking for ya." Diane, then, hallucinates (surreally or otherwise) Camilla's bright, always-make-up'd self. "Camilla... you've come back." -At this point, Camilla is already dead.

8) The final scene of the traditional storyline of MULHOLLAND DR. places Diane in a compromising position. The cops are on her tail. Switching bungalows with a neighbor didn't throw them off. She's head-over-heels guilty for having the object of her obsession (Camilla) killed. From desperation, hopelessness & guilt, Diane kills herself.
NOW... the trip begins.

The entire first and second acts of MULHOLLAND DR. are death trips. That's what makes this film so unique. This is a film about the things we see when we die. In life, Diane was overwrought with failure. She said so much to Coco in the DINNER PARTY scene. Her lover abandoned her. In Diane's afterlife, she's recreated an ideal situation for herself, where she:

1) Arrives in Hollywood. Remember how she describes it? "...I just came here from Deep River, Ontario and now I'm in this -- dream place."

2) Meets her lover, transcending Camilla's position in reality (from a cold *****) to someone with NO memory, practically someone who needs to rely on someone. Diane creates a situation in her afterlife where, as Betty the Actress, Camilla (now Rita with no memory), needs her, relies on her, emotionally and physically - much like Diane's obsession with Camilla in real life.

3) Diane, as Betty in her afterlife, creates a situation where her ideal potential is realized. Remember her discussion with Coco and an unnamed man at the DINNER PARTY, where she mentions a director who didn't care much for her? The man next to her calls him, "Bob Booker." This is the director who enjoys Betty's performance in THE AUDITION scene. In real life, Booker hated Diane. In Diane's ideal afterlife, Booker adores her as Betty.

4) Diane (as Betty) means to help Camilla (as Rita) discover herself. In real life, Diane must have had a horrible time identifying herself, always riding the coat tails of her famous, dead aunt. Now, she trails Camilla (to maintain a relationship). In her afterlife, Diane (as Betty), creates a situation where, through discovery, discovers her own death by finding her own corpse.

THIS IS WHERE DIANE'S AFTERLIFE SPINS SOMEWHAT OUT OF CONTROL, into a tailspin of the weird, surreal, truthful & tragic.

5) It is significant to note Diane's understanding of Camilla's death as somewhat detached. After all, at this point she is still an "Earthbound" spirit so drama is sure to envelop much of her afterlife. We see this in the scene where the Hit man kills a giggly, long-haired man with "THE BLACK BOOK," referred to as “The History of the World,” and a couple of other innocent people. Remember when the long-haired guy says "A freakin' car accident. Can you believe that?" -These may be Diane's thoughts surfacing in characters in her afterlife.

6) She is LOVED for her acting. In reality, Diane was no more than a hopeful"...I won this jitterbug contest. That sort of led to acting." -In her afterlife, Diane (as Betty) floors Bob Booker, Wally Brown & the others. In this scene, we here one of the most important lines of the film:

"Don't Play it real until it gets real."-Bob Booker, (Wayne Grace).

This is significant of Diane's situation. At the start of the film, some may consider the dialogue and story progression somewhat plotted and silly. In reality, it is meant to be plotted and straightforward, without the "likes" and "you-knows" of contemporary dialogue. What we consider as and artificial, though, IS and artificial in the sense that all we see and hear of "BETTY" is a fabrication in Diane's afterlife. Booker's words are meant to signify a point in the film where situations for Betty show their layers. Layers, mind you, so well developed in the proceeding scenes, we hardly notice they're there till they kick us in the nuts.

7) "SEEING ADAM" is an important scene, indicating Diane's acknowledgment of Adam as an entity in her life. She walks in on his auditioning various singers, including the ravishing Melissa George as "THE BLONDE GIRL," and eye contact is all the acknowledgement her soul needs, thus she retreats to previous engagements with Camilla. That's when they discover Diane's corpse.

8) Low and behold, Diane and Camilla are lovers again. The passion of withheld emotions erupts in Betty & Rita's sex scene. Here, in the afterlife, it's love. In reality, it began as love. Through rejection (from Camilla), Diane’s love quickly deteriorated into obsession.

9) SILENCIO brings a lot of MULHOLLAND DR. into the light, emotionally. First, we here a description as follows: "NO AYE BANDA" Or, No Band ... "...and yet, we HEAR a band." And, "It is all a tape." -Here, we have a scene of truths surfacing. The theatre is a gathering place of lost souls, where coming to terms with the end, new beginnings, situations & people lost, and hearing LLORANDO (crying), takes place. Diane and Camilla find themselves here. Here, we realize, both Diane and Camilla needed to let go, release their anger, hate, fear, loathing & jealousy. At this point, though, it's too late for sorries. Here, Diane also shakes violently. After the singing, Diane discovers the Blue Box. She and Camilla meddle with it. Betty disappears. When Camilla opens the box, (with the blue key), I think Diane's afterlife trip begins all over again, from the time she arrives in Hollywood to the time she returns home from the concert with Camilla.

VANILLA SKY did this to some extent. The entire film is a man's trip in a cryogenic state. But, we'll get to that later.

That box is a trigger that loops Diane's afterlife experience. You know how people see ghosts trapped in a routine all the time? The beginning and middle of MULHOLLAND DR. are Diane's routine.

Perhaps, she and Camilla haunt Hollywood...? =)

Also, her dislike of Adam in reality embodies itself in his being pursued and threatened in her afterlife. She strips him of his control, something she clearly didn't care for in reality. Besides, as a director, calling the shots is important. Diane denies Adam this in her afterlife where SHE calls the shots.

To me, THE COWBOY represents an extension of Diane that participates in Diane's ruining Adam. "How many drivers does a buggy have?" Adam replies, "One." Like in directing, there is one director (at least, in Adam's ideal professional situation. It's obvious he likes to call the shots). Diane, through The Cowboy, the Castigliani brothers, etc... strips Adam of that ideal control and puts him in a helpless position. Remember, he's also lost a wife, was beat up, his film is toyed with out of his hands. All these things are Diane's invention of Adam in her afterlife experience. Post-mortem revenge.

The Cowboy also says, "Now, you will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad." How many times do we see the Cowboy after his introduction? Twice. Once, after Betty & Rita disappear, the Cowboy opens the door to Diane's apartment where she lies in the way she did in death, and says, "Hey pretty girl. Time to wake up." Second, during the dinner party, after Camilla kisses the Blonde Actress. Blonde Actress walks off and the Cowboy passes through the hallway and out the house.

We've seen the Cowboy twice. Someone has done bad. I think this refers back to Diane, as SHE has done bad. I think The Cowboy speaks to a wider audience, illustrating the fact that Diane severely screwed up, let her emotions run away with her, caused some death and hurt a lot of people. Bad, indeed.

I think THE BUM is actually Diane. I think it's Diane's corpse, the rot in her soul. "He's the one that's doing this," says the Man With A Dream in the beginning, but it's not a he it's a SHE. Diane is responsible for her afterlife, regardless of what form her super consciousness takes. The Cowboy may represent the part of her that seeks revenge, much as traditional cowboys of history did. This is HER ride, her buggy. And only one driver.

Also, THE BUM is played by a woman, Bonnie Aarons, which adds water to my suggestion that The Bum is Diane (a woman) and not a “he.”

All in all, the conventional storyline of an affair between two people leading to jealousy and murder is classic Hollywood fare, especially set in the City of Dreams. The lines of reality and fantasy are blurred in a manner only David Lynch can execute.

So... why do I discharge the dream theory? I don’t entirely discharge it, only see a much more interesting avenue to travel when explaining MULHOLLAND DR.

There are several layers to discharging the dream theory. First & foremost, to say the first two acts of MULHOLLAND DR. are "a dream" is just too easy.

In analyzing the film, I tackled each point of the film deciding whether or not explanations were too easy or to complicated. At one point, I figured The Bum was the Hit man (I was thrown off by the line "He's the one that's doing it.") When I tried to fit The Hit man into the role of The Bum, I found myself having to make far too many excuses for that association. Perhaps he was in the limo and was killed trying to kill Camilla. Or, perhaps Diane's impressions of The Hit man embodied in her afterlife as The Bum, still considering the line "He's the one who’s doing this." BUT, he couldn't have been in the limo because we would have seen his dirty blonde head and both hit men in the limo had one-tone hair, not too dark but light brown. He couldn't have been Diane's impression of him as The Bum in her afterlife because he's already himself. No angle I took reached something satisfying. But - low and behold - a light went on upstairs. The Bum IS Diane. It's her rotting corpse. -Makes sense now. It's not too easy, not too complicated. It's a thoughtful explanation that's creepy and just what one can expect from David Lynch.

David Lynch's films are never simple. Each film takes a traditional, simple plot and adds layers of eclectic surrealism with roots in matters of the conscious, subconscious & super conscious. We have to consider the fact that the whole "dream" thing is way overdone and a tired escape for scripts full of holes. Instead of wrapping up scenarios properly, a writer will throw in a character "waking up," immediately vindicating the story progression from setting a finale & tying up loose ends.

Dreams are something audiences are used to. If you don't understand something, make it a dream and it all goes away. That way, nothing has to be explained, nothing has to be patched up, and nothing needs fulfilling. Have a look at the percentage of people who consider MULHOLLAND DR. a dream. My point is proven.

This is something David Lynch does not subscribe to. His daughter, Jennifer Chambers Lynch, made perfectly well what copping out with dreams can do to an otherwise promising project. BOXING HELENA suffered for it, not only at the box office but also from the critics.

The thing about a dream is that dreams are escapable. Watching MULHOLLAND DR. gave me the feeling of being stuck in a blend of reality & idealism. Dreams are reflections of our reality, either hopes or fears, but not tangible nor ideal. They just ARE. Death, on the other hand, is very real and not always ideal but for the best. They say we must pay for our errors in the next life. If that's the case, everything that happens here is for the best and what we take with us are our lessons learned (and mistakes) for further analysis in the next life.

In watching MULHOLLAND DR. from start to finish, we see Diane's mistakes (in the third act) but see how they materialize (in the first and second acts).

I know why the Dream Thesis comes about, though. After Betty & Rita disappear, we see a couple of fade ins & outs, and The Cowboy open Diane's door. "Hey, pretty girl. Time to wake up." And, Diane wakes up. In the film, what I call her afterlife trip directly precedes her waking up. Makes it look like a dream, doesn't it? Also, in understanding that place between wake & sleep, it's very easy to bring with us images from our dreams that only fade away when we fully wake. The Cowboy could be a character she first saw at the Dinner Party (she was looking directly at The Blonde Actress when The Cowboy passes through the hallway, out the house), and he embodied himself not only in her dream but also in her sleep-to-waking state, triggering her wakefulness to meet her neighbor's knocking at her door.

If you look at it analytically, it's very easy to describe MULHOLLAND DR. as a dream.

HOWEVER... it's too easy. To say acts 1 and 2 are a dream is also saying much of what one doesn't understand (like the Adam subplot, the Hit man, Mr. Roque’s Studio & the telephone calls), are entirely irrelevant because it was a dream anyway. In a dream, nothing HAS to make sense. It's too easy to say Diane dreamt it all because all that would remain from a dream are the major incidences and MULHOLLAND DR. is made up mostly of subtleties and details. Dreams have NO attention to detail.

Off-topic, even in song, we hear "Dream A Little Dream of Me."
Dreams, for the most part, are little - or remembered that way. We dream extensively yet remember seconds. To say it was all a dream is giving Diane A LOT of credit. In a dream, explanations are not necessary. After all, they are only dreams. If you piece together MULHOLLAND DR. as I have, you begin to notice an attention to detail uncharacteristic of dreams. One need only look past Lynch to his daughter’s BOXING HELENA. There is absolutely NO attention to detail in that film. It's primarily made up of Julian Sands & Sherilyn Fenn necking against a black background. THAT's a dream. MULHOLLAND DR. seems like more. Neither, does the plot of BOXING HELENA skew far from Julian Sands' character at any point. MULHOLLAND DR., on the other hand, has its sub-plots that escape Diane, even though they are manifestations of her feelings in a reality unlike ours. Why? That reality is death.

Here is my overbearing reason for applying an Afterlife spin to MULHOLLAND DR...

I have studied the afterlife for many, many years. I've had numerous personal experiences with "ghosts," and Near-Death/Out-of-Body-Experiences, not only in my personal research and experience, but on traditional Haunted Tours across the country. I firmly subscribe to the idea that we never die but "step out" of our bodies. The physical self dies, not the spiritual. If I (and those who can speak to people on the other side, like Sylvia Browne, James Van Praag, John Edward & Mary Altea to name a most credible few) are correct, and we DO cross over into another realm, one need only look to the many haunting cases of Hollywood.

At the Roosevelt Hotel (7000 Hollywood Blvd.), Marilyn Monroe is constantly spotted in a full-length mirror, originally located in her poolside Suite 1200, where Marilyn often stayed. The mirror in which her image appears is now located next to the elevator on the lower level.

Harry Houdini roams about the remains of his former home at 2398 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, in the Hollywood Hills.

Clifton Webb is constantly at his old residence, 1005 Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills.

George Reeves still wanders about 1579 Benedict Canyon Drive.
Thomas Ince makes a fuss over at Culver Studios (9336 Washington Blvd, in Culver City), all the time.

Montgomery Clift wanders the Roosevelt Hotel, too (#928, 9th floor). AND he still plays his trumpet, roams the hallways & is usually heard "reciting old lines."

Most notably, there's Thelma Todd... in the early 1930's she made comedies with Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers & Buster Keaton. She also ran a beachside cafe between Malibu & Pacific Palisades (17575 Pacific Coast Highway). Lucky Luciano wanted to run some unsavory numbers in her cafe and she said "Over my dead body." "That can be arranged," he said. Sure enough, Todd was found dead in 1935, bloody & beaten with the car running in her upstairs garage. Now, it's Paulist Productions and EVERYONE there has not only seen but HEARD her, walking about, crying (llorando), traveling up the same stretch of street and steps.

All these ghosts do these things over and over and over. This is common knowledge with those of us who follow Parapsychology. Spirits who cross over with, either unfinished business or before their time or from suicide, instantly become what are known as "Earthbound" spirits. They are neither in our realm nor the proper realm of the afterlife, but between realms where, as entities, they are stuck in situations that left the most impact on them in traditional life.

Take Thelma Todd, for example. She loved life. Rarely was she seen without a smile. She loved her work and was well respected. She was living a dream life, especially with her cafe. That was her world. The Mafia insisted on ruining her perfect world and she wouldn't have it. I think she knew the risks but opted to chance being killed. In the end, I'm sure it came as a surprise. Out of the cold, dead darkness of night came these thugs and they ended her promising, young life violently.

This can safely be called a "tragic passing." Tragic passings make ghosts, there's no question about that. However, let's remove our perceptions of what a ghost is and look at things from the GHOST'S perspective. Todd, as a ghost, is trapped between two realms. One - (life) - she loved with a passion. The other, the reality that life is over and a new existence must begin. However, she's not ready to give up her old life, her old material possessions, her cafe, perhaps even little things she liked to do - like taking walks up & down Pacific Coast Highway.

Where is she today? Roaming the cafe she so loved and roaming up & down Pacific Coast Highway.

She goes through "a routine" that is similar to the life she led here. Monroe always loved that mirror at the Roosevelt, and she's still looking at herself in it today. Clift is heard rehearsing scripts from the early 1950s. These are "loops" the ghosts are in, and most ghosts go through it, from what the pros say.

Reeves, Webb, Houdini all went back home. They return to a familiar place. Most to all ghosts do this, as well. Part of me wants to think Diane returned to the house her aunt (now dead, as we learn in the Dinner Party scene) lived in. Perhaps that's the house the first & second acts took place in. Of course, someone else lives there now but perhaps Diane visited her aunt there, on occasion, and dying in Hollywood shipped her off to the most familiar place in town -her aunt's house.

While watching MULHOLLAND DR. (all the times I have) I noticed details and behaviours characteristic of ghosts. The returning to familiar places, the seeking something, the crying (Llorando), and when it came time to explain The Blue Box - there was only one way to fit it all together. These are the goings & comings of someone who made an adventure for herself on the other side after completely blowing it in this life. Again, she recreated her situation to suit her needs, her wishes, her hopes.

As a dream, MULHOLLAND DR. is full of loose ends, (the phone calls, Mr. Roque’s Studio, , The Cowboy, The Bum, The Blue Box, The Blue Key, The Black Book (History of the World), Dan (The Man With A Dream), Club Silencio. -All these things go unresolved if MULHOLLAND DR. is a dream because they're not important anyway. Balls with it, it's only a dream, right?

I disagree. As an Afterlife experience, MULHOLLAND DR. has NO unresolved issues. The Cowboy, The Castigliani Brothers and Mr. Roque’s Studio are pieces of Diane that topple Adam and his overbearing control. The Black Book known as "The History of the World" is full of the review of Diane's life. Even popular religions indicate a "Book of Life" to be dealt with when we cross over. The phone calls are internal to Diane, alerting various parts of herself to situations that need resolving. Club Silencio is a place where "Earthbound" spirits gather. Llorando, as a song, speaks volumes of the condition of Earthbound spirits. Todd is heard crying. So is Valentino & George Reeves, among GALLONS of reported ghosts across the world. In the real world, ghosts cry - and they cry in MULHOLLAND DR., too.

Even Rebekah Del Rio is called "LA LLORONA DE LOS ANGELES." -The Cryer of the Angels-

People who have crossed are often referred to as "angels" or "guardian angels," depending on who is referring to them. Here, the situation is no different. La Llorona De Los Angeles puts on a never-ending show for the lost angels (angeles/spirits) of Club Silencio.

David Lynch has never dealt directly with dreams. It's not his style. LOST HIGHWAY wasn't a dream, ERASERHEAD wasn't a dream, neither were TWIN PEAKS or BLUE VELVET. These films deal with people who conflict and face, nose to nose, their internal selves, their demons, their fears, their pasts. Only once has David Lynch made dreams integral to a story and no one thought much of DUNE in the same way no one thought much of BOXING HELENA (his daughter's take on dreams). What makes David Lynch's work so pleasing, fulfilling & downright eerie is the fact that his stories have their foundations in reality. Our souls are real, the afterlife is real, our inner-selves are real. His most widely accepted films have a foot in reality. When dreams come into play, the foundation lies in the intangible, not the tangible, (again, see DUNE & BOXING HELENA).

This may be another reason MULHOLLAND DR. wasn't as widely accepted as it should have been. No one got it and that's a CRYING shame. =)
There has been wide speculation over the old people (Irene & Irene’s Companion) who accompany Diane through the end & beginning of the film.

Here’s my take on the old people…

In many cases of near-death experiences, people describe other people - or spirits - who come for them. These people guide the newly deceased into their afterlife. From what people who have died and returned say, it's fairly common to be greeted by people you know and guided towards whatever light people see.

Thing is, many also recognize people they DO NOT know, but these “strangers” know them. I recall the story of a very credible woman who died during surgery. After she came back, she described as much. People familiar, people unfamiliar... of course, death is surely different for everyone, but the general concensus is that there are people waiting on the other side for us, whether we know them or not.

Given that, the old people chasing Diane represents the fact that she went nuts, also representing these "spirits" that come for us, regardless of whether we know that split second we're going to die or not.

Immediately following her death, our first scene would be her arriving with those old people at the airport. See? They've brought her over and are sending her off to her afterlife. One could think of the airport as a lobby for limbo, as I associated with the Red Rooms in MD and TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME.

In clarifying the near-death-experience thought, I'd like to first say that MULHOLLAND DR. -IS- a movie, for the most part, and any movie may be granted some liberities in representing reality, fantasy, life, death, making a sandwich... it's all what we make of it. =)

THAT SAID... Yes, Diane is alive (running to the bedroom) but she IS about to die (near-death). In terms of film -where liberties are surely granted- dramatic premise might have these "things" coming for Diane in her final seconds of life, whether she's absolutely sure she's about to die or not. I think she's already decided to kill herself. It's partially metaphoric to the fact that's she's lost her mind, has -most likely- been contemplating suicide and is about to stain her bed with brains.

Remember those creepy black things that came for the "bad people" in GHOST? I think those Old People are a lot like them. In GHOST, they appeared IN death. In granting MULHOLLAND DR. some leeway, consider the idea that, chronologically, the Old People chasing Diane would directly precede her arriving in Hollywood, "amidst an eerie white glow." -And her splattering herself in bed lies comfortably between them.

IMO, MULHOLLAND DR. is a story told through subtleties and symbolism. I try to absorb the grander meaning of things, leaving open for conjecture various details that could represent a wide range of variables. It's the intricate details that are the most fun and everyone will, most likely, get something different out of everything.

In the end, we are all free to make up our own minds.

But, don’t spirits usually greet us…? Well, yes – BUT Keyword - USUALLY. Not everyone has pretty stories to tell of crossing over & coming back. Not everyone speaks of smiling faces & shining family. Some people encounter AWFUL things... I think Diane is one of those people who, while recreating an ideal situation for herself in the afterlife, was not a "good person" and shouldn't expect the afterlife to serve up tea & biscuits. Besides, just as our world here is diverse and full of all sorts of people, the afterlife is full of much the same thing. It takes all kinds. From what people who can speak to the dead say, ghosts roam around as freely as we do. All kinds, nice ones, nasty ones, it's a real melting pot. Some pretty nasty ones showed up at Diane's doorstep, IMO. =)

I don't think those old people actually "caused" Diane to shoot herself. Considering the Old People represent something "coming for" her soul, she was to shoot herself anyway, old people or not. Metaphorically, the Old People could be used to also represent a chaotic transition from life to death.

Regardless, I think those people "came for her." It's a creepy thought and works for me. It's only my opinion. =)

Another thing... when people die -or are about to die- or facing some kind of life/death psuedo-state (be it past or present or future) in Lynch movies, they're washed with that eerie blue light. It quite reminds me of the "light at the end of the tunnel" -but blue.
Pete Dayton as Fred was washed with blue light in LOST HIGHWAY, so was the younger Pete Dayton as Pete Dayton (Balthazaar Getty). This was more a transitional thing, but Pete/Fred is killed in the end.
Laura Palmer ate the blue light in TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME.
It reminds me of the other side showing itself and pointing its finger at the newcomer. In Diane's suicide scene, the blue light starts slowly, mostly a flicker, and grows with the old people’s laughter till it strobes after Diane, into her bedroom. If that blue light is a "portal" into the afterlife, it is gradual and SMALL as the old people were gradual and SMALL coming into her house. When the old people erupt, so does the blue light.

I consider that blue light the “tunnel of light” people describe in death. Thing is, Lynch likes his death light blue – not white. It’s an artistic thing – but a lot of us have our own ideas of the afterlife. Perhaps Lynch sees blue in his afterlife. I see lots of lavender, whites, opal… go figure.

If one wants to opt for the dream theory, that's fine. As long as one enjoyed the movie. As long as the experience of MULHOLLAND DR. got one thinking, that's all that matters. One can easily suggest the pillow and heavy breathing in the beginning signify someone lying down for bed. However, I think that slow pan across the pillows, into the pillow on the right - (facing the bed, on the right (rightside nightstand) is where Diane gets the gun) - is similar to the path she takes across the bed to get the gun in her suicide scene. The pillow scene is slower than the frantic suicide scene (and minus the screaming). However, the intricacies of how Diane ends up in bed can be taken however someone wants. Thing is, both scenes show something definite. Diane ends up in bed.

In the pillow scene, there's some diffused light highlighting the pillow. In the suicide scene, there the same kind of diffused light coming into the window from a street light (or yard light) outside. It's the same place, the same bed -but can be the same scene, only played differently for dramatic purposes within the film.

All in all, it's meant to be confusing. =)

Someone also brought up the idea that Detective Domgaard (when the cops are investigating the accident) held up the blue key in his evidence bag.

Camilla's left pearl earring is in the bag Detective Domgaard is holding, not the blue key. What one may have thought was the blue key is the ziploc on the bag -it's blue.
Here's the scene:

Domgaard produces the plastic bag from his pocket.

Domgaard: "The boys found this on the floor in the back of the caddy."

McKnight: "Yeah. You showed me."

He stuffs the bag in his pocket.

Domgaard: "Could be unrelated."

McKinght: "Could be. Any of those dead kids wearing pearl earrings?"

Domgaard: "No. Could be someone's missing, maybe."

McKnight: "That's what I'm thinking."

------

After the accident, when Camilla crosses Franklin Ave., a car passes her, washing her in its headlights. We see her left ear bloody. She's missing a pearl earring. The other dangles from her right ear. Before the accident, she's wearing both earrings (in the limo). After, she's missing one.

The bag is hard to see but I noticed the blue ziploc. The lighting makes it difficult to see the earring in the bag but it's there.
Also, before someone notices that Domgaard says "caddy" and not "limo" ... limousines also come in Cadillac brand. =)

In another thought… After the audition scene, Betty's taken to meet Adam. They announce in the scene that the set is "The Sylvia North Story." Adam is directing. In life, Diane said she met Camilla on the set of The Sylvia North Story. In death, only thing was Camilla was that blondie (Melissa George). Adam is the director, not Bob Booker (like the guy sitting next to Diane at the dinner party said, in life). This setup could be Diane's recreation of first meeting Camilla, only faces have shifted. She arrives as an "actress," not just for auditioning.

Adam DID direct Camilla at some point, though. We see this in the scene with Adam & Camilla necking in a car on-set.

I also enjoyed the idea that Diane and her neighbor might have been lovers. Imagine that Diane left her neighbor to philander with Camilla, only to be dumped by Camilla, hence dumped by both. The neighbor looking Camilla (Rita) up & down with a sneer could indicate Diane’s retention of her neighbor’s dislike for Camilla in real life. I’m sure they fought a great deal over something as serious as Diane meddling with a showbiz floozie. Switching apartments to avoid the police was of little help. Diane’s neighbor was gathering things from the bungalow. Diane remembered this from real life and it transcended to her afterlife.

Concerning Naomi Watts... Naomi Watts exherts pure glamour. Did you see her at the Golden Globes? She's absolutely radiant. What got me most of Watts' role was the actual subject matter. Considering MY view of the film (as an afterlife experience, not a dream) I just get this gut wrenching feeling... I feel so bad for her character. Let's just say I enjoy the sentiment. =)

Watts' role covers lots of terrain & a variety of emotions. One of my favourite angles to her character is the fact that the more Camilla pushes her away, the more her love - which I'm sure was some species of love in the beginning - becomes vengeful obsession. Piper Perabo's character did the same thing in LOST & DELERIOUS. Check it out if you haven't, it's a fabulous film. And, since MD is disjointed, we're forced to recall the minute details of Watts' performance long afterwards to piece them together when it's all said & done. The fact that MD is not a linear film adds a lot of weight to Watts' role because it takes more thought & time to understand her character (and the film, in general).

All in all, MULHOLLAND DR. & Naomi Watts insist we spend more time with them than we normally would any other film. (All thanks to The Good Lord Lynch, by the way.) In the time we spend watching and re-watching MD, it's obvious Watts' talent & good looks grow like wild mushrooms on us. Another thing is the fact that she plays a real **** of a person - yet we care about her anyway, (much like everything Thornton did this year.)

One last thing I'd like to point out, concerning dreams vs. the afterlife is, again, of Lynch's accepted films, matters of the spirit chained to reality are the true stars:

TWIN PEAKS = The Red Room, The Arm, The Garmonbozia, all tangible entities within the spiritual world. No dreams here.

LOST HIGHWAY = The Mystery Man AND the illusion of a double identity fades when we learn these are the same people and, in reality, Fred only ran from himself and, in despair, ruined his OWN life. No dreams here.

ERASERHEAD = A man's unwillingness to accept his own death surfaces as the birth of a malformed child. Ever wonder why The Radiator Girl sings "EVERYTHING IS FINE IN HEAVEN."...? Eraserhead is dead, that's why. (Quite like MULHOLLAND DR.)

BLUE VELVET = heh. No dreams there. An ear & Dennis Hopper sucking an oxygen mask screaming MOMMY but no dreams. =)

DUNE = Maudib dreams things before they happen and it bombed. Regardless, this was NOT from Lynch's imagination but based on Frank Herbert's amazing books. See, Lynch doesn't tackle dreams himself, he deals with death, the afterlife and brazen spirituality. My kinda guy. =)

In un-Lynchian related speculation, a fine film called IN DREAMS went straight into the gutter - and guess what the big deal about that film was? ...DREAMS...

I'm hard pressed to think of a movie dealing with dreams that enjoyed widespread acclaim besides THE WIZARD OF OZ and ALICE IN WONDERLAND...

I would also like to draw your attention to THE ARM (Man from another place) & THE RED ROOM from TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME. Now, think of MR. ROQUE & THE STUDIO in MULHOLLAND DR. Both THE ARM and MR. ROQUE are played by the always-creepy Michael Anderson and both characters are set in these "red rooms."

In TWIN PEAKS, Anderson and The Red Room signified a lobby for limbo, so to speak. Here is the place the dead pass through, on their way to Heaven or Hell. In MULHOLLAND DR., Diane's afterlife has a Red Room of its own, the place where Mr. Roque lives. Diane, in death, has arrived and must overcome an obstacle she brought with herself -Adam, (not entirely him, per se, but the control & heirarchy of Hollywood he represents). The obstacle was overcome by stripping Adam of his power. In death, Diane wins.

As an obstacle in TWIN PEAKS, Laura Palmer brings her father to The Red Room. Through Bob, (the image of her father she experienced when he'd rape her), and The Arm (Anderson), the obstacle is overcome when Bob sucks the "Garmonbozia (pain & sorrow) out of Leland Palmer. In death, Laura Palmer wins.

In looking at both of these films and analyzing their similarities, one can easily see how dreams are not a factor.

Anyway, of David Lynch's more ethereal movies, we come to notice a greater acceptance of his subject matter. People are tired of dreams. But, when matters of the spirit arise, everyone (especially in this day & age), perk their ears & eyes. Why? Work like that SPEAKS to the soul. People GET that, whether they realize it or not. We all have a spirit. Exploring the spiritual world in art (in film) helps us all to explore our own spiritual selves.

David Lynch's films speak to us louder & deeper than our ears alone can hear.

David Lynch's films have spoken to me on an ethereal level for many years. There's this thing called resonance. Lynch's films resonate with me; they possess an unseen quality that needs to be felt to be understood.

People who may not be entirely in tune with the Spiritual (not RELIGIOUS, mind you, SPIRITUAL) side of themselves may interpret MULHOLLAND DR. as a dream.

For people like me, MULHOLLAND DR. rang true at every turn. The soul knows the truth. I really wish more people would have realized it the way I, and others like me, did.

I got it. That's enough for me.

Good Wishes,

Alfred Romo



This guy is certainly entitled to his opinion as we all are. I think you will find under closer scrutiny that his interpetation is full of gaping holes. I feel his years of study on the afterlife prejudiced his opinion toward that explanation and is not logical and not supported by the facts. His logic relys on David Lynch being just as studied on the afterlife and dreams as he himself is. This is not reality, it is a film and the only dream logic or afterlife logic that applies is that which Lynch knows and that part of what he knows that he feels work with his story idea. This synopsis does contain many small details that are logical and I believe to be true but they all work with the dream explanation also. All things in the film can be explained to coincide with the dream. Lynch's past history with dreams has nothing to do with this film. In fact the history surrounding this film (an open ended story already filmed that had to be added to and changed) meant that he had to work differently than he has ever worked before.

The largest glaring loopholes in this (afterlife) theme are in the bedroom scenes.



When Diane kills herself she is wearing the tacky robe and laying across the bed with her head at the right edge of the bed and the gun still in her mouth, her face is pointed toward the foot of the bed. There are two pillows on the bed.

When Rita and Betty see the corpse there is just one pillow. The body is lengthwise on the bed with her face pointing to the right. There is no gun, she is wearing a black slip/nightgown.

If this event (suicide) had already happened at this point the details would be exactly as they were when it happened. Or at least very close (would have to include at least the gun). Coincidently (or not) the body is lying in the exact position as Diane is in when she is sleeping. If someone were to dream of a future possible death this would lack specific details.

In the beginning when the camera pans to the bed it is facing down to the floor comes up to the bed, goes back to the floor and eventually goes across the sheet to the pillow and the lens goes into the pillow completely cutting off the light. This is Diane putting her face into the pillow going to sleep. During the suicide Diane is looking back to those tormenting her and looking forward to the bed and across the bed not down. She never puts her head in the pillow.

Diane is not awakened by the Cowboy. This scene is still part of the dream. Diane is awakened by DeRosa knocking at the door.

Some other small holes in his theory;

In the dream (afterlife to him) Rita/Camilla did not love Diane/Betty.

Bob Brooker did not like Betty's performance at the audition.

The direction the Cowboy walked thru the party was into the house not out.

I could go on but I have a short post reputation to keep up.



I am not trying to be overly critical of this theory but I feel his extensive dismissal of the dream needed to be answered

SILENCIO

ARCADE FIRE & THE KNIFE

PISANJE U RIJEKU, PISANJE U VJETAR

Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote


Carole Hamilton




Hamilton is an English teacher at Cary Academy, an innovative private school in Cary, North Carolina. In this essay she examines the theme of reading in the literary project of “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.”



“Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” is metafiction about the overlap between essay writing and story writing. Writing certainly lies at the center of the story, beginning with the title. However, “Pierre Menard” is also “metareading,” a story that concerns itself with the relationship between writing and reading. References to writing about in this story. The narrator establishes Pierre Menard’s credibility as an author by listing a catalogue of his written work, his "visible oeuvre". The works represent a range of types, from sonnets and letters to monographs, manuscripts, and translations. The last item of the list, handwritten, is about one of the elements unique to writing: punctuation. The breadth of topics treated by the writings in the catalogue testifies to Menard’s intelligence and worth; his writing identifies him as an erudite and prolific writer. His most impressive work is a project to “produce a number of pages which coincided---word for word and line by line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes.” The narrator applauds this act of re-envisioning an entire novel, calling the finished product “perhaps the most significant writing of our time.” Menard himself, in a letter quoted by the narrator, equates his undertaking with “the final term of a theological or metaphysical proof” or to God. Menard assures the narrator in his letter that “The task I have undertaken is not in essence difficult…If I could just be immortal, I could do it.” Thus, the creative act of writing is placed on a divine level. Menard is also legitimized in a chain of biblical-sounding “begats,” as a descendent of a line of writers beginning with Poe. He is following an honored tradition. The novel that Menard chooses to re-created, Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, also carries a theme of writing, being a new written genre (the picaresque novel) and having many authorial intrusions that constantly remind the reader of the act of writing that produced the novel. The difference between the author’s goals is that while Cervantes’ work views writing as a means to the end of narration, Menard’s project centers on how writing affects the act of reading, and not on writing as an end in itself.The crowning moment of the article about “Pierre Menard” occurs when the narrator places the excerpt from Cervantes’ novel alongside the excerpt from Menard’s identical version. The narrator’s analysis then proves that reading, the flip side of writing--like the tree that falls in a forest—depends upon its audience to be appreciated. In the last paragraph of “Pierre Menard,” the narrator summarizes the impact of Menard’s having re-written the Quixote as a contribution to reading, “Menard (perhaps without wishing it) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the hesitant and rudimentary art of reading…” Given that the final product matches the original Quixote word for word, how can a second Quixote, an identical twin text of the first, have any bearing on reading, if the words are exactly the same? The answer lies in the “rudimentary art” of reading itself, which is an act not of translation, but of interpretation and putting into other words. Reading, as Borges’ story illustrates, is always an act of interpretation, for although the texts appear the same on the page (though begotten by a different process), they “mean” differently. Reading is a complex art that can be accomplished on many different levels.In “Pierre Menard” Borges presents many kinds of reading of varying levels of complexity, that might be arranged in a “hierarchy of reading” corresponding roughly to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a system of organizing human goals. On the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid are the most basic human requirements for survival: food, water, air, sleep. At the top, Maslow placed the human need for self-actualization. In Borges’ hierarchy, the basic “survival” reading skill is simple cataloguing, the librarian’s skill that Borges practiced as an assistant librarian. The narrator of “Pierre Menard” proves his skill of cataloguing early in the story, when he carefully lists all of Menard’s writings, correcting omissions of earlier lists. The next level up on Borges’ hierarchy of reading would be comprehension. In the narrator’s annotations of the catalogued items, he demonstrates his skill of comprehension, for the topic of each item is succinctly summarized. Comprehension is a relatively simple used by the high school student to learn parts of a text. However, comprehension lacks depth; one might comprehend the essence of a well known book (such as Don Quixote) simply because it has become an icon of culture. Regarding Don Quixote the narrator points out that “fame is a form—perhaps the worst form—of comprehension.” On a slightly more complex level would be interpretation, an act of inferring meaning between the lines and taking other information into consideration. The narrator proves his astuteness as a reader at this level of Borges’s hierarchy of reading when he points out that Menard’s diatribe against Paul Valéry “states the exact reverse of Menard’s true opinion of Valéry.” Here, the narrator has read Menard’s life against his written opinions in order to arrive at a more thorough understanding of his subject than a casual reader might derive. The narrator has taken Menard’s personal context—his habits of mind--into consideration in his interpretation. Borges, whose father had gone blind and who very early in his life began to have vision problems that would lead to blindness, had personal reasons to value the skills of comprehension and interpretation in reading. With his weak eyesight, it was important for Borges to grasp what he read quickly, so as not to need a second reading. In this Borges became quite successful, developing his memory to retain ideas, languages, and whole passages of favorite texts. Almost everyone who met Borges remarked on his uncanny ability to recall passages from books he had read years ago in the course of conversation about other books. Interpretation requires memory as well as understanding. One of Pierre Menard’s inspirations involves an even higher level of reading than interpretation--“total identification” with the author. To accomplish total identification with a sixteenth-century Spanish author, the French Menard had to “learn Spanish, return to Catholicism, fight against the Moor or Turk, forget the history of Europe from 1602 to 1918” all in order to “be Miguel de Cervantes.” As daunting an undertaking as this might seem, Menard dismissed it as “too easy.” Rather than read his way to a total identification with Cervantes, Menard wanted to come to the Quixote “through the experiences of Pierre Menard.” In other words, Menard’s wanted to retain his own identity while absorbing Cervantes’ world view thoroughly enough to reproduce his writing. Menard’s project is similar in some ways to the goals of the University literature professor, who tries to understand authors in enough depth to explain their work. Borges, writing “Pierre Menard” as a young man, had no way of knowing that he would later become a university professor of English literature too! Soon literature professors were approaching Borges himself in this fashion. One of them, Borges scholar Daniel Balderston, spent fifteen years on the Menardian task of trying to read and learn everything that Borges would have read and known when he wrote his stories, including “Pierre Menard.” Balderston wanted “to recover the fullness of Borges’s knowledge of his historical knowledge at the time of [composing].” Like Menard, Balderston chose to retain his own identity, knowing that he could not create the innocence of Borges’ knowledge, since intervening history affects his understanding. Balderston’s research is a rehistoricization of Borges. The postmodern term “rehistoricization” also applies to Menard’s goal, because he ostensibly succeeded in understanding Cervantes’ world, his historical context, while maintaining the identity of Menard. Menard and Balderston are ideal readers, who do not lose their own selves through “total identification.” They understand the writer’s words within their historical context as well within the contemporary context, with different values and beliefs. The second inspiration for Menard was “anachronism, ” an idea he gleaned from “one of those parasitic books that set Christ on a boulevard.” The fact that Borges has not supplied a specific title and author of a such a “parasitic book,” critics have debated what book he had in mind. Balderston suggests Joyce’s Ulysses, where Leopold Bloom is a quotidian Christ, while Emilio Carilla suggests a 1922 Argentine novel called Jesús en Buenes Aires. However, the question is irrelevant in the context of reading Borges’ story, for the point is not the specific allusion but the concept behind it, in this case, the placing of a famous character into a radically unexpected context. Such allusions, nearly impossible to trace, appear throughout “Pierre Menard” and they catapult the reader into the highest category of the Borges hierarchy of reading, to create meaning from deliberate ambiguity. This is where the craft of writing merges with the art of reading. Whether or not the reader can verify the story’s “fallacious attributions,” he or she is forced to create a meaning. This is a form of joke played by Borges upon his readers, to frustrate coherence as a way to “enrich the slow and rudimentary art of reading.” As critic John Frow put it, “Borges’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote is a perfectly serious joke that we are still learning how to take seriously.” The casual (who takes Borges’ word for it) as well as the inquisitive reader (who hunts down every reference) approach the text from different angles, but in either case must fabricate their own sense of his “deliberate anachronism and fallacious attributions.” By considering “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” an essay/story about reading, the oxymoron of the two inspirations for Menard’s project begins to make sense, too. One of the texts that inspired Menard was the Novalis “philogical fragment” on total identification with the author--in other words, a “perfect” reading. The other was a “parasitic book” that played with context—in other words, it disrupted the reader’s expectations. Taking the two opposing concepts together, Borges seems to suggest that full understanding, epitomized by “total identification” and perfect understanding, is undesirable and inadequate, because the reader has to negotiate context, epitomized by the example of Christ taken out of his expected context. Borges could not have intended “Pierre Menard” to spawn the postmodern idea of the “death of the author,” the concept that nothing new can be written. On the contrary, Borges meant the readers of “Pierre Menard” to discover the “birth of the reader,” the idea that it is readers who make the text, and not authors alone.


Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote II


The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays (1997) calls “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” “the most influential essay ever written in Latin America.” Typical of Borges’ style, the work does not fall neatly into the genre of narrative story or of essay—it is a fictional essay. Borges wrote it to test his mind after recovering from a head injury that gave him hallucinations and was complicated by a dangerous case of septicemia. In the form of a scholarly article, it tells of one Pierre Menard, a French symbolist recently deceased, who had undertaken the absurd task of re-writing Cervantes’ Don Quixote as a product of his own creativity. Menard wanted his version to “coincide with” the original--word for word. The narrator applauds and legitimizes the act as academic heroism. Because of Borges’ erudite reputation, the publication of this story sent scholars scrambling to discover the obscure author from Nîmes, Pierre Menard. They unearthed a minor essayist, with a forgettable published essay on the psychological analysis of handwriting. The narrator of the Borges story, himself a fussy pedagogue, explains that Menard succeeded in indoctrinating himself so thoroughly in Cervante’s culture, thoughts, and language, that the finished portions of his Quixote exactly match the Cervantes text. Furthermore, the narrator calls Menard’s achievement “infinitely richer” than that of Cervantes, due to its modern philosophical perspective and the obstacles Menard overcame to produce it. The narrator means that the modern context imbues the same words with different meanings, presaging postmodernism reader-response theories. As Donald Yates points out in his introduction to a collection of Borges’ fictions, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” “quite subtly anticipated critical literary theory that would emerge a quarter of a century later.” The story would be included in Ficciones (1944), a widely translated collection and the first Latin American work to achieve international acclaim.The dedication, “For Silvina Ocampo” honors the editor of the literary magazine Sur, in whose pages “Pierre Menard” first appeared. The story takes the form of a scholarly article about a recently deceased novelist. The novelist’s name, Pierre Menard, does not appear until the third sentence. The narrator of the article establishes credibility by citing a couple of literary ladies with unfamiliar names, then presents a catalogue of writings found among in Menard’s private papers. The narrator asserts that this list is more accurate than one published earlier by a Madame Henri Bachelier in a newspaper with Protestant leanings. The list encompasses an unusually wide range of interests, from love sonnets to Boolean logic. Many are esoteric and strange, such as an invective against the French poet Paul Valery which is really “the exact reverse of Menard’s true opinion of Valery,” and an article on the elimination of one of the pawns in the game of chess, wherein Menard “proposes, recommends, disputes, and ends by rejecting this innovation.” These and other poems and essays represent the “visible” part of Menard’s works. Now the narrator turns to Menard’s crowning achievement, which the narrator deems “subterranean, interminably heroic, and…inconclusive.” The rest of the article/story concerns itself with Menard’s re-authoring of just over two chapters of Don Quixote. This was the result of a project partially inspired by a theory of “total identification” with an author. Menard undertook “ to know Spanish well, reembrace the Catholic faith, to fight against Moors and Turks, to forget European history between 1602 and 1918, and to be Miguel de Cervantes.”
In a serious tone, the narrator extols Menard’s ambitious project and acknowledges his accomplishment of having completed the ninth, thirty-eighth , and portion of the twenty-second chapters of Part One of Don Quixote. Although the task was “complex in the extreme and futile from the outset,” Menard succeeded in producing these segments literally word for word. The narrator considers Menard’s achievement far greater than that of Cervantes, because for a Spaniard of the early seventeenth century to write in his own language of contemporary events was not as significant an effort as Menard had to make to write in archaic Spanish about events he knew only through research into history. The narrator quotes several long passages from a letter he says he received from Menard, in which the Frenchman justifies his project. In the letter, Menard explains that he chose Don Quixote because he had read it at age twelve and had forgotten it to the point where his memory of the text paralleled the “anterior image of a book not yet written.” Thus he could begin with similar ideas to those of Cervantes when he began to write Don Quixote. The narrator asserts that even though Menard never completed his project, he sometimes imagines that he did, and that while reading the Cervantes version, he further imagines that he detects the Frenchman’s style of writing. To demonstrate the significance of Menard’s achievement, the narrator juxtaposes two identical passages, first Cervantes’ and then Borges’. The reader is directed to notice the subtle shift in interpreting the phrase “truth, whose mother is history.” In Cervantes’ text, the phrase is mere rhetoric, praising truth. However, in Menard’s identical version, “truth, whose mother is history” carries the syntactic weight of the modern consciousness of history’s remaking of the past, with its concept that history creates truth. The narrator explains, “Historical truth, for him, is not what took place; it is what we think took place.” The narrator draws the reader’s attention to differences in acculturation that affect the reader’s expectation and interpretation. The meanings of the words change over time. The appreciation of style also changes, for whereas the language sounds suitable for a sixteenth-century Spanish author, it seems affectedly archaic and stiff when it comes from a modern French author. The story ends with the narrator’s commendation of Menard for having “enriched the art of reading” through his use of “deliberate anachronism and fallacious attribution.” These are the devices that Borges himself uses in his story.

Memory

Memory is what is retained (or created, in Borges’ terms) in the mind from experience. The theme of memory fascinated Borges, who wrote “Pierre Menard” as a test of his own mental ability after a minor head injury turned serious and gave him hallucinations. Borges’ concept of memory roughly parallels that of Marcel Proust, a writer Borges introduced to literature circles in Argentina. Proust’s landmark seven-volume novel about memory, Remembrance of Things Past (1917), exemplifies the theory of French philosopher Henri Bergson, that humans do not experience life when events happen, but later, in forming memories of those events. The processing of memories, Bergson postulated, took place in the durée [duration], deep in the mind, where the superficial constraints of clock time do not interfere. Bergson’s theories of time and memory inspired the Symbolist poets, Marcel Proust, and also Borges, among others. Like Proust, Borges attempted to express his own conception of memory and time in his fiction. At the end of his story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” the narrator writes, “already in memory a fictitious past takes the place of the other past, of which we know nothing, not even that it is false.” In “Pierre Menard,” the narrator postulates memory as a creative act. He compares memory, an act of reconstructing the past from the parts retained in the mind with creation, which also constructs a whole from parts. Pierre Menard had read Don Quixote long ago, and had forgotten parts of it. His faded memory corresponds to “the imprecise, anterior image of a book not yet written.” In other words, Menard’s hazy memory resembles the germ of an unborn idea, one that has not yet fully formed into a creative vision.

Meaning & Interpretation

In a 1967 interview with Richard Burgin, Borges said that “every time a book is read or reread, then something happens to the book...and every time you read it, it’s really a new experience.” A reader comes to a story with a set of culturally shaped experiences and values that influence the way the reader understands the meaning of the words on the page. As the reader matures and gains new experiences, new perspectives, these meanings may change, because the reader’s core beliefs and values have changed. The reader also responds to, or pays attention to, different aspects of the story depending on his or her status in life and personal interests. As in life, an older person pays attention to different issues in a text than a younger person does. A woman may interpret the same scenes differently than would a man. A person who has recently lost a friend or relative to death may notice different details than one who has never experienced such a loss. Differences between readers and between reading sessions also occur on a cultural level, as societies and cultures change over time. Readers of each new era pay attention to new details, as they experience shifts in values, beliefs, and perspectives. Things once taken for granted, that women do not vote, for example, are questioned. Consciousness is raised on new issues and old ones pass into obscurity. Though the words of a passage remain the same, over time connotations associated with the words inflect new meanings and resonate to new values. Even within a given time and place, the same phrase can take on different meanings according to different contexts. Literary critic Staley Fish explains this phenomenon in his 1980 essay, “Is There a Text in This Class?” According to Fish, no sentence can be understood outside of context. In other words, the reader can only interpret the meaning of a sentence by mentally connecting the words to previously held beliefs and knowledge. These beliefs and knowledge derive from the person’s social context: all readers are “situated” within a particular culture and history. A sentence is written or uttered in a given “situation” that inflects the way it will be interpreted. The phrase from Fish’s essay, “Is there a text in this class?”, could refer to assigned books to read or a text left behind. Fish explains, …within those situations, the normative meaning of an utterance will always be obvious or at least accessible, although within another situation that same utterance, no longer the same, will have another normative meaning that will be no less obvious and accessible….This does not mean that there is no way to discriminate between the meanings an utterance will have in different situations, but that the discrimination will already have been made by virtue of our being in a situation (we are never not in one) and that in another situation the discrimination will also already have been made, but differently. Reader-response theorists debate over whether meaning derives solely from the reader’s awareness and creation or whether the author prescribes meaning in the form of words on a page that invoke connotations.
The difference is significant, and lies at the heart of “Pierre Menard.”The two identical passages of text, one by Cervantes and one by Menard, demonstrate how the act of reading imbues a text with meaning. The second interpretation of the phrase “history, the mother of truth” comes Borges’ own understanding of William James’philosophy of pragmatism. Thus his own beliefs and knowledge inflect his interpretation of Menard’s passage, which he attempts to pass on to the reader. According to Stanley Fish, how the reader “gets” that meaning is another thing altogether.

The Literary Hoax

In a 1976 interview, Borges admitted that “Pierre Menard” is “what we might call a mystification, or a hoax.” A hoax is an attempt to present a text as authentic, either for monetary gain or as a joke. A literary hoax often takes the form of a text that the author presents as authentic, perhaps as translation of a recently discovered scroll or long-lost manuscript. In one of the chapters of Don Quixote re-authored by Menard, chapter IX of book I, the narrator tells of having purchased by chance an old Arabic scroll at the
silk market, and mentions that the scroll just happened to contain a missing fragment of the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha. Having found the missing piece, the narrator continues his story. Borges parodies the found manuscript with Menard’s re-invented manuscript. Rather than finding a lost work, however, Menard writes a work all over again, publishing a story that is not lost, but already published and extant.
Borges’ literary hoax echoes another idea from Don Quixote. In Cervantes’ prologue, a friend tells the narrator to fabricate bits of Latin and throw in random historical references, so that he “may perhaps be taken for a scholar, which is honorable and profitable these days.” The friend also advises including several notable authors in the beginning, to give the book authority. Borges takes his cue from Cervantes. He begins with two testimonials that authorize his essay and he lists an impressive catalogue of Menard’s writings to authenticate Menard as a viable writer. Borges creates a character with a fictitious list of works (paralleling the discovered long-lost texts), but they are trivial, personal writing whose discovery is nearly meaningless. These works the narrator presumably found among Menard’s personal effects, after Menard’s death, are quirky and contrived, and virtually irretrievable. Perhaps Borges’ narrator takes comfort in the assurances provided to the narrator of Don Quixote by the “intelligent” friend that there is no reason to fear discovery in this deceit, for “no one will take the trouble to ascertain whether you follow your authorities or not.”
Literary hoaxes have existed since ancient Egyptian times, when merchants offered large sums for Greek manuscripts to sell to the Ptolemaic rulers. With such a reward, many false replicas of Greek documents were fabricated and sold at a profit. “Pierre Menard,” in its own way, has also succeeded very well as a literary hoax. Scholars continue to conjecture who might be the original Menard, and one Borges expert, Daniel Balderston, has devoted fifteen years to studying and recreating all of the historical and literary knowledge that Borges drew upon to write his essays, including the story, “Pierre Menard.” In the introduction to his 1993 work, Out of Context, Balderston remarks that his years of research have given him new insight into the “fun Borges had at the time of writing “Pierre Menard”.

Ambiguity & Oxymoron

Ambiguity is openness to interpretation; it is writing that allows—or forces—the reader to contrive meaning independently. Ambiguity comes in degrees, and Borges stories lie at the high end of the scale. His stories cause the reader puzzle about their meaning. Usually, when a story--or a poem, essay or other piece of writing--contains a phrase that is difficult to comprehend, the story’s context gives pertinent clues. However, many Borges stories resist interpretation because the context also remains mysterious. Sometimes even knowing the facts does not help. Of how much use is knowing whether Pierre Menard existed or not? Or whether he actually tried to re-author Don Quixote? Does it really matter who the baroness de Bacourt was? In other places the narrator frustrates the reader with oxymoronic sentences, such as when he attributes to Menard the notion that “all times and places are the same, or are different.” In “Pierre Menard,” the narrator proclaims that “Ambiguity is a richness.” The narrator’s story contains dozens of high-sounding but ambiguous statements, such as “merely astonishing” and “pointless travesties.” In both of these phrases, the words “astonishing” and “travesties” are rather vague, but the modifiers “merely” and “pointless,” rather than clarify their referents, qualify them beyond sense into nebulous oxymorons. “Astonishing” means something extraordinary, while “merely” connotes commonplaceness, its opposite or near opposite. Somehow a sense of quiet surprise comes through the oxymoron in spite of its self-contradiction. Likewise in the phrase “swept along by the inertia of language and the imagination,” inertia means staying on a given path, thus lacking the creativity of imagination. Yet, the phrase manages to carry the sense of being at the mercy of language and imagination, as of a force outside of oneself. The process of deriving the meaning of Borgesian oxymorons requires the reader to reconcile the opposing terms. Jaime Alazraki, in an article called “Oxymoronic Structure in Borges’ Essays,” explains how the incongruity “is only illusory. The two components clash on a conventional level only to reach a deeper level of reality. Like any other trope, it represents an effort to correct through language to correct through language the deficiencies of language itself.” Borges stories demand that the reader create meaning by discerning it from his rich but ambiguous prose, by navigating between opposing terms; it is not just Menard who has “enriched the slow and rudimentary art of reading by means of a new technique,” but Borges himself.

Bricolage

”Bricolage” is something made out of whatever is at hand, of available bits and pieces, or trifles. It comes from the French verb bricoler, meaning to putter about. A short story that employs bricolage uses details that do not contribute to what Edgar Allan Poe termed the “single effect” sought by early modernist short story writers. Following Poe, conventional modernist wisdom had it that, due to the brevity of the short story, each of its element must contribute to the story’s theme and meaning. As Elizabeth Bowen said in her Preface to The Faber Book of Modern Short Stories, a short story “must have tautness and clearness; it must contain no passage not aesthetically relevant to the whole.” The modern short story was meant to be lyrical, to have the concise intensity of a poem. Bricolage resists lyricism by using a motley arrangement of symbols that evoke various responses and disrupt the possibility of a holistic, lyrical meaning. Bricolage is a postmodern device, exemplified in the works of novelists Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo and short story writer Bobbie Ann Mason. In “Pierre Menard” Borges employs bricolage in the catalogue of the “visible product of Menard’s pen.” The list includes works on chess, sonnets, and symbolic logic, an assortment that was not unusual for intellectuals of the early modern period such as Menard (and also Borges). The list contributes to the story a sense of everyday reality and
of the triviality of Menard’s life.

Between the World Wars in Argentina

It is not without significance that one of the chapters of the Quixote re-written by Pierre Menard concerns a debate between “arms and letters.” In 1939, Hitler was moving a substantial army into Poland and Czechoslovakia and 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed in Germany on Kristallnacht (Night of Crystal, named for the broken storefront windows) on November 9 and 10, 1938. Borges had been trapped in Zurich during World War I, his father having made the mistake of taking his family with him to Europe in 1914 in order to seek treatment for advancing blindness. The Borges family had ties to Europe, as did (and does) Argentina itself, since at that time, roughly one-third of Argentines were European immigrants, some of them Jews who had left Hitler’s Germany. The military armament and sense of impending disaster in Europe would have been apparent to Borges as he wrote. He courageously denounced Hitler and his program of a “final solution” of exterminating all Jews in the pages of the Argentine literary magazine, Sur, where “Pierre Menard” would later be published. Having had a history of politically instability country, Argentina found herself during the inter-War years with numerous thriving Fascist organizations, and frequent shifts occurred between democratic to Fascist leadership. Harboring German agents and generally supportive of the pro-Axis Powers, Argentina maintained neutrality long into World War II, even after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. In 1945, it joined the Allies just in time to be counted among the winning nations for the final victory.

Modernism and Postmodernism

Modernism was an early twentieth-century reaction against the movements of naturalism and Romanticism of the nineteenth century. It retained elements of the Symbolist movement of the late nineteenth century, especially the Symbolist interest in metaphor and in human consciousness. Borges was not just a modernist writer, but a transitional one whose work began in modernism and helped to shaped postmodernism as he moved from his gaucho (Argentine cowboy) stories and mysteries into his metaphysical experiments. Although Borges claimed to have no personal philosophy, his works demonstrate the influence of several eighteenth-century philosophers whose theories inspired modernist thought. Borges admired Hume and Berkeley for their notions of the self as a motley and ever-changing collection of different perceptions, and he spoke frequently of Schopenhauer’s concept of a universal will that can only be contained through the intellect. Borges found literary inspiration in the essentially pessimistic stories of Henry James and Franz Kafka, noting that neither of these authors developed characters, but rather wrote parables composed of intricate plots. The Borgesian turn from storytelling toward philosophy and metaphysics became pivotal in launching the postmodern movement, in which authors, in a sense beginning with Borges, challenged the separation between reality and fiction by blurring these lines in their stories. Postmodern literature, presaged by Borges’ style and interests, self-consciously destabilize traditional conventions of character, genre, and plot.1939: In Argentina, president Robert M. Ortiz was trying to establish democracy in a mostly Fascist country, partly to shore up its economic difficulties. Today: Since 1989, Carlos Saul Menem, elected president of Argentina has successfully pulled Argentina back from the brink of economic despair. He has balanced the budget and imposed an austerity program to curb inflation, which had been running at 900% in the 1980s. With diplomatic relations restored with Great Britain after a falling-out over the Falkland Islands in 1982, Argentina is well on its way to establishing itself as a positive economic power in South America. 1939: Europe was mobilizing for inevitable war with Germany. Hitler invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Today: Although the Balkan area remains a military hot spot, decisive action on the part of NATO has prevented the conflict from intensifying and spreading to other countries. 1939: Modernist literature expressed a sense of pessimism and exhaustion through flat characters who move relentlessly through a complex and absurd world. Today: Postmodern literature attempts to express the uniqueness of the individual through the theme of relative values. At the same time, however, a sizeable and growing number of writers are turning back to transcendent values, aware that despite diversity, the human condition shares many values and experiences in common.
Early criticism about Borges centered on his poetry, and when he began to write essays, most critics preferred his poems. His works appeared primarily in the literary magazine Sur which was a fledgling venture when he first contributed to its pages, but which later emerged as one of South American’s most important venues for new Hispanic literature. Surprisingly, Borges gained national attention despite his apparent disinterest in his nation’s turbulent political scene, in an era when Argentine writers proved their courage through polemical writing. He was also criticized for his literary games, and the fact that certain of his key phrases, themes, and devices tended to crop up again and again. Fellow Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato facetiously asked, “Will he be condemned from now on to plagiarize himself?” At least one compatriot recognized Borges’ groundbreaking technique; César Fernández Moreno called him “a premature phenomenon of our culture” under whose tutelage the country would one day gain the literary acumen to vie with European writers. An early work of criticism by Ana María Barranechea (1957) viewed Borges through the lens of “irreality” (Barranechea’s term), thus placing him firmly within the modernist movement. Her view of him is rather dark, seeing in him, “the horrifying presence of the infinite and the disintegration of substance into reflections and dreams.” It was the European ex-patriots living in Argentina who ensured that Borges’ works were translated into French, Italian, and German, thus exposing him to international criticism with the result in 1961 that he shared the Formentor International Publisher’s Prize with Samuel Beckett. John Updike, in his capacity as book reviewer for the New Yorker hinted in 1965 that in Borges might be found a proposal for “some sort of essential revision in literature itself.” In 1967, Columbian novelist, and liberal, Gabriel Garcia Marquez said of Borges, "He is one of the writers ... I have read most, and yet he is perhaps the one I like least." Why? Because he "writes about mental realities, he is sheer evasion." However, in the same year, John Barth found in Borges the inspiration for his essay, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” published in the Atlantic. Barth’s theory comprised the “death of the author,” the consequence of all stories having already been told. Barth called this state of affairs, “the used-upness of certain forms or the felt exhaustion of certain possibilities.” Barth cites the story, “Pierre Menard” as an example of “the difficulty, perhaps unnecessity, of writing original works of literature.” Borges, according to Barth, offered a new literary agenda, to self-consciously imitate what has been written already. Barth himself adhered to this agenda by writing his “Lost in the Funhouse,” also published in the Atlantic in 1968. The Borges theme of the labyrinth serves as the central organizing metaphor for Barth’s short story. The sixties saw Borges responding to international interest in his writing, and he traveled worldwide on lecture and reading tours. However, in Argentina as well as abroad, Borges was often seen as an anomaly in contrast to writers committed to social change, such as civil rights and feminist advocates. Argentine critics and fellow writers accused him of solipsism, alone and impotent in his narrow world of dreams and labyrinths. Mexican critic Jaime García Terrés called him “a sort of self-sufficient vacuum.” Reader-response theories of the eighties brought about a shift in valuing this aspect of Borges, such that Jean Marco applauded his “context-free paradigm which can be reactivated through reading at any time and under any circumstances.” In other words, Borges’ lack of social “commitment” (context), his interest in surfaces and the artifice of writing, is now considered significant and relevant. This revaluation derives from the shift over the last twenty years from political writing to interest in issues of reading and interpretation. The concern over the sources for his numerous allusions to minor authors (whether apocryphal or historical) now resonates to the postmodern sense that the context hasno pertinence. If, on one hand, he made up certain allusions, then his works parody reality; if, on the other hand, his allusions are real, yet unimportant, then his works, again, parody reality. Thus, recent criticism, encouraged by the appearance of three new centenary editions (commemorating the hundredth anniversary of his birth, 1899-1999) of his poems, stories, and essays, respectively, has responded favorably to the Borgesian irony.



Borgesov rukopis i crtež
_____________________

* Ova dva kratka teksta, koja čak ne bih nazvao ogledima o Borgesovoj priči "Pierre Menard, pisac Don Kihota" već naprosto nepretencioznim uvodima u nju, donosim ovdje iz dva razloga - oba zorno svjedoče o nedostatku boljih običaja naše akademske zajednice: prvi se tiče susretljive spremnosti američkih profesora da bez ikakvih suvišnih okolišanja žurno, srdačno i iscrpno odgovore svakome tko se zanima za predmet njihova znanstvena interesa i bavljenja; drugi, ne manje značajan, tradicionalan je nedostatak uvoda bilo u znanstvene discipline kojima se naši univerzitetski profesori bave, bilo u teme s kojima se studenti tih disciplina svakodnevno susreću. Mentalitet hrvatske akademske zajednice čudan je bastard devetnaestostoljetne arogancije seoskog vučitela/doktora/župnika u apovijesnom seljačkom narodu nepismenih, i socijalističke zaštićenosti univerzitetskih profesora od bilo kakve akademske obveze, osim one citiranja klasika marksizma.
Redovito se dopisujem s američkim znanstvenicima: nema onoga tko bi mi uskratio neku informaciju, esej, kopiju nedostupnog teksta, dapače nerijetko raspričano iznenađen prekoatlanskim interesom za akademski život, kao u ovom slučaju, male privatne škole u Sjevernoj Karolini, na kojoj predaje profesorica Carole Hamilton. Kao bivši student Filozofskog fakulteta, nedavno sam se e-mailom obratio nekom tamošnjem imbecilnom glupom kretenskom shithead slojmun u glavi mi gnarrrrr po mozgu skače ignoratnu, koji na Komparativnoj izgleda muca o ovim istim temama, jasno, visokoparno i kudikamo pozvanije od američkih kolega okupljenih oko Daniela Balderstona i Borges Centra ( koji je sada na Univerzitetu u Iowi ), jer, kako inače objasniti činjenicu da mi idiot na rafinirano i poticajno pitanje o paleografiji Borgesovih teksova - o čemu sam inače tih dana vodo zanimljivu prepisku s C. Jared Loewensteinom, kuratorom najveće svjetske zbirke Borgesovih manuskripata, The Borges Collection, na Univerzitetu Virđinija (misleći da mu pišem iz SAD, odmah mi je ponudio termin susreta!) - nije odgovorio čak ni kratkim dopisom: Čujte, jebite vi to, o tome ja ne znam ništa, pustite me na miru, ja sam idiot i imam svu sreću svijeta da sam rođen i živim i radim u Zagrebu, Croatia, s kraja 20. i početkom 21.vijeka. Bog i Hrvati! S osobitim štovanjem, vaš Im Becil.
O nedostatku einführunga ne treba trošiti riječi: ovdje se već naraštajima odustaje od bilo kakvog uvođenja studenata u predmete s čijih katedri pročelnike odnose izravno u mrtvačnice, jer naši profesori nikada nisu dovoljno veliki stručnjaci da napišu dovoljno male knjige: inhibirani s jedne strane ambicijom fundamentalnog prekretničkog doprinosa vlastitoj znanstvenoj disciplini, a s druge jasnom sviješću o nedostatku snaga i znanja neophodnih takvom poduhvatu, umjesto svijeta akademici uglavnom i najradije mijenjaju birtiju. Studenti su tu posve nevažni i suvišni, jer, budu li dobri ionako će odmah po studiju napustiti zamlju, a gubiti vrijeme na kretene zaludna je mistrija.
Ništa čudno: bona parte naše akademske zajednice misli da je ionako od Bolonjskog procesa kudikamo značajniji onaj Bombaški!
Budući da ne priznaju ničiji sud osim onoga svoje partije, sva je zgoda da i ja ovdje piše/am malo u vjetar, malo u rijeku: bez minimuma šanse da i moja kaplja pomogne je tkati, a samo bih mogao iz svega izaći osjećajuć' se k'o - popisan.



J.L.B., "Viejo habito argentino", manuskript


Bonustrack


Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote


by Jorge Luis Borges




The visible work left by this novelist is easily and briefly enumerated. Impardonable, therefore, are the omissions and additions perpetrated by Madame Henri Bachelier in a fallacious catalogue which a certain daily, whose Protestant tendency is no secret, has had the inconsideration to inflict upon its deplorable readers--though these be few and Calvinist, if not Masonic and circumcised. The true friends of Menard have viewed this catalogue with alarm and even with a certain melancholy. One might say that only yesterday we gathered before his final monument, amidst the lugubrious cypresses, and already Error tries to tarnish his Memory . . . Decidedly, a brief rectification is unavoidable.

I am aware that it is quite easy to challenge my slight authority. I hope, however, that I shall not be prohibited from mentioning two eminent testimonies. The Baroness de Bacourt (at whose unforgettable vendredis . I had the honor of meeting the lamented poet) has seen fit to approve the pages which follow. The Countess de Bagnoregio, one of the most delicate spirits of the Principality of Monaco (and now of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, following her recent marriage to the international philanthropist Simon Kautzsch, who has been so inconsiderately slandered, alas! by the victims of his disinterested maneuvers) has sacrificed "to veracity and to death" (such were her words) the stately reserve which is her distinction, and, in an open letter published in the magazine Luxe , concedes me her approval as well. These authorizations, I think, are not entirely insufficient.

I have said that Menard's visible work can be easily enumerated. Having examined with care his personal files, I find that they contain the following items:

a) A Symbolist sonnet which appeared twice (with variants) in the review La conque (issues of March and October 1899).

b) A monograph on the possibility of constructing a poetic vocabulary of concepts which would not be synonyms or periphrases of those which make up our everyday language, "but rather ideal objects created according to convention and essentially designed to satisfy poetic needs" (Nîmes, 1901).

c) A monograph on "certain connections or affinities" between the thought of Descartes, Leibniz and John Wilkins (Nîmes, 1903).

d) A monograph on Leibniz's Characteristica universalis (Nîmes 1904).

e) A technical article on the possibility of improving the game of chess, eliminating one of the rook's pawns. Menard proposes, recommends, discusses and finally rejects this innovation.

f ) A monograph on Raymond Lully's Ars magna generalis (Nîmes, 1906).

g) A translation, with prologue and notes, of Ruy López de Segura's Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del axedrez (Paris, 1907).

h) The work sheets of a monograph on George Boole's symbolic logic.

i) An examination of the essential metric laws of French prose, illustrated with examples taken from Saint-Simon (Revue des langues romanes , Montpellier, October 1909).

j) A reply to Luc Durtain (who had denied the existence of such laws), illustrated with examples from Luc Durtain (Revue des langues romanes , Montpellier, December 1909).

k) A manuscript translation of the Aguja de navegar cultos of Quevedo, entitled La boussole des précieux .

I) A preface to the Catalogue of an exposition of lithographs by Carolus Hourcade (Nîmes, 1914).

m) The work Les problčmes d'un problčme (Paris, 1917), which discusses, in chronological order, the different solutions given to the illustrious problem of Achilles and the tortoise. Two editions of this book have appeared so far; the second bears as an epigraph Leibniz's recommendation "Ne craignez point, monsieur, la tortue" and revises the chapters dedicated to Russell and Descartes.

n) A determined analysis of the "syntactical customs" of Toulet (N. R. F. , March 1921). Menard--I recall--declared that censure and praise are sentimental operations which have nothing to do with literary criticism.

o) A transposition into alexandrines of Paul Valéry's Le cimitičre marin (N. R. F. , January 1928).

p) An invective against Paul Valéry, in the Papers for the Suppression of Reality of Jacques Reboul. (This invective, we might say parenthetically, is the exact opposite of his true opinion of Valéry. The latter understood it as such and their old friendship was not endangered.)

q) A "definition" of the Countess de Bagnoregio, in the "victorious volume"--the locution is Gabriele d'Annunzio's, another of its collaborators--published annually by this lady to rectify the inevitable falsifications of journalists and to present "to the world and to Italy" an authentic image of her person, so often exposed (by very reason of her beauty and her activities) to erroneous or hasty interpretations.

r) A cycle of admirable sonnets for the Baroness de Bacourt (1934).

s) A manuscript list of verses which owe their efficacy to their punctuation.1
1. Madame Henri Bachelier also lists a literal translation of Quevedo's literal translation of the Introduction ŕ la vie dévote of St. Francis of Sales. There are no traces of such a work in Menard's library. It must have been a jest of our friend, misunderstood by the lady.
This, then, is the visible work of Menard, in chronological order (with no omission other than a few vague sonnets of circumstance written for the hospitable, or avid, album of Madame Henri Bachelier). I turn now to his other work: the subterranean, the interminably heroic, the peerless. And--such are the capacities of man!--the unfinished. This work, perhaps the most significant of our time, consists of the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of the first part of Don Quixote and a fragment of chapter twenty-two. I know such an affirmation seems an absurdity; to justify this "absurdity" is the primordial object of this note.1
1. l also had the secondary intention of sketching a personal portrait of Pierre Menard. But how could I dare to compete with the golden pages which, I am told, the Baroness de Bacourt is preparing or with the delicate and punctual pencil of Carolus Hourcade?
Two texts of unequal value inspired this undertaking. One is that philological fragment by Novalis--the one numbered 2005 in the Dresden edition--which outlines the theme of a total identification with a given author. The other is one of those parasitic books which situate Christ on a boulevard, Hamlet on La Cannebičre or Don Quixote on Wall Street. Like all men of good taste, Menard abhorred these useless carnivals, fit only-- as he would say--to produce the plebeian pleasure of anachronism or (what is worse) to enthrall us with the elementary idea that all epochs are the same or are different. More interesting, though contradictory and superficial of execution, seemed to him the famous plan of Daudet: to conjoin the Ingenious Gentleman and his squire in one figure, which was Tartarin . . . Those who have insinuated that Menard dedicated his life to writing a contemporary Quixote calumniate his illustrious memory.

He did not want to compose another Quixote --which is easy-- but the Quixote itself . Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide--word for word and line for line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes.

"My intent is no more than astonishing," he wrote me the 30th of September, 1934, from Bayonne. "The final term in a theological or metaphysical demonstration--the objective world, God, causality, the forms of the universe--is no less previous and common than my famed novel. The only difference is that the philosophers publish the intermediary stages of their labor in pleasant volumes and I have resolved to do away with those stages." In truth, not one worksheet remains to bear witness to his years of effort.

The first method he conceived was relatively simple. Know Spanish well, recover the Catholic faith, fight against the Moors or the Turk, forget the history of Europe between the years 1602 and 1918, be Miguel de Cervantes. Pierre Menard studied this procedure (I know he attained a fairly accurate command of seventeenth-century Spanish) but discarded it as too easy. Rather as impossible! my reader will say. Granted, but the undertaking was impossible from the very beginning and of all the impossible ways of carrying it out, this was the least interesting. To be, in the twentieth century, a popular novelist of the seventeenth seemed to him a diminution. To be, in some way, Cervantes and reach the Quixote seemed less arduous to him--and, consequently, less interesting--than to go on being Pierre Menard and reach the Quixote through the experiences of Pierre Menard. (This conviction, we might say in passing, made him omit the autobiographical prologue to the second part of Don Quixote . To include that prologue would have been to create another character--Cervantes--but it would also have meant presenting the Quixote in terms of that character and not of Menard. The latter, naturally, declined that facility.) "My undertaking is not difficult, essentially," I read in another part of his letter. "I should only have to be immortal to carry it out." Shall I confess that I often imagine he did finish it and that I read the Quixote --all of it--as if Menard had conceived it? Some nights past, while leafing through chapter XXVI--never essayed by him--I recognized our friend's style and something of his voice in this exceptional phrase: "the river nymphs and the dolorous and humid Echo." This happy conjunction of a spiritual and a physical adjective brought to my mind a verse by Shakespeare which we discussed one afternoon:
Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk . . .
But why precisely the Quixote ? our reader will ask. Such a preference, in a Spaniard, would not have been inexplicable; but it is, no doubt, in a Symbolist from Nîmes, essentially a devoté of Poe, who engendered Baudelaire, who engendered Mallarmé, who engendered Valéry, who engendered Edmond Teste. The aforementioned letter illuminates this point. "The Quixote ," clarifies Menard, "interests me deeply, but it does not seem-- how shall I say it?--inevitable. I cannot imagine the universe without Edgar Allan Poe's exclamation: Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted! or without the Bateau ivre or the Ancient Mariner , but I am quite capable of imagining it without the Quixote . (I speak, naturally, of my personal capacity and not of those works' historical resonance.) The Quixote is a contingent book; the Quixote is unnecessary. I can premeditate writing it, I can write it, without falling into a tautology. When I was ten or twelve years old, I read it, perhaps in its entirety. Later, I have reread closely certain chapters, those which I shall not attempt for the time being. I have also gone through the interludes, the plays, the Galatea , the exemplary novels, the undoubtedly laborious tribulations of Persiles and Segismunda and the Viaje del Parnaso . . . My general recollection of the Quixote , simplified by forgetfulness and indifference, can well equal the imprecise and prior image of a book not yet written. Once that image (which no one can legitimately deny me) is postulated, it is certain that my problem is a good bit more difficult than Cervantes' was. My obliging predecessor did not refuse the collaboration of chance: he composed his immortal work somewhat ŕ la diable , carried along by the inertias of language and invention. I have taken on the mysterious duty of reconstructing literally his spontaneous work. My solitary game is governed by two polar laws. The first permits me to essay variations of a formal or psychological type; the second obliges me to sacrifice these variations to the "original" text and reason out this annihilation in an irrefutable manner . . . To these artificial hindrances, another--of a congenital kind--must be added. To compose the Quixote at the beginning of the seventeenth century was a reasonable undertaking, necessary and perhaps even unavoidable; at the beginning of the twentieth, it is almost impossible. It is not in vain that three hundred years have gone by, filled with exceedingly complex events. Amongst them, to mention only one, is the Quixote itself."

In spite of these three obstacles, Menard's fragmentary Quixote is more subtle than Cervantes'. The latter, in a clumsy fashion, opposes to the fictions of chivalry the tawdry provincial reality of his country; Menard selects as his "reality" the land of Carmen during the century of Lepanto and Lope de Vega. What a series of espagnolades that selection would have suggested to Maurice Barrčs or Dr. Rodríguez Larreta! Menard eludes them with complete naturalness. In his work there are no gypsy flourishes or conquistadors or mystics or Philip the Seconds or autos da fé. He neglects or eliminates local color. This disdain points to a new conception of the historical novel. This disdain condemns Salammbô , with no possibility of appeal.

It is no less astounding to consider isolated chapters. For example, let us examine Chapter XXXVIII of the first pare, "which treats of the curious discourse of Don Quixote on arms and letters." It is well known that Don Quixote (like Quevedo in an analogous and later passage in La hora de todos ) decided the debate against letters and in favor of arms. Cervantes was a former soldier: his verdict is understandable. But that Pierre Menard's Don Quixote--a contemporary of La trahison des clercs and Bertrand Russell--should fall prey to such nebulous sophistries! Madame Bachelier has seen here an admirable and typical subordination on the part of the author to the hero's psychology; others (not at all perspicaciously), a transcription of the Quixote ; the Baroness de Bacourt, the influence of Nietzsche. To this third interpretation (which I judge to be irrefutable) I am not sure I dare to add a fourth, which concords very well with the almost divine modesty of Pierre Menard: his resigned or ironical habit of propagating ideas which were the strict reverse of those he preferred. (Let us recall once more his diatribe against Paul Valéry in Jacques Reboul's ephemeral Surrealist sheet.) Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer. (More ambiguous, his detractors will say, but ambiguity is richness.)

It is a revelation to compare Menard's Don Quixote with Cervantes'. The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter nine):
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor.
Written in the seventeeth century, written by the "lay genius" Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor.
History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases--exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor --are brazenly pragmatic.

The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard--quite foreign, after all--suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time.

There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter--if not a paragraph or a name--in the history of philosophy. In literature, this eventual caducity is even more notorious. The Quixote --Menard told me--was, above all, an entertaining book; now it is the occasion for patriotic toasts, grammatical insolence and obscene de luxe editions. Fame is a form of incomprehension, perhaps the worst.

There is nothing new in these nihilistic verifications; what is singular is the determination Menard derived from them. He decided to anticipate the vanity awaiting all man's efforts; he set himself to an undertaking which was exceedingly complex and, from the very beginning, futile. He dedicated his scruples and his sleepless nights to repeating an already extant book in an alien tongue. He multiplied draft upon draft, revised tenaciously and tore up thousands of manuscript pages.1 He did not let anyone examine these drafts and took care they should not survive him. In vain have I tried to reconstruct them.
1. I remember his quadricular notebooks, his black crossed-out passages, his peculiar typographical symbols and his insect-like handwriting. In the afternoons he liked to go out for a walk around the outskirts of Nîmes; he would take a notebook with him and make a merry bonfire.
I have reflected that it is permissible to see in this "final" Quixote a kind of palimpsest, through which the traces--tenuous but not indecipherable--of our friend's "previous" writing should be translucently visible. Unfortunately, only a second Pierre Menard, inverting the other's work, would be able to exhume and revive those lost Troys . . .

"Thinking, analyzing, inventing (he also wrote me) are not anomalous acts; they are the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional performance of that function, to hoard ancient and alien thoughts, to recall with incredulous stupor that the doctor universalis thought, is to confess our laziness or our barbarity. Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case."

Menard (perhaps without wanting to) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the halting and rudimentary art of reading: this new technique is that of the deliberate anachronism and the erroneous attribution. This technique, whose applications are infinite, prompts us to go through the Odyssey as if it were posterior to the Aeneid and the book Le jardin du Centaure of Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier. This technique fills the most placid works with adventure. To attribute the Imitatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand Céline or to James Joyce, is this not a sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual indications?

Meet the architects of law face to face

CLOSER: THIS IS THE WAY, STEP INSIDE.

NEMANJA, VASELJENSKI CAR: KOSMOS JE KNJIGA!

GDE SVE ČITAJU VASELJENU JUTROS U 8:05



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Bonustrack*


Haruki Murakami

On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning



One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can't recall the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It's weird.

"Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% girl," I tell someone.

"Yeah?" he says. "Good-looking?"

"Not really."

"Your favorite type, then?"

"I don't know. I can't seem to remember anything about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts."

"Strange."

"Yeah. Strange."

"So anyhow," he says, already bored, "what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?"

"Nah. Just passed her on the street."

She's walking east to west, and I west to east. It's a really nice April morning.

Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and - what I'd really like to do - explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world.

After talking, we'd have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.

Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart.

Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen yards.

How can I approach her? What should I say?

"Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?"

Ridiculous. I'd sound like an insurance salesman.

"Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?"

No, this is just as ridiculous. I'm not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who's going to buy a line like that?

Maybe the simple truth would do. "Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me."

No, she wouldn't believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you're not the 100% boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I'd probably go to pieces. I'd never recover from the shock. I'm thirty-two, and that's what growing older is all about.

We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can't bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She's written somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could contain every secret she's ever had.

I take a few more strides and turn: She's lost in the crowd.



Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.

Oh, well. It would have started "Once upon a time" and ended "A sad story, don't you think?"



Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened.

One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street.

"This is amazing," he said. "I've been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you're the 100% perfect girl for me."

"And you," she said to him, "are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I'd pictured you in every detail. It's like a dream."

They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle.

As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one's dreams to come true so easily?

And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, "Let's test ourselves - just once. If we really are each other's 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we'll marry then and there. What do you think?"

"Yes," she said, "that is exactly what we should do."

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west.

The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.

One winter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season's terrible inluenza, and after drifting for weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence's piggy bank.

They were two bright, determined young people, however, and through their unremitting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another, who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love.

Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty.

One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very center of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew:

She is the 100% perfect girl for me.

He is the 100% perfect boy for me.

But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fouteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever.

A sad story, don't you think?



Yes, that's it, that is what I should have said to her.


_____________________

* Na Dan knjige, nakon Dana planete Zemlje, kad već svi i svuda čitaju Vaseljenu, pod dojmom Osakakite, evo jedne priče za sve na svijetu: jasno, boy meets girl.

KOHELET

ICHI-GO ICHI-E*





Određeno vrijeme za svaku stvar

3 1 Ima jedan čas za sve
i jedan čas za svaku stvar pod nebom:
2 jedno vrijeme za rađati i jedno
vrijeme za umirati,
jedno vrijeme za saditi i jedno
vrijeme za čupati biljku,
3 jedno vrijeme za ubiti i jedno vrijeme
za ozdraviti,
jedno vrijeme za podrovati i
jedno vrijeme za graditi,
4 jedno vrijeme za plakati i jedno
vrijeme za smijati,
jedno vrijeme za oplakivati i
jedno vrijeme za plesati,
5 jedno vrijeme za bacati kamenje
i jedno vrijeme za gomilati kamenje,
jedno vrijeme za za grliti
i jedno vrijeme za izbjeći grljenje,
6 jedno vrijeme zatražiti i jedno
vrijeme za gubiti,
jedno vrijeme za čuvati i jedno
vrijeme za bacati,
7 jedno vrijeme za rastrgati i jedno
vrijeme za sašiti,
jedno vrijeme za za šutjeti i jedno
vrijeme za govoriti,
8 jedno vrijeme za ljubiti i jedno
vrijeme za mrzjeti,
jedno vrijeme za rat i jedno vrijeme
za mir.
9 Koju korist ima zanatlija od rada koji
obavlja
10 Ja vidim bavljenje koje je Bog dao
sinovima Adamovim
[18] da se time bave.

11 On je načinio sve lijepe stvari u svoje
vrijeme;
u njihovo srce on dade čak smisao
trajanju, a da čovjek ne može otkriti
djelo koje je Bog učinio od početka
do kraja.
12 Ja znam da nema ničeg dobrog za
njega nego se veseliti i dati sebi
dobra vremena tijekom svog života.
13 I po tome, svaki čovjek koji jede i
pije i kuša sreću u svem svom radu,
to, to je dar Božji.
14 Ja znam da sve što čini Bog,
to će trajati uvijek;
nema ništa za dodati tome, ničega
za oduzeti mu,
i Bog čini na takav način da se
strahuje
pred licem njegovim
[19].

15 Ono što je već bilo, i on što će biti
već je bilo,
i Bog će tražiti ono što je nestalo
[20].



Postoji određeno vrijeme za svaku stvar. Ako se stvari ne učine na vrijeme, kasnije je prekasno. I ispada nekako nakazno, fake. Nigdje se to ne vidi kao kod silne želje za slavom. Evo, recimo Bago: briljantan novinar; njegova javljanja iz Vlade i Sabora uzorit su primjer tv-novinarstva; insider: upućen u sve nijanse tema kojima se bavi; pametan mladi čovjek... ali, dočekao je svojih pet minuta i slava će uništiti cijelokupan Bagin dosadašnji rad. Zato jer ga poštujem, kazat ću: ako ne stane i ne razmisli!
Iako, možda je već kasno.
Jer, to što Bago radi, sasvim je negledljivo, točnije: neslušljivo; umjesto da vidim i čujem kako stoje stvari s SDP-om, gledao sam još jedan Bagin talk-show. Svi tamo imaju svoj talk-show, čak i oni koji sve češće, kao Mare Nemčić, pričaju sami sa sobom. Sve je na HTV-u u znaku komercijalizacije, pa je i informativni program javne televizije postao infotainment: presudni su problemi našeg društva samo isprika za retoričko pripetavanje javnih osoba i zaradu od telefona i reklama, i u toj općoj i ciničnoj nivelaciji tema i ljudi dogodio se diskretni kopernikanski obrat: televizija nije više tu zbog nas, da nam kao njena zaštitnica Sv.Klara (Jasna) stvari čini jasnima - Hrvati bi rekli transparentim - da nam ih i pojašnjava i uopće dade vidjeti, nego smo mi tu zbog televizije - mi smo samo rejting gledanosti programa, ono što jedna kompanija, ovdje HTV, prodaje drugoj kao svoj osnovni proizvod: mi, gledatelji, mi smo roba, i takvom odnosu nije ni čudno da moj osnovni zahtjev javnoj televiziji: Objavite!, biva uskraćen. Kakva javnost, kakvo općinstvo, kakva priopćenja, objavljivanja i kakva, molim vas, Informacija! Show must go on! Kultura spektakla.
I onda jasno, nitko se ništa ni ne usudi zaustiti u strahu da ga Bago ne prekine, ne prestrašen Baginom pameću, jer tu je razum već kazao laku noć, nego naprosto njegovom neugodnom, neodgojenom autopoiteičkom upadicom: onom koja postaje sama sebi svrhom, jer je jedina svrha Bagina performancea - upadica. To je Bagina misija: instrumentaliziranje svih u funkciji Mislava Bage (nedajbože gledatelja HTV-a). Bago će vas prekinuti bilo kad i samo iz jednog razloga: jer, Bago prekida! Ako vas ne prekine, pa kako će očuvati dobar glas i reputaciju!? On je na glasu kao strašan frajer koji prekida čak i Račana i Sanadera, i dnevnu kvotu diskontinuiteta bilo kojeg govora o bilo čemu valja Aliji Bagi Sirotanoviću ispuniti, jer on bi se nekako loše osjećao, a i opći bi dojam bio blijed: Nije to više onaj stari Bago!

- Oprostite, ja vas moram prekinuti., gotovo sa željenjem reče Bago.
- Zašto?, iskreno začuđen upita gost.
- Zato, reče Bago, jer sam ja poznat kao voditelj koji prekida goste: kad vas ne bih prekidao, ne bih bio poznat, razumijete me, ne?, odgovori Mislav nekako permisivno, a opet strogo, sa sadističkim sostenuto prizvukom prijekora, svojstvenog glasu mladog župnika.

I tako, da bi se iz emisije u emisiju zvijezde HTV-ovog infotainmenta dokazale, mi više nismo u prilici pratiti normalan, kontinuiran, suvisli razgovor s gostom ili gostima ili gostiju, nego je odnedavno riječ o neurotskom, histeričnom nadrkavanju jednog prekasno proslavljenog novinara koji misli da mu se u sekundi mora odgovorit na pitanje: Ako Jurčić podrži Milanovića i ovaj izgubi izbore, hoće li Bandić likovati?, i to točno, naime točno kako je Bago predvidio, inače, u protivnom, on gasi svjetlo! Fajrunt! Bago je već umoran od kenjaže, dosta je njemu jebanju u glavu, idemo, sredina naprijed, ajmo, brže, brže to, nema se više vremena, nemojte vi meni tu...
Nemojte vi meni...! Nevjerojatno! Vi MENI! Kao da tu itko išta Bagi, kao da je on neki kurac pa sad se svi skupljaju na HTV-u zbog Bage! A IMT? A di smo tu mi? Pada li njemu na pamet da to oni govore NAMA, ne njemu, nama koji ne bismo bili u 10.30 nužno svaku večer nadrkani, pa i ako smo ćelavi, i koji smo živo zainteresirani za odgovore na pitanja koja, sasvim nezainteresiran za njihovu sudbinu, Bago postavlja. Nezainteresiran...kako, čekaj...da, da, nezainteresiran u biti, jer, Bago je zainteresiran jedino i samo za to da u prvom mogućem trenutku sugovornika prekine s takvim shitfaceom da nastaje neugodna atmosfera čak i u domovima gledatelja, ne samo u studiju.
Da bi se ovo prekinulo, savjetujem da se Bagi dopusti da u prime-timeu subotom vodi "Najslabiju političku kariku": tu bi mogao vrijeđati do mile volje, prekidao bi i izbacivao političare kako mu se prohtije, oni bi mu rado dolazili u emisiju jer hrvatski političari iz nekog idiotskog razloga vjeruju da ne biraju oni sami medij vlastite komunikacije s javnošću već da se moraju nadlajavati s Gogom Bjondinkom, nadvikivati s Dreletom i nadjebavati sa Zuhrom (Zuhra je zapravo gospodin u ovoj konkurenciji, pa čak i bez nje) ali ama baš u svakoj mogućoj formi šalikurca, kako se nekoć dok je tv bio crno-bijel nazivao infotainment, u ona vremena kad je Marica Hrdalo bila proto-stand-up komičar, samo to još nitko, pa ni ona, nije znao.
Stanimo malo, junaci, eeeeeej! Koji vam je kurac?
Idemo malo u stariji, postojaniji, normalniji svijet: daj da netko više kaže Bagi u studiju, pa makar mu to bilo zadnje na HTV-u ili u politici: Ej, Bago, nabijemtenakurac, a ti si neki mjesni zevzek, što li?, i vjerujte taj će čovjek postati premijer. Jer, vidjet će građani: Konačno netko ozbiljan!
Hoću ćuti odgovore. Bagina pitanja nisu glupa, dapače, velim, baš zato jer su pametna želim čuti odgovore. Ali, zaustavite Bagu čim postavi pitanje! Između odgovora i Bage ispriječila se slava. Ako ona ne intervenira i ne prekine sugovornika, pa čemu smo se večeras skupili, mi u studiju, i vi dragi gledatelji kraj svojih malih ekrana, koji nikad nisu dovoljno premali a da Bago na njima ne bude velik čovjek. U svojim očima.

Nego, ono bitno, ono što nismo mogli čuti u "Otvorenom": od Bagine buke nije se moglo razgovjetno čuti ono presudno, a to je da je SDP posve izgubio kompas. Linić veli da ga zanimaju i sučeljavanja stranačkih kandidata za predsjednika SDP-a, a Bago odmah - to je indeks korumpiranosti tog mentaliteta: sve je njima samo prigoda za slavu/gledanost/marketing: sve je tu samo i jedino zbog njih! - spremno, s rubinšajnom u očima, domeće: Pa organizirat ćemo mi i sučeljavanja!, hoćemo, hoćemo. Stašno.
I nije, zaista nije sad poanta da se unutarstranački problemi riješavaju daleko od očiju javnosti: ne, sjajno je da SDP ima snage za ovakve javne nastupe i rasprave, doista je to svojevrsan dokaz demokratičnosti SDP-a. Ili bi bio, da nema poante: SDP je počeo svoje unutarstranačke probleme riješavati jedino u medijima, kroz medije i samo uz pomoć medija!
SDP je potpao pod vlast medija.
A htio bi vladati Hrvatskom.

SDP, kao što je pokazao i Glavni odbor, u sebi samome nema snage riješiti niti jedan bitan stranački problem, a ako ima, to ni na koji način ne pokazuje: znam da skaredno zvuči, ali reklo bi se da SDP ima kroničan problem s medijskim posredovanjem vlastite politke, upravo zbog prevelike naklonosti medija!
Umjesto da se dogovori proceduralni konsenzualni minimum, jedan se na odboru samonominira, drugi s njega odlazi, a obor zaključuje da će konvenicije - biti!
Dva dana potom, SDP diskutira svoje probleme u studiju HTV-a, demonstrirajući da niti jedan od tih problema nije prodiskutiran na Iblerovom.
Dapače, čelnici nastupaju hendikepirani, bez odstajalih prevrnutih šalica kave, gonetajući budućnost bez ikake kristalne kugle, karata ili barem ptičje iznutrice: hoće li se kandidirati Bandić, hoće li podržati Jurčića ili Antunovićku, hoće li Jurčić zahtjevati partijski plebiscit kao potporu kandidaturi, hoće li predsjednik stranke biti i premijer, hoće li bilo koji socijaldemokrat uopće biti premijer...? Navodno da je Linić u tom ozračju u nekoj izmaglici vidio Komunizam, neki su po Iblerovom trgu noću čuli grohotan smijeh Pepce Kardelj, a Tonči Vujić je, kažu, govorio mrtvim jezicima, što doduše nije nužno parapsihološki fenomen, ali je psihološki shvatljivo zašto se danas takvim čini.

A da se dogovorite, bilo što, prije no što vam upadnem u riječ?

______________________________

* Ichi-go ichi-e ( literally "one time, one meeting") is a Japanese term that describes a cultural concept often linked with famed tea master Sen no Rikyu. The term is often translated as "for this time only," "never again," or "one chance in a lifetime."
Ichi-go ichi-e is linked with Zen Buddhism and concepts of transience.

MAVASHI GERI KUPER

Prvo je Gorgonzola ubio boga u Mirku.
Onda je Davorko ekspresno opjevao Mirka u 'Videoteci', računajući da će mu ta iskrena kolegijalna sućut priskrbiti i neki bočni, mavaši ipon.
Onda je uletio Bruce Lee i sjebao koncepciju, plasiravši kontracepciju:

Da, baš je to strašno: dobio je u glavu nogom frajer kaj je kroz život odlučno koračao udarajući nogom u glavu druge!
Što se pak karaktera tiče, Mirko je zapravo luzer. Izgubio je sve bitne bitke svoje karijere.
Izgubio je od Minotaura.
Izgubio je od Fedora Emelianenka.
Sada, u borbi za status izazivača prvaka, opet je izgubio.
Dakle, u vjerojatno najnakaznijem sportu današnjice jedan je luzer pao na pod nakon udarca glavom u nogu i to je sve. To što je Hrvat, pa što? Brazilci imaju sjajan rad nogu.

Bruce Lee

A tada je u ring ušao privilegirani gledetelj ultimativnog fajta, uzorit Mirkov fan, naime - idiot:

DOBAR DAN!
(EJ,TI GORE! 22.04.2007. 17:08)

Očitio, idiot nije bio siguran kako to radi pa je isprva probao s 'dobar dan', Cro Caps Lock, da se bolje vidi. I, kad je vidio da šljaka, Mirkov je fan napisao zašto on misli da Bruce Lee možda i nema pravo:

MA TKO JE LUZER? LUZER SI TI,IDIOTE ŠUGAVI,BJEDNI A NAJVIŠE PRAZNOGLAVI!
SADA SI NABROJAO ,KOLIKO? 3 ČOVJKA KOJA SU POBJEDILA MIRKA A NISI NABROJAO VEČINU KOJE JE MIRKO POBJEDIO,KRETENU ŠUGAVI!MIRKO NE SAMO DA NIJE LUZER,ON JE PONOS HRVATSKE!A TI SI SRAMOTA,ĐUBRE JEDNO!MIRKO JE SUPER BORAC!PA ŠTO AKO JE IZGUBIO? DOBIO JE OVU NOGU U GLAVU POTPUNO NEOČEKIVANO! A SAD SE BAŠ PITAM,PITAJ SE I TI,I VI DRUGI SE PITAJTE, JEL BI TVOJ KOMENTAR GLASIO ISTO DA JE MIRKO POBJEDIO OVU BORBU? NEE NEBI SIGURNO! TI SI JEDAN OD TAKVIH DEBILA KOJI HVALE DOK POBJEĐUJEŠ I ČIM IZGUBIŠ MAKNU SE I SERU PO TEBI KO PIČKE! BOLJE TI JE DA ŠUTIŠ! NISI DOSTOJAN LIZAT NOGE MIRKU FILIPOVIĆU CRO-CAPU!
(EJ,TI GORE! 22.04.2007. 17:10)

Ahahahahahah....Kakva poezija! Kakav nesalomljiv duh! Nitko ne sme da bije ovaj narod. Ni Gonzaga!
A da bi bilo sasvim jasno et distincte, on se još jednom "obrača" osobi koja se potpisala kao "BRUCE LEE":

NEKA SE ZNA DA SAM SE OBRAČAM OSOBI KOJA SE POTPISALA KAO "BRUCE LEE" A TREBALA SE POTPISAT KO "GOVNO"!

Bila je to još jedna velika noć u Manchesteru.
Sada je najvažnije da se Mirko dobro odmori.

BEATI PAUPERES...

ECSTASY OF ST.TERESA



« Beati pauperes spiritu, quoniam ipsorum est Regnum caelorum.
Beati, qui lugent, quoniam ipsi consolabuntur.
Beati mites, quoniam ipsi possidebunt terram.
Beati, qui esuriunt et sitiunt iustitiam, quoniam ipsi saturabuntur.
Beati misericordes, quia ipsi misericordiam consequentur.
Beati mundo corde, quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt.
Beati pacifici, quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur.
Beati, qui persecutionem patiuntur propter iustitiam, quoniam ipsorum est Regnum caelorum.
Beati estis cum maledixerint vobis et persecuti vos fuerint et dixerint omne malum adversum vos, mentientes, propter me. Gaudete et exsultate, quoniam merces vestra copiosa est in caelis » (Mt 5,3-12).



Gianlorenzo Benrini, 1647-52
Cappella Cornaro, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

Kaptol izbacio tvrtku generala Zagorca iz projekta u Tkalčićevoj


ZAGREB - Crkva i Hypo Alpe Adria banka dogovorili su izbacivanje tvrtke generala Vladimira Zagorca Molteh iz 26,5 milijuna eura vrijednog projekta gradnje poslovno-stambenog kompleksa “Prebendarski vrtovi” u Tkalčićevoj ulici u Zagrebu.

Crkva je time preduhitrila Zagorca. On je, još od izbijanja afere krađe dragulja iz MORH-a, preko direktora Molteha Romana Bindera i poslovnog partnera Dragana Jurilja, pokušavao prodati projekt u Tkalčićevoj gdje su od tada prekinuti svi radovi. No, to mu nije pošlo za rukom.

Crkva je krajem prošlog tjedna iskoristila klauzulu iz ugovora o koncesiji na 99 godina, prema kojoj se ugovor raskida ako radovi budu zaustavljeni više od 30 dana. Dogovor s Hypo Alpe Adria bankom postignut je odmah nakon isteka tog roka.
- Još ne možemo u javnost s detaljima - rečeno je s Kaptola. Potvrđeno je da su bili u kontaktima s vodstvom Hypo Alpe Adria banke u Zagrebu, koje je iz Klagenfurta dobilo dozvolu da nastavi s projektom “Prebendarski vrtovi” bez investitora Molteha.

Iako je još uvijek nejasno može li Crkva izbaciti Molteh bez odštete, jasno je da Hypo banci nipošto nije odgovaralo da jedan od najinteresantnijih objekata u Zagrebu dođe u ruke druge banke. Kaptolu je itekako stalo da se gradnja što prije završi jer će 30 posto objekta od tri tisuće četvornih koristiti Prebendarski zbor.

Važno je također da Crkva pod svaku cijenu želi prekinuti neugodna povezivanja s krajnje upitnim poslovanjem generala Zagorca. Da će to biti teško potvrđuju okolnosti pod kojima je dogovaran projekt “Prebendarskih vrtova”. Crkva je dala koncesiju na 99 godina Zagorčevoj tvrtki čiji osnivački kapital iznosi 20.000 kuna.*

Kao vlasnik Molteha naveden je fond registriran u Lihtenštajnu “Sintra Invest Estabilishment”. Kaptol je 2006. demantirao da iza projekta stoji Zagorec, blisko povezan s tadašnjim voditeljem prebendara Mijom Gabrićem. Kaptol je tada priopćio da je Zagorec, prije potpisivanja ugovora, prodao Molteh lihtenštajnskom fondu.

Nije objašnjeno kako je na čelu tvrtke ostao Roman Binder, najbliži Zagorčev poslovni partner. Prekid suradnje Hypo banke i Zagorca u Tkalčićevoj pod znak pitanja dovodi i njegove druge projekte koje je s 260 mil. eura financirala ista banka.



* Crkva je dala koncesiju na 99 godina tvrtki čiji je osnivački kapital 20 000 kn.
U čemu je problem? Proturječje?
Pa neće valjda Crkva dati konceciju na 99 godina tvrtki čiji je kapital 20 milijardi eura!?
Nevjernici!
Crkva djeluje karitativno: ona skrbi za potrebite i njena solidarnost ima samo jednog
adresata: siromahe svijeta!
A kako shvatiti to da Crkva gradi shopping centar?
Kako je vaša vjera slaba, vi sitničavi ljudi!
Očigledno je da »Crkva siromaha«, da Crkva s opcijom za siromahe predstavlja uznemirujuću snagu u procesu globalizacije koji je programiran kao globalizacija ekonomije, kao globalizacija putova komunikacije i prometa modela sekularizirane i sekularističke civilizacije. Od te vrste globalizacije mora se Crkva distancirati.
Teološki gledano, »Crkva za siromahe« je neposredno nasljedovanje Krista Gospodina. Radikalno nasljedovanje Krista traži još više od Crkve: da bude ujedno »siromašna Crkva«. Bog, inkarniran u Isusu Kristu, izabire mjesto siromašnih kao mjesto svoje inkarnacije. Siromašnima daje milost da prvi na svijetu začuju nebesku poruku »Slava Bogu na visini a mir ljudima na nizini.« Isus donosi spas čovječanstvu iz pozicije siromašnih. Izgleda da iz pozicije bogatih i moćnih rijetko može doći trajno dobro za čovječanstvo. Isus donosi spas čovječanstvu iz pozicije totalne nemoći na drvu križa. Izgleda da iz pozicije kraljevskih i predsjedničkih palača rijetko dolazi ispunjenje ljudskih težnja za mirom, za pravdom, za slobodom. Siromašna i nemoćna Crkva, Crkva s opcijom za siromahe bit će u globaliziranom svijetu sakrament - znak - jedinstva ljudi međusobno i jedinstva čovječanstva s Bogom. Crkva je mjesto gdje bogati i siromašni sjede za istim stolom, pokritim nebeskim darovima Duha Svetoga.
Amen!

EKSKLUZIVNO! VOLDEMORT:

PENSIEVE!



EKSKLUZIVNO! SENZACIONALNO! EPH SE VRAĆA NA TEKS br.1!

TEKST br.1

Otkrivamo koga će na stranačkim izborima podržati Bandićevi ljudi koji bi mogli presuditi u izboru novog predsjednika

Dvojac Milanović - Jurčić kao privremeno rješenje

(...) Vidi dolje: 20. travnja, RORSCHACHOV TE(K)ST.

Ha, ha, ha, EPH se ipak vraća prvotnome planu: unatoč spektakulranim najavama da će Milan Bandić održati govor istine na Glavnome odboru, gradonačelnik ga je bez riječi napustio, i plan i odbor, jer se i u subotu mora delat, a i valja ostaviti dojam da ima i važnijih poslova od izbora predsjednika SDP-a! Budući da se dakle plan TEKSTA br. 2 (vidi: post od 20. travnja RORSCHACHOV TE(K)ST) izjalovio, Vampire State Building okrenuo se u smjeru Slytherina, odakle Voldemort zagonetno poručuje: Pensieve!
Što to znači? Kakav je smisao tih okultnih riječi? Hoće li sve završiti na dobro? Hoće li EPH mirno instalirati svoga premijera i, ako ide, i predsjednika SDP-a? Čitajte u tekstu broj 3., pod vrlo stereotipnim naslovom:


Ljubo Jurčić za Milanovića!

Piše: Nataša Božić


ZAGREB - Prvi kandidat za predsjednika SDP-a Zoran Milanović zasad može poprilično pouzdano računati s potporom samo jednog županijskog ogranka SDP-a, onog osječkog, ali i s nimalo nevažnom potporom potencijalnog SDP-ova premijerskog kandidata - Ljube Jurčića.

- Ne bih otvoreno govorio tko je moj favorit, o tome će na konvenciji odlučiti SDP. Mnogi u stranci smatraju da novi lider treba biti kopija staroga, a ja baš mislim da SDP-u treba nešto novo! - odgovorio je danas Jurčić na pitanje koga bi on za predsjednika SDP-a.
Iako Milanović na konvenciji možda neće dobiti njegov glas, jer je upitno hoće li Jurčić kao novi član biti delegat, njegova indirektna ali jasna potpora Milanoviću poruka je svima koji podržavaju projekt “Jurčića za premijera”, a njih u SDP-u nije malo.

Milanović u subotu nije želio odgovoriti jasno na pitanje je li sklopio “deal” s Jurčićem, rekavši da je “nekorektno na taj način gledati na stvari”. Jasno je, međutim, istaknuo kako mu neće smetati ako netko drugi bude premijer, a on predsjednik stranke.

Milanović danas nije želio dati intervju Jutarnjem listu jer, kako kaže, ne želi agitirati ni lobirati.

- Neću ići po organizacijama, obratio sam se javno svakom članu SDP-a i računam da će svaki od njih svojom glavom i svojim srcem na konvenciji odlučiti što smatra da je najbolje za SDP - rekao je.

Kandidaturu Zorana Milanovića najvjerojatnije će poduprijeti županijska organizacija iz Osječko-baranjske županije, jedna od onih iz 4. izborne jedinice gdje je Milanović koordinator. No ta će organizacija najvjerojatnije kandidirati i Željku Antunović.

- Zoran je dosta popularan, ljudi su ga posljednjih mjeseci dobro upoznali i jedino se bojimo da nam, ako postane predsjednik, ne ode iz ove izborne jedinice. Ali, i Željka je naša, ona nas je vodila u prošle parlamentarne izbore, ljudi je iznimno poštuju i cijene. Najvjerojatnije je, stoga, da će i jedno i drugo dobiti potporu iz ove organizacije - procjenjuje predsjednica osječkih SDP-ovaca Biljana Borzan.

S druge strane, Milanović baš ne može računati na potporu iz druge županije u 4. izbornoj jedinici - one Požeško-slavonske. Iako je istaknuo kako Milanoviću nitko ne spori pravo da se kandidira, alfa i omega požeških SDP-ovaca Zdravko Ronko naglasio je kako će se zalagati da predsjednik stranke postane “netko tko iza sebe ima rezultate u vođenju stranačke organizacije i izbornim bitkama”.

- Ne volim ulaziti u nešto nepoznato - dodao je Ronko. Milanović navodno ne kotira najbolje ni u Bandićevu krugu, međutim jedan od uglednih SDP-ovaca koji podupiru Milanovića objasnio je danas kako zagrebačka organizacija ima samo 19,7 posto delegata na konvenciji, a uz to i nije cijela poslušna Bandiću.

BREAKING NEWS



Grupa opasnih clownova pod zapovjedništvom vehementnog Schmoey Schmoe-head the Clowna zauzela je uredništvo "Jesenjeg lista". Odlučili su ići na sve ili ništa. Pišu užasne pizdarije. Distribuiraju ih. Uz pomoć sarkazma i subliminalnih poruka nakanili su zavladati zemljom, bilo kojom, pa danonoćno odašilju tekstove u vezi glavnih tekstova (tako to piše u 'Jesenjem listu'!). Evo oglednog primjera: ne bi li uništili karijeru i reputaciju Zorana Milanovića, clownovi - Tondo the Clown i, kažu, Bongo the Clown - u javnost pripuštaju tekst naslovljen kao događaj dana, tvrdeći da je riječ o biografiji kandidata za predsjednika socijaldemokratske partije Hrvatske! Pročitajmo zajedno:

DVIJE PRIČE

Sándor Márai

PRED ORDINIRANJE




1
Lekar je sa skoro jednočasovnim kašnjenjem stigao oko podneva kući. Još u predsoblju je čuo glas svoje supruge, koja je uzrujano razgovarala sa vaspitačicom. Bacio je šešir i kaput na vešalicu i ušao u kupatilo da opere ruke. Tek sada, kada mu se sa nasapunjanih ruku cedila vrela voda, pogledao je na ručni časovnik koji mu je visio sa zgloba; pokazivao je pola tri. „Kakva gužva!” – pomislio je i uzdahnuo. U ušima mu je još odzvanjao prigušeni plačni lelek članova porodice; proveo je celo prepodne kraj samrtnika; stajao je nemoćan kraj bolesničke postelje čuvenog advokata: bolesnik je stenjao svoje zadnje trenutke, a čuveni internista i lekari pozvani na savetovanje sedeli su uljudno u bolesnikovoj sobi; uljudni i nemoćni. Do večeri će umreti, pomisli sada. Na trenutak, video je pepeljastosivo, samrtničkim grčevima izobličeno lice odlazećeg; kratko, rasejano je uzdahnuo i požurio ka trpezariji.
Dvoje mlađe dece je već ručalo i izgubilo se sa vaspitačicom; kraj stola su sedeli samo njegova žena i najstarija kćerka, sa golim okom vidljivom nervozom gladnih ljudi, dočekali su ga prekornim pogledima. Lekar je poljubio ženu u ruku, pogladio kćerku po kosi, seo u čelo stola i počeo kašikom da zahvata veštački vrelu supu, tu podgrejanu žbuku, iz čijeg ukusa je tokom čekanja isparila svežina i imala je ukus kao da je skuvana juče. Osećao je oko sebe odbojnu tišinu, nagnuo se nad tanjir i pognute glave, pravdajući se, rekao:
– Fizeš. Znaš, čuveni Fizeš. Zadnji trenuci. Nisam mogao da dođem ranije. Sin mu je već doputovao iz Ciriha.
Beznadežno je odmahnuo rukom i rasklopio na kolenu crnu krpu za brisanje usta. Tek tada je podigao pogled: žena je sedela naspram njega, bleda, sumorna, sa zakolutanim očima.
– Imaš li nekih problema, dušo? – upitao je, kao da ih je tek tada primetio.
– Ne, nikakvih – rekla je žena malo promuklo. – Samo gospođica. Ovi kasni obedi. Ništa, dragi, jedi.
Devojčica je ćutala i oborila oči, kao i uvek kada bi se nebo nad njenim roditeljima naoblačilo. Lekar je posmatrao ženu ispitivačkim pogledom.
– Bleda si – reče iskreno i toplo.
– Nije to ništa – odgovori mu žena ljutito. – Loše sam spavala.
– Ma, hajde – reče lekar, tek onako, u vazduh.
Servirali su pečenicu i salatu. Lekar je počeo da jede, brzo žvaćući krupne zalogaje stvrdnutog jela. Na ulaznim vratima je već zvonio prvi pacijent. Između dva zalogaja, punih usta, rekao je:
– Pred ordiniranje ćeš doći kod mene. Pregledaću te. Bez pogovora. Počeću da primam pacijente tek nakon pola četiri. Recite im da malo pričekaju – reče izrazito grubo sobarici.
A onda je natenane, s velikim apetitom, obedovao, popio čašu crvenog vina, pripalio tompus i krenuo prema ordinaciji. Zastao je na vratima, i kroz šalu, rukom pokazao ženi put:
– Sledeći, molim – reče blagim glasom, osmehnut.

2
Laborantkinja i pomoćna lekarka su već pripremile ordinaciju za popodnevni rad. Rendgen aparat je bio postavljen i instrumenti su uredno poređani u stakleni ormar. Lekar je u poslednjih pet-šest godina bio dosta tražen; „ušao sam u modu” – govorio je ponekad s krotkim samopregorom i slegao ramenima. Dešavalo se da je primao pacijente u gluvo doba noći, ali i u ranu zoru. Nije imao veliku titulu, studijsku karijeru je završio čim je diplomirao. Jedno vreme je radio u bolnici, bezimeno, nije pronašao nikakav lek ili neku novu terapiju. Ali, u četrdeset petoj godini je zapazio da je „tražen” lekar. „On je, u stvari, pravi lekarski lekar” – govorili su bolesnici koje je lečio i koji su mu verovali. On je, pak, znao ono što je znao i ćutao. Znao je da nema „tajni”, da ne može bolesniku da obećava kule i gradove; nije znao ni više ni manje od ostalih sto do dvesta poštenih i savesnih internista u gradu. Možda je stvar u tome što su bolesnici kod njega osetili saosećanje, saosećanje i pažnju s kojom je pristupao bolesti. „Treba biti jako pažljiv” – govorio bi ponekad mlađim saradnicima iz bolnice. – „U tome je cela stvar. Treba biti jako pažljiv i ne uzdati se ni u koga i ni u šta, nego verovati bolesnicima. I treba se ponekad sažaliti na njih” – govorio bi zamišljeno. Mlađi lekari su mu verovali. Njegovo odeljenje je bilo na dobrom glasu. Samo se on ponekad, u pedesetoj godini, osećao malo umorno. Lekar se oženio pre dvadeset godina. Nakon prve, gladne decenije, naglo je stigao uspeh; naglo je stigao i trebalo mu je platiti cenu. Sklopio je brak iz ljubavi i prvih desetak godina proveli su u usklađenom šuškanju. Žena je živela za decu, za muža, za tu zamršenu, tihu mašineriju zvanu porodica. Kada su se vinuli na bajkovitom tepihu uspeha, poznati predeli njihovog dotadašnjeg života ostali su daleko za njima. Preselili su se u novi stan, jer više nije bilo moguće primati bolesnike na prvom spratu kuće u predgrađu; preuredili su dve sobe u čekaonicu, a višesobni stan je trebalo napuniti skupim modernim nameštajem.
Lekar nekada danima nije viđao porodicu; pojeo bi nešto na brzinu u bolnici ili u gradu, ili dok je sanitetskim vozilom putovao u unutrašnjost, jer telefoni su neprestano zvonili, ljudi su grozničavo cvileli u jezi smrtnog straha, moji bubrezi, moja jetra, gospodine doktore, drndao je telefon. Lekar je išao svugde gde je bio pozivan, i uvek je nalazio vremena za svakog. Bolesnici bi se nekoliko dana ranije prijavljivali kod njegove sekretarice; ali kada je neko dospeo do njega, mogao je i po nekoliko časova da se jada. Ali u ovom preduzeću je izgubio porodicu. Sa grižnjom savesti je mislio ponekad na njih, sa nemoćnim osećanjem krivice koje čovek oseća kada misli na svoju sudbinu. Svi su od njega tražili sve, celog čoveka; karijera, bolesnici, porodica. Ali život je kratak. Ponekad, u časovima umora, sa čuđenjem je spoznavao koliko se već potrošio, koliko mu je već pobegao život. I žena je zaostala za njim u ovoj trci; poslednjih godina skoro da ni noći nisu provodili zajedno, lekar je spavao u zasebnoj sobi kraj ordinacije, legao je kasno, a ustajao u osvit zore. U kući je sve i svja stajalo na usluzi bolesnicima. Ponekad bi se dosetio, i otputovao bi vozom sa porodicom negde na more i provodili bi dve-tri nedelje zajedno, i živeli bi tako pomalo veštački porodični život. Ali upravo u tom izveštačenom, usiljenom zajedništvu, jasno su iskazivali koliko su se međusobno udaljili.
U poslednje dve godine, dešavalo mu se da zaboravi i na ženin rođendan. Setio bi se tek u unutrašnjosti, kraj bolesničke postelje; preplašeno je slao telegram i vraćao se kući sa skupim poklonom. Ponekad se premišljao da li još uvek ima nečega među njima.
„Šta se tu može, takav je život” – pomišljao bi u tim trenucima.
Sada su sedeli sučelice, lekar u naslonjači, a žena na ordinacijskom ležaju. Lekar je pušio tompus i milovao ženinu ruku. Pričali su tiho, a lekar je otvorio jedno prozorsko krilo, da pacijenti posle ne bi osećali duvanski dim.

3
Supružnici su pričali šatrovačkim govorom, ranjivo i predano. Žena se žalila. Kako je bleda, pomisli lekar. A potajno je pomislio i „Koliko je ostarela”. Četrdesetogodišnja žena je izgledala znatno starije na kasnopopodnevnoj svetlosti.
Gledao je s osećanjem krivice to lepo, umorno, ostarelo lice. Znao je da samo ljubav može da je oživi, da je podmladi. „Potrošio sam ljubav” – mislio je dok je slušao ženu koja je tiho, prisnim šapatom predočavala svoju svakidašnju jadikovku. „Pa, ipak, još uvek je volim, ona je prava. Koliko je već udaljena od mene! Živimo ovde, pod istim krovom, a ja moram da mislim na saučešće koje bi trebalo izjaviti gospodinu Fizešu, da pružim ljubav i pažnju generalovim bolesnim bubrezima i železničarevoj bolesnoj jetri. Šta je ostalo njoj?” – pomislio je, pognuo se i pažljivo posmatrao ženino uvelo lice.
Iz četrdesetogodišnje žene se izlivalo jadikovanje; deca, vođenje domaćinstva, dnevne brige. Možda ne bi bilo loše da otputuje negde. Lekar je klimnuo glavom. Sedeo je naspram žene, još uvek sa šaljivo-ozbiljnim nadmoćnim izrazom, kao da zapravo izigrava čuvenog lekara koji sluša nervozno jadanje bolesnika. Uvek jedno te isto, pomisli. Da, otputujmo. Ali žena je naprasno zaćutala.
– Imre, molim te – reče kasnije, nakon kraće pauze, izmenjenim glasom – ne osećam se dobro.
Lekar je obratio posebnu pažnju na taj glas. Već hiljadu puta je u ovoj sobi, na ovom ležaju, u ovakvom stanju čuo tu rečenicu. Nije voleo tu intonaciju. Zaokupljala mu je mnogo veću pažnju nego ženine svakodnevne kućne brige. Imao je dobar sluh za takve stvari. Odložio je tompus u pepeljaru. Ovo „ne osećam se dobro” je opšta žalba koja više liči na uzdah, ali je tragično iskrena, kao podsvesno obrazlaganje optužbe hiljadu i hiljadu puta je odjeknula u ovoj prostoriji. Poznavao je taj naglasak. Zapazio je, vremenom, da je ta rečenica često znak postojanja bolesti. Bolesnik kog je „bolelo” nešto, pričao je strasno i uzrujano o bolesnom organu ili čulu, sa tačnim pritužbama. Ali taj uobičajeni uzdah bio je druge prirode, bio je znak utvrđivanja teške bolesti. Osećao je da mu se srce popelo u grlo.
– Boli li te nešto – upitao je pognuto.
Žena je odgovorila, tiho rekavši upravo ono čega se lekar pribojavao:
– Ne boli me ništa – reče. – Samo se ne osećam dobro.
Lekar se pridigao.
– Skini haljinu – reče gotovo sirovo.

4
Prišao je ormaru, obukao beli mantil i oprao ruke. Zatim je strogo, sigurnim korakom prišao ženi, pružio ruke, položio joj glavu na svoj dlan i pažljivo je pregledao.
– Smršala si? – upitao je tiho, kruto.
– Da.
– Koliko?
– Šest kila.
– Otkad?
– Ima dva meseca.
Pričali su nekim čudnim, krutim glasom; žena je skoro prkosno otkidala reči. Kao da i nisu supružnici.
– Na rendgen – reče lekar.
Soba se zamračila. Žena je pristupila aparatu koji je stajao u uglu; lekar joj je mehaničkim pokretima navukao olovnu pregaču. Zraci su zazujali i na ogledalu rendgen aparata pojavile su se tajne ženine nutrine. Lekar je, sa ogledalom u rukama, polako putovao nad nepoznatim predelima ženinog tela, osvetlio joj pluća i želudac. Onda se vratio plućima.
– Šest kila – reče promuklo.
– Šest. Možda i sedam – odgovorila je žena iz visine, iz mraka.
Isključio je zrake i vratili su se na ležaj. Lekar je opipavao sada već sigurnim prstima, hladnim i sigurnim rukama. Nije ni sad osećao neko drukčije uzbuđenje, osim usahnuća i gneva koji je bujao u njemu, kada god bi naleteo na trag, trag koji vodi ka raskrsnici na kojoj se razdvajaju putevi života i smrti. Osetljivi vrhovi njegovih prstiju opipavali su ženine vratne žlezde. Našao je ono što je tražio. Jedna žlezda, veličine kikirikija, bila je tvrda kao kamen.
– Otkad imaš ovo? – upita mirno.
– Ima nekih dva meseca od kako sam primetila.
– Zašto mi nisi rekla ranije? – upitao je mehanički.
Žena je odgovorila tiho i prkosno, iz velike daljine, zagledana u plafon:
– Eto, tek onako.
Gledali su se nekoliko trenutaka. Lekar nije mogao da izdrži taj pogled i oborio je oči.
– Obuci se – rekao je jako tiho.

5
Dok je prao ruke i osluškivao šušketanje haljine koju je žena oblačila, razmišljao je:
– Gospode! Neka mi neko pomogne! Potrebna mi je samo jedna reč. Zapravo, ne reč, samo glas, naglasak. Treba mi sada, da mogu, kada se okrenem i pogledam je u oči, da se osmehnem i da joj blago predočim laž, onako kako sam to činio hiljadama ljudi u ovoj sobi, nakon pregleda, kada su se sve sve žalbe svele na „ne osećam se dobro”. Koliko li joj je ostalo vremena? Osam meseci? Godinu dana? Verujem da sve zna, iz očiju joj sija to užasno saznanje, ta tvrdoglava i kočoperna samospoznaja, kakvu oseća ovakva vrsta bolesnika koja jasno naslućuje svoj udes. Šta je uopšte udes? Hiljadu puta sam stajao oči u oči s njim, ovde, u ovoj sobi. Kada bih bio jak kao naši preci, ili veran i mudar, kakvi su mogli biti ljudi u velikim junačkim vremenima, možda bih sad mogao da nađem prave reči. Ali, ne nalazim ništa. Ja sam jedan običan lekar. Imam samo skalpel i rendgenske zrake. Možda bih i mogao da je zavaravam neko vreme, ali će na kraju ipak doći trenutak kad će shvatiti, kada više neću moći da je zavaravam. Šta bih mogao da joj pružim za to vreme? Sada nije dovoljno biti samo lekar. Treba biti junak. Nisam nikada znao da je tako teško biti junak.
Okrenuo se, brišući ruke.
– Nije to ništa – reče mirno.
Ali žena ništa nije odgovorila. Sedela je obučena na ležaju i posmatrala tepih onim istim pogledom kojim je tokom pregleda gledala u plafon.
– Dolazim, sine – rekla je nešto kasnije. – Čuješ li? Već su stigli.
Iz čekaonice su se čuli glasovi. Lekar je slegao ramenima. Zagrlio ju je i ispratio do izlaza.
– Umorna si – reče joj u vratima. – I nazebla. Trebalo bi da otputuješ na more.
– Da – odgovori mu žena. – Mnogo sam umorna.
Izašla je. Lekar je neko vreme stajao nasred sobe, pritisnuvši dlanove na oči, kao neko ko je gledao u jaku svetlost, pa ga sada bole oči. Nekoliko trenutaka je stajao tako pognut. Zatim se uspravio. Otvorio je vrata ordinacije, blago se nagnuo i, po navici, uobičajeno tiho izgovorio:
– Sledeći, molim.

(S mađarskog preveo Ivan Stan)

Šandor Marai, pravo prezime Grošmid (Grosschmied Márai Sándor) rodio se 11. aprila 1900. u Kaši (Košice, danas u Slovačkoj), a preminuo 21. februara 1989. u San Dijegu (SAD). Jedan je od najznačajnijih mađarskih prozaista XX veka, čiji uticaj je u okviru mađarske književnosti bio najsnažniji između dva svetska rata. Pored proze, pisao je poeziju, bavio se publicistikom, esejistikom i prevođenjem.
Najznačajnije delo u njegovom po obimu i po kvalitetu bogatom stvaralačkom opusu su Ispovesti jednog građanina (Egy polgár vallomásai, u dva dela 1934-35), roman sa autobiografskim elementima, koji uz Budenbrokove Tomasa Mana, Tiboove Rožea Martena di Gara daje vernu sliku evropske građanske klase s kraja XIX i početka XX veka. Roman Sindbad se vraća kući (Szindbád hazamegy, 1940), posvećen životu i delu Đule Krudija, najznačajniji je esejistički roman u mađarskoj književnosti, a Sveće gore do kraja (A gyertyák csonkig égnek, 1942), su nakon Ispovesti jednog građanina najznačajniji Maraijev roman koji se bavi problematikom mađarske građanske klase. Među značajna dela ovog pisca, svakako treba pomenuti i romane Ljubomorni (Féltékények, 1937), Esterina zaostavština (Eszter hagyatéka, 1939), Sestra (A novér, 1946), Uvređeni (Sértodöttek, u tri dela, treći deo zaplenjen, 1947-48), Mir u Itaki (Béke Ithakában, 1952), zbirku pripovedaka Magija (Mágia, 1941), publicističku knjigu Zarobljavanje Evrope (Európa elrablása, 1947), knjigu memoarske proze Zemlja, zemlja! (Föld, föld!, 1972), knjigu izabranih pesama Delfinov pogled unazad (A delfin visszanézett, 1978), kao i obimnu dnevničku prozu, na kojoj je intenzivno radio od 1943. do pred kraj života.
Nakon odlaska u izgnanstvo, živeo je u više gradova više zemalja (Švajcarska, Italija, SAD), da bi se 1968. konačno nastanio u San Dijegu. I u izgnanstvu je nastavio aktivno da se bavi književnošću i publicistikom (od 1952. do 1967. bio saradnik Radija Slobodna Evropa), ali se nakon smrti supruge i sina, povukao iz javnog života i u dubokoj starosti i usamljenosti, hicem iz revolvera, oduzeo sebi život. (I. S.)



The Open Window

BY SAKI (H. H. Munro) (1870-1916)



"MY AUNT WILL BE DOWN presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."

Framton Nuttel endeavored to say the correct something which should duly Hatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing

"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."

Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division.

"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

"Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady.

"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."

"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?"

"Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favorite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window--"

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.

"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.

"She has been very interesting," said Framton.

"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?"

She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," he continued.

"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention--but not to what Framton was saying.

"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.

"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?"

"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodby or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."

"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve."

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

INTERMEZZO ili UKIDANJE LIMBA

Jean-François Lyotard




Može li misao nastaviti bez tijela?

ON


Vi filozofi postavljate pitanja bez odgovora, pitanja koja moraju ostati bez odgovora, da bi zaslužila da se nazivaju filozofska. Prema vama, pitanja na koja je dat odgovor samo su tehničke stvari. U početku su ona to i bila. Ona su zamenjena filozofskim pitanjima. Vi se okrećete ka drugim pitanjima na koja je izgleda potpuno nemoguće odgovoriti: koja se, po definiciji, opiru svakom pokušaju osvajanja razumom. Ili što je isto: vi izjavljujete da, ako je na prva pitanja bio dat odgovor, to je zato što su ona bila loše formulisana. Vi sebi dozvoljavate privilegiju da pitanja koja tehnička nauka smatra rešenima (u stvari ona se samo neadekvatno bavi njima), nastavljate da tretirate kao nerešiva, što će reći kao dobro formulisana. Za vas su rešenja samo iluzije, neuspesi da se očuva integritet zbog bića – ili takve neke stvari. Živelo strpljenje. Vi ćete zauvek istrajavati u sopstvenoj podozrivosti. Ali nemojte biti iznenađeni ako, zbog sopstvene neodlučnosti, svejedno završite tako što ćete zamoriti svoje čitaoce.
Ali nije to u pitanju. Dok govorimo Sunce stari. Ono će eksplodirati za 4,5 milijarde godina. To je samo nešto malo više od polovine njegovog očekivanog trajanja. To je kao čovek u ranim četrdesetim koji se nada da će doživeti osamdesete. Kada umre Sunce biće svršeno i sa vašim nerešivim pitanjima. Moguće je da ona ostanu bez odgovora sve do samog kraja, besprekorno formulisana, iako tada više neće postojati osnova za postavljanje takvih pitanja, kao ni mesto za tako nešto. Objašnjavate: nemoguće je misliti jasan i jednostavan kraj bilo čega, pošto je kraj granica, a da biste ga mislili, morate biti sa obe strane te granice. Dakle, ono što je okončano ili konačno mora neprekidno biti u našem mišljenju ako treba da bude mišljeno kao okončano. Ovo je istina za granice koje pripadaju mišljenju. Međutim, posle smrti Sunca neće biti mišljenja koje bi znalo da se njegova smrt već desila.
Ovo je, po meni, jedino ozbiljno pitanje sa kojim se danas suočava čovečanstvo. U poređenju s njim sve drugo izgleda beznačajno. Ratovi, sukobi, političke tenzije, promena mišljenja, filozofske debate, čak i strasti – sve je već mrtvo ako ova beskonačna rezerva iz koje sada crpite snagu da odlažete odgovore, ukratko, ako mišljenje kao traganje, umire zajedno sa Suncem. Možda smrt nije reč. Možda se neizbežna eksplozija koja dolazi, ona koja je uvek zaboravljena u vašim ponižavajućim intelektualnim taktikama, može posmatrati na izvestan način kao prethodno pojavljivanje koje čini ove ponižavajuće taktike posthumnim – čini ih uzaludnim. Govorim o onome što je izbrisano iz vaših dela – o materiji. O materiji uzetoj kao uređenje energije koja se uvek iznova, beskonačno, stvara, uništava i ponovo stvara. Mislim, na korpuskularnoj i/ili kosmičkoj skali. Ne govorim o poznatom, bezbednom zemaljskom svetu ili bezbednoj transcendentnoj imanenciji mišljenja u svojim objektima, analogno načinu na koji oko transcendira ono što je vidljivo ili habitus svog situsa. Za 4,5 milijarde godina doći će do smrti vaše fenomenologije i vaših utopističkih politika; neće biti nikoga da zvoni na posmrtna zvona, niti bilo koga da ih čuje. Biće suviše kasno razumeti da je vaše strasno, beskonačno zapitkivanje uvek bilo zavisno od “života duha”, koji nije bio ništa drugo do skriveni oblik zemaljskog života. Oblik života koji je bio duhovni zato što je bio ljudski, ljudski zato što je bio zemaljski – koji potiče sa zemlje najživljeg od svih bića. Mišljenje pozajmljuje horizont i orijentaciju, bezgraničnu granicu i kraj bez kraja od telesnog, čulnog, emocionalnog i kognitivnog iskustva jedne vrlo sofisticirane, ali svakako zemaljske egzistencije, kojoj isto tako mnogo duguje.
Sa nestankom Zemlje, mišljenje će se zaustaviti – ostavljajući taj nestanak potpuno nemišljenim. Upravo je horizont taj koji će biti uništen, a sa njegovim nestankom nestaće i vaša transcendencija u imanenciji. Ako, kao ograničenje, smrt zaista jeste ono što izmiče i što je odloženo i čime se, usled toga, mišljenje stalno bavi od samog početka – ova smrt je još uvek samo život naših duhova. Ali, smrt Sunca jeste smrt duha, zato što je to smrt smrti kao života duha. Nema nikakvog ukidanja i odlaganja ako ništa nije preživelo. Ovo uništenje je potpuno drugačije od one vaše govorancije o “našoj” smrti, smrti koja je deo sudbine živih stvorenja koja misle. Uništenje je, u svakom slučaju, previše subjektivno. Ono će za sobom povlačiti promenu u stanju materije, što će reći, u obliku koji će poprimiti energije. Ova promena je dovoljna da učini potpuno bezvrednom vašu anticipaciju sveta posle eksplozije. Politički naučno-fantastični romani opisuju hladne pustinje našeg ljudskog sveta posle nuklearnog rata. Solarna eksplozija neće se dogoditi zahvaljujući ljudskom ratu. Neće ostaviti iza sebe opustošen ljudski svet, lišen ljudskih osobina, koji će bar i pored svega imati jednog preživelog, nekoga ko bi ispričao priču o onome što je preostalo, ko bi je zapisao. Lišeno ljudskih osobina još uvek implicira čoveka, mrtvog ali pojmljivog čoveka, koga je, zato što je mrtav u ljudskim terminima, još uvek moguće ukinuti u mišljenju. Međutim, u onome što preostane posle solarne eksplozije neće biti nikakve ljudskosti, neće biti živih stvorenja, neće biti inteligentnih, osećajnih, osetljivih zemljana koji bi tome bili svedoci, jer će oni i njihov zemaljski horizont biti uništeni.
Pretpostavimo da će tlo, Huserlova (Husserl) Ur-Erde, nestati u oblaku toplote i materije. Posmatrana kao materija, zemlja ni u kom slučaju nije originarna, zato što je podložna promenama svog stanja – promenama izdaleka ili izbliza, promenama koje potiču od materije i energije i od zakona koji upravljaju transformacijama Zemlje. Erde je uređenje materije/energije. Ovo uređenje je prolazno i traje, manje-više, nekoliko milijardi godina. Lunarnih godina. Što i nije tako dugo ako se posmatra u kosmičkim razmerama. Sunce, naša Zemlja i vaše mišljenje neće biti ništa drugo do isprekidana stanja energije, trenutno uspostavljeni poredak, osmeh na površini materije u udaljenom kutku kosmosa. Vi nevernici, vi ste zapravo vernici: vi verujete, previše verujete u taj osmeh, u saučesništvo stvari i mišljenja, u svrsishodnost svih stvari! Kao i bilo ko, i vi ćete završiti kao žrtve stabilizovanih odnosa poretka u tom udaljenom kutku. Vi ćete biti zavedeni i obmanuti onim što zovete priroda, podudaranjem duha i stvari. Klodel (Claudel) je ovo nazvao "co-naissance”, a Merlo-Ponti (Merleau--Ponty) je govorio o šijazmi oka i horizonta, o tečnosti u kojoj pluta duh. Solarna eksplozija, puka misao o toj eksploziji, trebalo bi da vas probudi iz ove euforije. Pogledajte: vi pokušavate da mislite događaj u njegovom quod, u dolasku onoga “dešava se da” pre svake suštine, zar ne? Vi ćete potvrditi da je eksplozija Sunca sâmo quod, bez mogućnosti neke kasnije odredbe. O toj samoj smrti Epikur je trebalo da kaže ono što je rekao o smrti – da ja nemam ništa s tim, jer ako je ona prisutna, ja nisam, a ako sam ja prisutan, ona nije. Ljudska smrt je uključena u život ljudskog duha. Solarna smrt implicira nepovratno isključivo razdvajanje smrti i mišljenja: ako postoji smrt, ne postoji mišljenje. Negacija bez ostatka. Bez sopstva koje bi dalo smisao. Čist događaj. Propast. Svi događaji i sve propasti koje su nam poznate i o kojima pokušavamo da mislimo završiće kao ne više do bledi simulakrumi.
Ovaj događaj je neizbežan. Pa tako, ili, vas to ne zanima – pa ostajete u životu duha i u zemaljskoj fenomenalnosti. Kao i Epikur, vi oveka i kažete “sve dok to nije ovde, ja jesam, i nastavljate da filozofirate u prijatnom okrilju saučesništva između čprirode”. Ali, opet, sa ovom sumornom primisli: aprčs moi le déluge. Potop materije. Složićete se da postoji značajna tačka razilaženja između našeg mišljenja i klasičnog i modernog mišljenja zapadne civilizacije: očigledna činjenica da nema prirode, nego samo materijalno čudovište D’Alamberovog (D’Alembert) Sna, Timajeva chôra. Nekada se smatralo da smo sposobni da razgovaramo sa Prirodom. Materija ne postavlja pitanja, ne očekuje nikakve odgovore od nas. Ona nas ignoriše. Ona nas je stvorila onako kako je stvorila sva tela – slučajno i prema svojim zakonima.
Ili, vi pokušavate da anticipirate propast i da je otklonite značenjima koja pripadaju toj kategoriji – značenjima koja pripadaju zakonima transformacije energije. Odlučili ste da prihvatite izazov krajnje verovatnog uništenja sunčevog sistema i sistema vašeg sopstvenog mišljenja. Tada je sasvim jasno šta je još preostalo da se uradi – taj posao je u toku već neko vreme – posao simulacije uslova života i mišljenja koji čini da mišljenje ostane materijalno moguće posle promene stanja materije koja je propast. Ovo, i samo ovo je ono što se danas dovodi u pitanje u tehničkim i naučnim istraživanjima na svakom polju, od dijetetike, neurofiziologije, genetike i sinteze tkiva, do korpuskularne fizike, astrofizike, elektronike, informatike i nuklearne fizike. Bez obzira na to koji su tu neposredni ulozi: zdravlje, rat, proizvodnja, komunikacija. Za dobrobit čovečanstva, kako se to obično kaže.
Znate, tehnologiju nismo izmislili mi ljudi. Pre će biti obrnuto. Kao što priznaju antropolozi i biolozi, čak i najjednostavniji oblici života, infusoria (male, sićušne alge sintetizovane svetlošću na ivicama plimnih bara pre nekoliko miliona godina) već jesu tehnički pronalasci. Bilo koji materijalni sistem je tehnološki ako filtrira informacije korisne za svoj sopstveni opstanak, ako memoriše i prenosi te informacije i izvodi zaključke na osnovu određujućeg efekta ponašanja, drugim rečima, ako utiče i pravi intervencije na svojoj okolini kako bi osigurao bar svoje sopstveno trajanje. Ljudsko biće, po svojoj prirodi, nije drugačije od objekta ovog tipa. U poređenju sa drugim živim bićima njegova opremljenost za prikupljanje podataka nije izuzetak. Tačno je da je ljudsko biće omnizorno kada se bavi informacijama zato što poseduje izdiferenciraniji regulativni sistem (kodove i pravila obrade) i kapacitet skladištenja memorije koji je veći nego kod drugih živih bića. Najviše od svega: ono je opremljeno simboličkim sistemom koji je, kako arbitraran (u semantici i sintaksi), što mu omogućava da bude manje zavisan od neposredne okoline, tako i “rekurzivan” (Hofstadter), što mu dozvoljava da uzme u obzir (iznad i više od sirovih podataka) način na koji prerađuje takve podatke. To jest, samog sebe. Dakle, prerađivanje svojih sopstvenih pravila kao informacija i izvođenja drugih načina obrade informacija. Ukratko, čovek je živa organizacija, koja nije samo kompleksna, već, takoreći repleksna. On može shvatiti sebe kao medijum (kao u medicini), ili kao organ (kao u aktivnostima usmerenim prema cilju) ili kao objekat (kao u mišljenju – mislim, u estetičkom, kao i u spekulativnom mišljenju). On čak može apstrahovati sebe od samog sebe, i uzeti u obzir samo sopstvena pravila prerađivanja, kao u logici i matematici. Suprotna granica ove simboličke rekurzivnosti nalazi se u nužnosti kojom je on istovremeno prinuđen (bez obzira na meta-nivo njegovog delovanja) da utvrđuje pravila koja garantuju njegov opstanak u bilo kojoj sredini. Nije li to upravo ono što konstituiše osnovu vaše transcendencije u imanenciji? Do dana današnjeg ova sredina je bila zemaljska. Opstanak misleće-organizacije zahteva razmenu sa tom sredinom, takvu da ljudsko telo može sebe da perpetuira u njoj. Ovo je podjednako tačno za suštinsku meta-funkciju – filozofsko mišljenje. Na kraju krajeva, da bi mislili morate da dišete, jedete, itd. Još uvek ste pod obavezom da “zaradite za život”.
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Telo se može posmatrati kao hardver kompleksnih tehničkih pomagala kakvo je i ljudsko mišljenje. Ako ovo telo ne funkcioniše pravilno, onda tako kompleksne operacije, meta-pravila treće i četvrte moći, kontrolisane deregulacije koje vi filozofi toliko volite, nisu moguće. Vaša filozofija beskrajnog kraja, besmrtne smrti, bezgranične razlike, neodlučnosti, izraz je, možda izraz par exellence, samog meta-pravila. Ono kao da je uzelo u obzir sâmo sebe kao meta. Sve je to divno i krasno. Ali, ne zaboravite: ova moć referencijalne promene nivoa proizilazi samo iz simboličke i rekurzivne moći jezika. Sad, jezik je jednostavno najkompleksnija forma (živih i mrtvih) “sećanja” koja uređuju sva živa bića i čine ih tehničkim objektima bolje prilagođenim svojoj okolini nego što su to mehaničke celine. Drugim rečima, vaša filozofija je moguća jedino zato što je materijalna celina zvana “čovek” opremljena veoma sofisticiranim softverom. Ali, takođe, ovaj softver, ljudski jezik, zavisi od stanja hardvera. Međutim, i hardver će biti razoren u solarnoj eksploziji a zajedno sa njim u plamenu će nestati i filozofsko mišljenje (kao i svako drugo mišljenje).
Problem tehnoloških nauka može se odrediti na sledeći način: kako snabdeti ovaj softver hardverom koji će biti nezavisan od uslova života na zemlji.
Što znači: kako omogućiti mišljenje bez tela. Mišljenje koje nastavlja da postoji posle smrti ljudskog tela. Ovo je cena koju treba platiti ako eksplozija treba da bude shvatljiva, ako smrt Sunca treba da bude smrt kao i sve druge smrti za koje znamo. Misao bez tela je uslov za mišljenje smrti svih tela, solarnih ili zemaljskih, kao i smrti mišljenja koja su neodvojiva od tih tela.
Ali "bez tela" u ovom određenom smislu: bez kompleksnog živog zemaljskog organizma poznatog kao ljudsko telo. Očigledno, ne bez hardvera.
Dakle, teoretski, rešenje je veoma jednostavno: proizvodnja hardvera sposobnog da “podrži” softver koji je bar isto toliko kompleksan (ili repleksan) koliko i današnji ljudski mozak, ali u ne-zemaljskim uslovima. Ovo jasno znači pronalaženje “podrške” za predviđeno “telo” koja ništa ne duguje bio-hemijskim komponentama sintetizovanim na površini zemlje putem korišćenja solarne energije. Ili: učenje izazivanja ovih sinteza na drugim mestima osim Zemlje. U oba slučaja to znači učenje proizvođenja hardvera koji je sposoban da podrži naš softver ili njegov ekvivalent, ali takav koji se utvrđuje i podržava samo izvorima energije dostupnim u kosmosu uopšte.
Jasno je, čak i laiku kao što sam ja, da kombinovane sile nuklearne fizike, elektronike, kvantnih teorija i informatičkih nauka otvaraju mogućnost konstruisanju tehničkih objekata, sa svojstvom koje nije samo fizičko nego i kognitivno, koji “izvode” (to jest odabiru, proizvode i raspoređuju) energije koje su potrebne ovim objektima da bi funkcionisali drugačije od formi koje se generalno mogu pronaći svuda u kosmosu.
Toliko o hardveru. Što se tiče softvera kojim treba da su opremljene ovakve mašine, treba reći da je to problem istraživanja u oblasti veštačke inteligencije i kontroverzi koje prate ova istraživanja. Vi filozofi, pisci i umetnici prebrzo odbacujete patetičnu prošlost današnjih softverskih programa. Istina, misleće ili “predstavljačke” mašine (termin Monik Linar /Monique Linard/) su slabašne u poređenju sa običnim ljudskim mozgovima, čak i sa onim neuvežbanim.
Može se uputiti prigovor da su programi pohranjeni u takvim kompjuterima elementarni i da se može očekivati progres u informatici, veštačkim jezicima i u komunikologiji. To je verovatno. Ali glavni prigovor se tiče samog principa ovih inteligencija. Ovaj prigovor je sumiran u zaključku koji je predložio Hubert L. Drajfus (Dreyfus). Naše razočaranje ovim organima “bestelesnog mišljenja” potiče od činjenice da oni funkcionišu po binarnoj logici, koju su nam nametnule Raselova (Russell) i Vajthedova (Whitehead) matematička logika, Turingova mašina, MekKalohov (Mc Culloch) i Pitsov (Pitts) neuronski model, Vinerova (Wiener) i fon Nojmanova (von Neumann) kibernetika, Bulova (Bool) algebra i Šenonova (Shannon) informatika.
Međutim, kao što Drajfus pokazuje, ljudsko mišljenje ne misli u binarnom modusu. Ono ne radi sa jedinicama informacije (bitovi), već sa intuitivnim, hipotetičkim konfiguracijama. Ono prihvata neprecizne, dvosmislene podatke, koji izgleda da nisu odabrani prema prethodno ustanovljenim kodovima ili čitljivosti. Ono ne zanemaruje kontra efekte ili marginalne aspekte jedne situacije. Ono nije samo usredsređeno nego i lateralno. Ljudsko mišljenje može da razlikuje važno od nevažnog bez da vrši iscrpljujuća inventarisanja podataka i bez testiranja, putem pokušaja i pogrešaka, važnosti podataka za cilj kome se teži. Kao što je Huserl pokazao, mišljenje postaje svesno “horizonta”, ono cilja na “noemu”, na neku vrstu objekta, neku vrstu ne-konceptualnog monograma koji mu obezbeđuje intuitivne konfiguracije i otvara “ispred njega” polje orijentacije i očekivanja, “kostur” (Minski /Minsky/). U takvom okviru, možda pre shemi, ono ide ka onome što traži, “odabirajući”, to jest, odbacujući i re-kombinujući podatke koji su mu potrebni; štaviše, bez da koristi prethodno utvrđene kriterijume koji unapred određuju šta je prikladno da se izabere. Ova slika neizbežno podseća na Kantov opis misaonog procesa koji je on nazvao refleksivno suđenje: način mišljenja koji nije vođen pravilima za utvrđivanje podataka, ali koji se sam pokazuje kao možda sposoban da naknadno razvija takva pravila na temelju “refleksivno” postignutih rezultata.
Ovaj opis refleksivnog mišljenja nasuprot utvrđenog mišljenja ne krije (u Huserlovom ili u Drajfusovom delu) ono što duguje opažajnom iskustvu. Polje mišljenja postoji na isti način na koji postoji polje vida (ili sluha): u njemu se duh orijentiše, kao što to čini oko u polju vidljivog. U Francuskoj je ova analogija bila centralna za Valonovo (Wallon) delo, na primer, kao i za Merlo-Pontija. Ona je “dobro poznata”. Ipak treba naglasiti da ova analogija nije ekstrinsična nego intrinsična. U svojim procedurama ona ne opisuje samo mišljenje analogno iskustvu percepcije. Ona opisuje mišljenje koje napreduje po analogiji, i samo po analogiji, a ne logički. Mišljenje u kome su, dakle, procedure tipa: “baš kao ... slično tome...”, ili “kao da ... onda”, ili opet “kako je p za q, tako je r za s” privilegovane u poređenju sa digitalnim procedurama tipa “ako ... onda ...” i “p nije ne-p”. Ovo su paradoksalne operacije koje konstituišu iskustvo tela, “stvarnog” ili fenomenološkog tela, u njegovom prostor-vreme kontinuumu čulnosti i percepcije. Zbog toga je pogodno uzeti telo kao model u proizvodnji i programiranju veštačke inteligencije, ako se namerava da veštačka inteligencija ne bude ograničena na sposobnost logičkog mišljenja.
Iz ovog prigovora je očigledno da ono što čini neodvojivim mišljenje i telo nije samo u tome da je telo nužan hardver mišljenja, materijalni uslov njegove egzistencije. Radi se o tome da je svaki od njih analogan drugom u odnosu sa svojom odgovarajućom (čulnom, simboličkom) sredinom, pri čemu je odnos u oba slučaja analogan. U ovom opisu postoje ubedljivi razlozi za neprihvatanje hipoteze (koju je jednom predložio Hilari Patnam /Hilary Putnam/) o principu “odvojivosti” inteligencije, princip kojim je on verovao da može da legitimiše pokušaj stvaranja veštačke inteligencije.


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Ovo je nešto što nas može zadovoljiti kao filozofe. Nešto što umiruje deo naše brige. Polje percepcije ima granice, ali te granice su uvek izvan domašaja. Dok vizuelni objekt predstavlja jednu stranu oku, uvek postoje druge strane koje se ne vide. Direktno, usmereno viđenje je uvek okruženo zakrivljenim prostorom gde se vidljivost drži u rezervi, ali nije odsutno. Ovo razdvajanje je inkluzivno. Ne govorim o sećanju koje je uvedeno u igru najjednostavnijim pogledom. Kontinuirano viđenje čuva u sebi ono što je trenutak ranije bilo viđeno iz drugog ugla. Ono anticipira ono što će ubrzo biti viđeno. Ove sinteze rezultiraju identifikacijama objekata, identifikacijama koje nikada nisu potpune, sintezama koje sledeće gledanje uvek može da poremeti i poništi. U ovom iskustvu oko je svakako uvek u potrazi za prepoznavanjem, kao što je i duh u potrazi za potpunim opisom objekta na koji pokušava da misli: međutim, onaj koji gleda nikada nije u stanju da kaže da savršeno prepoznaje objekt, pošto je polje predstavljanja svaki put apsolutno jedinstveno, i pošto, kada pogled zaista vidi, nikada ne može zaboraviti da uvek postoji još nešto što mora biti viđeno, jednom kada je objekt “identifikovan”. Opažajno “prepoznavanje” nikada ne zadovoljava logički zahtev za potpunim opisom.
U svakoj ozbiljnoj diskusiji o analogiji misli se na ovo iskustvo, ovu nejasnoću, ovu nesigurnost, ovu veru u neiscrpnost opažajnog, a ne samo na način transfera podataka ka prvobitno ne sopstvenoj površini upisivanja. Slično tome, pisanje zaranja u polje fraza, napredujući putem značenja skica, tumarajući u pravcu sopstvenog “značenja” i uvek svesno da, onda kada se zaustavi, odlaže sopstvenu potragu samo za trenutak (trenutak koji može da traje čitav život), i da, s onu stranu pisanja koje se zaustavilo, ostaje beskonačnost reči, fraza i značenja u latentnom stanju, obuzdanih u neizvesnosti, sa isto toliko stvari “koje treba reči” kao i na početku. Prava “analogija” zahteva da misleća ili predstavljačka mašina bude u svojim podacima, isto kao što je to oko u polju vizuelnog ili pisanje u jeziku (u širem smislu). Nije dovoljno da ove mašine prilično dobro simuliraju rezultate viđenja ili pisanja. To je stvar (da upotrebim privlačno odgovarajući izraz) “davanja tela” veštačkom mišljenju za koje su one sposobne. I to telo, istovremeno i “prirodno” i veštačko, treba da bude preneto daleko od Zemlje pre njenog uništenja, ako želimo da mišljenje koje će preživeti solarnu eksploziju bude nešto više od jadnog binarizovanog duha onoga što je ono bilo ranije.
Sa ove tačke gledišta svakako bi trebalo da imamo osnove da ne odustanemo od tehno-nauke. Ne znam da li je moguće postići takav “program”. Da li je uopšte dosledno tvrditi da programirano iskustvo prkosi, ako ne programiranju, ono bar programu – kao što to čini pogled slikara ili pisanje? Na vama je da pokušate. Na kraju krajeva problem je za vas od velike važnosti. To je problem razumevanja običnog jezika putem vaših mašina. Problem sa kojim se susrećete naročito u oblasti interfejsa terminal/korisnik. U tom interfejsu postoji veza veštačke inteligencije sa naivnom vrstom inteligencije koja je stvorena putem takozvanih “prirodnih” jezika i zaronjena u njih.
Međutim, muči me jedno drugo pitanje. Da li je to zaista drugo pitanje? Mišljenje i patnja se poklapaju. Reči, fraze u činu pisanja, skrivene suptilne razlike i boja glasa na horizontu slike ili muzičke kompozicije u toku stvaranja (to ste i sami rekli) posvećuju nam se za tu priliku, a ipak nam uvek klize kroz prste. Čak i zapisane na stranici ili platnu, one “govore” nešto više nego što smo mi “mislili” zato što su one starije od sadašnje namere, preopterećene mogućnostima značenja – to jest, povezane sa drugim rečima, frazama, senkama značenja, bojama glasova. Upravo pomoću njih one konstituišu polje, “svet”, “hrabri” ljudski svet o kome ste govorili, onaj koji pre podseća na neprozirnost veoma udaljenih horizonata koji postoje samo zato da bismo im “prkosili”. Ako mislite da opisujete mišljenje onda kada opisujete odabiranje i sređivanje podataka, vi, u stvari, ućutkavate istinu. Zato što podaci nisu dati nego mogu biti dati, odabiranje nije izbor. Mišljenje, kao i pisanje ili slikanje, skoro da nije ništa više nego dozvoliti onome što može biti dato da vam se približi. U diskusiji koju smo u tom smislu vodili prošle godine u Siegenu, naglasak je bio na izvesnoj praznini koju od duha i tela dobija japanski umetnik-ratnik kada radi kaligrafiju, glumac kada glumi: neka vrsta odlaganja običnih namera duha povezanih sa habitusom ili uređenjima tela. Po tu cenu, tvrde Glen (Glenn) i Andreas (a možete zamisliti koliko brzo sam se složio sa njima, potpomognut Dogenom /Dôgen/, Didroom /Diderot/ i Klajstom /Kleist/) četkica se susreće sa “pravim” oblicima, glas i teatarski pokret su opremljeni “pravim” tonom i izgledom. Ovo izazivanje praznine, ovo uklanjanje – suprotno uobraženoj, selektivnoj i identifikatornoj aktivnosti – ne dešava se bez izvesne patnje. Neću da tvrdim da lepota o kojoj je Klajst govorio (lepota poteza, tona ili knjige) treba da se zasluži: to bi bila drskost. Međutim, ona treba da se priziva, izaziva. Telo i duh treba da budu oslobođeni tereta da bi nas dotakla lepota. Toga nema bez patnje. Sada je izgubljeno uživanje u onome što smo posedovali.
Ovde ćete ponovo primetiti da postoji nužnost fizičkog iskustva i povratka na egzemplarne slučajeve telesne askeze za razumevanje i razumljivost određenog tipa pražnjenja duha, pražnjenja koje se zahteva ako duh treba da misli. Ovo očigledno nema nikakve veze sa tabula rasa, sa onim što je Dekart (Déscartes) (sujetno) hteo da bude polazište saznajnog mišljenja – polazište koje paradoksalno, stalno i iznova može biti polazište. U onome što zovemo mišljenje duh nije “usmeren” nego suspendovan. Vi mu ne dajete pravila. Vi ga učite da ih prima. Vi ne raščišćavate teren da biste neometano gradili: vi otvarate čistinu za najtamniji deo senke skoro-datog u kojoj će on biti u stanju da modifikuje svoju konturu. Primer ovog rada može se pronaći mutatis mutandis u Frojdovom (Freud) Durcharbeitung. U kome se – neću dalje razvijati ovu problematiku – može videti patnja i cena rada mišljenja. Ova vrsta mišljenja ima veoma malo veze sa kombinovanjem simbola u skladu sa propisanim pravilima. Iako čin kombinovanja, dok traga i čeka svoje pravilo, ima mnogo veze sa mišljenjem.
Bol mišljenja nije simptom koji dolazi spolja da bi se upisao u duh, umesto u svoje istinsko mesto. Sama misao je ta koja odlučuje da bude neodlučna, koja odlučuje da bude strpljiva, koja želi da ne želi, ne želeći da stvori značenje na mestu onoga što mora biti označeno. Ovo je pozdrav dužnosti koja još nije imenovana. Možda ta dužnost nije obaveza. Možda je ona samo način prema kome će se pojaviti ono što još uvek ne postoji, reč, fraza, boja. Tako da je patnja mišljenja patnja vremena, onoga što se događa. Da sumiramo – da li će vaše misleće, vaše predstavljačke mašine patiti? Šta će biti njihova budućnost ako su one samo sećanja? Reći ćete mi da ovo jedva da je važno, ako one mogu da “postignu” bar paradoksalan odnos sa izgovorenim “podacima” koji su samo kvazi-dati, omogućeni, a koje sam upravo opisao. Međutim, ovo je malo verovatna pretpostavka.
Ako je ova patnja znak istinskog mišljenja, to je zato što mi mislimo u već-mišljenom, u upisanom. Zato što je teško ostaviti nešto u neizvesnosti ili ga ponovo preuzeti na drugačiji način, ono što nije bilo mišljeno još uvek se može pojaviti, a ono što treba da bude biće upisano. Ne govorim samo o rečima koje nedostaju u obilju raspoloživih reči, nego o načinima sastavljanja tih reči, načinima koje treba da prihvatimo uprkos artikulacijama na koje nas podstiče logika, sintaksa naših jezika, ili konstrukcije nasleđene našim čitanjem. (Sepu Gumbrehtu /Sepp Gumbrecht/, koga iznenađuje moje stanovište da bilo koja i svaka misao treba da zahteva i povlači za sobom zapis, kažem: mi mislimo u svetu zapisa koji su već dati. Nazovite to kulturom, ako hoćete. I ako mislimo, to je zato što još uvek nedostaje u tom obilju, i zato što se mora ostaviti dovoljno prostora za taj nedostatak čineći duh praznim, što dozvoljava da se dogodi ono nešto drugo što ostaje da bude mišljeno. Međutim, sa svoje strane, ovo se može “pojaviti” samo kao već zapisano.) Ono nemišljeno boli zato što se osećamo lagodno u onom što je već mišljeno. Mišljenje koje prihvata ovu nelagodnost je, da to grubo kažemo, pokušaj da se s tim završi. To je nada, koja podržava svako pisanje (slikanje, itd.), da će, na kraju, stvari biti bolje. Pošto kraja nema, ova nada je iluzorna. Dakle, ono nemišljeno treba da uznemiri vaše mašine, ono nezapisano koje ostaje da se zapiše nateraće njihovu memoriju da pati. Da li vidite šta hoću da kažem? Zašto bi one inače ikada počele da misle? Nama su potrebne mašine koje pate od tereta svoje memorije. (Međutim, patnja nema dobru reputaciju u tehnološkom megalopolisu. Naročito ne patnja mišljenja. Ona čak više ne izaziva ni smeh. Njene ideje više nema, to je sve. Postoji trend u pravcu “igre”, ako ne izvođenja.)
Konačno, ljudsko telo ima rod. Prihvaćena je pretpostavka da je polna razlika paradigma nesavršenosti, ne samo tela nego i duhova. Naravno, postoji muškost u ženama kao i ženskost u muškarcima. Kako bi inače jedan rod uopšte imao ideju drugog ili osećanje koje potiče od onoga što nedostaje? Ono nedostaje zato što je prisutno duboko unutra, u telu, u duhu. Prisutno kao čuvar, ograničeno, gurnuto u stranu, na ivici vašeg pogleda, prisutno na nekom njegovom horizontu. Ono što izmiče, nemoguće da se pojmi. Opet se vraćamo na transcendenciju u imanenciji. Pojam roda koji dominira u savremenom društvu želi da zatvori ovu pukotinu, da sruši ovu transcendenciju, da prevaziđe ovu nemoć. Pretpostavljeni “partneri” (u uređenju zadovoljstva) sklapaju ugovor u svrhu zajedničkog “uživanja” same polne razlike. Ugovor obezbeđuje da ni jedna strana ne pati zbog ove veze, a da na prvi znak nedostatka (bilo kroz neuspeh izvođenja ili ne), defokalizacije, nedostatka kontrole i transcendencije, strane poništavaju ugovor – mada je to još uvek prejak izraz, one ga samo puštaju da propadne. Čak iako s vremena na vreme moda smešta “ljubav” nazad u inventar objekata koji su u opticaju, ona je kao “vrhunski” polni odnos rezervisana za superstarove i reklamirana kao poželjni izuzetak. U ovom uređenju vidim da tehno-nauka primorava mišljenje da zanemari različitost koju nosi u sebi.
Ne znam da li je polna razlika ontološka razlika. Kako bi to neko mogao znati? Moj skromni fenomenološki opis još uvek ne ide dovoljno daleko. Polna razlika se ne odnosi samo na telo koje oseća svoju nesavršenost, nego na nesvesno telo ili na nesvesno kao telo. To jest, kao odvojeno od mišljenja – čak i analoškog mišljenja. Ova razlika je ex hypothesi izvan naše kontrole. Možda (zato što, kako je to Frojd pokazao u svom opisu odložene akcije, ona upisuje efekte bez da je zapis bio “memorisan” u obliku sećanja) stvar stoji sasvim obrnuto? Ova razlika prvobitno postavlja polja percepcije i mišljenja kao funkcije čekanja, dvosmislenosti, kao što sam i rekao? Ovo najverovatnije definiše patnju u opažanju i razumevanju kao stvorenu putem nemogućnosti ujedinjavanja i potpunog određenja viđenog objekta. Onome što bi bez rodne razlike bilo samo neutralno iskustvo prostora-vremena percepcije i mišljenja, iskustvo u kome bi osećanje nesavršenosti nedostajalo kao nesrećno, ali koje jedino stvara jednostavnu i čistu kognitivnu estetiku; ovoj neutralnosti rodna razlika dodaje patnju napuštanja, jer to vraća neutralnosti ono što ni jedno polje viđenja i mišljenja ne može da sadrži – zahtev. Moć da se transcendira dato o kojoj ste govorili, moć koja je smeštena u imanenciji, svakako pronalazi način da to uradi u rekurzivnosti ljudskog jezika – mada takva sposobnost nije samo mogućnost, nego stvarna sila. Ta sila je želja.
Dakle, inteligencija koju pripremate da preživi solarnu eksploziju moraće da nosi u sebi tu silu na svom međuzvezdanom putovanju. Vaše misleće mašine moraće da se hrane ne samo radijacijom nego i neizlečivim raskolom roda.
Ovde ponovo treba postaviti pitanje kompleksnosti. Slažem se sa teorijom fizike da je tehnološko-naučni razvoj, na površini Zemlje, sadašnji oblik procesa negentropije ili usložnjavanja koji traje od kada je Zemlja počela da postoji. Slažem se da ljudska bića nisu, niti su ikada bila pokretači ovog usložnjavanja, nego posledice i nosioci ove negentropije, njeni nastavljači. Slažem se da će bestelesna inteligencija, u čije stvaranje je sve upregnuto, omogućiti odgovor na izazov procesu usložnjavanja koji upućuje entropijski talas plime i oseke, koji se, sa ove tačke gledišta, izjednačava sa budućom solarnom eksplozijom. Slažem se da će sa kosmičkim egzilom ove inteligencije mesto visoke kompleksnosti – centar negentropije – izbeći svoju najverovatniju posledicu, sudbinu koja je obećana svakom izolovanom sistemu drugim Karnoovim (Carnot) zakonom – upravo zbog toga što ova inteligencija neće dozvoliti sebi da ostane izolovana u svom zemaljsko-solarnom stanju. Slažući se sa svim tim, priznajem da ovu tehno-nauku ne pokreće nikakva ljudska želja da se sazna ili promeni stvarnost, nego kosmička okolnost. Međutim, obratite pažnju da kompleksnost ove inteligencije prevazilazi kompleksnost najsofisticiranijih logičkih sistema, pošto je to potpuno drugačija vrsta stvari. Kao materijalna celina, ljudsko telo sprečava odvojivost ove inteligencije, sprečava njeno izgnanstvo i samim tim njen opstanak. Ali, istovremeno, telo, naše fenomenološko, smrtno, opažajuće telo, jeste jedini dostupan analogon za mišljenje određene kompleksnosti mišljenja.
Mišljenje izdašno koristi analogiju. Ono to čini i u naučnom otkriću, naravno “pre” nego što je njegova operativnost fiksirana u paradigmama. Sa druge strane njegova moć analogije može takođe da se vrati, uvodeći u igru spontano analoško polje opažajućeg tela, obrazujući Sezanovo (Cézanne) oko, Debisijevo (Debussy) uho, da vidi i čuje ono što može biti dato, skrivene razlike, boje tonova, koje su “beskorisne” za opstanak, čak i za kulturni opstanak.
Ali, još jednom, ova moć analogije, koja analogno i uzajamno pripada telu i duhu, i koju telo i duh dele jedno sa drugim u umetnosti invencije, nekonsekventna je u poređenju sa nepopravljivom transcendencijom upisanom na telu rodnom razlikom. Ne samo proračun, nego ni analogija ne može da odbaci ostatak koji preostaje putem ove razlike. Ova razlika se čini da se mišljenje beskonačno nastavlja, i ne dozvoljava sebi da bude mišljena. Mišljenje je neodvojivo od fenomenološkog tela, iako je rodno telo odvojeno od mišljenja i pokreće mišljenje. U iskušenju sam da u ovoj razlici vidim prvobitnu eksploziju, izazov mišljenju koji se može uporediti sa solarnom katastrofom. Ali to nije slučaj, jer ova razlika izaziva beskonačno mišljenje – koje se kao takvo drži u rezervi u tajnosti tela i misli. Ona poništava samo Jedno. Morate pripremiti post-solarno mišljenje za neizbežnost i kompleksnost ovog razdvajanja. U suprotnom, za kormilom svemirskog broda Exodus, još uvek će biti entropija.

Prevela s engleskog Aleksandra Zdravković

(Iz: Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman, Polity Press, Cambridge 1991)



Bonustrack

RORSCHACH TE(K)ST

JUTARNJI LIST PIŠE:



Prije pet dana "Jutarnji list" je pisao:

TEKST br.1

Otkrivamo koga će na stranačkim izborima podržati Bandićevi ljudi koji bi mogli presuditi u izboru novog predsjednika


Dvojac Milanović - Jurčić kao privremeno rješenje


Zagrebački SDP-ovci koji bi mogli imati najznačajniju ulogu u izboru novog predsjednika stranke još nisu dogovorili koga će podržati.

Iz razgovora s nekoliko zagrebačkih SDP-ovaca doznali smo da na liderskoj poziciji kao trajno rješenje ne vide nijednog od trenutačno eksponiranih kandidata.

Njihov animozitet prema Željki Antunović i dalje je jednak. Ljubo Jurčić još im je nepoznanica, a Zorana Milanovića, kažu neki od njih, vide na vrhu stranke, ali - privremeno. Zasad im se ne čini realnom Bandićeva kandidatura iako je s njim, upozoravaju, svako iznenađenje moguće.

- Zagreb će se zasad držati po strani. Dokad? Pa, vidjet ćemo. Ionako je to privremeno rješenje. Popunjava se samo jedno upražnjeno mjesto, i to na godinu dana. To nikako nije trajno rješenje - rekao nam je jedan utjecajan zagrebački SDP-ovac.

Potvrdio nam je da sada najviše izgleda ima scenariji prema kojemu bi zagrebački SDP za predsjednika stranke podržao Milanovića, a za premijerskog kandidata Jurčića.

Zagrebački SDP-ovci, naime, na predsjedničkoj bi poziciji voljeli vidjeti nekoga uz koga će, kao i dosad, “mirno koegzistirati”, a smatraju da to nipošto ne bi bilo moguće uz Antunović, koja ima ambicije i prema Zagrebu, za razliku od Jurčića ili Milanovića.

Jedan član zagrebačkog SDP-a iznio nam je tumačenje kako je “Račan ostavkom dao do znanja da na čelnoj poziciji ne vidi Antunović”.

- Mislim da tim potezom nije umanjio kvalitete Željke Antunović, ali da je procijenio kako ona nije osoba za vodeću poziciju - rekao nam je taj sugovornik.



Kao da se ništa nije dogodilo, ili kao da se ne znam što u međuvremenu dogodilo, "Jutranji list" odjednom piše:


TEKST br.2


Bandić će podržati Željku Antunović?


ZAGREB - Glavni odbor SDP-a na sjednici u subotu će raspravljati o sazivanju izvanredne izborne konvencije na kojoj će se birati novi predsjednik SDP-a. Članovi Glavnog odbora, njih 63, moraju odlučiti i o broju i strukturi delegata, no prema najavama predsjednika tog tijela Tonina Picule, konvencija bi mogla okupiti 1615 delegata, a održat će se vjerojatno 2. lipnja.

Najviše će delegata stići iz zagrebačke organizacije, potom splitske i riječke. Zato je važno koga će podržati Milan Bandić. Iz razgovora s Bandićevim suradnicima može se zaključiti da je Bandić zasad odustao od ideje da se sam kandidira za šefa SDP-a. Bandić se navodno boji riskirati jer je ostalo premalo vremena do parlamentarnih izbora. Jedan od njegovih najbližih suradnika kaže da je zagrebački gradonačelnik 17 godina gradio karijeru te da bi, kad bi se, primjerice, kandidirao pa izgubio na izborima za Sabor - mogao najednom ostati bez svega.

U izborima za predsjednika SDP-a podržat ću Željku Antunović jer bi taj izbor imao najmanje štete za stranku

Slavko Kojić

- Sigurno je da rukovodstvo stranke pada ako ne dobijemo Sanadera - izjavio je jedan od Bandićevih suradnika. Dakle, zagrebački SDP-ovci smatraju da je prvi sljedeći predsjednik SDP-a “žrtveno janje” i samo trenutno rješenje, a da bi se zagrebački gradonačelnik mogao kandidirati na sljedećim stranačkim izborima.

Zagrebački SDP-ovci sutra navečer će se sastati s gradonačelnikom Bandićem kako bi dogovorili strateški plan. Nije, tvrde nam, isključeno da zagrebačka organziacija odluči poduprijeti Željku Atnunović.

Potpredsjednik zagrebačke organizacije SDP-a i zagrebački pročelnik Slavko Kojić u četvrtak je za Jutarnji list izjavio da će podržati Željku Antunović. - To je moj osobni stav. Mislim da bi taj izbor imao najmanje štete za stranku - rekao je Kojić i dodao da Ljubu Jurčića ne bi podržao ni kao šefa stranke niti kao kandidata za premijera.

Jedan od Bandićevih suradnika izjavio je da će se zauzeti za to da novi šef SDP-a bude dugogodišnji član stranke te da u biografiji ne bi smio imati podatak o članstvu u drugoj stranci. Na Glavnom odboru vjerojatno će se otvoriti i pitanje treba li SDP odmah izabrati premijerskog kandidata ili tek naknadno, tko bi to trebao biti, može li to biti netko tko nije predsjednik stranke.

RUN 'N' GUN

Ili si u sedlu i jašeš ili nisi.*
Milan Bandić


Zagrebački gradonačelnik Milan Bandić pitao je na sastanku Linića: ‘Odakle ti znaš da Jurčić može pobijediti Sanadera?’. Istraživanja o popularnosti vodećih SDP-ovih političara provodit će se među građanima i bit će glavni kriterij



ZAGREB - SDP će svojeg premijerskog kandidata najvjerojatnije birati na temelju istraživanja o popularnosti vodećih SDP-ovih političara, sudeći prema posljednjim informacijama s Iblerova trga.

Rezultat istraživanja, odnosno javno mišljenje bit će, dakle, jedan od najvažnijih kriterija za njegov izbor.

Takva odluka stranačkog vrha, koja je prihvaćena na sastanku u ponedjeljak, rezultat je uključivanja moćnog zagrebačkog SDP-ovca Milana Bandića u političku bitku za vlast u stranci.
Prvi put od ostavke Ivice Račana zagrebački gradonačelnik i šef zagrebačke organizacije SDP-a povukao je potez kojim se direktno uključio u unutarstranačka previranja. Naime, upravo je Bandić, tvrde naši izvori iz SDP-a, na tom sastanku predložio da se provede ispitivanje javnog mnijenja o popularnosti istaknutih SDP-ovih političara te da rezultat tog ispitivanja bude jedan od glavnih kriterija kada će se odlučivati o SDP-ovu kandidatu za premijera.

Sudionici sastanka kažu da su zagovornici Ljube Jurčića pokušali uvjeriti v.d. predsjednika stranke Željku Antunović da i ona podrži Jurčića kao premijerskog kandidata jer, govorili su, jedino Jurčić kao kandidat može pobijediti Ivu Sanadera.

- Odakle vi to znate? - upitao je Milan Bandić, prema navodima dvoje naših sugovornika koji su prisustvovali sastanku. Na to mu je Slavko Linić odgovorio kako sve ankete govore da je Jurčić najpopularniji SDP-ov kandidat za premijera.

Prema riječima onih koji su bili na sastanku, Bandić je onda rekao: “Ako je to kriterij za izbor premijerskog kandidata, neka se onda provede istraživanje o popularnosti vodećih SDP-ovaca.” Kao rezultat te rasprave, iz koje je bilo jasno da nema suglasja oko Jurčića kao premijerskog kandidata, zaključeno je da SDP za sada neće određivati premijerskog kandidata, nego će se ići samo na izbor predsjednika stranke.

Milan Bandić na tom je istom sastanku predložio i da se postigne suglasje oko jednog zajedničkog kandidata za predsjednika stranke kojeg bi potvrdio Glavni odbor, no u stranci postoje i razmišljanja da Glavni odbor jednostavno treba poduprijeti svaku kandidaturu koja pristigne na legalan, statutom propisan način.

U SDP-u je danas održan i sastanak Izbornog stožera koji nastavlja redovite pripreme za izbore, a Slavko Linić iskazao je uvjerenje da biranje novog vodstva neće podijeliti SDP. Naglasio je da svi u SDP-u, uključujući i budućeg predsjednika stranke i premijerskog kandidata, imaju samo jedan cilj.

- Pobijediti na izborima nesposobni HDZ koji je doveo građane do osiromašenja i upetljan je u niz korupcijskih afera - istaknuo je Linić.

U jednom tjedniku danas je objavljeno i da je Zoran Milanović definitivno odlučio kandidirati se za predsjednika stranke, no on to danas nije želio ni potvrditi ni demantirati.

Lieber tot als rot

Better red than dead



Politički komentar dana

"Better dead than Red" was an anti-Communist phrase first used during World War II in its original German form "Lieber tot als rot" and later during the Cold War by the United States. It was coined by Nazi Germany's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels in the end phase of the Second World War to motivate the German military and population to fight the Russians to the end.[citation needed]

The English version may come from the original German but it could also be a re-invention. The slogan was used in the United States in the 1950s by anti-Communists to express their opposition to a Communist takeover in the USA, or indeed to any potent leftist influence at all. The counter-slogan "Better Red than dead" also developed. (See also McCarthyism)

The phrase continues to find use today in various places. Because of the common use of the primary colors red and blue to represent Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning U.S. states, people in some more politically liberal regions might express their disgust with the power of conservative-leaning areas by using the phrase.

"Better dead than red" has also been used in school rivalries. For instance, it has been yelled by fans of teams that match up against the Wisconsin Badgers (who use the colors red and white), especially fans of the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

During the 1970's the phrase was common amongst teens and young adults marking the dividing line between the social class of marijuana users and those who did not. With the color red referring to the non-users as rednecks.

The phrase also used and embraced by fascists. Most notably used as the name of the American "RAC/Oi!" band "Better Dead Than Red."

Jouissance

VENUS IN FURS vs. VENUS INFERS


Rubbersoul:

Sex also needs some phantasmic screen -- . . . any contact with a 'real' flesh-and-blood other, any sexual pleasure that we find in touching another human being, is not something evident but something inherently traumatic, and can be sustained only in so far as this other enters the subject's fantasy-frame. . . . What happens, then, when this screen dissolves? The act turns into ugliness -- even horror.



Átame!

The Real of sexual activity is disgusting, make no bones about it. The closer one gets microscopically to the body of the other, i.e., the more fully one asks the other's body to 'tell everything' about itself (its Reality), the more one runs the danger of being repulsed. The tongue is slimy and coated like a fat, crawling bug; the penis and vagina ooze and emit slimy, foul fluids; the genitals (as mentioned by both Augustine and Freud) are but a nanometer away from the urinary opening and the infamous organ of excrement; the body rots, sags, stinks, is covered with warts and pores and bumps and blemishes of all sorts; and one experiences what little beauty the body does have, and what little excitement it is able to produce, less frequently and less intensely the more one comes in contact with it (the more one approaches the Real). Yes, it attracts, but it also repels. It is the role of fantasy to allow us to experience the real that we create (i.e., the body purged of its ugliness, the body in which the beauty shines forth). Besides, most people are just plain fat, or ugly, or otherwise physically repulsive. We need fantasy, then, to get things going. Else we would forever refuse to get into bed with anyone. Sometimes the fantasy is fueled or constituted precisely by "love," which refuses to see the foulness; sometimes it is fueled by horniness (according to David Hume; see also Simon Blackburn); sometimes it is fueled by alcohol (Jerry Seinfeld); and sometimes, of course, we try to mask the ugliness and emphasize the beauty with cosmetics, clothing, and swagger -- and end up only postponing the other's frightening encounter with our Real body.



LOST IN TRANSLATION

Jesen. Četnik na groblje
odnesen. Raznesen.
Malen zdrug i trešnja

Danima sam sustavno bio maltretiran anonimnim posjetama Osaklija: sada su konačno dolijali!
Netom nakon što su Osakljani prešli u Kinu koja se na srpski kaže Bioskopija: 15ss-5s.tsinghua.edu.cn., Manđurske su im vlasti stale na kraj!
Stvarno me jebu ti azijati! Vršljaju tak mali pa im ne može čovjek nikako stati na kraj.

Očito, nastupila je zen faza.
Kad sam već blizu satorija, evo autentičnog bilogorskog zen-koana, Majstora Leba:

Zen caffe bara Mir

Caffe bar Mir smješten je pored starog Zagorca, na cesti prema Tomi Vinkoviću i Česmi, gledajući od strane Centralovog parkirališta. Zašto to kažem? Bez veze, eto zašto. Onome tko nije iz Bijelovara ti podaci neće pomoći, a onaj tko potiče iz tog pitomog gradića na bilogorskim brdima ionako zna gdje je Mir.
U Miru se okupljaju pijanci. Tamo su od jutra do mraka, svakog dana. Tamo se tješe, filozofiraju, tuku, ljube i pjevaju.

Moj prijatelj Zordan (koji je jučer bio u emisiji Prijatelj na kvadrat) rekao je kako jedne nedjelje otišao u Mir kupiti cigarete. I tako, ušao je unutra, on ima jedno dvadesetak godina, ušao je tamo i zatekao stalnu postavu srednjevječnih ljudi s rukavima zaljepljenim o stolove, kako mutna pogleda traže poticaj za otvaranje usta.

Zordan je prišao šanku i naručio bijeli ronhil i još jedne cigarete, za druga ili drugaricu koji/ja je ostao/la vani.

Pogledao ga je jedan od pijanaca, razmišljao par minuta i razbio tišinu riječima: Ja imam četiri sina i jednu kćer.

Ostali pijanci su šutjeli. Svi su šutjeli, konobarica, Zordan i pijanci. U Miru je zavladao mir. Ugodan ili neugodan, kako kome.

Nakon par minuta, jedan od pijanaca je odgovorio pijancu-roditelju:

"Kud baš kćer."

Eto, tu priču ispričao nam je Zordan



RADICAL SEX

Vertebrata, ženski i muški mazohizam su dvije posve različite priče.

K tomu još: ima feminizama i feminizama.

Usput, čini mi se smislenim pretpostaviti da ni onih preostalih 96% (straight, op.N.) ne čine homogenu jezgru nadmoćne normalnosti, nego ih valja dalje dijeliti na skupine od po 4% ove ili one denominacije.

Ima, recimo, jedna teta, zove se Pat Califia, ali u stvari nije više teta nego je sad striček, koja piše lezbijsku s/m pornografiju i teoriju i drže ju za uglednu feministkinju. A, zašto je spominjem: pa zato jer je pokrenula leatherwomen's quarterly Venus Infers. Da nije zgodno:
Venus in Furs vs. Venus Infers.

Čitala sam njezinu zbirku priča Macho Sluts, i mala nije loša.

Njetočka

Jedna nevolja nikada ne dolazi sama! Jasno da je Pat Califa rođena u mjestu ingeniozno američkog imena: Corpus Christi, Texas.

NEMANJA

Nije da se ne zna, zna se. Pat je bisexual transgendered person i k tome pobornica radical sexa. Najjprije je bila biseksualna žena, da bi, nakon operacije, postala biseksualnim muškarcem. Pat je, bre, sveznajuća ko Tirezija. Neka dete uči.

Draga Nemanjice, znadem ja kako Pat izgleda, no to se nije se nepovoljno odrazilo na njezino pisanje. Lezbe ti vole taj tip vozačice kamiona, znam da ti to ne kuzis, no ti nisi lezba.

Njetočka



FILIA

It is highly hazardous to enter this domain of the utmost intimacy, as one gets more than one asked for -- all of a sudden, when it is already too late to withdraw, one finds oneself in a slimy obscene domain. . . . Perhaps the feature which characterizes true friendship is precisely a tactful knowledge of when to stop, not going beyond a certain threshold and 'telling everything' to a friend. We do tell everything to a psychoanalyst -- but precisely for that reason, he can never be our friend.



DEATH DRIVE

Death drive is basically, I claim, the Freudian term for immortality. Death drive has nothing to do, as Lacan points out, convincingly, with this so-called nirvana principle where everything wants to disappear, and so on. If anything (and because of this I like to read Richard Wagner's operas where you have this), death drive is that which prevents you from dying. Death drive is that which persists beyond life and death. Again, it's precisely what, in my beloved Stephen King's horror/science fiction terminology he calls the "undead": this terrifying insistence beneath death, which is why Freud links death drive to the compulsion to repeat. You know, it can be dead, but it goes on. This terrifying insistence of an undead object.



PERE VERSION

Točkice, nisam lezba. ali sam još kao mali volio lizati marke kad smo pisali razglednice s mora. Misliš li da bi, uz adekvatan trud, mogao postati barem leatherwomen?

P.S.

Kad bi ih ja polizao marke bi otpadal s razglednica: jedan liz i lepak bi skliznuo s marake kao šal Isadore D. crnim automobilskim lakom diskutabilnog Amilcara.

Moram prenesti celokupni pasus o toj bizarnoj smrti:

A habitual wearer of flowing scarves which trailed behind her, Duncan's fashion preferences were the cause of her death in a freak automobile accident in Nice, France, on the night of September 14, 1927 at the age of 50. The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein's mordant remark that "affectations can be dangerous."

Duncan was a passenger in the Amilcar automobile of a handsome young Italian mechanic, Benoît Falchetto, whom she had ironically nicknamed 'Buggatti' [sic]. (The marque of the automobile is open to dispute but the informed opinion is that it was an Amilcar, a 1924 GS model. It was regularly described and filmed as a more glamorous Bugatti). Before getting into the car, she said to a friend, Mary Desti, and some companions, "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais Ă la gloire!" ("Goodbye, my friends, I am off to glory!") However, according to the diaries of the American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan's body in the morgue (his diaries are in the collection of the Beineke Library at Yale University), Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan's last words. Instead, she told Wescott, the dancer actually said, "Je vais Ă l'amour" ("I am off to love"), which Desti considered too embarrassing to go down in history as the legend's final utterance, especially since it suggested that Duncan hoped that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation. Whatever her actual last words, when Falchetto drove off, Duncan's immense handpainted silk scarf, which was a gift from Desti and was large enough to be wrapped around her body and neck and flutter out of the car, became entangled around one of the vehicle's open-spoked wheels and rear axle. Duncan died on the spot.

As the New York Times noted in its obituary of the dancer on 15 September 1927, "The automobile was going at full speed when the scarf of strong silk began winding around the wheel and with terrific force dragged Miss Duncan, around whom it was securely wrapped, bodily over the side of the car, precipitating her with violence against the cobblestone street. She was dragged for several yards before the chauffeur halted, attracted by her cries in the street. Medical aid was summoned, but it was stated that she had been strangled and killed instantly."

Isadora Duncan was cremated, and her ashes were placed in the columbarium of Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.



Vladamo gradom uz pomoć orgazma & sarkazma.

Nemanja

Da. I provodimo kulturnu strahovladu.

Njetočka



LEATHERWOMAN

Nemanja, svi smo mi leatherwoman.

A možemo li onda, ako smi svi mi leatherwoman, ti i ja biti lezbe? Mislim, to me pitanje muči već duže vrijeme...

Ja mislim da je 'Sebastiane' film za pedere. To mi se nekak ne sviđa. Upravo sam ušao u svoju lezbijsku fazu i za pederastiju i Svete čete nemam nikakva afiniteta. Bez obzira na njihovu velicanstvenu žrtvu. Pusti ti to.

Onda ispada da sam ja peder. I to ortodoksni.
Može onda tako? Ti budi lezba, ja ću biti peder i stvar štima.

Ili možemo biti superjunakinje Leatherwoman i Venusinfurs.

E, može, to je sjajno: ja sam lezba, ti peder, a ja se furam na Leatherwoman a ti si Venusinfurs! Ti imaš muf od kriptonskog zeca! A ja Atilin bič od volovske žile (jebome ti ako ja znam koja bi to žila bila, ali stipu, u filmu sam!). Ja se hvatam jezikom za zgrade kao Spiderman paučinom, a ti ulaziš na stražnje ulaze i izazivaš strah i drhtanje! Mmmmm, razradit ću ovo, uslikati nas i posvetiti nam cijeli blog. Vartebrata može biti Robinja (neka vrst Batmanovog Robina). On ima čarobnu knjigu iz koje za svaku prigodu zlikovcu prije egzekucije pročita adekvatan citat! Vladamo gradom uz pomoć orgazma & sarkazma.
Šta kažeš?



According to the Jewish tradition, Lilith is the woman a man makes love to while he masturbates alone in his bed during the night - far from standing for the feminine identity liberated from the patriarchal hold, her status is purely phallic: she is what Lacan calls La femme, the Woman, the fantasmatic supplement of the male masturbatory phallic jouissance.



Technique

Bondage can be divided into six main categories:
• Bondage that pulls parts of the body together (rope, straps, harnesses).
• Bondage that spreads parts of the body apart (spreader bars, x-frames).
• Bondage that ties the body down to another object (such as chairs or stocks).
• Bondage that suspends the body from another object (suspension bondage).
• Bondage that restricts normal movement (hobble skirts, handcuffs, pony harness).
• Bondage that wraps the whole body or a part of it in bindings such as cloth or plastic (saran wrap or cling film "mummification") as well as sleepsack bondage.
Some of the large variety of restraints used in bondage:
• Rope, often preferred because of its flexibility. Rigging, however, requires considerable skill and practice to do safely.
• Chains, including police handcuffs, thumbcuffs and belly chains.
• Institutional restraints, including straitjackets.
• Purpose-made bondage gear, such as monogloves, sleepsacks, bondage hooks and bondage tables.
Some simple bondage techniques:
• Verbal bondage, in which (as the name suggests) the top simply tells the bottom to do something.
• Simply tying the hands together in front or behind.
• Anchoring the hands to the front, back or sides of a belt at the waist.
• A spread eagle, with the limbs splayed out and fastened by wrists and ankles to bedposts, door frame or some other anchoring point.
• A hogtie securing each wrist to its corresponding ankle behind the back (wider, padded restraints such as bondage cuffs are recommended for this).
• A ball lock involves fastening a padlock around the male testicles, leaving the male at his partner's mercy for what could be a prolonged period, in private or concealed in public.
• The crotch rope involves pulling a rope between the labia to apply pressure to the female genitals. Sometimes a knot is placed in the rope at the position of the clitoris to intensify the sensation.
Some more complex techniques:
• The reverse prayer position (not recommended unless the subject has flexible shoulders).
• An over-arm tie, in which the arms are brought over the head, and the wrists fastened together behind the head and then by a length of rope, chain or strapping to a belt at the waist.
There are also some common fantasy settings in which bondage is often played:
• Rape fantasy: The top fictitiously abducts the consenting bottom and has complete control to do what he/she pleases.
• Domination/slavery: A training session occurs in which rewards for obedience and punishment for defiance are given. Humiliation is usually involved.
• Predicament bondage: The bottom is given a choice between two tortures. For example, caning on the rear or flogging on the chest. If the bottom cannot stand one any longer, the top will start the other. This can also be done mechanically, like having a bottom squat and rigging a crotch rope to tighten if they attempt to stand.
Bondage is often combined with other sexual and BDSM techniques. See list of bondage positions and list of bondage equipment for more details.
Technique in self-bondage is more complex, involving special methods to apply the bondage to oneself, and also to effect a release after a lapsed period of time. Self-bondage is also notably risky: see the safety notes below.



Jouissance (as opposed to plaisir); the disruptive rapture experienced when transgressing limits.

In BDSM, the safeword is generally used so that the 'bottom' can scream "no, stop", etc. as much as he/she wants without really meaning it, and still have a way of indicating a serious desire that the scene stops. Accordingly, a safeword is usually a word that the person would not ordinarily say during sex, such as red light, big tree, scrambled eggs, mercy, uncle or even aardvark. Commonly the word safeword itself is used as a safeword. It is the default at many play parties.

With the range of safewords in common use it is important that the safeword be negotiated beforehand.




The Interpassive Subject

Fetish between structure and humanism

According to the classic Althusserian criticism of the Marxist problematic of commodity fetishism, this notion relies on the humanist ideological opposition of "human persons" versus "things." Is it not one of Marx's standard determinations of fetishism that, in it, we are dealing with "relations between things (commodities)" instead of direct "relations between people," i.e. that, in the fetishist universe, people (mis)perceive their social relations in the guise of relations between things? Althusserians are fully justified in emphasizing how, beneath this "ideological" problematic, there is another, entirely different — structural — concept of fetishism already at work in Marx: at this level, "fetishism" designates the short-circuit between the formal/differential structure (which is by definition "absent," i.e. it is never given "as such" in our experiential reality) and a positive element of this structure. When we are victims of the "fetishist" illusion, we (mis)perceive as the immediate/"natural" property of the object-fetish that which is conferred upon this object on account of its place within the structure. The fact that money enables us to buy things on the market, is not a direct property of the object-money, but results from the structural place of money within the complex structure of socio-economic relations; we do not relate to a certain person as to a "king" because this person is "in himself" (on account of his charismatic character or something similar) a king, but because he occupies the place of a king within the set of socio-symbolic relations; etc.etc.

Our point, however, is that these two levels of the notion of fetishism are necessarily connected: they form the two constitutive sides of the very concept of fetishism; which is why one cannot simply devalue the first as ideological, in contrast to the second as properly theoretical (or "scientific"). To make this point clear, one should reformulate the first feature in a much more radical way. Beneath the apparently humanist-ideological opposition of "human beings" and "things," there lurks another, much more productive notion, that of the mystery of substitution and/or displacement: how is it ontologically possible that the innermost "relations between people" can be displaced onto (or substituted by) "relations between things"? That is to say, is it not a basic feature of the Marxian notion of commodity fetishism that "things believe instead of us, in the place of us"? The point worth repeating again and again is that, in Marx's notion of fetishism, the place of the fetishist inversion is not in what people think they are doing, but in their social activity itself: a typical bourgeois subject is, in terms of his conscious attitude, an utilitarian nominalist — it is in his social activity, in exchange on the market, that he acts as if commodities were not simple objects, but objects endowed with special powers, full of "theological whimsies." In other words, people are well aware how things really stand, they know very well that the commodity-money is nothing but a reified form of the appearance of social relations, i.e. that, beneath the "relations between things," there are "relations between people" — the paradox is that, in their social activity, they act as if they do not know this, and follow the fetishist illusion. The fetishist belief, the fetishist inversion, is displaced onto things, it is embodied in what Marx calls "social relations between things." And the crucial mistake to be avoided here, is the properly "humanist" notion that this belief, embodied in things, displaced onto things, is nothing but a reified form of direct human belief: the task of the phenomenological reconstitution of the genesis of "reification," is then to demonstrate how original human belief was transposed onto things… The paradox to be maintained is that displacement is original and constitutive: there is no immediate, self-present living subjectivity to whom the belief embodied in "social things" can be attributed, and who is then dispossesed of it. There are some beliefs, the most fundamental ones, which are from the very outset "decentered," beliefs of the Other; the phenomenon of the "subject supposed to believe," is thus universal and structurally necessary. From the very outset, the speaking subject displaces his belief onto the big Other qua the order of pure semblance, so that the subject never "really believed in it"; from the very beginning, the subject refers to some decentered other to whom he imputes this belief. All concrete versions of this "subject supposed to believe" (from small children for whose sake parents pretend to believe in Santa Claus, to the "ordinary working people" for whose sake Communist intellectuals pretend to believe in Socialism) are stand-ins for the big Other. So, what one should answer to the conservative platitude according to which every honest man has a profound need to believe in something, is that every honest man has a profound need to find another subject who would believe in his place…



PARADOX OF MOVING STATUES

As if to acknowledge this problem, the most frequent metaphorical vehicle used in representing fetishism is the image of the object that comes to life. Karl Marx explains, for example, that fetishism occurs when "the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own" (Capital 165). In commodity fetishism, products appear transformed by their entry into exchange relations. A wooden table is just a table:

But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will. (163-164)

Using the same metaphor, Comte represents fetishism as if the material world were alive in every tree and rock. Similarly, Tylor illustrates fetishism with a story (originally from Charles Darwin) of "two Malay women in Keeling Island who held a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table or a hat at a modern spirit-seance" (2: 152).21 All of these are examples of what Zizek, in "Fetishism and Its Vicissitudes," calls the "paradox of moving statues, of dead objects coming alive and/or of petrified living objects" that comes into play when "the barrier which separates the living from the dead is transgressed" (Plague 89, 88).



FETISH

These objects constitute the symptom of the human being; but they can also become the opposite: its fetish. Žižek writes of the fetish that it is effectively the counterpart to the symptom; operating as a kind of sham life, it structures our entire life in order to support it. The fetish is the embodiment of a lie that enables us to endure an unbearable truth (Slavoj Žižek 2000). This is the Real itself (in the Lacanian sense), an isolated object (the Lacanian objet petit a) whose fascinating and meaningful presence guarantees the structural real, the social order. This real enables one to gain a distance from everyday reality: one introduces an object that has no place inside it, that cannot be named or otherwise symbolized - the photo collage of the beloved in the film The Truman Show, for example. What Žižek means is that every symbolic structure must contain an element that embodies the moment of its impossibility, around which it is organized. This is both impossible and real (in its effect) at the same time. The symptom on the other hand is the return of the repressed truth in a different form.
Žižek explains this objet petit a—the MacGuffin—in the following way: "MacGuffin is objet petit a pure and simple: the lack, the remainder of the real that sets in motion the symbolic movement of interpretation, a hole at the center of the symbolic order, the mere appearance of some secret to be explained, interpreted, etc."



Jouissance: it is the shocking and transgressive enjoyment that attends the subject's involvement with experiences that normally are not talked about such as death, sex or violence. In addition to a more or less coherent set of discursive claims about the wrld, ideologies structure the subject's relations to "the Real of jouissance", if they are to reproduce themselves. Finally, Zizek contends that these two registers of the Real are not the deepest: actually he combines them under the term "ideological fantasies" or "phantasm". Ideological fantasies are the necessary supplement to the tenets of any given ideology. These ideological fantasies, however, that subjects are interpellated into, in fact misrepresent those same tenets: in its deepest register the Real does not name anything that heterogeneously exceeds the terms of an ideology. So in the last resort the Real indicates the inherent and necessary finitude of the ideological fabric, which ideological fantasies serve to distort as contingent and as emanating from some agency external to the political community.

Are We Allowed to Enjoy Daphnée du Maurier?

PAX LILITHICA





Slavoj Žižek

A year or so ago, while waiting in line to pay at a London Waterstone bookstore, I overheard a young man asking one of the staff: 'I just finished Mrs de Winter. Is it true that this is the sequel to another book?' This was for me a depressing encounter with the illiteracy of the younger generation-how can anyone not know about Rebecca?

Or is this oblivion perhaps deserved? There is something radically untimely about Daphne du Maurier: her prose seems marked by a melodramatic excess that often comes dangerously close to the ridiculous-after reading one of her books, it is difficult to avoid the vague sentiment that it is no longer possible to write like that today. 1 She tells stories without truly being a writer; in what, then, resides the secret of the undisputed tremendous power of fascination exerted by her stories? What if these two features are somehow connected? What if her lack of style, her pathetic directness, is the formal effect of the fact that du Maurier's narratives directly, all too directly, stage the fantasies that sustain our lives? The notion of fantasy has to be taken here in all its fundamental ambiguity: far from being opposed to reality, fantasy is that which provides the basic coordinates of what we experience as 'reality' (as Lacan puts it, 'everything we are allowed to approach by way of reality remains rooted in fantasy' 2) - however, in order to fulfil this function, it has to remain hidden, it must exert its efficiency in the background: 'If what [neurotics] long for the most intensely in their phantasies is presented them in reality, they none the less flee from it'. 3 And it is this properly shameless, often embarrassing, direct staging of fantasies that makes du Maurier's writing so compelling-especially when compared with aseptic 'politically correct' feminism. 4

According to the Jewish tradition, Lilith is the woman a man makes love to while he masturbates alone in his bed during the night - far from standing for the feminine identity liberated from the patriarchal hold, her status is purely phallic: she is what Lacan calls La femme, the Woman, the fantasmatic supplement of the male masturbatory phallic jouissance. Significantly, while there is only one man (Adam), femininity is from the very beginning split between Eve and Lilith, between the 'ordinary' hysterical feminine subject and the fantasmatic spectre of Woman: when a man is having sex with a 'real' woman, he is using her as a masturbatory prop to support his fantasizing about the non- existent Woman... And in Rebecca, her most famous novel, du Maurier adds another twist to the Lilith myth: the fantasy of Woman is (re)appropriated by a woman - what if Lilith is not so much a male fantasy as the fantasy of a woman, the model of her fantasmatic competitor?

So where does du Maurier belong? Properly speaking, she is flanked, on one side, by Romanticism, with its notion of radical Evil ('pleasure in pain'), and, on the other side, by Freud, and the direct impact of psychoanalysis on arts - why? It is interesting to note that Lacan identified the beginning of the movement of ideas that finally gave birth to psychoanalysis as being that of Kantian ethics (particularly his Critique of Practical Reason) and the Romantic notion of 'pleasure in pain'. 5 It is this epoch that provides the only proper ground for what is deceitfully called 'applied psychoanalysis'. Prior to this moment, the universe was one in which the Unconscious was not yet operative, in which the 'subject' was identified with the Light of Reason as opposed to the impersonal Night of drives, and not, in the very kernel of its being, this Night itself; afterwards, the very impact of psychoanalysis transformed artistic literary practice (Eugene O'Neill's plays, for example, already presuppose psychoanalysis, whereas Henry James, Katherine Mansfield and even Kafka do not). It is also within this horizon that du Maurier moves- this space of the heroic innocence of the Unconscious in which irresistible passions freely roam around.

There is one term that encapsulates everything that renders this space-and du Maurier's writing itself-so problematic for contemporary feminism: feminine masochism. What du Maurier stages again and again in a shamelessly direct way is the different figure of 'feminine masochism', of a woman enjoying her own ruin, finding a tortured satisfaction in her subjection and humiliation, etc. So how are we to redeem this feature? The ultimate point of irreconciliable difference between psychoanalysis and feminism is that of rape (and/or the masochist fantasies that sustain it). For standard feminism, at least, it is an a priori axiom that rape is a violence imposed from without: even if a woman fantasizes about being raped, this only bears witness to the deplorable fact that she has internalized the male attitude. The reaction is here one of pure panic: the moment one mentions that a woman may fantasize about being raped or at least brutally mishandled, one hears the objections: 'This is like saying that Jews fantasize about being gassed in the camps, or African-Americans fantasize about being lynched!' From this perspective, the split hysterical position (that of complaining about being sexually misused and exploited, while simultaneously desiring it and provoking a man to seduce her) is secondary, while for Freud, it is primary, constitutive of subjectivity. Consequently, the problem with rape for Freud is that it has such a traumatic impact not simply because it is a case of such brutal external violence, but because it also touches on something disavowed in the victim herself. So when Freud writes, 'If what [neurotics] long for the most intensely in their phantasies is presented them in reality, they none the less flee from it', his point is not merely that this aversion occurs because of censorship, but, rather, that the core of our fantasy is unbearable to us. (Of course, this insight in no way justifies rape along the infamous lines 'she just got what she fantasized about...' - if anything, it makes it more violent: what could be more brutal than to impose on someone the traumatic core of his/her fantasy?)

What this means is that, paradoxically, the staging of what appears to be a masochist scenario is the first act of liberation: by means of it, the servant's masochistic libidinal attachment to his master is brought into the light of day, and the servant thus achieves a minimal distance towards it. In his essay on Sacher-Masoch, 6 Gilles Deleuze elaborated this aspect in detail: far from bringing any satisfaction to the sadistic witness, the masochist's self-torture frustrates the sadist, depriving him of his power over the masochist. Sadism involves a relationship of domination, while masochism is necessarily the first step towards liberation. 7 When we are subjected to a power mechanism, this subjection is always and by definition sustained by some libidinal investment: the subjection itself generates a surplus-enjoyment of its own. This subjection is embodied in a network of 'material' bodily practices, and, for this reason, we cannot get rid of our subjection through a merely intellectual reflection-our liberation has to be staged in some kind of bodily performance, and, furthermore, this performance has to be of an apparently 'masochistic' nature, it has to stage the painful process of hitting back at oneself. Did Sylvia Plath not adopt the same strategy in her famous poem 'Daddy'?

What she does in the poem is, with a weird detachment, to turn the violence against herself so as to show that she can equal her oppressors with her self- inflicted oppression. And this is the strategy of the concentration camps. When suffering is there whatever you do, by inflicting it upon yourself you achieve your identity, you set yourself free. 8

This also resolves the problem of Plath's reference to the holocaust, i.e., the reproach of some of her critics that her implicit equation of her oppression by her father to what the Nazis did to the Jews is an inadmissible exaggeration: what matters is not the (obviously incomparable) magnitude of the crime, but the fact that Plath felt compelled to adopt the strategy of turning violence against herself as the only means of psychic liberation. For this reason, it is also far too simplistic to dismiss her thoroughly ambiguous hysterical attitude towards her father (horror at his oppressive presence and, simultaneously, her obvious libidinal fascination by him - 'Every woman adores a Fascist, the boot in the face...' 9): this hysterical knot of the libidinal investment of one's own victimization can never be undone. That is to say, one cannot oppose the 'redemptive' awareness of being oppressed to the 'pathological' enjoyment the hysterical subject gains from this very oppression, interpreting their conjunction as the result of the 'liberation from patriarchal domination as an unfinished project' (to paraphrase Habermas), i.e., as the index of a split between the 'good' feminist awareness of subjection and the persisting patriarchal libidinal economy which chains the hysteric to patriarchy, making her subordination into a servitude volontaire. If this were the case, then the solution would be simple: one would enact what, apropos of Proudhon, Marx characterized as the exemplary petty bourgeois procedure of distinguishing in every phenomenon a 'good' and a 'bad' aspect, and then affirming the good and getting rid of the bad-in our case, struggling to keep the 'good' aspect (awareness of oppression) and discard the 'bad' one (finding pleasure in oppression). The reason this 'untying of the knot' doesn't work is that the only true awareness of our subjection is the awareness of the obscene excessive pleasure (surplus- enjoyment) we gain from it-which is why the first gesture of liberation is not to get rid of this excessive pleasure, but actively to assume it. If, following Franz Fanon, we define political violence not as opposed to work, but, precisely, as the ultimate political version of the 'work of the negative', of the educational self-formation, then violence should primarily be conceived as self-violence, as a violent re-formation of the very substance of subject's being.

Consequently, the first thing to do in every case of masochism is to look for the 'collateral damage' that generates the accidental side-profit. In one of the anti-Soviet jokes popular after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, a fairy-queen approaches a Czech and tells him that she is ready to grant him three wishes; the Czech immediately offers his first wish: 'The Chinese army should occupy my country for a month and then withdraw!' After the fairy-queen asks him for the other two wishes, he says: 'The same again! The Chinese should occupy us again and again!' When the bewildered queen asks him why he chose such a strange wish, the Czech answers with a malicious grin: 'Because each time the Chinese were to occupy us, they would have to pass through the Soviet Union on their way here and back!' The same holds often for 'feminine masochism', and especially for du Maurier's stories whose heroines enjoying their painful passions: they follow the logic of displacement, i.e., to interpret them properly, one should focus attention on the third (male) subject who is targeted when a woman is repeatedly 'occupied by the Chinese army'.

This, then, is what du Maurier is doing when she is staging elementary fantasmatic narratives, and, perhaps, nowhere is this clearer than in six of her short stories: 'The Birds', 'Monte Veritŕ', 'The Apple Tree', 'The Little Photographer', 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger' and 'The Old Man'. 10 They are to be read in the same way that Claude Lévi- Strauss interpreted myths: instead of directly searching for a hidden meaning within each of them, they should be interpreted through each other, read side by side-the moment one does it, one perceives that they form a precise structure. The central four stories present four versions of why sexual relationship fails. In 'Monte Veritŕ', a beautiful young Anna abandons her husband and potential lover for the 'Truth Mountain', a remote resort in the Swiss Alps, the seat of an initiatic group who lead there a secluded life of immortality, a life of eternal ecstatic satisfaction exempted from the traumas of our 'world of men and women'-in short, she chooses what Lacan called the Other Jouissance over ordinary phallic jouissance. In 'The Apple Tree', an older husband whose neglected wife died a while ago suddenly notices how a malformed apple tree close to his house bears an uncanny resemblance to her; the tree starts to haunt him and he dies, entangled in its fallen wings in a winter storm. In 'The Little Photographer', a lone, bored beautiful wife who married into rich nobility becomes involved in a weird and humiliating love affair with a poor crippled local photographer while on holiday at a seaside resort. In 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger', a young mechanic spends a long evening with a mysterious girl who is the following day revealed to be the serial murderer of several RAF pilots. In all four stories, the intrusion of an unexpected dimension disturbs the 'normal' run of things and ruins the prospect of a satisfied, calm life of a couple: the fantasmatic Other Place of non-phallic jouissance; the return of the dead wife in the guise of the tree as a conversion-symptom that haunts the husband; the strange lure of the low- class, doggishly faithful, repulsive lover; the unexpected lethal dimension of an ordinary girl. The first and the last stories are, in clear contrast, the ones with a 'happy' couple. 'The Birds' (on which, of course, Hitchcock's film is based) tells the story of a countryside family of tenants on the Cornwall coast who had to deal with attacking birds. In 'The Old Man', the observer witnesses how a strange couple living in a cottage near the sea maintains their secluded happiness by killing their intrusive son whose presence started to disturb their idyll. The two 'happy' families are thus more than weird: the one lives under siege by the attacking birds; the other has to secure its happiness by killing their offspring...

Especially instructive here is 'The Birds', especially if we compare du Maurier's original story with Hitchcock's film: while both share the same fantasmatic cataclysmic event, this event is in each case included in a different context that confers upon it an entirely different meaning. In order to unravel Hitchcock's The Birds, one should first imagine the film without the birds, simply depicting the proverbial middle-class family in the midst of an Oedipal crisis-the attacks of the birds can only be accounted for as an outlet of the tension underlying this Oedipal constellation, i.e., they clearly materialize the destructive outburst of the maternal superego, one mother's jealousy toward the young woman who tries to snatch her son from her. The same procedure should also be applied to du Maurier's 'The Birds': her 'Birds without birds' would have been a sketch of hard English peasant life, of tough characters who are aware that, ultimately, they can only rely on themselves, and are able to keep their mind and provide for their survival even in the most disturbing circumstances. The attacking birds here are thus to bring out the best of the tough character of the 'ordinary' English peasant-against what? Hints scattered throughout the story make it clear that the true target of the story is the post-World War II Labour Welfare State: the state fails to react properly to the threat of the birds and, towards the end of the story, simply ceases to function.

And the same goes for the other stories: one should first imagine an alternate version without the disturbing intrusion. 'Monte Veritŕ without Monte Veritŕ' would have been a story about an apparently happy and prosperous young couple, in which the wife is nonetheless not fully satisfied, haunted by visions of and longing for a different, more emancipated, life. 'The Apple Tree' would have been a depressing story about an old couple whose superficially calm life conceals silent despair and cruel ignorance. 'The Little Photographer' would have been a vignette on a beautiful girl who married for money but is now condemned to lead a suffocating, aseptic existence of empty family rituals, cut off from the bustle of real life. 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger' would have been a story of the everyday emotional misery of a young mechanic unable to find a stable love relationship. Finally, 'The Old Man' would have been a portrait of utter immobility: a couple isolated from society, living in a state of psychotic seclusion... The intrusive Event (birds attacking, the twisted apple tree, the strangely attractive crippled photographer, etc.) is then nothing but a fantasized escape from this misery, a figure that renders all the more palpable the misery of its everyday background - can one imagine a more devastating picture of the choices life is offering us today?

The paradox of old gramophone recordings is that, today, we perceive the singing voice whose clarity is obfuscated by scratches as more 'realistic' than the most faithful Dolby- stereo or THX recording - as if the very imperfection of the rendering is a proof that the 'real voice' was there, while, in the second case, the very perfection derealizes what we hear, turning it into an experience of a perfect fake. And, perhaps, this is how one should read du Maurier's texts: their very scratches - what makes them old-fashioned, often ridiculous-are also what keeps them alive.

Notes;

1 However, does the same not hold for many a great classic? Is it still possible today to listen to the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with the naďve recognition of the persistent knocking of fate, or is this movement forever lost on account of its later 'commodification'?

2 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan XX: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-73 (Encore), ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), 95.

3 Sigmund Freud, 'Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ("Dora")', in The Penguin Freud Library, 8: Case Histories I, ed. and trans. James Strachey (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 151.

4 Another more contemporary work that, although worthless in strict artistic terms, provides a similar powerful staging of fantasies would be Colleen McCullough's Thornbirds.

5 See Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Dennis Porter (London: Routledge, 1992), 24-25.

6 See Gilles Deleuze, 'Coldness and Cruelty', in Masochism (New York: Zone Books 1989), especially 123-34.

7 Zizek develops this notion of 'liberating violence' at some length with particular reference to David Fincher's 'Fight Club in 'Lenin's Choice', in Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917, ed. Slavoj Zizek (London and New York: Verso, 2002), 250-63.

8 Claire Brennan, The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (Cambridge: Icon Books 2000), 22.

9 Sylvia Plath, 'Daddy', in The Collected Poems, ed. Ted Hughes (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 223.

10 This paper was originally written as an introduction to the Virago Modern Classics edition of The Birds and Other Stories (London: Virago, 2004), but was rejected 'for being too theoretical and disrespectful of du Maurier' (Zizek, private communication). The six stories listed here were collected in this volume.

JOIE DE VIVRE ili KOME PJEVA THOMPSON?

NEDJELJNA MISA ZA JUGOSLAVENE



'Svaki džukac vidi guzu moje curice.', Hajdemo u planine, Bijelo dugme



VALTERDAN


Piše: Aleksandar Hemon



Proljeće je uvijek nekako počinjalo 6. aprila, na Valterdan. U zraku se osjećao kraj škole; maturanti su, iz razloga kojeg se ne mogu sjetiti, dobivali crvene karanfile; neki su bili primani u Savez komunista; hrabriji, zagorjeli parovi su se na Vilsonovom već znali pofatati ispod još malo pa prolistalih kestenova; džepovi zimskih kaputa su se polaki punili naftalinom; dani su znali biti dovoljno topli da bi se neko usudio otvoriti prozore u tramvaju, prouzrokujući tako promaju opasnu po zdravlje starijih građana, koji zimsku odjeću nisu skidali do Dana rada; a na Skenderiji pod bistom Vladimira Perića Valtera ukazali bi se vijenci i buketi cvijeća.

Valterdan je bio lokalni, urbani praznik, beznačajan izvan domena grada Sarajeva. Istaknuti pojedinci i organizacije dobijali su Šestoaprilsku nagradu, i građani su nekako bili lično vezani za dobitnike, pošto su znali tračeve o pojedincima, a radili su za organizacije. Bilo je škole, ali je sve bilo opuštenije - moglo se razguliti na ime neke svečane akademije ili koncerta Breza. Dok su federalni i republički praznici bili apstraktniji, vezani za mutna dostignuća narodnooslobodilačkog rata, socijalističkog samoupravljanja i Titovog života, važnost Valterdana - Dana oslobođenja rodnog grada - bila je konkretna i očigledna: da Sarajevo nije oslobođeno, niko ne bi smio luftati da se fata na Vilsonovom, niti bi u Domu mladih, na koncertu povodom (misteriozne) dodjele crvenih karanfila, Ljubiša Račić, taj rock'n'roll pregalac i vođa grupe Formula 4, svirao za vratom brze solaže na svom Stratocasteru, sa kojim je, činilo se, onomad sa ranjenicima pregazio Neretvu.

Valterdan je bio urbani praznik i zato što je Vladimir Perić Valter bio mnogo više dio urbane nego socijalističke mitologije. Poginuo je na Marijin-Dvoru, na ulici, kod Davora, jednog od ranih sarajevskih kafića, za razliku od svetišta narodnooslobodilačke borbe do kojih se moralo prvo autobusom, a onda uzbrdo, pješke. Bio je mlad k'o proljeće kad je, na Dan oslobođenja 1945. istupio iz redova života, izbjegavši tako moralno-političku korupciju kojoj su podlegli njegovi preživjeli drugovi. I ne samo da je bio ilegalac (divna riječ: ilegalac, suštinski alternativna i drugačija od rukovodioca ili legalca - nijedan tinejdžer nikad nije htio biti legalac), nego je imao i vrlo zajebano, ilegalno, asfaltno ime, ni nalik na nadimke tipičnih narodnih heroja: Crni, Stari, Španac, Uča. Mitski Valter je bio urbani pojedinac, heroj koji je operisao u gradu, u betonu, za razliku od narodnih heroja koji su na čelu narodnih masa u opancima i gunjevima bježali kroz obruče okupatora i domaćih izdajnika, sa jedne slobodne teritorije na drugu. Mitski Valter je bio špijun, jalijaš, prevarant, laufer - jednom riječju, sarajevski lik.

Valter brani Sarajevo, taj kultni film, nije samo eksploatisao tu valterovsku urbanu mitologiju, nego ju je i potpuno ustoličio, uprkos tome što ni Bata Životinja ni Smoki Samardžić nisu imali ni zeru sarajevskog akcenta, niti je Sarajevo geografski precizno predstavljeno, a da ne govorimo da je u ime bratstva i jedinstva (vidljivog i u izboru glumaca) eliminisano prisustvo ustaša, koji su harali Sarajevom za vrijeme onog rata. Valter brani Sarajevo je, naravno, tek slučajno bio film o narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi - njegova ideološka struktura je mnogo manje važna od njegove žanrovske strukture - što je vidljivo i u naslovu: Valter brani Sarajevo = pojedinac brani grad, što je bilo i jest vrlo različito od "narod se bori za slobodu". Zapravo, pojedinac je bio identifikovan sa gradom - Das ist Valter, kaže na kraju filma poraženi Švabo, dok pokazuje na grad, uključujući i vidljive socijalističke nebodere Novog Sarajeva.

Taj urbani individualizam i mitologija koja se oko toga prirodno gradila bila je privlačna onima koji su početkom osamdesetih, na zalasku socijalizma, konstituisali sarajevsku rock scenu - prvi album Zabranjenog pušenja se zvao, kao što znamo, Das ist Valter, a dio sljedeće generacije bio je i bend zvan Valter. Krajem osamdesetih, mit o Valteru je potpuno izgubio svoju socijalističku-ideološku dimenziju i potpuno se preselio u domen urbanog diskursa. Proslava Dana oslobođenja Sarajeva bila je lišena partijsko-državne retorike, te se 6. april pretvorio u čisto urbani praznik. Otud ima precizne simbolike u tome da je napad na Sarajevo na izvjestan način počeo oko Valterdana 1992., kao što je nekako osvješćujuća činjenica da je bivši Valter Bata Životinja lako postao ozbiljan četnik, i da se Doktor Karajlić, jedan od osnivača Zabranjenog pušenja i ključni urbani mitolog, bez pozdrava vojnim avionom ispalio u Beograd, upravo negdje oko Valterdana.

Rat je bio zasnovan na nacionalnim mitologijama, koje su bile izrađivane i razrađivane u uskim krugovima, što će reći da je u ratu de facto poražena svaka urbana mitologija. Nakon svega što se desilo, Valter brani Sarajevo nije više od divne, naivne bajke u koju je bilo lako vjerovati, zato što smo - urbani pojedinci - bilo skloni vjerovati u herojske individualce. A sarajevska rock scena danas prouzrokuje nostalgična sjećanja nalik na reminiscencije onih koji tvrde da su bili na Woodstocku - bilo je kratko i zanosno, mada se teško sjetiti detalja, pošto smo svi bili poneseni mladošću i alkoholom. I dok je herojski otpor Sarajeva za vrijeme opsade zasluživao ponavljanje rečenice sa kraja Valtera, od rata naovamo nema više heroja, osim ako u svjetlu poslijeratnog moralnog kolapsa Ćele i Gašiji ili neki drugi gangsteri, koji nikad ne bi dali sto maraka, a kamoli život za slobodu ili bilo kakvu ideju koja nije zasnovana na njihovoj guzici, ne izgledaju nekome kao junaci. Možda je Valter lik iz bajke, ali bajka je poučna.

Otud bi se možda Valterdan trebao slaviti kao što se slavi Nova godina - bio bi dernek, možda i teferič, pilo bi se, jelo bi se, a u neka doba, ne nužno u ponoć, svi bismo se do pasa izljubili, poželjeli jedni drugima bolje Sarajevo i razmijenili crvene karanfile. Djeca i omladina bi od Čika Valtera dobila poklone upotrebljive isključivo u urbanom kontekstu: malu električnu gitaru, ritam-mašinu, sintisajzer, loptu, rolšue, rezervaciju za klupu na Vilsonovom, kartu grada na kojoj se mogu obilježiti mjesta od lične važnosti, jednogodišnju pretplatu na taxi i glasački listić uz pomoć kojeg bi se s vlasti sklonili oni kojima je Sarajevo samo prijestonica nakaradne države.



VALTER BRANI OD SARAJEVA


" Mitski Valter je bio špijun, jalijaš, prevarant, laufer - jednom riječju, sarajevski lik."
Aleksandar Hemon


Zanimljiva je ta fantazma sukoba urbanih i ruralni: to je dakle ideološka laž koja strukturira bosansku zbilju. Kad se ne može kazati 'sukob jugoslavena i nejugoslavena' onda se posiže za tom višestrukom laži o sukobu urbanih i ruralnih.
Višestrukom, jer, sve da i jest nešto tako na djelu, o kakvoj se tu urbanosti radi?: o jalijašima, prevarantima, lauferima, špijunima...o tipičnom sarajevskom liku, kako autor ovog teksta opisije stereotip u kojem misli! Taj stereotip, već zato jer je stereotip, ali i u svojoj partikularnoj pitoresknosti bosanskog džepara, zaista nema nikakve veze s gradom, građanskim i smislom autentičnog građanskoga aktivizma: ako je po ičemu ta građanske hrabrost karakteristična, a onda je to po svom odnosu s "beskonačnom vrijednošću zakona". Riječ je o laži, jer chorus-line strana u sukobu i nisu činili nacionalisti (Manolić nacionalist? Milošević nacionalist? Mesić nacionalist? Ma dajte!) ali jesu osobe koje su bezostatno pripadale bivšem sigurnosnoobavještajnom miljeu (vidi: lauferi, špijuni...). Potom, riječ je o laži, jer i autor primjećuje da je protagonist njegova Valterdana tip koji kao da je 'onomad sa ranjenicima pregazio Neretvu' (usput budi kazano, kakva nedosljednost: "Mitski Valter je bio urbani pojedinac, heroj koji je operisao u gradu, u betonu, za razliku od narodnih heroja koji su na čelu narodnih masa u opancima i gunjevima bježali kroz obruče okupatora i domaćih izdajnik..."), a sada taj urbani pojedinac, kako pravilno uočava autor teksta, izgleda kao da je u opancima i gunjevima bježao kroz obruče, fašističke ili vatrenocirkuske, svejedno. Pravilno se to zapaža, jer je i Hemonu bjelodano da u slučaju Šeher-Sarajeva nema govora o urbanosti nego eventualno o pastirskom rocku, koji je samo i jedino zato jer je jugoslavenski: pastirski ergo seljački, imao takav uspjeh diljem Jugovine: nisu tu mogli postati megastarovi ni Idoli ni Azra - zanimljiv je taj odnos Azre i Dugmeta: za Jugoslavije nitko od današnjih slinavaca za Johnnyje ne bi bez smješka popratio usporedbu s Bregom, dočim danas, za male jugonostalgične potrebe, Johnny B. odjednom poprima mitske razmjere! - ali jesu tipovi koji izgledaju kao crossover The Sladea i jahorinskih čobana.
Kao što se vidi, cijela ova fanfaronada ima nevjerojatno naličje: niti su se u ratu sukobili urbani i ruralni - ta, kao da su Kusturica i Karajlić manje urbani od Hemona!? - niti su po sebi današnji apologeti na poziciji građanskog ili urbanog ( a) jer tu poziciju zapravo falsificiraju tako što njenu najgoru protivšitnu, socijalnu okretnos jalijaša s ruba zakona, označavaju kao privilegiranu socijalnu figuru i nositelja građanske svijesti, pokazujući zorno da niti razumiju što ta građanska pozicija jest i treba biti, niti je u Sarajevu zapravo ima, b) jer građanskim nazivaju zapravo jugoslavenstvo i de facto jugoslavensku nacionalističku poziciju, kojoj su srpstvo, hrvatstvo etc. navodno krivi za sve, pa i za rat, dok se elementarnim istinama ne želi pogledati u oči, i c) jer urbanime nazivaju najcrnji primitivizam koji u Sarajevu barem ima poštenu svijest o svom porijeklu, mjeri i dometu, već i time što se osamdesetih ironično naziva 'Novim primitivizmom': ako "Zabranjeno pušenje nije ovdje mjerodavno, onda ništa nije, a ono i u svojim prvim radovima (karakteristično, prvi se album zove "Das ist Walter"!) npr. u pjesmi 'Učini da budem vuk', jasno deklarira kao mogući krivovjernik, ali nikako ne raskolnik: Učini da budem prorok, da znam šta će protiv mene smisliti sutra, učini da budem indijanac jer nije dovoljno što sam crven iznutra... , da bi i u posljednjima poput pjesme 'Anarhija all over Baščaršija', otvoreno i nedvosmisleno izražavalo "svoje gađenje primitivnim i nepismenim čovjekom bosanskim, njegovim manirima pridošlice i ne samo njegovoj nesposobnosti da se snađe u urbanoj sredini već i njegovom (što je najgore) otvorenom mržnjom i agresijom prema svemu onom što urbanost predstavlja (Nervira ga ono A po zidovima...Sejo se danas dobro osjeća, sinoć je na ulici razbio hipika, mali je pokrio lice rukama, al je ostao bez bubrega...Sejo se malo muči dok razmišlja, ali sinoć ga nije izradila riba, opuco joj je odma dva šamara, kad ga je za mecu slagala...)"!, niti se jugoslavenstvo želi javno izaziti kao nacionalna pozicija, jedna među mnogima, ni manje ni više sklona nacionalizmu od ostalih (po sebi gledano, ali, za nas riječ je o konkretnim okolnostima u kojima je danas jugoslavenstvo, pritajeno iza ovakvog fake pojma građanstva, zapravo realizirano u svojoj malignoj formi: formi resentimanom opterećene svijesti o iščeznuću vlastita nacionalnog prostora, Jugoslavije, i posljedničnom mržnjom spram onih koji su se od te zemlje emancipirali i taj prostor razlomili.), a na koncu konca stvarni se uzroci rata kao i njegovi vinovnici - ta, zar je jogurt-revoluciju Milošević provodio kao srpski nacionalist? Jesu li Lazareve mošti nošene po Jugoslaviji u organizaciji srpskohrvatskih četničkoustaških falangi? Putuje li Tuđman u Kanadu osamdesetih bez znanja SDB-a?itd.itd. - sustavno ili zataškavaju ili previđaju: Ako je Hrvatskom, recimo, divljao i harao razorni fašistoidni nacionalizam, kako Bosanci sebi tumače činjenicu da su mnogi od nas Hrvata aktivno - recimo ja, na brojne načine, od kojih su intervencije u Mostaru ili Sarajevu samo jedan oblik pomoći - pomagali "protivničku", suprotnu, neprijateljsku stranu, koja je u stotinama tisuća pripadnika slobodno šetala i mojim gradom! Želim li ja dakle kazati da je nacionalna lomača buknula udbaškom potpalom i da je rat dogovornoga karaktera, ne bi li u situaciji kad za vatrometa nitko ne gleda zvijezde nastanak novih nacionalnih država poslužio kao tranzicijsko sredstvo starim udbaškim kadrovima? Da, to govorim. To uostalom više nikom nije sporno, pa čak ni povjesničarima poput Ive Banca, jedino, oni to diskretnije govore: "No, ima tu još nešto o čemu sa sigurnošću još ne možemo govoriti. Nije samo Norval birao Tuđmana. Kad je riječ o emigraciji, posebno luburićevskoj, nikad ne možemo biti sigurni govorimo li o emigraciji ili infiltraciji."
Eto, možda sada ova idilična gluparija o jugoslavenstvu koje je urbano i koje su rasturili srpski i hrvatski seljački nacionalisti ipak dobija adekvatan okvir. Bože, kakava farsa: Jugoslaveni su, ako išta jesu, nacija pridošlica, novonastala nacija mješovitih brakova prve generacije seljaka u gradovima! Zašto se sramite svoga porijekla, Jugoslaveni? Možda zato jer povijesno i nastupate u znaku srpa, seljak, i čekića, dakle radnika, pri čemu je sve građansko bilo kontrarevolucionarno, buržoasko: nenarodno! Strašno je to danas gledati: djeca onih koji su se zaklinjali u to da tko bješe ništa bit će sve - to su uglavnom i postigli, barem neko vrijeme, da ništarije budu sve i sva - djeca proletera danas pjevaju himne Građanstvu! Sinovi komunista slave vrijednosti buržoazije! Kakav epohalni neuspjeh Marxove intencije! U samo jednoj generaciji Kapital je razorio Oktobar. Ha, ha, ha, kako budalasta, nesvijesna generacija: generacija koja nije u stanju misliti izvan svijeta predodžaba, dakle uopće nije u stanju misliti: otuda ova potreba za simplificiranjem univerzuma društvenih sukoba i njihovim svođenjem na jedan, izražen predodženim parom urbani-ruralni! Konačno, kakav imbecilan i sasvim neodrživ provizorij: ruralno je tu dakle sinonim za ono nacionalno: ono što se tijekom povijesti jedino i samo zbivalo (i do pojma dovodilo) upravo unutar zidina grada!
I kao zuschlag svemu: Čujte, ako već vrijeđamo Sarajevo svodeći ga na stereotipe - jalijaš, špijun...- zašto i opet biti polovičan? Budimo pošteni pa kažimo onda da je Sarajlija u toj Jugoslaviji za svakog poštenog Beograđana i Zagrepčana bio - bosanska seljačina!
Bio, i ostao.

P.S.

Thompsonovu glazbu zaista ne slušam. Ne želim sada nabrajati što slušam kako bih se time deklarirao kao urbani, kao građanin - svakako ne slušam još jednu seljačinu, Edu Maajku, ne zbog ideologije njegovog uljanog repanja, nego zbog seljačkog akcenta koji mi ide na kurac, priznajem - ali sa žaljenjem konstatiram da je i Zagreb pripizdina, malo drukčija od Sarajeva, i zato jer je snobovska unekoliko podnošljivija (u mjeri u kojem snobizam barem izvanjski barata s import-robom, pa je ipak lakše živjeti pa i na tom površnom Zapadu, nego na Bliskom Istoku, barem meni, formiranom na kulturi toga Zapada), ali ipak pripizdina u kojoj na koncert istog tog Thompsona dolaze tisuće ljudi, u kojem po automobilima trešti Dara Bubamara, dok koncerti The Residentsa i Tuxedomoona zjape poluprazni (ne očajavam ja nad time, jebe se meni, samo konstatiram: seljačine!) . Ne slušam dakle Thompsona, ali, pun mi vas je kurac Bosanci: jedan takav jalijaš, u ime tamošnjih zelenih beretki, objašnjavao je kako je on sa svojim momcima osiguravao dolazak Pape, okom ne trepnuvši, gledajući novinara u oči, a skrivajući pritom sržnu laž današnje Bosne: u ime građanske, unitarne BiH, stvara se država muslimanske, bošnjačke nacije.
Mene Thompson smeta, moj prijatelju, onako kako bi ti htio da tebe smeta: jednostavno je riječ o razlici kulturnih idioma. Ali, tebe, vas, Bosance, Thompson, pod izgovorom da je riječ o kulturnoj borbi, smeta politički: on je za vas ustaša. A tada vi, Bosanci, radite temeljan ideološki potez uzdizanje partikularnog na razinu univerzalnog: u ime navodnih univerzalnih općeljudskih (zanimljiv je vaš prosede, prvo je upravo u ime tog ideala Čovjeka reagirala židovska zajednica!; pametni ste vi Bosanci, kako vama Muslićima čak i Židovi služe kao živi štit u uličnim borbama za Zetru!; no, dobro je da je tako: konačno smo nakon par tisućljeća vidjeli da i Židov može biti manipuliran i ispasti glup, u najboljoj namjeri - ja, kao filosemit nikada nisam mislio da je takvo što moguće.) vrijednosti, zapravo podmećete vaše partikularne, bosanske qua Bošnjačke vrijednosti: vaše manifestno jugoslavenstvo, vaš latentni muslimanski fundamentalizam.
Ali, pročitali su vas Srbi.
Kad se sve desi i prođe, Banja Luka će ionako poslovati sa Zagrebom, Široki i Mostar također, s vi, jalijaši, špijuni i rječju sarajski likovi, čagajte ciganicu s medvjedima uz Gazi-husref begov ćevap i neopastirski simfo-rock.
Das ist Walter!
Uzdravlje!

______________

*Već sam dolje pisao o tome da Hrvatska nakon hercegovačke upravo proživljava svoju bosansku, dakle jugoslavensku fazu.
Kad god vidim takvo što, ja jednostavno ne mogu odoljeti: to je nekakav refleks, kao kad vjetar po ulici nosi kartonsku kutiju pa ne možete izdržati a da je ne napucate nogom. Nema tu ničeg osobnog, naprosto joie de vivre.

Fascinantni su ti Jugoslaveni. Kako oni samo uzurpiraju prostor građanskog. I lažu pritom, lažu mnogostruko. Lažu Jugoslaveni da su anacionalni: o, itekakav je grdni nacionalizam to jugoslavenstvo koje je i koje bi sve nas Hrvate ponovo raseljavalo, zatvaralo i ubijalo, kao ustalom još koliko devedesetih, samo zato jer smo Hrvati.
Lažu Jugoslaveni da su građani, a do jučer im je sve građansko bilo bužoasko, a kao bružoasko i ekonomski i politički ne samo neprihvaljivo, nego i reakcionarno! A takve je, i opet, trebalo po kratkom postupku.
Lažu Jugoslaveni da je riječ o nekakvom sukobu urbanog i ruralnog, a kada bi i bilo tako, zaboravljaju da ako itko jest, a onda su oni istinska pozicija seljakluka i primitivizma koji se Salonu nametnuo svom brahijalnošću vojničke čizme i valtera za pasom.

U ovoj zemlji ta je laž usred svog najžešćeg trijumfa: ljudi koji su još 1988. na javnim tribinama po Zagrebu zagovarali neophodnost očuvanja Jugoslavije posjeduju danas najatraktivnije dijelove hrvatske zemlje! Koliko god se to odlagalo, suočenje s nikad lustriranin jugoslavenstvom tek predstoji.
Ne u ime Thompsona i njegove pozicije, kako se svakome tko u ovoj zemlji glasno očituje svoje hrvatstvo istom želi pripisati, nego upravo u ime građanske pozicije zakona i pravde: ovdje je stasala generacija koja s dva totalitarna zla i ekstrema, crvenim boljševičkim i crnim nacističkim, nema ama baš ništa, osim što ih svejednako prezire, mrzi i osuđuje, generacija koja, da bi mogla živjeti u autentičnom građanskom ozračju kontitucionalne demokracije liberalnog tipa, mora dobiti zadovoljštinu kao simboličku naknada za zločine počinjene nad građanima Hrvatske između II. Svjetskog i Domovinskog rata: tek tom naknadom uspostavlja se vladavina prava i restituira pravni poredak: nemoguće je živjeti s onima koji su do jučer progonili ljude samo zato jer drukčije misle (Informbiro) ili zato jer su Hrvati (Proljeće), budući da bi time opravdali zločin. Ta se ideologija ne da pravdati antifašizmom.

U Hrvatskoj se danas perpetuira ta laž o prasukobu Crvenih i Crnih kao temeljna ideološka laž sustava, čime se proizvodi ne samo stalna potreba jednih za drugima, nego i povijesno opravdanje Jugoslavenstva: evo, sve dok nacisti zazivaju Jasenovac i Gradišku staru, potrebna je Narodna Fronta i nadnacionalno jedinstvo svih naših naroda i narodnosti! Nije.

Potrebna je pravna država. Jedino, vama Thompson služi, ne nama - građanima!
Vama, koji ga u svojim građanskim listovima svakog podesnog blagdana posterno raspačavete u stotinama tisuća primjeraka, da bi u međuvremenu tiskali stotine tisuća stranica vapaja protiv ustašizacije Hrvatske.
Vama služi, da biste opravdali svoju pozciju i obrazložili svoju historijsku neminovnost: dok je Fašista, potrebni ste i vi, zare ne?
Vama Thompson pjeva, ne nama! Mi možemo zaplakati i na 'Imagine'.
Što vi ne samo da ne razumijete, nego ne razumijete ni zašto ne razumijete.

Umjesto da se rezonira jednostavno: Thompson zaziva Crnu Legiju. O.K.! Privođenje, uhićenje, pritvor, suđenje, dokaz - zatvor!, ne, naravno da se takvo što u ovoj idiotskoj zemlji ne događa.
Jasno da ovdje nema riječi o pravnoj državi.

Evo, izveo sam vam: očigledno nema tu govora ni o kakvom građanskom društvu!
Jer u takvoj bi zemlji netko ipak barem prenio vjest o suđenju za ubistvo Đurekovića, ako barem ne bi napravio o toj temi, kao simbolu udbaških ubistava Hrvata jer su i zamo zato jer su Hravati, "Latinicu" ili "Otvoreno".
Toga na HRT danas nema, i toga danas na hrvatskoj državnoj televiziji niti ne može biti!
Kao ni jedne jedine vijesti o kupovini te prekrasne hrvatske zemlje od strane onog Jugoslavena iz 1988. godine.
A onda će se danas-sutra, kad ova potisnuta trauma to jače brizne u svom ekscesnom eruptivnom obliku, svi čuditi odakle sad taj hrvatski endemični nacionalizam!?

Objasnit ću vam ja, sada i ovdje, mirno: Iz mržnje spram vas, Jugoslaveni!
Sasvim utemeljene, paradoksalne, racionalne i opravdane mržnje: ubijali ste nas Jugoslaveni! Nas, Hrvate! Ne ustaše. Hrvate.
Samo, vama je to isto.
I zato vam Thompson i treba pjevati.
Na sprovodu.
Pa vi dovodite "Dugme" na Maksimir, dok Jajo taj isti stadion na kojem je odrastao nije mogao dobiti za koncert, pizda vam materina Jugoslavenska!
I samo vi naričite da vam je ravna Jugoslavija - nisam vidio da netko tako zdušno radi na svojoj propasti.


Toliko neka za sada bude kazano o nacionalizmima u ovom podneblju.

CAR MILAN I. & POSLJEDNJI

LOGIKA KOJOM ĆE MILAN BANDIĆ NEMINOVNO POSTATI HABSBURŠKI CAR DO 2025.



Milan je zapravo genije!
On će podržati svakog kandidata, sve do zadnjeg časa: podržava Jurčića kao kandidata za premijera, Milanovića kao kandidata za predsjednika stranke, a Antunovićku dovodi u goste na Z1 (isprovociranu Jurčićevim nastupom na Novoj) da objasni kako će se ona kandidirati za predsjednicu stranke, ne nužno za mjesto premijera, ali kako premijer mora biti i predsjednik stranke naprosto da bi mogao efikasno vladati! Summa summarum: Bandić je podržao sve aspirante na sve pozicije! Ta, Bandić sve njih tretira kao Vlastu Pavić: kao trbuhozborac lutku. Logično je da će u posljednjem trenutku Bandić, procijenivši odnos snaga, podržati najizglednijeg kandidata: tako neće pogrješiti jer će biti izabran i onaj kojega će Bandić podržati, a Milan će, post festum, uživati odobravanje velike većine SDP-a: onih koji bi i bez njegovih ljudi glasali za novoizabranog predsjednika stranke i, jasno, svojih ljudi iz SIZ-a. Ali, i to je samo srednjoročan tranzicijski potez: Milan zna da će SDP izgubiti izbore - o tome smo pisali, ali, novi post sljedi sutra - i da će stoga predsjednik gubitničke stranke morati ponuditi ostavku i platiti ceh! I tada, kao gradonačelnik s još dvije godine mandata, sa Stipom na Panti i Ivom na Griču, Milan jedri punim jedrima: nema više zajebancije, pizda vam materina, sve sam vas podržao, sve sam vam dao, vidite kaj ste napravili dok sam ja delal, i SDP-ovci željni vlasti (SDP-ovci, ne SIZ-ovci, jer SIZ-ovci žive k'o bubreg u loju, oni nisu frustrirani i imaju vremena čekati, mada ne znaju kaj bi zapravo imali dočekati budući da bolje od ovoga nemre bit: ta, imaju Zagreb na pladnju: Zagreb kao holding s jednim članom uprave i jednim Nadzornikom; božanstveno!) klikču: Milane, oprosti nam, vodi nas, Milane, please!
I tada kreće prava zajebancija, samo da bog da zdravlja! Milan osvaja još jedan mandat gradonačelnika na neposrednim izborima, priprema stranku za izbore 2011., naravno moderniziranu na neoliberalnim načelima, i u zimu 2011. postaje premijer Hrvatske. Premijer koji će za svoga mandata uvesti Hrvatsku u EU! Nakon toga Bandić s parlamentarnom većinom mijenja Ustav, povećava opseg predsjedničkih ingerencija i - postaje predsjednik RH. Godina je 2015.
Milan vlada kao predsjednik Hrvatske do 2025.
Organizira svjetsko nogometno prvenstvo u Hrvatskoj i Hecegovini. Izabiru ga za doživotnog Bana. Hrvatska, bogata vodom, postaje svjetska velesila. S Austrijom i Ugarskom obnavaljamo starodrevni trojedini državni savez, ali na novim osnovama: Bandić postaje Sveti rimski Car Milan prvi i posljednji, i stoluje na Medvedgradu. Slobodan Ljubičić Kikaš osvaja drugi premijerski mandat, sada kao predsjednik HDZ-a. Duško Ljuština kupuje HNK od Ninočke Pavića. Srbija primljena u EU.
Svi koji misle da je ovaj scenarij sasvim fiction (SF) ili su stranci ili nisu patrioti. Pročitajte još jednom, polako.

My name is Ljubo. I made a joke!

Što je Ljubo Jurčić radio u HDZ-u 29. ožujka u 10.30?*



- Prva vrata desno, odmah do ulaza u HDZ, je škola poslovnog engleskog jezika Contego, gdje idem na konverzaciju - rasvijetlio nam je u sekundi sam Jurčić kad smo ga danas nazvali i pitali što je on doista radio u HDZ-u.

- A još me moja profesorica upozoravala da će biti problema ako me netko ondje snimi - našalio se.

SIZ SDP

Samoupravna interesna zajednica SDP Zagreb



Buahahahahahahaha...A lijepo sam vam ja govorio u onoj magistralnoj analizi SDP-SDP par postova niže: Bandića za predsjednika! Samo, nitko mi nije vjerovao, dapače, budući da je ironija čini se usmeni žanr, čuo sam da se u SDP-u vjeruje kako sam konačno pokazao svoje pravo, hadezeovsko lice! Vjerojatno me se ne može čuti jer govorim ono što se ne želi čuti: kao što tvrdi "Jesenji list" - sve žući, sve bliži padu - zagrebački će SDP-ovci mirno koegzistirati s SDP-om, otprilike kao Zagorci i Hrvati.
Zagrebački SDP-ovci?
Da, posebna vrsta ljudi. Samoupravna interesna zajednica. Ljudi koje je osobno izabrao i zadužio Dragi Vođa, čovjek koji nije kao drugi jer ima srce i dušu, kako će sam za sebe par redaka niže kazati (doduše, do jučer je razglabajući široki krug tema u uskom krugu ljudi govorio da je bolje da na izborima pobijedi Sanader, jer bi ga pobjeda Žutog odvela u zatvor, ali, samo se budale ne mijenjaju, zar ne!?) i briznuti u plač, skupa s kamenom. Samoupravna, da se vratimo temi u ovom rondu, jer SDP Zagreba zaista kohabitira s ostatkom SDP-a: politika je to miroljubive pasivne koegzistencije: SIZ samoupravlja, a Iblerov trg navraća u Prašku ili u Poglavarstvo kao turisti na Fontanu di Trevi: tek da zažele želju. Žetoni su stranački. Interesna, jer nema tu ideoloških barijera: tu je važan jedino i samo interes, pa je tako već zarana Dragi Vođa sugerirao da stranačke kolege svoj osobne ili grupne potrebe dostave napismeno, jasno bez javnobilježničke ovjere, tek da ne čekaju na red s ostalim građanima-turistima.
Ovaj koncept privatizacije javnih usluga, čijim ispunjenjem nastaje moralna obveza građana spram gradonačelnika, osobni je doprinos Milana Bandića povijesti političke tehnologije: on će do kraja 2008. osobno zadužiti 68% stanovnika Lijepe naše, tako da Milanu i nije moguće drukčije vratiti dug nego sletom i štafetom, pa i pjesmom: Što je više kleveta i laži, Milan nam je miliji i draži! (Kao što je zamjetno, nakon Antike, ovo je prvi praktički pokušaj pomirenja sfera moralnog i političkog.)
Zajednica, he, he, zna se: svi smo mi za jedno, a to jedno su žetoni, kaj ne!? Idemo delat!
Eto, SIZ, a ne SDP. Kakva k*** socijaldemokracija! U Zagrebu vlada posvemašnja ideološka pomirba zavađenog hrvatstva na tragu dr.Franje Tuđmana: Bandić ionako nikada nije imao nikakvu ideologiju osim ideje da on vlada; Sanader čak nije inzistirao ni na tome, pod pretpostavkom da zaradi. Takve sloge u Hrvata odavno nije bilo: light HDZ, HDZ lišen nacionalističke biti, i light SDP, SDP lišen socijalističkog balasta*, udruženi u HDZ-SDP kao interesnu zajednicu nove hrvatske oligarhije - u zemlji u kojoj su gotovo svi čelni ljudi parlamentarnih stranaka barem župani - složno će vladati tisuću godina u sreći i blagostanju.
Poslušajmo dakle kako razmišljaju u Zmajevom gnijezdu:



Milan Bandić, na slici, izgleda, lijevo

Otkrivamo koga će na stranačkim izborima podržati Bandićevi ljudi koji bi mogli presuditi u izboru novog predsjednika

Dvojac Milanović - Jurčić kao privremeno rješenje

Zagrebački SDP-ovci koji bi mogli imati najznačajniju ulogu u izboru novog predsjednika stranke još nisu dogovorili koga će podržati.

Iz razgovora s nekoliko zagrebačkih SDP-ovaca doznali smo da na liderskoj poziciji kao trajno rješenje ne vide nijednog od trenutačno eksponiranih kandidata.

Njihov animozitet prema Željki Antunović i dalje je jednak. Ljubo Jurčić još im je nepoznanica, a Zorana Milanovića, kažu neki od njih, vide na vrhu stranke, ali - privremeno. Zasad im se ne čini realnom Bandićeva kandidatura iako je s njim, upozoravaju, svako iznenađenje moguće.

- Zagreb će se zasad držati po strani. Dokad? Pa, vidjet ćemo. Ionako je to privremeno rješenje. Popunjava se samo jedno upražnjeno mjesto, i to na godinu dana. To nikako nije trajno rješenje - rekao nam je jedan utjecajan zagrebački SDP-ovac.

Potvrdio nam je da sada najviše izgleda ima scenariji prema kojemu bi zagrebački SDP za predsjednika stranke podržao Milanovića, a za premijerskog kandidata Jurčića.

Zagrebački SDP-ovci, naime, na predsjedničkoj bi poziciji voljeli vidjeti nekoga uz koga će, kao i dosad, “mirno koegzistirati”, a smatraju da to nipošto ne bi bilo moguće uz Antunović, koja ima ambicije i prema Zagrebu, za razliku od Jurčića ili Milanovića.

Jedan član zagrebačkog SDP-a iznio nam je tumačenje kako je “Račan ostavkom dao do znanja da na čelnoj poziciji ne vidi Antunović”.

- Mislim da tim potezom nije umanjio kvalitete Željke Antunović, ali da je procijenio kako ona nije osoba za vodeću poziciju - rekao nam je taj sugovornik.

DOLE IMPERIJALISTI! or Vampire State Building

U EPH POČELA BITKA ZA RAČANOVOG NASLJEDNIKA

NEVER MORE

VINCENT



The 'Vincent'-Poem, written by Tim Burton.
Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven' and children's stories by Dr. Seuss.


Vincent Malloy is seven years old
He's polite and always does as he's told
For a boy his age, he's considerate and nice
But he wants to be just like Vincent Price

He doesn't mind living with his sister, dog, and cats
Though he'd rather share a home with spiders and bats
There he could reflect on the horrors he has invented and wander dark hallways alone and tormented

Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him
But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum
He likes to experiment on his dog Abocrombie
In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie
So that he and his horrible zombie dog
could go searching for victims in the London fog

His thoughts aren't only of ghoulish crime
He likes to paint and read to pass some of the time
While other kids read books like "Go Jane Go"
Vincent's favorite author is Edgar Allen Poe.

One night while reading a gruesome tale
he read a passage that made him turn pale
Such horrible news he could not survive
For his beautiful wife had been buried alive

He dug out her grave to make sure she was dead
Unaware that her grave was his mother's flower bed
His mother sent Vincent off to his room
He knew he'd been banished to the tower of doom
where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life
alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife.

While alone and insane incased in his doom
Vincent's mother burst suddenly into the room
She said, "If you want, you can go out and play
It's sunny outside and a beautiful day."

Vincent tried to talk but he just couldn't speak
the years of isolation had made him quite weak
So he took out some paper and scrawled with a pen:
"I'm possessed by this house and can never leave it again."

His mother said, "You are NOT possessed and you are NOT almost dead
These games you play are all in your head
You are NOT Vincent Price, you're Vincent Malloy
You're not tormented or insane, you're just a young boy
You're seven years old, and you are my son
I want you to get outside and have some real fun."

Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall
While Vincent backed slowly against the wall
The room started to sway, to shiver and creak
His horrored insanity had reached its peak
He saw Abocrombie, his zombie slave
and heard his wife call from beyond the grave

She spoke through her coffin and made ghoulish demands
While through cracking walls reached skeleton hands
Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams
swept his mad laughter to terrified screams

To escape the badness, he reached for the door
but fell limp and lifeless down on the floor
His voice was soft and very slow
As he quoted "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe:
"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted...Nevermore."

ŠTO JE 'P' U SDP?

P KAO POŠTENJE



Velik je čovjek i dobar čovjek Ivica Račan.
Pošten čovjek.
A to je u Hrvatskoj najviše što čovjek uopće može biti, ako nešto jest. (NEMANJA 11.04.2007. 23:22)

Račan mi se činio čovjekom starog kova, gdje to starog kova mislim izvanvremenski, i žalim za njim najiskrenije na svijetu.
A ti si me, Nemanja, dirnuo izborom oproštajne pjesme, a još i više podbuhlim Elvisom koji ju pjeva. (njetocka 12.04.2007. 14:56)

Nikad nisam bio veliki Račanov fan ali karakteriziralo ga je nešto s čim se malo tko od gadova u hrvatskoj politici mogao pohvaliti - moral i poštenje. Da ništa drugo nema, poštovao bih ga samo zbog toga, koliko god se isticalo da je moral u politici deplasiran. (Herostrat 12.04.2007. 15:11)

Hero, posve se slažemo. Što se tiče kraja tvoga komentara, zato sam i stavio Now or never: ako upravo to Račanovo nasljeđe sada ne zaživi u SDP-u i ne počne prosijavati kroz sve aspekte programske politike socijaldemokrata, ta moralna vjerodostojnost političara i politike, onda je sve svejedno.
Točkolinac, vele, kao što možeš pročitati u ovoj kratkoj biografiji, da je Račan volio Elvisa. Da, nevjerojatan prizor, taj spot s ostarjelim Kraljem.
Postaje mi sve mučnije.
Kad bi bilo moguće proveo bih ostatak dana ofline.
Jedino što osjećam velika je žalost. Imaš pravo, Njetočka, postojaniji ljudi. (NEMANJA 12.04.2007. 15:31)

Doista Pošten Gospodin Čovjek (Pacijent 12.04.2007. 21:15)

kako se jasno osjeti kako se nitko ne usuđuje sa podsmijehom otpratiti Ivicu Račana, kako i njegovi najljući politički protivnici ne uspijevaju unijeti ton nebitnosti kojim bi sugestivno kontaminirali svoje deklarativne izraze žaljenja, kako je svima jasno da taj čovjek nije bio u politici zbog nekih prizemnih interesa, zbog egomanije, povijesne uloge ili pukog materijalnog probitka... tek kad netko takav stavi javnost na test iskrenosti svojom smrću pojavi se ono što se ne da simulirati niti se lako previđa... poštovanje prema nekome tko je bio pošten. a Račan je bio pošten čovjek. rekao bih 'slava mu...' da mu je slava igrala neku ulogu u životu. žao mi ga je iskreno. (pooka pooka pooka pooka pooka pooka pooka pooka po 13.04.2007. 01:33)

IVICA RAČAN

SDP-SDP: LET'S PARTY!

SOCIJALDEMOKRATSKA PARTIJA - STRANKA DEMOKRATSKIH PROMJENA




In medias res

Pokušajmo konceptualizirati neminovne promjene u SDP-u. U skladu s učenjem profesora moralne filozofije s Princetona, H.G.Frankfurta, drugovi, prestanimo kenjati*: nemoguće je ovdje pod izlikom razgovora o suvremenoj socijaldemokraciji kazati nomina sunt odiosa! Je, možda sunt odiosa, ali cut the shit: o imenima se ovdje radi možda više nego u "Romeu i Juliji", jer ovdje ruža ne bu mirisala pod drugim imenom, ili možda bude, što je za ponekog još i bolnija spoznaja. U svakom slučaju, jučerašnjim nastupom na Z1 šefice SDP-a Željke Antunović, party može početi! Što sad to znači? Zašto bi nastup čelince SDP-a na lokalnoj gradskog televiziji označio ako ne početak kraja a ono barem kraj početka definiranja odnosa u postračanovskom SDP-u? Iz vrlo jednostavnog razloga: gospođa Antunović sinoć je igrala U Zmajevom gnijezdu! Ad hoc nastup na Z1 znači - c.t.sh. - pomak gospođe Antunović u smjeru Milana Bandića!
To je ono stvarno senzacionalno u hrvatskoj politici ovoga tjedna, ono što se zasigurno neće drugdje moći pročitati, ne samo zato jer se ne znaju čitati znaci vremena, nego naprosto stoga jer se ne može pročitati ono što se ne smije napisati.
Da bi se objasnila ova ekstravagantna, a opet logična promjena - i ja bih učinio isto, da sam na mjestu Milana Bandića; i ja bih učinio isto, da sam na mjestu Željke Antunović; i ja bih se udružio suprotivu Ljubi Jurčiću, jer što bi mi drugo preostalo? - ne treba puno mudrosti: Jurčić je nakon netrimičnog gledanja u oči prvi trepnuo, najavivši današnju molbu za primitak u partijsko članstvo, dakle upravo u trenutku kad je Liga gentlemana predvožđena Linićem i Vujićem obznanila političku volju socijaldemokratskog partijskog mainstreama, pa partijskoj prvoj dami zaista nije ostavljeno puno prostora: na ljudu ranu, ljutu travu, u skladu s jučerašnjim nadnevkom! Postalo je očito ono što Željka Antunović, s pravom, sama veli: premijer mora biti šef stranke, i šef stranke mora biti kandidat za premijera, sve je ostalo kompromis, a kompromis je regres.
Slažem se. Gubitak vremena. A SDP ionako vrijeme gubi na isti onaj način na koji ga je gubio HDZ zatočen na Trgu velikana žrtava fašizma: netko će kazati da je razlika ogromna, da je Račan bogu hvala živ, da upravo intenzivno razmišlja o sudbonosnim odlukama koje će ovih dana obzaniti, ali, dečki i cure, slušajte profesora Frankfurta: nemojmo kenjati! U politici nema testamenata, pa makar Račan 2008. ponovo sjedio na Markovom trgu! Politički se testamenti ne otvaraju! Kad ih otvore, već su povijesni dokument, samo to i ništa više.
Znam da je okrutno, i meni je Račan drag čovjek, i velim, dao mu bog sto godina i mandat premijera koji uvodi Hrvatsku u EU, ali, u međuvremenu, drugovi i drugarice, pred nas se postavlja povijesni zadatak - prestanimo kenjati!
Idemo u promijene! U demokratske promjene. Zato je vrijeme za slogan: SDP - SDP: socijaldemokratska partija ponajprije mora biti stranka demokratskih promjena, jer, inače, koji će nam kurac socijaldemokratska partija koja ne bi odgovarala vlastitome pojmu, skjuz maj frenč!
Da bi se u ovim neminovnim promjenama SDP znao orijentirati, ponudit ću par konceptualnih varijanti, ne samo zato jer sam ja tu najpametniji - što je točno, ali u ovom trenutku je manje važno, ako se tako može kazati - nego zato jer stalno imam na pameti samo jedno: korist SDP-a! A kroz korist SDP-a i korist zajednice. Dakle, za idiote: skrbim oko općeg dobra, tj. djelujem politički par exellence: nudim dakle par koncepata, tek da skratim priču i uštedim Partijskim brahmanima vrijeme neophodno za kenjažu - to je inače sumoran posao, to savijanje prostora tj. formuliranje visokoparnih izlika niskih poriva, no, it goes with teritory, kaj se može - te svima plastično ocrtam što se logički uopće dade domisliti razmišljajući, onako, popodne, čekajući tekmu, o sudbini SDP-a u ova Posljednja Vremena.
C.t.sh., Nemanja, ideme...

Varijanta prostodušna, hiperrealistička

Da hrvatska politika nije farsa, SDP uopće ne bi imao nikakav problem, niti bi se pred članstvo postavljalo ikakvo pitanje Račanova nasljednika. Hrvatski jezik nije tako nijansiran kad je riječ o kurčenju, što je karakterološki shvatljivo, pa kao što Eskimi imaju tanani vokabulara za izražavanje delikatnih valera bjeline, tako Srbi imaju prebogat rječnik pojmova koji određuju teško prevediv termin "dase" ili "badže": nema te hrvatske riječi koja bi to opisala; možda bi u enciklopedijskom rječniku najbolje bilo uz riječ dasa, recimo, staviti Čačićevu sliku, ponuditi ostenzivnu definiciju pojma. E, dakle, to je badža: to je ono što bi se samo od sebe ukazalo pred očima socijaldemokrata, da nisu žrtve ideološkog privida: naime, SDP ima dasu u svojim redovima, ne samo prirodnog nasljednika Račana, nego tipa koji je u stanju kroz par godina osvojiti izbore i u Austro-Ugarskoj, a potom je za potrebe vlastite vlasti i restaurirati, na oduševljenje i uz prepristupne fondove Europske Unije. Jasno, to je one and only Milan Bandić.
Ne zajebavam se.
Da u politici ima minimum poštenja, ljudi bi se skupili i kazali: čujte, da se može drukčije Milan Bandić bi danas nastupao na Željkinoj televiziji a ne ona na njegovoj, ali budući da je realnost upravo obrnuta od onoga što vidimo kroz opskurnu kameru ideologije ili televizije, svejedno, mora se naprosto priznati da postoji samo jedan čovjek u Hrvatskoj koji može pobijediti Ivu Sanadera na parlamentarnim izborima, a da mu to ovaj pritom i ne zamjeri. Možete se vi ljutiti koliko hoćete, ali to je Milan Bandić. Govorim to s gotovo budhistički apsolutnom sviješću o tome što to sve znači i konotira. Ali, činjenica da SDP ne uviđa ovu tako očitu istinu da je zapravo neugodno tu istinu i izgovoriti a da čovjek sebi ne zazvuči kao idiot koji ponavlja da kiša pada, pas laje a Bandijeras rulez!, ta je činjenica velim indeks perverzije odnosa i u SDP-u, i u našem društvu, pa i šire, za što nas u ovom odsudnom trenutku zabole kita: naime, postavlja se opravdano pitanje: Ako ne mislite da je Bandić jedini dasa u Hrvata koji može povesti SDP do pobjede na parlamentarnim izborima, a zakaj ga onda držite u stranci! Ni manje ni više. Da, da, drugovi i drugarice, pssssst, tiho, tišina molim, upravo tako: Ako Bandić nije taj koji po logici stvari, po prirodi stvari, po babu i stričevima i po bogu i vragu već sutra mora preuzeti kormilo SDP-a, naprosto stoga jer je čovjek na čelu najjače SDP-ove partijske ćelije - bože, da ga ne ureknem!- u zemlji, zato jer....dobro, moram li zaista gubiti vrijeme na kenjažu i objašnjavati bilo kome u Hrvatskoj hu d fak iz Milan Bandić, onda je vaš izbor zaista duboko konceptualan: ne može se Bandića ignorirati, a ne priznati da se izabrala budućnost u kojoj za Bandića zapravo nema mjesta! Ovdje se nemre, kao što će se kasnije pokazati, igrati po logici vuk sit, koza nostra cijela! Ovdje se igra ili - ili! Ili je najuspješniji esdepeovac šef stranke, ili stranka mora sebi objasniti zašto on to nije!
E, prijatelji, jedno od toga morate objasniti i nama: nemre se uz pomoć Glavaša postati Sanader, pa onda Brane u rešt! Ili i u SDP-u mislite da se može? Predrastičan sam? Je li?
Dakle, ili je Milan Bandić šef SDP-a, naprosto stoga jer on to de facto jest samo vi to ne znate (budući da to još EPH nije objavio) ili ne želite znati, ili vi morate napraviti nekakav drukčiji SDP, pa, rekao bih, i drugi SDP: ta, Milan ima svoj, on ga je napravio devedesetih, u Zagrebu, a sad ga radi i po Hrvatskoj, po istom modelu po kojem je radio devedesetih ovaj zagrebački: ide po zemlji(a i šire) kao po Trnju i Kozari boku, zna svakog čovjeka i svaki problem, i ja bih se kladio da u vašem rodnom mjestu župnik već ove nedjelje, ako ne najdalje do 1.maja, drži misu za zdravlje - Ivice Račana. Jasno, jer je sredio Milan. Ne znate za to? Čujte, malo mi je neugodno, ali možda bi trebalo ipak ako ne po sakristijama, a ono barem više biti s pastvom.
Da zaključim i još jednu po(d)vučem na kraju izlaganja: zaista se ne šalim, vi nemate izbora: ili je to Bandić, ili sebi i Bandiću i njegovom SDP-u i Hrvatskoj morate objasniti zašto to Bandić ne može biti.
To bih objašnjenje volio čuti. Jedino, bojim se da nema tog medija na kojem bi vam to objašnjenje pročitali.
I opet mi je neugodno, ali, vratimo se na početak priče: nije li sve počelo na Milanovoj televiziji?
Jebiga, a kaj ste vi radili? I, zakaj bi zapravo čovjek bio kriv što je radišan. Da sam ja političar u Hrvatskoj, da nisam dekadent i ne vladam iz sjene - morate priznati da je moj utjecaj zapravo nevjerojatan, kad se uzme u obzir fakat da čega se god dotaknem u Kini izazove potres u Hrvatskoj - ja bih već posjedovao i famozni EPH! Ima načina. To je sasvim legitimno, da prestanemo konačno kenjati.
I u tome i jest poanta: kad u pravom smislu te riječi, u smislu profesora moralne filozofije Frankfurta, prestanome kenjati, bez lažnih iluzija, onak realno, rečite vi meni: Dobro, a zakaj odalažete stvari? Zakaj ne Milan? Ta, prije ili kasnije, on će to biti. Ovo je sasvim maniristička situacija: doživljavate politiku kao manje ili više dovitljivo pravdanje s neumitnim, odlažući ono što ionako mora biti, neminovno.
Prepustite se. Vidjet ćete da je cool. Full. Sviđat će vam se. Stvarno.
A, da vam sasvim pokvarim dan: Razlog zakaj ne ne smijete kazati glasno! Probajte!

Varijanta, složena, besmislena, zapravo neostvariva i nadrealistička**

Budući da me ne želite slušati, ulazimo u kenjažu, kaj se meni ni malo ne sviđa, jer to je onaj period koji je prolazio HDZ sa Sanaderom i Pašalićem, prije no što je Pašalić postao slobodni zidar u Turopolju i Istri - i opet je fascinantna paralela: on je stolovao u Zakladi; čujte, imate li vi neku zakladu u Praškoj ili su to poklade? - ali, ako se već drukčije nemre, idemo onda složiti varijantu po kojoj bi čak i drveni špaher bio moguć: dakle, SDP koji ne bi propao u obračunu frakcijskih borbi na koje se spremate: s jedne strane predsjednica Antunović u koaliciji sa Zmajem od Milana, a s druge regent Ljubo Jurčić i Novi Fosili, obnovljeni band prokušanih mahera hrvatskog socijaldemokratskog mainstreama. Recimo da je za neki period, čak i mandat, ova varijanta moguća. Ako ne, po gubitku izbora, ionako će padati glave, što vas ne mora zabrinjavati: kao što je dokazala glava cara Lazara, moguće je po bojnom polju skakutati i samostalno, u potrazi za vlastitim tijelom. Biračkim. Na koncu konca, doći ćete na moje, na varijantu prostodušnu, ali, evo, nek bude za neko vrijeme po vašem.
Recimo da je predsjednica Antunović i dalje predsjednica, a premijer da bude Ljubo Jurčić (molio bih Ratka Mačeka da ovaj dio ne čita premijeru Sanaderu tijekom ručka, jer ne želim biti kriv za HDZ-ov gubitak ne samo izbora, nego i premijera, barem ne osobno i ne u ovom mandatu). Željka Antunović, i opet morate shvatiti da se ne šalim, tu radi velik kompromis: naime, ma koliko to vama izgledalo nevjerojatno, ona ima sasvim legitiman zahtjev tražeći i premijersku kandidaturu! Ta, ona je šefica stranke u ovom trenutku. Čast svakome, ali, vidim na Z1, testamenti se ne otvaraju. Ako ona odustane od premijerske stolice - dobro, dobro, Ivo, skratit ću, znam da nemrete više - trebala bi i druga strana nešto dati. Ali, k vrago, što: kao što veli Aljoša Karamazov, nemrem razdat sve i poći za tobom kad u džepu imam samo tri kopjejke! Malo neugodna situcija. Tim prije što se uz šjora Ivu, čujem ga već, i Milan smije, i to grohotom: ta, Željka je ionako oslonjena na njegovu infrastrukturu, stranačku, personalnu, medijsku, financijsku, informativnu i svakovrsno bogoštovnodomoljubnu, pa ja zapravo ne vidim za što bi se grupacija oko Ljube Jurčića mogla uhvatiti osim za - ideale! Eeeeej, ljudi, ne zajebavam se, zbilja to mislim. Jer, ako je Milentije, kojemu ne treba vjerovati ni kad te triput ljubi, Zaitgeist in persona, čisti komad stvarnosti, najstvarnije nešto što uopće možete sresti diljem Zemlje zalazećeg sunca, onda je gospodin Ljubo Jurčić, u današnjem SDP-u, puka tvar od koje sazdani su snovi: izbor između Bandića i Jurčića, izbor je između stvarnosti i ideala. Nepošten izbor. Jer, zapravo nemate izbora. Uvijek nešto gubite, hoću kazati: gledajući u smjeru Ljube Jurčića čini vam se nestvarnim realizirati ideale socijaldemokracije u Hrvatskoj protokapitalističkog delirija, okrećući se k Bandiću, osjećate se kao kad ste privi put ostavili dečka jer je bio student, sociologije naravno: back to life, back to reality! Možda vam se ovo čini kao reductio ad absurdum, a možda niste učili logiku pa vam se ne čini, ali koliko god bilo apsurdno, to vam je to: birate između idealnog uzorka hrvatske stvarnosti i stvarno uzoritog ideala hrvatskoga sna. Možda bi u maniri svojih predšasnika, slavne šezdesetosmaške generacije, da tako oštro niste s tim vremenima jednom za svagda raščistili, mogli dijalektički zaključiti: stvarnost je za one koji ne podnose san! Jedino, za ovu je zgodu taj zaključak nepodesen kao naputak: možda je to istina, ali, ukurac, što sad? Što to znači?
Ne znam. Nije moje da mislim za vas. Ili da sugeriram. Ja samo izvodim logičke nužnosti: kao što kiša pada, kao što Milan vlada, tako ja mislim, s neminovnošću prirodnih pojava.
Napuštamo carsto ideala i moguću simbiozu raka samca i moruzgve, kako bi rekao drugi profesor, onaj večernje škole, Pervan. Zajednica Ljube Jurčića kao premijera i Željke Antunović kao predsjednice SDP-a s Milanom Bandićem u zaleđu privremeno je moguća, ali već u kratkoročnom razdoblju takav će brak iz računa SDP pretvoriti u suštu suprotnost vlastitom idejnom i vrijednosnom određenju: SDP će postati metaklijentelističkom strankom, jer već je smo postojanje takve stranke čisti klijentelizam: stranka bi bila tek puko sredstvo promocije ili očuvanja položaja svojih članova u njoj samoj!, a odatle do nedavne opaske Denisa Kuljiša nije dalek put: Ako vidiš čovjeka koji je korumpiran kao hadezeovac, a glup kao esdepeovac, odmah znaš da je haenesovac; jasno, u ovoj formul(acij)i nema konstantnih varijabli.

Racionalna varijanta, za koju bih ja glasovao

Recimo da hrvatska politika nije farsa, da nema dogovora HDZ-a i SDP-a. Zapitajmo se na čas: dobro, a o čemu se u toj hrvatskoj politici zapravo radi? Ako izuzmemo onaj dobar, ali ipak neugodan Duceov odgovor da on hoće vlast, što biste vi odgovorili: Što je vaš program? Agenda je zadana: Haag je tu umjesto pravne države; EU umjesto vanjske politike; MMF umjesto ekonomske politike, Svjetska banka umjesto monetarne...sasvim je jasno da vam preostaje samo Monopoly, kao navlastit sadržaj politike: kockanje s lukrativnim hrvatskim nekretninama - uzeo Nino, preskače dva bacanja, što je najgore što se poštenome čovjeku može destiti u Hrvatskoj dopadne li zbog loše sreće i kocaka u rešt - i prodaja još ove žličice za desert, i srebro je rasprodano! U takvoj situaciji očito je da je svako pametan shvatio kako ovih par godina, ako već ionako nije kasno, svakako valja biti in, inače si za cijeli jedan život isključen. Homo sacer, neke vrste: biološki živ, ali bez ikakvih prava. Čini se da bi to bio jedini posao SDP-a, ili HDZ-a, svejedno: ne dozvoliti da se Hrvatska petrificira u odnosima kakvi upravo vladaju: u Hrvatskoj svi koji su nekaj u politici, zapravo su na vlasti, barem u svojoj županiji! Stoga je su ovogodišnji izbori zapravo sitnija elementarna nepogoda: baš dolaze u nezgodno vrijeme, taman kad su se odnosi Stipe, Ive, Milana, pa i Ratka, Đurđe jebem ti općinu, gle: čak i magistra Đapića tako idealno posložili, kako će ponovo biti konstelirani tek za 1560 godina, što će dočekati jedino Joža Manolić. Kaj tu zapravo treba mijenjati: ta, Bandić i Sanader imaju toliko vremena i toliko su nezajažljivi - bože, gdje su ona krasna vremena Franje Tuđamana koji je takve sitničavosti ipak prepuštao Braci i Seki! - da su SDP i HDZ partneri čak i u Z1! Hrvatska je za političare idealna zemlja i tu zaista ne treba ama baš ništa pomicati ako ne želimo narušiti savršen sklad proporcija i harmoniju društvenih odnosa i proizvodnih snaga, mislim da sam se točno izrazio, oprostite, novi sam. Imamo Nineka, i ako se nekaj i promijeni, građani to nikada neće saznati: ta, tko bu im rekel? Imamo Tomu, koji je jedinstveni šef špiclova na svijetu, jer istovremeno špijunira i pro domo sua i pro patria, pri čemu drugo pro bono, da bi prvo bilo buono, buono!, i nema majci da se nekaj dogodi a da mi to ne znamo! Ceste se grade kao i dvorane i mostovi, još malo pa će nova operna sezona a mi volimo talijansku operu više nego ekipa u "Neki to vole vruće", i samo da odvalimo još o ovu demokratsku obvezu prema građanima, pa, kako ide ona Milane, a? Idemo delat! Ahahahahah...Da, da, idemo, idemo. Što prije.
U tome je jedini izlaz: racionalna varijanta bi rekla: E, to ne! Jer, ako to da, ako je ovo Hrvatska, ona je najbolje da se raziđemo doma: onda SDP nema smisla.
Jer, kakvog smisla ima glasovati za SDP, kad SDP ionako radi s HDZ-om?
Zašto onda ne bismo izravno glasovali za HDZ?
Ta, tko veli da nismo kanili!? Samo pitamo, vas, SDP, zašto bi netko glasovao za vas? Kad može izravno za njih!
Ja znam da je ovaj problem vama teško odmah uočiti i shvatiti, jer vi biste vjerojatno odgovorili: Paaa, dobro je glasovati za nas da i mi malo budemo na vlasti! Jedino, Vlasta je malo umorna. Jebe je tko stigne.
I zato bi racionalna varijanta bila: Dajte razmislite kaj će vam vlast, pa onda odlučite hoćete li uopće na izbore. Ovako, s ovom ekipom koja Hrvatsku doživljava kao svoje gradilište nema nikakve potrebe glasovati za SDP.
Imamo naime HDZ.
Stranku demokratskih promjena.
Mislite da se šalim?
Čujte, kad bih se šalio odgovor bi mogao glasiti: Stvarno bi idealni predsjednik SDP-a jedino mogao biti dr.Ivo Sanader. Navedite jedan jedini razlog protiv toga. Sebi. Ne meni.***

_____________________

Marquis de ga Sad

* Jučer sam pročitao knjižicu "Kenjaža – teorijski pristup" Harryja G. Frankfurta, profesora etike na Sveučilištu u Princetonu. Prvo donosim citat i kratak opis da shvatite o čemu je riječ, a zatim ću vam pokazati hrvatski primjer kenjaže prebacujući fokus s govora na pisanje.

"Kad označujemo govor kao praznu slamu, onda mislimo da iz govornikovih usta izlazi upravo to. Ništavilo. Govor je prazan, bez građe ili sadržaja. Shodno tomu, njegova upotreba jezika ne pridonosi svrsi kojoj navodno služi. Dobivamo točno onoliko informacija koliko zrnja ispada mlaćenjem prazne slame. Slučajno postoje sličnosti između prazne slame i izmeta koje izraz prazna slama čine osobito prikladnom istovrijednicom (ekvivalentom) za izraz kenjanje. Baš kao što je prazna slama kao govor oslobođena sveg informativnog sadržaja, tako je izmet tvar iz koje su iscrpljene sve hranjive tvari. Izmet se može smatrati lešinom hranidbe, ono što preostaje kad se iscrpe svi vitalni elementi hrane. U tom smislu, izmet je prikaz smrti koji sami proizvodimo i koji, dapače, moramo proizvoditi u samom procesu održanja života. Možda zato izmet smatramo tako odbojnim, jer nam toliko približava smrt. U svakom slučaju, ne može poslužiti u svrhu održanja, baš kao što prazna slama ne može poslužiti u svrhu komunikacije."

U eseju se nalazi jedan izvrstan primjer kenjaže s Wittgensteinom u glavnoj ulozi koji je svoju filozofsku energiju usmjeravao na iznalaženje onoga što je smatrao podmuklim, narušavateljskim oblicima "besmisla" i borbu protiv njega.
Wittgensteinova poznanica Fanie Pascal je operirala mandule i nakon njegova pitanja kako se osjeća rekla je: "Osjećam se ko pregaženi pas", s gnušanjem je odgovorio: "Ne znaš kako se osjeća pas kad ga pregaze."
Problem s njezinim iskazom jest u tome da on tobože prenosi nešto više nego tek činjenicu da se loše osjeća – opis njezina osjećanja je pretjerano osobit, što Wittgenstein smatra čistim kenjanjem. Njezina pogreška ne leži u tome da se ne uspijeva točno izraziti, već u tome da niti ne pokušava. Frankfurt upravo to nepostojanje povezanosti s brigom za istinu – nebrigu za stvarno stanje stvari smatra suštinskim za kenjanje. Kenjator ne odbacuje autoritet istine, kao što to lažac čini, i ne suprotstavlja mu se. On uopće ne obraća pozornost na njega. Samim time, kenjanje je veći neprijatelj istini nego što su to laži.

** Nadrealizam = "... kao slučajan susret šivaćeg stroja i kišobrana na stolu za seciranje."

*** Htio bih sumirati, za ljude u crnom: Isprva nudim impostaciju problema. Potom realističko rješenje. Onda idealističko. Zatim racionalno. Konačno, odstupam od početne teze i tvrdim suprotno: prije no što odlučite tko, odlučite što. Time pokazujem maksimum pristojnosti, ne samo analitičke dovitljivosti. Preporučam se.

Bonustrack

HOMO SACER

Homo sacer: biće zakonski mrtvo mada biološki još uvijek živo; biće Zwischenlanda.



Homo sacer (Latin for "the sacred man") is an obscure figure of Roman law: a person who is banned, may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. The person is excluded from all civil rights, while his/her life is deemed "holy" in a negative sense.


Homo Sacer according to Agamben

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben used this concept for his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Agamben describes the homo sacer as an individual who exists in the law as an exile. There is, he thinks, a paradox: It is only because of the law that society can recognize the individual as homo sacer, and so the law that mandates the exclusion is also what gives the individual an identity.
Agamben holds that life exists in two capacities. One is natural biological life (Greek: Zoë) and the other is political life (Greek: bios). This zoe is related by Agamben himself to Hannah Arendt's description of the refugee's "naked life" in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). The effect of homo sacer is, he says, a schism of one's biological and political lives. As "bare life", the homo sacer finds himself submitted to the sovereign's state of exception, and, though he has biological life, it has no political significance.
Agamben says that the states of homo sacer, political refugees, those persecuted in the Holocaust, and the "enemy combatants" imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay and other sites are similar. As support for this, he mentions that the Jews were stripped of their citizenship before they were placed in concentration camps.
Thus, Agamben argues, "the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man prove to be completely unprotected at the very moment it is no longer possible to characterize them as rights of the citizens of a state", following in this Hannah Arendt's reasoning concerning the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which tied human rights to civil rights. Although human rights were conceived of as the ground for civil rights, the privation of those civil rights (as, for example, in the case of stateless people or refugees) made them comparable to "savages", many of whom were exterminated, as Arendt showed, during the New Imperialism period. Arendt's thought is that respect of human rights depends on the guarantee of civil rights, and not the other way around, as argued by the liberal natural rights philosophers.

Interview with Giorgio Agamben – Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life

Editors’ note: this interview, conducted by Ulrich Raulff in Rome on 4March 2004, was originally published, in German, by the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 6 April 2004. We are grateful to Ulrich Raulff and Giorgio Agamben for the permission to translate and publish this interview in German Law Journal. This translation was made by German Law Journal Co-Editor, Morag Goodwin, EUI, Florence. All notes have been provided for this publication by the editors.

Raulff: Your latest book The State of Exception has recently been published in German. It is an historical and legal-historical analysis of a concept that we, at first blush, associate with Carl Schmitt. What does this concept mean for your Homo Sacer[1]project?

Agamben: The State of Exception belongs to a series of genealogical essays that follow on from Homo Sacer and which should form a tetralogy. Regarding the content, it deals with two points. The first is a historical matter: the state of exception or state of emergency has become a paradigm of government today. Originally understood as something extraordinary,an exception, which should have validity only for a limited period of time, but a historical transformation has made it the normal form of governance. I wanted to show the consequence of this change for the state of the democracies in which we live. The second is of a philosophical nature and deals with the strange relationship of law and lawlessness, law and anomy. The state of exception establishes a hidden but fundamental relationship between law and the absence of law. It is a void, a blank and this empty space is constitutive of the legal system.

Raulff: You wrote already in the first volume of Homo Sacer that the paradigm of the state of exception came into being in the concentration camps, or corresponds to the camps. The indignant outcry of last year as you applied this concept to the United States, to American politics, was predictably loud. Do you still consider your critique to be correct?

Agamben: Regarding such an application, the publication of my Auschwitz book[2] brought similar remonstrance. But I am not an historian. I work with paradigms. A paradigm is something like an example, an exemplar, a historically singular phenomenon. As it was with the panopticon for Foucault,[3] so is the Homo Sacer or the Muselmann or the state of exception for me. And then I use this paradigm to construct a large group of phenomena and in order to understand an historical structure, again analogous with Foucault, who developed his “panopticism” from the panopticon.[4] But this kind of analysis should not be confused with a sociological investigation.

Raulff: Nevertheless, people were shocked by your comparison because it seemed to equate American and Nazi policies.

Agamben: But I spoke rather of the prisoners in Guantánamo, and their situation is legally-speaking actually comparable with those in the Nazi camps. The detainees of Guantanamo do not have the status of Prisoners of War, they have absolutely no legal status.[5] They are subject now only to raw power; they have no legal existence. In the Nazi camps, the Jews had to be first fully “denationalised” and stripped of all the citizenship rights remaining after Nuremberg,[6] after which they were also erased as legal subjects.

Raulff: What do you understand the connection to be to America’s security policy? Does Guantánamo belong to the transition you have previously described from governance through law to governance through the administration of the absence of order?

Agamben: This is the problem behind every security policy, ruling through management, through administration. In the1968 course at the Collčge de France, Michel Foucault showed how security becomes in the 18th century a paradigm of government. For Quesnay, Targot and the other physiocratic politicians, security did not mean the prevention of famines and catastrophes, but meant allowing them to happen and then being able to orientate them in a profitable direction. Thus is Foucault able to oppose security, discipline and law as a model of government. Now I think to have to have discovered that both elements – law and the absence of law – and the corresponding forms of governance – governance through law and governance through management – are part of a double-structure or a system. I try to understand how this system operates. You see, there is a French word that Carl Schmitt often quotes and that means: Le Roi reigne mail il ne gouverne pas (the King reigns but he does not govern). That is the termini of the double-structure: to reign and to govern. Benjamin brought the conceptual pairing of schalten and walten (command and administer) to this categorization. In order to understand their historical dissociation one must then first grasp their structural interrelation.

Raulff: Again, is the time of law over? Do we live now in an era of rule by decree (Schaltung), of cybernetic regulation and of the pure administration of mankind?

Agamben: At first glance it really does seem that governance through administration, through management, is in the ascendancy, while rule by law appears to be in decline. We are experiencing the triumph of the management, the administration of the absence of order.

Raulff: But do we not also observe, at the same time, the enlargement of the whole legal system and a tremendous increase in legal regulation? More laws are created on a daily basis and the Germans, for example, regularly feel that they are governed far more by Karlsruhe than Berlin.[7]

Agamben: Also there you see that both elements of the system coexist with one another, and that they both are driven to the extreme, so much so, that they seem at the end to fall apart. Today we see how a maximum of anomy and disorder can perfectly coexist with a maximum of legislation.

Raulff: From the way you have just described it, I see a rift that leads to an ever-starker polarization. Elsewhere, however, you say that the classical realm of the political will become ever narrower – and that sounds somewhat critical and decadently theoretical.

Agamben: Allow me to reply with Benjamin: there is no such thing as decline. Perhaps this is because the age is always already understood as being in decline. When you take a classical distinction of the political-philosophical tradition such as public/private, then I find it much less interesting to insist on the distinction and to bemoan the diminution of one of the terms, than to question the
interweaving. I want to understand how the system operates. And the system is always double; it works always by means of opposition. Not only as private/public, but also the house and the city, the exception and the rule, to reign and to govern, etc. But in order to understand what is really at stake here, we must learn to see these oppositions not as “di-chotomies” but as “di-polarities,” not substantial, but tensional. I mean that we need a logic of the field, as in physics, where it is impossible to draw a line clearly and separate two different substances. The polarity is present and acts at each point of the field. Then you may suddenly have zones of indecidability or indifference. The state of exception is one of those zones.

Raulff: Does the endpoint – and therewith the reality – of the private still have a meaning, in the sense of your systematic examination too? Is there something there that is worth defending?

Agamben: It is firstly obvious that we frequently can no longer differentiate between what is private and what public, and that both sides of the classical opposition appear to be losing their reality. And the detention camp at Guantánamo is the locus par excellence of this impossibility. The state of exception consists, not least, in the neutralization of this distinction. Nonetheless, I think that the concept is still interesting. Think only of the multitude of organizations and activities in the United States that, at present, are devoted to the protection and defense of “privacy” and attempt to define what belongs within this realm and what does not.

Raulff: How does this then involve your work?

Agamben: Homo Sacer is supposed to, as I said at the beginning, comprise four volumes in total. The last and most interesting for me will not be dedicated to an historical discussion. I would like to work on the concepts of forms-of-life and lifestyles. What I call a form-of-life is a life that can never be separated from its form, a life in which it is never possible to separate something such as bare life. And here too the concept of “privacy” comes in to play.

Raulff: At this point you clearly link up again with Foucault, perhaps with Roland Barthes as well, who held one of his later lectures on the topic of Vivre ensemble.

Agamben: Yes, but Foucault went back in history to the Greeks and the Romans when he had this idea. When you work on this topic, you suddenly no longer have a floor under your feet. And here you see clearly that we seem not to have any access to the present and to the immediate, except through what Foucault called an archaeology.[8] But what an archaeology could be, whose object is a form-of-life, that is to say an immediate life experience, this is not easy to say.

Raulff: As I understand it, almost every philosopher has had a vision of the good and the right or of a philosophical life as well. What does yours look like?

Agamben: The idea that one should make his life a work of art is attributed mostly today to Foucault and to his idea of the care of the self. Pierre Hadot, the great historian of ancient philosophy, reproached Foucault that the care of the self of the ancient philosophers did not mean the construction of life as a work of art, but on the contrary a sort of dispossession of the self.[9] What Hadot could not understand is that for Foucault, the two things coincide. You must remember Foucault’s criticism of the notion of author, his radical dismissal of authorship. In this sense, a philosophical life, a good and beautiful life, is something else: when your life becomes a work of art, you are not the cause of it. I mean that at this point you feel your own life and yourself as something “thought,” but the subject, the author, is no longer there. The construction of life coincides with what Foucault referred to as “se deprendre de soi.” And this is also Nietzsche’s idea of a work of art without the artist.

Raulff: For all those who have tried over the last thirty years to forge a non-exclusive form of politics, Nietzsche was the decisive reference. Why is he not that for you?

Agamben: Oh, Nietzsche was important for me also. But I stand rather more with Benjamin, who said, the eternal return is like the punishment of detention, the sentence in school in which one had to copy the same sentence a thousand times….

Raulff: But the work of the Italian Philological School around and after Montinari has precisely shown us that Nietzsche is not a hard, despotic author, as one wanted us to believe for so long, but rather an open, traversed and criss-crossed system of readings and ideas – a work of art without author, like you just now called for.

Agamben: If that is so, then we need to learn to forget the presence of the subject. We must protect the work against the author.


[1] See, e.g., Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Daniel Heller-Roazen trans., Stanford University Press 1998). Homo Sacer is, according to ancient Roman law, a human being that could not be ritually sacrificed but whom one could kill without being guilty of committing murder. Agamben uses the concept as the underpinning for a fresh decoding of the major political difficulty in our century: the rise of the worst sort of totalitarianisms, with Nazism at its apex.
[2] Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (reprint, Zone Books 2002).
[3] See, e.g., Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader 217 (Pantheon 1984) (“[It was only] in the penitentiary institutions that Bentham’s utopia could be fully expressed in a material form. In the 1830s, the panopticon became the architectural program of most prison projects. It was the most direct way of expressing ‘the intelligence of discipline ...’”). The panopticon consisted of a large courtyard, with a tower in the center, surrounded by a series of buildings divided into levels.
[4] Id. at 212. ("... And, although the universal juridicism of modern society seems to fix limits on the exercise of power, its universally widespread panopticism enables it to operate, on the underside of the law, a machinery that is both immense and minute, …”).
[5] On 20 April 2004 the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in cases seeking the determination of the legal status and judicial access of the Guantánamo detainees. See, e.g., Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334 (D.C. Cir filed 2 Sept. 2003), cert. granted 124 S.Ct. 534 (2003).
[6] The Nuremberg Laws, decreed at the 1934 Nazi “Party Conference on Freedom” included a law on citizenship, “which deprived all those ‘not of German blood’ of their rights as citizens.” Ingo Müller, Hitler’s Justice 96-97 (Deborah Lucas Schneider trans., Harvard University Press 1991).
[7] Karlsruhe is the seat of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – German Federal Constitutional Court) and the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH – German Federal Court of Justice). For a sense of the judicializing-political meaning of Karlsruhe, see Gerhard Casper, The “Karlsruhe Republic” – Keynote Address at the State Ceremony Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Federal Constitutional Court, 2 German Law Journal No. 18 (01 December 2001), at http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=111.
[8] See, e.g., Michel Foucault, Archeology of Knowledge (Pantheon 1982).
[9] See, e.g., Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy (Michael Chase trans., Belknap 2004); Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Pierre Hadot and Arnold Davidson eds., Michael Chase trans., Blackwell 1995).


HOMO SACER AS THE OBJECT OF THE DISCOURSE OF THE UNIVERSITY

by Slavoj Zizek


L'envers de la psychanalyse, Seminar XVII (1969-1970) on the four discourses, is Lacan's response to the events of 1968 - its premise is best captured as his reversal of the well-known anti-structuralist graffiti from the Paris walls of 1968 "Structures do not walk on the streets!" - if anything, this Seminar endeavors to demonstrate how structures DO walk on the streets, i.e. how structural shifts CAN account for the social outbursts like that of the 1968. Instead of the one symbolic Order with its set of a priori rules which guarantee social cohesion, we get the matrix of the passages from one to another discourse: Lacan's interest is focused on the passage from the discourse of the Master to the discourse of University as the hegemonic discourse in contemporary society. No wonder that the revolt was located at the universities: as such, it merely signaled the shift to the new forms of domination in which the scientific discourse serves legitimizes the relations of domination. Lacan's underlying premise is sceptic-conservative - Lacan's diagnosis is best captured by his famous retort to the student revolutionaries: "As hysterics, you demand a new master. You will get it!" This passage can also be conceived in more general terms, as the passage from the prerevolutionary ancien regime to the postrevolutionary new Master who does not want to admit that he is one, but proposes himself as a mere "servant" of the People — in Nietzsche's terms, it is simply the passage from Master's ethics to slave morality, and this fact, perhaps, enables us a new approach to Nietzsche: when Nietzsche scornfully dismisses "slave morality," he is not attacking lower classes as such, but, rather, the new masters who are no longer ready to assume the title of the Master - "slave" is Nietzsche's term for a fake master. — How, then, more closely, are we to read the university discourse?


The university discourse is enunciated from the position of "neutral" Knowledge; it addresses the remainder of the real (say, in the case of pedagogical knowledge, the "raw, uncultivated child"), turning it into the subject ($). The "truth" of the university discourse, hidden beneath the bar, of course, is power, i.e. the Master-Signifier: the constitutive lie of the university discourse is that it disavows its performative dimension, presenting what effectively amounts to a political decision based on power as a simple insight into the factual state of things. What one should avoid here is the Foucauldian misreading: the produced subject is not simply the subjectivity which arises as the result of the disciplinary application of knowledge-power, but its remainder, that which eludes the grasp of knowledge-power. "Production" (the fourth term in the matrix of discourses) does not stand simply for the result of the discursive operation, but rather for its "indivisible remainder," for the excess which resists being included in the discursive network, i.e. for what the discourse itself produces as the foreign body in its very heart. Perhaps the exemplary case of the Master's position which underlies the university discourse is the way in which medical discourse functions in our everyday lives: at the surface level, we are dealing with pure objective knowledge which desubjectivizes the subject-patient, reducing him to an object of research, of diagnosis and treatment; however, beneath it, one can easily discern a worried hystericized subject, obsessed with anxiety, addressing the doctor as his Master and asking for reassurance from him. At a more common level, suffice it to recall the market expert who advocates strong budgetary measures (cutting welfare expenses, etc.) as a necessity imposed by his neutral expertise devoid of any ideological biases: what he conceals is the series of power-relations (from the active role of state apparatuses to ideological beliefs) which sustain the "neutral" functioning of the market mechanism.

In the University discourse, is not the upper level ($ — a) that of biopolitics (in the sense deployed from Foucault to Agamben)? Of the expert knowledge dealing with its object which is a - not subjects, but individuals reduced to bare life? And does the lower not designate what Eric Santner called the "crisis of investiture," i.e., the impossibility of the subject to relate to S1, to identify with a Master-Signifier, to assume the imposed symbolic mandate?1 The key point is here that the expert rule of "biopolitics" is grounded in and conditioned by the crisis of investiture; this crisis generated the "post-metaphysical" survivalist stance of the Last Men, which ends up in an anemic spectacle of life dragging on as its own shadow. It is within this horizon that one should appreciate today's growing rejection of death penalty: what one should be able to discern is the hidden "biopolitics" which sustains this rejection. Those who assert the "sacredness of life," defending it against the threat of transcendent powers which parasitize on it, end up in a world in which, on behalf of its very official goal — long pleasurable life — all effective pleasures are prohibited or strictly controlled (smoking, drugs, food…). Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is the latest example of this survivalist attitude towards dying, with its "demystifying" presentation of war as a meaningless slaughter which nothing can really justify - as such, it provides the best possible justification for the Colin Powell's "no-casualties-on-our-side" military doctrine.

On today's market, we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol... And the list goes on: what about virtual sex as sex without sex, the Colin Powell doctrine of warfare with no casualties (on our side, of course) as warfare without warfare, the contemporary redefinition of politics as the art of expert administration as politics without politics, up to today's tolerant liberal multiculturalism as an experience of Other deprived of its Otherness (the idealized Other who dances fascinating dances and has an ecologically sound holistic approach to reality, while features like wife beating remain out of sight…)? Virtual Reality simply generalizes this procedure of offering a product deprived of its substance: it provides reality itself deprived of its substance, of the resisting hard kernel of the Real - in the same way decaffeinated coffee smells and tastes like the real coffee without being the real one, Virtual Reality is experienced as reality without being one.

Is this not the attitude of the hedonistic Last Man? Everything is permitted, you can enjoy everything, BUT deprived of its substance which makes it dangerous. (This is also Last Man's revolution — "revolution without revolution.") Is this not one of the two versions of Lacan's anti-Dostoyevski motto "If God doesn't exist, everything is prohibited"? (1) God is dead, we live in a permissive universe, you should strive for pleasures and happiness — but, in order to have a life full of happiness and pleasures, you should avoid dangerous excesses, so everything is prohibited if it is not deprived of its substance; (2) If God is dead, superego enjoins you to enjoy, but every determinate enjoyment is already a betrayal of the unconditional one, so it should be prohibited. The nutritive version of this is to enjoy directly the Thing Itself: why bother with coffee? Inject caffeine directly into your blood! Why bother with sensual perceptions and excitations by external reality? Take drugs which directly affect your brain! - And if there is God, then everything is permitted — to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, as the instruments of His will; clearly, a direct link to God justifies our violation of any "merely human" constraints and considerations (as in Stalinism, where the reference to the big Other of historical Necessity justifies absolute ruthlessness).

Today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint — it is no longer the old notion of the "right measure" between pleasure and constraint, but a kind of pseudo-Hegelian immediate coincidence of the opposites: action and reaction should coincide, the very thing which causes damage should already be the medicine. The ultimate example of it is arguably a chocolate laxative, available in the US, with the paradoxical injunction "Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate!", i.e., of the very thing which causes constipation. Do we not find here a weird version of Wagner's famous "Only the spear which caused the wound can heal it" from Parsifal? And is not a negative proof of the hegemony of this stance the fact that true unconstrained consumption (in all its main forms: drugs, free sex, smoking…) is emerging as the main danger? The fight against these dangers is one of the main investments of today's "biopolitics." Solutions are here desperately sought which would reproduce the paradox of the chocolate laxative. The main contender is "safe sex" — a term which makes one appreciative of the truth of the old saying "Is having sex with a condom not like taking a shower with a raincoat on?". The ultimate goal would be here, along the lines of decaf coffee, to invent "opium without opium": no wonder marijuana is so popular among liberals who want to legalize it — it already IS a kind of "opium without opium."

The structure of the "chocolate laxative," of a product containing the agent of its own containment, can be discerned throughout today's ideological landscape. There are two topics which determine today's liberal tolerant attitude towards Others: the respect of Otherness, openness towards it, AND the obsessive fear of harassment — in short, the Other is OK insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as the Other is not really Other… A similar structure is clearly present in how we relate to capitalist profiteering: it is OK IF it is counteracted with charitable activities — first you amass billions, then you return (part of) them to the needy… And the same goes for war, for the emergent logic of humanitarian or pacifist militarism: war is OK insofar as it really serves to bring about peace, democracy, or to create conditions for distributing humanitarian help. And does the same not hold more and more even for democracy: it is OK if it is "rethought" to include torture and a permanent emergency state, if it is cleansed of its populist "excesses," and if the people are "mature" enough to live by it…

However, what we were describing what cannot but appear as two opposite ideological spaces: that of the reduction of humans to bare life, to homo sacer as the dispensable object of the expert caretaking knowledge; and that of the respect for the vulnerable Other brought to extreme, of the attitude of narcissistic subjectivity which experiences itself as vulnerable, constantly exposed to a multitude of potential "harassments." Is there a stronger contrast than the one between the respect for the Other's vulnerability and the reduction of the Other to "mere life" regulated by the administrative knowledge?

But what if these two stances nonetheless rely on the same root, what if they are the two aspects of one and the same underlying attitude, what if they coincide in what one is tempted to designate as the contemporary case of the Hegelian "infinite judgement" which asserts the identity of opposites? What the two poles share is precisely the underlying refusal of any higher Causes, the notion that the ultimate goal of our lives is life itself. Nowhere is the complicity of these two levels clearer as in the case of the opposition to death penalty — no wonder, since (violently putting another human being to) death is, quite logically, the ultimate traumatic point of biopolitics, the politics of the administration of life. To put it in Foucauldian terms, is the abolition of death penalty not part of a certain "biopolitics" which considers crime as the result of social, psychological, ideological, etc., circumstances: the notion of the morally/legally responsible subject is an ideological fiction whose function is to cover up the network of power relations, individuals are not responsible for the crimes they commit, so they should not be punished? Is, however, the obverse of this thesis not that those who control the circumstances control the people? No wonder the two strongest industrial complexes are today the military and the medical, that of destroying and that of prolonging life.

Superego is thus not directly S2; it is rather the S1 of the S2 itself, the dimension of an unconditional injunction that is inherent to knowledge itself. Recall the informations about health we are bombarded with all the time: "Smoking is dangerous! To much fat may cause a heart attack! Regular exercise leads to a longer life!" etc.etc. — it is impossible not to hear beneath it the unconditional injunction "You should enjoy a long and healthy life!"… What this means is that the discourse of the University is thoroughly mystifying, concealing its true foundation, obfuscating the unfreedom on which it relies.

1. See Eric Santner, My Own Private Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996.

ISLAND UNIVERSES & BORDANDO EL MANTO TERRESTRE

ISLAND UNIVERSES

To je kao da se tvrdi da Kant nije napisao tri kritike jer nije nikad napustio Istočnu Prusiju, a pola života je proveo kao kućni učitelj. Nije ni prvi rekao da su izmaglice koje se vide kroz teleskop druge galaksije, 'Island Universes' jer nije bio nikad izvan Mliječne staze.

LOVE IS MURDER

Previously unpublished paper
To appear in IJŽS Vol 1.4 - Special Issue, Žižek & Hegel

CHRIST, HEGEL, WAGNER

Slavoj Žižek



What is a simple adultery compared to marriage!


In pre-digital times, when I was in my teens, I remember seeing a bad copy of Vertigo - its last seconds were simply missing, so that the movie appeared to have a happy ending, Scottie reconciled with Judy, forgiving her and accepting her as a partner, the two of them passionately embracing... My point is that such an ending is not as artificial as it may seem: it is rather in the actual ending that the sudden appearance of the Mother Superior from the staircase below functions as a kind of negative deux ex machina, a sudden intrusion in no way properly grounded in the narrative logic, which prevents the happy ending. Where does the nun appear from? From the same preontological realm of shadows from which Scottie himself secretly observes Madeleine in the florist's. And it is here that we should locate the hidden continuity between Vertigo and Psycho: the Mother Superior appears from the same void from which, “out ofnowhere,” Norman appears in the shower murder sequence of Psycho, brutally attacking Marion, interrupting the reconciliatory ritual of cleansing. And we should follow this direction to the end: in a strange structural homology with the between-two-frames dimension of a painting, many of Hitchcock’s films seem to rely on a between-two-stories dimension. Here is a simple mental experiment with two of Hitchcock’s late masterpieces: what if Vertigo were to end after Madeleine’s suicide, with the devastated Scottie listening to Mozart in the sanatorium? What if Psycho were to end seconds prior to the shower murder, with Marion staring into the falling water, purifying herself? In both cases, we would get a consistent short film. In the case of Vertigo, it would be a drama of the destruction caused by the violently-obsessive male desire: it is the very excessive-possessive nature of male desire which makes it destructive of its object – (male) love is murder, as Otto Weininger knew long ago. In the case of Psycho, it would be a moral tale about a catastrophe prevented in the last minute: Marion commits a minor crime, escaping with the stolen money to rejoin her lover; on the way, she meets Norman who is like a figure of moral warning, rendering visible to Marion what awaits her at the end of the line if she follows the path taken; this terrifying vision sobers her up, so she withdraws to her room, plans her return and then takes a shower, as if to cleanse her of her moral dirt… In both cases, it is thus as if what we are first lured into taking as the full story is all of a sudden displaced, re-framed, relocated into, or supplemented by, another story, something along the lines of the idea envisaged by Borges in the opening story of his Fictions, which culminates in the claim: “Un libro que no encierra su contra-libro es considerado incomplete.” (A book which does not contain its counter-book is considered incomplete.) In his 2005-2006 seminar, Jacques-Alain Miller elaborated this idea, referring to Ricardo Piglia.1 Piglia quoted as an example of Borges’s claim one of Michail Chekov’s tales whose nucleus is: ‘A man goes to the casino at Monte Carlo, wins a million, returns to his place and commits suicide.’ If this is the nucleus of a story, one must, in order to tell it, divide the twisted story in two: on the one hand, the story of the game; on the other, that of the suicide. Thus Piglia’s first thesis: that a story always has a double characteristic and always tells two stories at the same time, which provides the opportunity to distinguish the story which is on the first plane from the number 2 story which is encoded in the interstices of story
number 1. We should note that story number 2 only appears when the story is concluded, and it has the effect of surprise. What joins these two stories is that the elements, the events, are inscribed in two narrative registers which are at the same time distinct, simultaneous, and antagonistic, and the construction itself of the story is supported by the junction between the two stories. The inversions which seem superfluous in the development of story number 1 become, on the contrary, essential in the plot of story number 2. There is a modern form of the story which transforms this structure by omitting the surprise finale without closing the structure of the story, which leaves a trace of a narrative, and the tension of the two stories is never resolved. This is what one considers as being properly modern: the subtraction of the final anchoring point which allows the two stories to continue in an unresloved tension.This is the case, says Piglia, with Hemingway, who pushed the ellipse to its highest point in such a way that the secret story remains hermetic. One perceives simply that there is another story which needs to be told, but which remains absent. There is a hole. If one modified Chekov’s note in Hemingway’s style, it would not narrate the suicide, but rather the text would be assembled in such a way that one might think that the reader already knew it. Kafka constitutes another of these variants. He narrates very simply, in his novels, the most secret story, a secret story which appears on the first plane, told as if coming from itself, and he encodes the story which should be visible but which becomes, on the contrary, enigmatic and hidden.” Back to Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Psycho, is this not precisely the structure of the narrative twist/cut in both films? In both cases, the story number 2 (the shift to Judy and to Norman) only appears when the story seems concluded, and it certainly has the effect of surprise; in both cases, the two narrative registers are at the same time distinct, simultaneous, and antagonistic, and the construction itself of the story is supported by the junction between the two stories. The inversions which seem superfluous in the development of story number 1 (like the totally contingent intrusion of the murdering monster in Psycho), become essential in the plot of story number 2. One can thus well imagine, along these lines, Psycho remade by Hemingway or Kafka. In Hemingway’s version, Norman’s story will remain hermetic: the spectator will simply perceive that there is another (Norman’s) story which needs to be told, but which remains absent - there is a hole. In Kafka’s version, Norman’s story would appear in the first plane, told as if coming from itself: Norman’s weird universe would have been narrated directly, in the first person, as something most normal, while Marion’s story would have been encoded/enframed by Norman’s horizon, told as enigmatic and hidden… This is how, from a proper Hegelo-Lacanian perspective, one should subvert the standard self-enclosed linear narrative: not by means of a postmodern dispersal into a multitude of local narratives, but by means of its redoubling in a hidden counternarrative. (This is why the classic detective whodunit is so similar to the psychoanalytic process: in it also, the two narrative registers – the visible story of the discovery of crime and its investigation by the detective, and the hidden story of what really happened – are “at the same time distinct, simultaneous, and antagonistic, and the construction itself of the story is supported by the junction between the two stories”… One of the few remaining truly progressive US publications, the Weekly World News, reported on a recent breath-taking discovery3: archeologists discovered an additional ten commandments, as well as seven “warnings” from Jehovah to his people; they are suppressed by the Jewish and Christian establishment because they clearly give a boost to today’s progressive struggle, demonstrating beyond doubt that God took side in our political battles. Say, the Commandment 11 is: “Thou shalt tolerate the faith of others as you would have them do unto you.” (Originally, this commandment was directed at the Jews who objected to the Egyptian slaves joining them in their exodus to continue to practice their religion.) Commandment 14 (“Thou shalt not inhale burning leaves in a house of manna where it may affect the breathing of others”) clearly supports the prohibition of smoking in public places; commandment 18 (“Thou shalt not erect a temple of gaming in the desert, where all will become wanton”) warns of Las Vegas, although it originally refers to individuals who organized gambling in the desert close to the camp of wandering Jews; commandment 19 (“Thy body is sacred and thou shalt not permanently alter thy face or bosom. If thy nose offends thee, leave it alone”) points towards the vanity of plastic surgery, while the target of commandment 16 (“Thou shalt not elect a fool to lead thee. If twice elected, thy punishment shall be death by stoning”) is clearly the re-election of President Bush. Even more telling are some of the warnings: the second warning (“Seek ye not war in My Holy Lands, for they shall multiply and afflict all of civilization”) presciently warns of the global dangers of the Middle East conflict, and the third warning (“Avoid dependence upon the thick black oils of the soil, for they come from the realm of Satan”) is a plea for new sources of clean energy. Are we ready tohear and obey God’s word?
There is a basic question to be raised here, above the ironic satisfaction provided by such jokes: is the search for supplementary Commandments not another version of the search for the counter-book without which the principal book remains incomplete? And insofar as this Book-to-be-supplemented is ultimately the Old Testament itself, is the counter-Book not simply the New Testament itself? This would be the way to account for the strange co-existence of two sacred books in Christianity: the Old Testament, THE Book shared by all three “religions of the book,” and the New Testament, the counter-book that defines Christianity and (within its perspective, of course) completes the Book, so that we can effectively say that “the construction itself of the Bible is supported by the junction between the two Testaments”… This ambiguous supplementation-completion is best encapsulated in the lines on the fulfilment of the Law from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain, in which he radicalizes the Commandments (Matthew 5, 17-48, quoted from NIV):
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. /…/
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. /…/
You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. The official Catholic way to interpret this series of supplements is the so-called Double Standard View, which divides the teachings of the Sermon into general precepts and specific counsels: obedience to the general precepts is essential for salvation, but
obedience to the counsels is only necessary for perfection, or, as St. Thomas Acquinas put it (in Did. 6:2): "For if you are able to bear the entire yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you are not able to do this, do what you are able." In short, Law is for everyone, while its supplement is for the perfect only. Martin Luther rejected this Catholic approach and proposed a different two-level system, the so-called Two Realms View, which divides the world into the religious and secular realms, claiming that the Sermon only applies to the spiritual: in the temporal world, obligations to family, employers, and country force believers to compromise; thus a judge should follow his secular obligations to sentence a criminal, but inwardly, he should mourn for the fate of the criminal. Clearly, both these versions resolve the tension by way of introducing a split between the two domains and constraining the more severe injunctions to the second domain. As expected, in the case of Catholicism, this split is externalized into two kinds of people, the ordinary ones and the perfect (saints, monks…), while in Protestantism, it is internalized into the split between how I interact with others in the secular sphere, and how I inwardly relate to others. Are these, however, the only ways to read this operation? A (perhaps surprising) reference to Richard Wagner might be of some help here: a reference to his draft of the play Jesus of Nazareth, written somewhere between late 1848 and early 1849. Together with the libretto The Saracen Woman (Die Sarazenin, written in 1843 between The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser), these two drafts are key elements in Wagner’s development: each of them indicates a path which might have been taken but was abandoned, i.e., it points towards a what-if scenario of an alternate Wagner, and thus reminds us of the open character of history. The Saracen Woman is, after Wagner found his voice in the Dutchman, the last counter-attack of the Grand Opera, a repetition of Rienzi – if Wagner were to set it to notes and if the opera were to turn out to be a triumph like Rienzi, it is possible that Wagner would have succumbed to this last Meyerbeerian temptation, and would have developed into a thoroughly different composer. Similarly, a couple of years later, after Wagner exhausted his potentials for the Romantic operas with Lohengrin and was searching for a new way, Jesus again stands for a path which differs thoroughly from that of the music-dramas and their “pagan” universe – Jesus is something like Parsifal written directly, without the long detour through the Ring. What, among other things, Wagner proposes in Jesus: what Wagner attributes there to Jesus is a series of alternate supplementations of the
Commandments:
The commandment saith: Thou shalt not commit adultery! But I say unto you: Ye shall not marry without love. A marriage without love is broken as soon as entered into, and who so hath wooed without love, already hath broken the wedding. If ye follow my commandment, how can ye ever break it, since it bids you to do what your own heart and soul desire? – But where ye marry without love, ye bind yourselves at variance with God’s love, and in your wedding ye sin against God; and this sin avengeth itself by your striving next against the law of man, in that ye break the marriage-vow.4
The shift from Jesus’ actual words is crucial here: Jesus “internalizes” the prohibition, rendering it much more severe (the Law says no actual adultery, while I say that if you only covet the other’s wife in your mind, it is the same as if you already committed adultery, etc.); Wagner also internalizes it, but in a different way – the inner dimension he evokes is not that of intention to do it, but that of love that should accompany the Law (marriage). The true adultery is not to copulate outside marriage, but to copulate in marriage without love: the simple adultery just violates the Law from outside, while marriage without love destroys it from within, turning the letter of the Law against its spirit. So, to paraphrase Brecht yet again: what is a simple adultery compared to (the adultery that is a loveless) marriage! It is not by chance that Wagner’s underlying formula “marriage is adultery” recalls Proudhon’s “property is theft” – in the stormy 1848 events, Wagner was not only a Feuerbachian celebrating sexual love, but also a Proudhonian revolutionary demanding the abolition of private property; so no wonder that, later on on the same page, Wagner attributes to Jesus a Proudhonian supplement
to “Thou shalt not steal!”:
This also is a good law: Thou shalt not steal, nor covet another man’s goods. Who goeth against it, sinneth: but I preserve you from that sin, inasmuch as I teach you: Love thy neighbour as thyself; which also meaneth: Lay not up for thyself treasures, whereby thou stealest from thy neighbour and makest him to starve: for when thou hast thy goods safeguarded by the law of man, thou provokest thy neighbour to sin against the law.5 This is how the Christian “supplement” to the Book should be conceived: as a properly Hegelian “negation of negation,” which resides in the decisive shift from the distortion of a notion to a distortion constitutive of this notion, i.e., to this notion as a distortion-in-itself. Recall again Proudhon’s old dialectical motto “property is theft”: the “negation of negation” is here the shift from theft as a distortion (“negation,” violation) of property to the dimension of theft inscribed into the very notion of property (nobody has the right to fully own means of production, their nature is inherently collective, so every claim “this is mine” is illegitimate). The same goes for crime and Law, for the passage from crime as the distortion (“negation”) of the law to crime as sustaining law itself, i.e., to the idea of the Law itself as universalized crime. One should note that, in this notion of the “negation of negation,” the encompassing unity of the two opposed terms is the “lowest,” “transgressive,” one: it is not crime which is a moment of law’s self-mediation (or theft which is a moment of property’s self-mediation); the opposition of crime and law is inherent to crime, law is a subspecies of crime, crime’s self-relating negation (in the same way that property is theft’s self-relating negation). And does ultimately the same not go for nature itself? Here, “negation of negation” is the shift from the idea that we are violating some natural balanced order to the idea that imposing on the Real such anotion of balanced order is in itself the greatest violation… which is why the premise, the first axiom even, of every radical ecology is “there is no Nature.”
These lines cannot but evoke the famous passages from The Communist Manifesto which answer the bourgeois reproach that Communists want to abolish freedom, property and family: it is the capitalist freedom itself which is effectively the freedom to buy and sell on the market and thus the very form of un-freedom for those who have nothing but their labor force to sell; it is the capitalist property itself which means the “abolition” of property for those who own no means of production; it is the bourgeois marriage itself which is universalized prostitution … in all these cases, the external opposition is internalized, so that one opposite becomes the form of appearance of the other (bourgeois freedom is the form of appearance of the unfreedom of the majority, etc.). However, for Marx, at least in the case of freedom, this means that Communism will not abolish freedom but, by way of abolishing the capitalist servitude, bring about actual freedom, the freedom which will no longer be the form of appearance of its opposite. It is thus not freedom itself which is the form of appearance of its opposite, but only the false freedom, the freedom distorted by the relations of domination. Is it not, then, that, underlying the dialectic of the “negation of negation,” a Habermasian “normative” approach imposes here immediately: how can we talk about crime if we do not have a preceding notion of legal order violated by the criminal transgression? In other words, is the notion of law as universalized/self-negated crime not auto-destructive? This, precisely, is what a properly dialectical approach rejects: what is before transgression is just a neutral state of things, neither good nor bad (neither property nor theft, neither law nor crime); the balance of this state of things is then violated, and the positive norm (Law, property) arises as a secondary move, an attempt to counter-act and contain the transgression. With regard to the dialectic of freedom, this means that it is the very “alienated, bourgeois” freedom which creates the conditions and opens up the space for “actual” freedom.
This Hegelian logic is at work in Wagner’s universe up to Parsifal, whose final message is a profoundly Hegelian one: The wound can be healed only by the spear that smote it (Die Wunde schliesst der Speer nur der Sie schlug). Hegel says the same thing, although with the accent shifted in the opposite direction: the Spirit is itself the wound it tries to heal, i.e., the wound is self-inflicted.6 That is to say, what is “Spirit” at its most elementary? The “wound” of nature: subject is the immense – absolute - power of negativity, of introducing a gap/cut into the given-immediate substantial unity, the power of differentiating, of “abstracting,” of tearing apart and treating as self-standing what in reality is part of an organic unity. This is why the notion of the “self-alienation” of Spirit (of Spirit losing itself in its otherness, in its objectivization, in its result) is more paradoxical than it may appear: it should be read together with Hegel’s assertion of the thoroughly non-substantial character of Spirit: there is no res cogitans, no thing which (as its property) also thinks, spirit is nothing but the process of overcoming natural immediacy, of the cultivation of this immediacy, of withdrawing-into-itself or “taking off” from it, of – why not – alienating itself from it. The paradox is thus that there is no Self that precedes the Spirit’s “self-alienation”: the very process of alienation creates/generates the “Self” from which Spirit is alienated and to which it then returns. (Hegel here turns around the standard notion that a failed version of X presupposes this X as their norm (measure): X is created, its space is outlined, only through repetitive failures to reach it.) Spirit's self-alienation is the same as, fully coincides with, its alienation from its Other (nature), because it constitutes itself through its “return-to-itself” from its immersion into natural Otherness. In other words, Spirit’s return-to-itself creates the very dimension to which it returns. (This holds for all “return to origins”: when, from 19th century onwards, new Nation-States were constituting themselves in Central and Eastern Europe, their discovery and return to “old ethnic roots” generated these roots.) What this means is that the “negation of negation,” the ”return-to-oneself” from alienation, does not occur where it seems to: in the “negation of negation,” Spirit’s negativity is not relativized, subsumed under an encompassing positivity; it is, on the contrary, the “simple negation” which remains attached to the presupposed positivity it negated, the presupposed Otherness from which it alienates itself, and the “negation of negation” is nothing but the negation of the substantial character of this Otherness itself, the full acceptance of the abyss of Spirit’s self-relating which retroactively posits all its presuppositions. In other words, once we are in negativity, we never quit it and regain the lost innocence of Origins; it is, on the contrary, only in “negation of negation” that the Origins are truly lost, that their very loss is lost, that they are deprived of the substantial status of that which was lost. The Spirit heals its wound not by directly healing it, but by getting rid of the very full and sane Body into which the wound was cut. It is a little bit like in the (rather tasteless version of the) “first-the-bad-news-then-the-good-news” medical joke: “The bad news is that we’ve discovered you have severe Alzheimer’s disease. The good news is the same: you have Alzheimer’s, so you will already forget the bad news
when you get back home.”
In Christian theology, Christ’s supplement (the repeated “But I tell you…”) is often designated as the “antithesis” to the Thesis of the Law – the irony here is that, in the proper Hegelian approach, this antithesis is synthesis itself at its purest. In other words, is what Christ does in his ”fulfillment” of the Law not the Law’s Aufhebung in the strict Hegelian sense of the term? In its supplement, the Commandment is both negated and maintained by way of being elevated/transposed into another (higher) level.

1 Piglia’s text to which Miller refers without providing any references is “Tesis sobre el cuento,”
Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada, vol. 1 (1991), p. 22-25.
2 Jacques-Alain Miller, “Profane Illuminations,” lacanian ink 28, p. 12-13.
3 “The Ten Commandments Were Just the Beginning…,” Weekly World News, Nov 6 2006 p. 24-
26.
4 Richard Wagner, Jesus of Nazareth and Other Writings, Lincoln and London: University of
Nebraska Press 1995, p. 303.
5 Wagner, op.cit., p. 303-304.
6 G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics, Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, p. 98.

USKRŠNJA POSLANICA UZORITOG NEMA

OVAJ JE POST GOTOV: LET'S PARTY*!



Korizmi je došel kraj,
Đizus ide sad u Raj!
Bit će tamo rock'n'rolla,
Nema patnje, nema bola!

Korizmi je došel kraj,
Đizus ide sad u Raj!
Bit će tamo šunke, jaja,
Krkanju tu nema kraja.

Aleluja, Aleluja,
Jesi Bože ti nas čuja!

Vazamski tradicional, okolica Krka

__________

* COMUNIST PARTY!

VAZAM

USKRS U HRVATA



SVETO TRODNEVLJE

U svakodnevnom govoru navikli smo ubrajati u sveto trodnevlje Veliki četvrtak, Veliki petak i Veliku subotu. Sveto trodnevlje započinje misom Večere Gospodnje, nastavlja se liturgijom Velikog petka, Uskrsnim bdjenjem, dnevnom misom na Uskrs, a završava službeno večernjom misom uskrsnog dana. Ovdje je potrebno napomenuti da je večernja misa Velikog četvrtka - u liturgiji - predvečerje sutrašnjeg dana, jer su kod Židova veliki blagdani počinjali večer uoči istog.

Stari su hrvatski pisci Uskrs nazvali Vazmom, što je izvedenica od grčke riječi "azima" koja doslovno znači "beskvasni kruh", a skraćeno se upotrebljavala za židovsku Pashu, kojoj je Krist dao novi sadržaj svojom smrću i svojim uskrsnućem. Uskrs je najstarija i konstitutivna svetkovina kršćanske zajednice. Često se može čuti u ovom vremenu liturgijske godine izraz 'vigilija'. Sv. Augustin je tako nazvao Uskrsno bdjenje, a doslovno znači "majkom svih bdjenja".

Naime, Kristova Pasha - njegov prijelaz s ovoga svijeta k Ocu po muci, smrti i uskrsnuću - predmet je slavljenja nedjelje, kao 'malog Uskrsa', ali i svih ostalih euharistijskih slavlja tijekom liturgijske godine koja su se postepeno razvila upravo od Uskrsa. U ovom kratkom prikazu pokušali bismo prikazati bogatstvo liturgijskih slavlja ovih, najznačajnijih dana za svakog kršćanina.

VELIKI ČETVRTAK - VEČERA GOSPODNJA

Na ovaj dan, nema dnevnih sv. misa, jedino se slavi misa Večere Gospodnje koja je godišnji spomen-čin ustanovljenja svih naših euharistijskih slavlja. U katedralama, kao matičnim crkvama svake biskupije, biskup ujutro ovoga dana slavi liturgiju sa svim svećenicima svoje biskupije. Tada se blagoslivlja bolesničko i katekumensko ulje, a posvećuje se također i krizmano ulje, te ulje za ređenje svećenika. Nakon biskupove propovijedi svećenici obnavljaju obećanja dana na ređenju da će vjerno obavljati prihvaćenu službu. Uvečer se slavi euharistija u svim crkvama. Nakon Ivanova izvještaja o Isusu koji za vrijeme Večere pere učenicima noge, sam predvoditelj slavlja (u nekim zajednicama) pere dvanaestorici odabranih noge i tako podsjeća sve okupljene da je euharistija upućena na život - bratsku ljubav svih kršćana koju trebaju širiti u svijet.

VELIKI PETAK MUKE GOSPODNJE

Današnji obred Velikog petka razvio se od onoga koji su već u IV. st. uveli kršćani Jeruzalema nakon što je carica Helena 320. godine pronašla zagubljenu relikviju križa Kristova. Od tada su se kršćani počeli skupljati popodne na Golgoti i tamo imali službu Riječi. Današnji obred Velikog petka započinje prostracijom svećenika i poslužitelja ili pak klečanjem u šutnji. Nakon toga slijede čitanja, čiji vrhunac svake godine je Muka po Ivanu. Crkva nakon homilije izriče sveopću molitvu kao zaključak službe riječi.

Ove molitve su vrlo stare, te uključuju sve ljude, od pape, vjernika, katekumena, kršćana koji nisu u punom zajedništvu s katoličkom Crkvom, Židova, članova nekršćanskih religija, onih koji ne vjeruju u Boga, upravitelja država, bolesnih, gladnih, zatvorenih, putnika, iseljenika, umirućih. Slijedi klanjanje Križu. Ono počinje celebrantovim predstavljanjem križa okupljenoj zajednici: "Evo drvo Križa, na kom je visio Spas svijeta!" Vjernici se mogu slobodno pokloniti Križu, ili ga poljubiti.

Poželjno je da to učini svaki član zajednice. Dok traje poklon članova zajednice Križu, pjeva se stara tužaljka "Usta moja, opjevajte" koja stavlja u usta trpećem Isusu dobročinstva koja je Bog učinio svome narodu u povijesti spasenja, a narod svoga Mesiju daje razapeti na križ, ruga mu se, poji ga octom, probada mu bok kopljem. Posljednji dio obreda ovoga dana jest pričest koja je na Veliki četvrtak pohranjena na sporednom oltaru. Obred počinje Molitvom Gospodnjom, nema znaka mira, već se samo pristupa pričesti. Liturgija završava otpusnom molitvom te se vjernici razilaze u šutnji. Tišina je u crkvi i srcima vjernika, tišina kojom Bog progovara onima koji su ga spremni slušati - Spasitelj je mrtav da bi nas smrtne izveo u vječni život.

VELIKA SUBOTA - USKRSNO BDJENJE

Od obreda Velikoga petka kroz cijelu Veliku subotu Crkva 'šuti'. Navečer se vjernici okupljaju na bdjenje. Prva je Crkva uskrsnu noć provodila u pjesmi i molitvi pridružujući katekumene Kristu raspetom i uskrslom. Današnji obred Vazmenoga bdjenja sastoji se od službe svjetla s blagoslovom ognja i Vazmenim hvalospjevom; službe riječi sa sedam starozavjetnih i dva novozavjetna čitanja koja iznose ključne događaje povijesti spasenja; krsne službe s litanijama svih svetih, blagoslovom vode, krštenjem odraslih ili obnovom krsnih obećanja; euharistijske službe pod kojom novokršteni donose misne darove te prvi put blaguju Tijelo Kristovo.

Služba svjetla - u samoj crkvi ugašena su svjetla, a predsjedatelj pred crkvom blagoslivlja oganj kojim će biti zapaljena uskrsna svijeća. Možda bi ovdje bilo zgodno spomenuti simbolizam svijeće; svijeća je djevičanski plod pčela, i zato je prikladna da bude simbol Krista, Sina djevičanske Majke. U uskrsnu svijeću predvoditelj slavlja ucrtava križ te prvo i posljednje slovo . Nakon toga se svijeća pali od blagoslovljenog ognja i? i ?grčkog alfabeta _ nosi kroz Crkvu s tri 'postaje'; pri dnu crkve, u sredini i pred oltarom. Đakon ili onaj koji nosi svijeću podiže je i pjeva: "Svjetlo Kristovo". To je epegzegetski genitiv i znači: "Svjetlo koje je sam Krist". Na taj poklik vjernici odgovaraju: "Bogu hvala!" Nakon toga slijedi Vazmeni hvalospjev, čiju je ljepotu potrebno doživjeti slušanjem.


"Ovo je noć koja svjetlošću stupa
rasprši tmine grijeha.
Ovo je noć koja danas po svem svijetu one,
što u Krista vjeruju,
od tmina grijeha i od opačina otima,
vraća milosti i pridružuje svetosti.
Ovo je noć, u kojoj je Krist
raskinuo okove smrti
i kao pobjednik od mrtvih ustao."

Vazmeni hvalospjev

Služba riječi je dugačka zato što su vjernici u starini željeli dočekati zoru uskrsnog jutra razmatrajući "divna djela što ih je Gospodin Bog svome narodu od početka činio, vjeran svojoj riječi i obećanju" (Rimski misal), a samo krštenje dijelilo se u zoru i liturgija je završavala euharistijskom službom. Iz Staroga zavjeta imamo sedam čitanja koja govore o značajnijim Božjim zahvatima u povijesti izraelskog naroda. Iza svakog čitanja celebrant moli molitvu koja je povezana s pročitanim. Nakon posljednjega Starozavjetnog čitanja slijedi Slava koja se nije pjevala u vremenu korizme. Slijedi čitanje Pavlove poslanice te evanđelje o otkriću praznog groba koje nam donosi Luka.
Krsna služba _ započinje blagoslovom vode kojem prethode Litanije svih svetih. Nakon blagoslova vode slijedi odricanje od grijeha, to jest od Sotone, te ispovijest vjere. Vodom će zatim biti kršteni odrasli katekumeni ili djeca koja će se krstiti u ovoj noći. Ako nema kandidata za krštenje, tada predvoditelj škropi sve prisutne vjernike u znak obnove krsnih obećanja koja su dali Bogu osobno ili su ih dali njihovi roditelji i kumovi.
Euharistijska služba _ u Vazmenom bdjenju je vrhunac Kristove prisutnosti u ovoj noći nakon što smo ga doživjeli prisutnog u simbolu uskrsne svijeće, preko prisutnosti u riječi te u krštenju. Euharistija ostvaruje prisutnost Krista pod prilikama kruha i vina, koji je među nama prisutan u svakodnevnom životu kao Uskrsli, a posebno u svakom euharistijskom slavlju kada nam daje samog sebe za naše suobličenje njemu Proslavljenom.

Posljednica

Svetoj Žrtvi uskrsnici
dajte slavu krštenici!
Janje ovce oslobodi,
Krist nas grešne preporodi.
Sa životom smrt se sasta
i čudesna borba nasta:
Vođa živih pade tada
i živ živcat opet vlada.
Marijo, o reci što je?
Što ti oko vidjelo je?
"Grob ja vidjeh Krista Boga,
svijetlu slavu uskrsloga,
Anđele i platno bijelo
u kom bješe sveto tijelo.
Ufanje mi uskrslo je,
Krist, moj Gospod i sve moje;
Pred vama će tamo gdje je
cvjetna strana Galileje."
Znamo da si doistine
uskrsnuo, Božji Sine;
Pobjedniče, Kralju divan,
budi nama milostivan!
Amen, aleluja!

U HRVATSKOM JEZIKU POSTOJE DVA IZRAZA: VAZAM I USKRS JE LI OVDJE RIJEČ O SINONIMIMA I ČEMU OVA DVOJNOST?

Bit ću vrlo neposredan. Kad si čestitamo, nemojmo reći: Sretan ti Vazam, nego Sretan Uskrs! To je najjednostavnija i najčišća poruka. Nešto je o tome s jezičnog stajališta vrlo dobro pisao prof. Babić u Vjesnikovoj Danici. Riječ vazam je, po svoj prilici, sinonim riječi uskrs, jer je to u čakavskom i kajkavskom narječju jedini naziv za Uskrs.

No vazam smo u naše vrijeme oživjeli više zbog teoloških razloga. Vazam i vazmeno vrijeme imaju mnogo šire značenje od uskrsnog vremena. Za bit uskrsovanja u kršćanskoj vjeri, u teologiji, a onda i u svakodnevnici, vrlo je važno spojiti u jednu, nerazdjeljivu misaonu i doživljajnu cjelinu Veliki petak i Uskrs. Očito, dakle, riječ vazam pruža mogućnost da se to dvoje poveže u jedno. Tako imamo dva vida jednoga kršćanskoga otajstva: prvi je korizmeni - trpni, a drugi je uskrsni - slavljenički.

ZAŠTO SE TOLIKO MIJENJA DATUM USKRSA?

Uskrsni su se događaji Kristova života odvili u okvirima stare židovske Pashe. On je proslavio svoju vazmenu večeru, proživio svoju muku i smrt i doživio svoj Uskrs za vrijeme toga židovskoga blagdana. On je tom blagdanu dao i konačan, svoj smisao, naznačio mu novu perspektivu koja dosiže sam prag vječnoga života.

Židovi su slavili Pashu 14. dana mjeseca nisana. Bio je to sedmi mjesec židovskoga kalendara, a odgovara našem ožujku i travnju, s početkom proljeća. U Crkvi se u prvo vrijeme Uskrs nije slavio u svim krajevima podjednako, ali uvijek u svezi sa židovskom Pashom. Koncil u Niceji godine 325. donosi opće pravilo za datum Uskrsa, kako bi svi u jedan glas i u isti dan mogli uzdići svoje molitve na sveti dan Uskrsa.

Uskrs se otada slavi u nedjelju koja pada nakon punog mjeseca koji prati proljetnu ravnodnevnicu, ekvinocij. Tako se Uskrs pomiče između 21. ožujka i 25. travnja. Otkad je Grgur XIV. godine 1528. reformirao kalendar (Hrvatski sabor ozakonjuje ga 1587.), istočne crkve ostaju po julijanskom kalendaru.
Tako Blagdan nad blagdanima, kako se u kršćanskoj predaji zove Uskrs, nažalost ne slave svi kršćani u isti dan. Postoji sveopća težnja da se dođe do što usklađenijega svjetskoga kalendara. Tomu bi mnogo pridonijelo kad bi se Uskrs slavio uvijek na isti dan. Katolička se Crkva na II. vatikanskom koncilu izjasnila u prilog takva kalendara, uz uvjet da ga prihvate i druge Crkve. Po današnjem računanju, Isusov se Veliki petak one godine dogodio 7. travnja, a Uskrs 9. travnja. Taj bi datum bio prikladan za buduće stalno uskrsovanje.

B. Duda, Krist i naši svagdan

USKRS

"Što tražite Živoga među mrtvima? Nije ovdje, nego uskrsnu!" (Lk 24, 5 - 6)
Uskrs je najveći i najvažniji kršćanski blagdan. Na Uskrs slavimo središnji događaj kršćanstva _ Kristovo uskrsnuće. Zato biti kršćanin znači ponajprije vjerovati da je Bog Isusa, onog istog kojeg su ljudi raspeli, uskrisio i učinio Gospodarem svega stvorenoga. Kristovo uskrsnuće je bilo pripravljeno kroz cijeli Stari zavjet, a kad je jednom ostvareno, sva kršćanska pokoljenja riječju i životom svjedoče za tu temeljnu istinu povijesti _ Krist je uskrsnuo, s njime i mi neprestano uskrsavamo. Prvo svjedočanstvo za uskrsloga Krista dali su njegovi učenici. Prema Djelima apostolskim, kršćanska se zajednica zasniva, razvija i širi na toj činjenici i na vjernosti uskrslome Kristu. Činjenica Kristova uskrsnuća prenosi se tako svim budućim kršćanskim naraštajima, sve do danas. Kristovo uskrsnuće početak je novoga svijeta i zalog je našeg uskrsnuća koje se već sada ostvaruje dok se s mukom i naporom opiremo zlu i grijehu, a koje će se u punini očitovati kad se Krist jasno objavi svijetu na kraju vremena. Današnji blagdan poziva nas na uskrsnu radost i poručuje nam da zbilju uskrslog Krista širimo oko sebe pobjeđujući smrt i unoseći u svijet pouzdanje, vjeru i nadu.

"Uzdignimo se k njemu koji je prah naše niskoće uzeo u tijelo svoje slave, i ugledajmo se u svemu u njegovu poniznost i strpljivost, da mu se možemo pridružiti u njegovu uskrsnuću" (sv. Leon Veliki).

Bonustrack



USKRS U SLOVENACA


Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Vol. 1 Issue 2, page 32
Volume 1, Issue 2 | Spring 2004

An Interview with Slavoj Žižek

On Divine Self-Limitation and Revolutionary Love

Joshua Delpech-Ramey
Journal of Philosophy and Scripture




JPS: Of late, the writings of St. Paul have
become for you, as well as for Alain
Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, a
touchstone for radical thought. You seem
to see in Paul’s works something of a
revolutionary manual, and in the
founding of the community of believers a
supreme example of the structure and
effect of an authentic revolutionary act.
For Badiou, Paul articulates a general
structure of universality. But how
separable is Paul’s gesture in founding
Christianity from the particularities of
Christianity itself? How general are the
lessons one can learn from Paul? Can or
should those lessons be separated out, as
form from content, from their
particularity as aspects of the history of
Christianity, itself? Or are the
particularities of Christianity somehow,
of the essence of this gesture?

SZ: My problem with Badiou, although I
admire his book very much, is that Badiou . .
. allows for only four truth procedures:
science, art, politics, and love (and then
philosophy is just the study of these genetic
procedures . . .). The point is that his
supreme example of a truth-procedure—
event, and so on—its implicit model is a
kind of religious interpellation. So no
wonder that the best example, it’s religious!
But paradoxically there is no place for
religion. You know the irony is that the
supreme example of the seminal structure of
truth event that he tries to articulate, and it
doesn’t count as a truth-event.
So what he does is something similar to
Heidegger—there is a long history to this.
As we know the early Heidegger started
with the same reference, St. Paul. He
[Heidegger] I think used the term formales
anzeigen, formal indication. The idea being
that, as Heidegger would have put it,
religious experience is just an ontic
experience, it doesn’t really have this
transcendental dignity, and so on, but you
find there a certain formal structure which
can be then generalized, abstracted from its
particular context into a kind of
transcendental a priori. But still what is not
answered, as you said, is that we cannot
simply arrange this and say it’s a simply
empirical concept. Why this structure?
The second point I want to make here is,
I think the reason that Badiou does not
deploy this, as I tried to develop in the long
chapter on Badiou and St. Paul in The
Ticklish Subject, the key question for me is
negativity in the sense of death. For him, in
Badiou’s reading of St. Paul, the death of
Christ, as he puts it, has no inherent meaning
whatsoever—it’s just to prepare the site for
the event. All that matters is resurrection
life. This is connected with a very complex
philosophical-theological topic . . . you may
have noticed if you read Badiou, Badiou has
some kind of natural, gut-feeling resistance
toward the topic of death and finitude. For
him, death and finitude, animality and so on,
being-towards-death, death-drive—he uses
the term sometimes in a purely nonconceptual
way, “death drive, decadence” as
if we were reading some kind of naďve
Marxist liberal optimist from the early 20th
century. This is all somehow for me
interconnected. Although I am also taking
St. Paul as a model, a formal structure which
can then be applied to revolutionary
emancipatory collectivities, and so on,
nonetheless I try to ground it in a specific
Christian content, which again for me
focuses precisely on Christ’s death, [his]
death and resurrection. I am trying even to
identify the two. The idea that resurrection
follows death, the idea that these are two
narrative events, this is at the narrative level
of what Hegel would have called
vorstellungen, representations. Actually, the
two of them are even united. That is to say
that Christ’s death, in the Hegelian reading,
is the disappearance of disappearance. It is
in itself already what becomes for itself the
new community.
What interests me is how precisely to
distinguish Christ’s death from this old
boring topic—and all the old materialist
critics of Christianity like to point this out:
what’s the big news, don’t you have this
sacrificial death of God in all pagan
religions? Ah ah! You don’t. The structure
is totally different if you read it closely:
already at the most superficial level, after
Christ’s death what you get is Holy Spirit,
which is something totally different than in
previous societies. All this about Isis, and so
on, this rather boring circular myth, where
basically god dies . . . you know, it’s like,
people are disordered, things go bad, but
then there is the phoenix, everything is good
again—no wonder this version is so popular,
like even in The Lion King, where you have
a kind of Hamlet-version where king dies,
son redeems, there is a new king and so on .
. . Christianity precisely is not this.
This brings us to two further topics.
Now in Badiou’s reading of psychoanalysis,
he totally dismisses death drive. But the
paradox for me, as I try to develop in my
work, is that death drive is a very
paradoxical notion if you read Freud closely.
Death drive is basically, I claim, the
Freudian term for immortality. Death drive
has nothing to do, as Lacan points out,
convincingly, with this so-called nirvana
principle where everything wants to
disappear, and so on. If anything (and
because of this I like to read Richard
Wagner’s operas where you have this),
death drive is that which prevents you from
dying. Death drive is that which persists
beyond life and death. Again, it’s precisely
what, in my beloved Stephen King’s
horror/science fiction terminology he calls
the “undead”: this terrifying insistence
beneath death, which is why Freud links
death drive to the compulsion to repeat. You
know, it can be dead, but it goes on. This
terrifying insistence of an undead object.
Point two: This is the big lesson to be
learned, with all my criticism (criticism is
the vulgar word, my difference of horizon),
from Heidegger. The big breakthrough of
Heidegger is to totally reconceptualize the
notion of finitude. Already we have this in
the early Heidegger with special reference to
Kant. Already you see precisely how the
other of finitude, the big stuff—infinity,
eternity, and so on—is a category, modality,
horizon of finitude. This was, for Heidegger,
Kant’s big breakthrough: transcendental as
opposed to transcendent is a category of
finitude.
All this somehow gets lost, in Badiou.
[But] the whole category of “event” works
only from the category of finitude. There are
events only in finite situations. You can
prove it only from his own position. Only
for a finite being do you have this infinite
work, what he likes to describe, in Christian
terms, this trinity of faith, hope, love. Faith
that the event did take place, hope in the
final state (in Christianity universal
redemption, in Marxism I don’t know,
communism at the end) and love as work, as
what is between the two, fidelity to the event
and so on. But . . . when in his last work,
Badiou tries to articulate the structure of
totalitarian danger, he calls “forcing the
event,” which means simply to ontologize
the event, as if the event were not an infinite
process whose place you have to discern in
reality, as if the event totally permits its
irrealities. But the gap between event and
reality, that which is covered up by
totalitarianism, is precisely the gap of
finitude—so there is something missing at
this level in Badiou.

JPS: A fourth term for that triad, as it
were, of faith, hope and love?

SZ: Yes, yeah, maybe, but also . . . in these
terms, I would say it: what I do like in
Badiou is his clear awareness that the
authentic Christian notion of love is
something basically very violent and
unilateral, it’s totally different for me from
the pagan notion where love is this kind of
universal balance, you love the whole
universe, you say yes to everything—no!
Love—you find this in Christianity—is onesided,
unilateral. Love means “I love you
more than everything”: love is precisely
what Buddhists would have called the origin
of evil. Love is a kind of radical imbalance.
Here I think you get (as I tried to put it in
my Fragile Absolute) a very fine analysis of
this logic of finitude already in the Bible,
already in Paul, in Corinthians. It’s very
mysterious, that part, that paragraph on love
[I Corinthians 13]. The mystery is the
following one. He [Paul] oscillates basically
between two versions, and the key point I
think is to read them together. The first one
is a kind of radical affirmation of love’s
priority, in the sense of “even if I got to
know everything, and have all the power,
without love I would be nothing, etc.” But
then two paragraphs later, he says—as if
since now we don’t know everything—all
that we have is love. And I think that the
two are to be read together. This is the
paradox of Christianity, for me, that it’s not
God sitting up there and was a good enough
guy to come to us . . . what we have to think,
in a way, is the self-limitation of divinity
itself.
The basic message is that I think there is
a certain dimension of Christianity which for
more complex reasons is missed, I think, by
Badiou, because of his overall view that
there is no place for finitude, as for example
in his critique of Heidegger where he misses
the point. He even goes into this mode
where being-toward-death is just the animal
level of being threatened . . . although I
don’t identify Heidegger’s being-towarddeath
with death drive, Badiou is also
missing that, because he cannot elevate
finitude to its transcendental a priori dignity.
He remains precisely, at a certain level, a
pre-kantian metaphysician.

JPS: Next let’s talk about this idea of the
incarnation, as you read it in The Puppet
and the Dwarf, as symbolizing an internal
difference, a lack in God. The other side
of that speculative judgment is the way
you read Christ, from the perspective of
finitude. Now for orthodox Christianity,
Christ is the icon of God: what can be
known of God is seen in Christ. Now for
your materialist idiom, you want to say
something like “Christ is the icon of
humanity, or of what in humanity is not
quite human”—is that what is breaking
through from the perspective of finitude?

SZ: One thing I would like to specify is that
nonetheless I violently reject this so-called
“humanist” reading of Christianity, which
says that simply, in a kind of Fuerbachian
boring statement, that God is only the
projection of various aspects of being
human, and so on. No, I think this “more in
the human than humanity”—you have to
take it very radically. The basic message of
religion, to put it in a nutshell, is that
humanity cannot stand on its own, that you
need an otherness, not a natural otherness
like the earth or the all-embracing feminine .
. . Here I may be approaching not so much
gnosticism as certain not a little bit heretical
twists, because I want to say not only that
humanity only knows God through Christ
but that only through Christ does God know
himself. We all know that this is a wellknown
gnostic, or not so much gnostic as a
certain mystic tradition or heretical move,
this idea that our knowledge of God is
divine self-knowledge, and so on.
But this is also how I read Jewish
iconoclasm. I don’t think Jewish iconoclasm
is opposed to Christianity. Those who claim
Jews got it correctly, let’s not conceive God
in an anthropomorphic way, Christians
screwed it up in a half-pagan way—no!
They don’t get it. The true lesson already of
Jewish iconoclasm is against this gnostic
fake mysticism. The only terrain of the
divine is contact with other humans. The
divine is not [there] in this gnostic way, you
withdraw into some absolute knowledge.
Images of God [are not proscribed] because
God is tout autre, beyond, and every image
betrays him, but because the space of the
divine is not up there, it’s here, in human
interactions, and I think this is perhaps only
brought to a conclusion in Christianity.
But again I cannot emphasize enough, I
am not playing the old game, “theology is
just the alienated self-image of humanity”
and so on. The whole problem is precisely
that humanity never coincides with itself.

JPS: Does this have to do with why for
you the true anti-type of Christ is not
Adam, but Job. Why is that, exactly?

SZ: On the one hand, as we all know, this is
one of the standard readings of Christianity,
that Job’s suffering in a way points towards
Christ’s suffering.

JPS: But you also, in The Puppet and the
Dwarf, propose the character of Job as
the first great critic of ideology. What is
uncanny about Job however, is that
unlike the modern liberal subject who
considers herself as having the legal right
to the criticism of the state, of religion, of
any authority, etc., Job does not presume
that he has the right to criticize God.
After God’s “answer” to Job—an answer
which takes the form of a kind of obscene
slide-show of the history of God’s
power—Job remains silent. How, then,
can you claim that Job is the first critic of
ideology? How and in what sense are we
to interpret Job’s silence as critical?

SZ: There is sympathy with God: Job
correctly reads this very strange text, this
divine boasting: “I created monsters, sea
serpents, who are you?” [Job replies:] “I
sympathize with you, I know that this is a
show to conceal that you are impotent. . .”
Where I see this critical-ideological
dimension is more in this—I would really
like to write about these three or four guys
who confront Job. In these three or four
guys you see a spontaneous categorization
of different modes of ideology. The first guy
is a pretty brutal, simplistic ideologist. He
says God is God, you suffer because you
must have done something wrong. The other
guys have more and more refined versions
and so on. But again, the shocking news for
me is that when God appears, you remember
he says “every word that Job says is true.” In
a way Job doesn’t even have to answer
because God, in a way . . .



JPS: God answers for him?

SZ: Yes, God says everything Job says is
true and everything those four ideologists
said is false. So God clearly takes sides. This
is for me really the single maybe most
radical theological breakthrough, especially
if you read it with Rene Girard. I don’t
always follow Girard but here I think he was
right that what matters is this parallax as
such, that is so uncanny. It’s not simply who
is right: in a way, nobody is right. The point
is not simply that God was wrong . . .
I tend to agree with historicist critics of
Christianity about this first scene with the
devil. Probably this was a remainder of
some previous pagan tradition where you
have something like this, a gentleman’s
conversation between God and devil, let’s
make a deal, and so on . . . but I wouldn’t
make too much out of that. OK, they took it,
OK! Bricolage, it’s how you write sacred
books! What interests me more is that you
have two perspectives, and you cannot say
this or that is the true one. You cannot say
simply Job was right, God was cruel, you
cannot say it was just illusion, there is this
undecided openness. This is for me such a
tremendous breakthrough. Why? It’s not the
usual oriental openness, where all our
perspectives are finite. . . it’s not just
different finite perspectives on some more
primordial maternal chaos or whatever. No,
the gap is between God and man . . . Never
forget this.
That’s my thesis: you just have to
transpose this radical gap back into God
himself and you get Christ. This is the big
mystery I’m struggling with. This is in the
subtitle of the book [The Puppet and the
Dwarf], “the perverse core of Christianity.”
In a way I am sorry for that subtitle because
some of my more vulgar materialist
antitheological friends misread it and
thought that I was saying Christianity is in
itself perverse, and that I want to point to
some perverse core in a negative way. Or
some people even misread it as if in a kind
of vulgar Deleuzian way that I want to assert
“yes, Christianity is perverse!”—you know,
people who praise perversion as liberation,
and so on. No, no none of it!
My desperate problem is how to draw,
how to extract the Christian notion of
redemption from this financial transaction
logic. This is what I’m desperately looking
for. Here I think it is crucial to read Christ’s
sacrifice not literally as paying a debt. It is
also—we should just trust our intuitions
here—because the message of Christ’s
sacrifice is not “now I take it for you, you
can screw it up again.” No, it just opens the
space for our struggle, and this is the
paradox I like. This is what I like in what
maybe is the best chapter of this book, the
fifth one [of Puppet]. To put it in very
simple terms, Christ’s redemption doesn’t
mean that, OK, now we can go watch hardcore
movies because we are redeemed each
time. No, it’s done, the Messiah is here, it’s
done, means that the space is now open for
struggle. It’s this nice paradox that the fact
that the big thing happened does not mean
it’s over. It precisely opens the space for
struggle. This is what I find again so
incredible. Which is why to the horror of
some of my Jewish friends, who doesn’t like
this idea that in Christianity everything
happened whereas in Judaism the Messiah is
always postponed, always to-come, and so
on. No, I like here this crazy radicality of
Christianity which is that, no, it happened, it
already happened. But precisely that doesn’t
mean everything is already decided. No,
again, what intrigues me is that I find here
such a shattering revolution of the entire
economy. . .
And another aspect which is linked to this
entire economy—and here I do agree with
Badiou—I do not agree with his critics who
think Paul’s famous “for me there are no
Jews nor Greeks” simply means everybody
can become a member, it is universally
open. Then you can play all these games: if
you are out, then you are not even human,
there are only my brothers and if you are not
my brother you are not even people. OK,
OK, but my point is that Badiou nonetheless
is still more precise. I speak here ironically
of Badiou’s Leninism. The shattering point
is that truth is unilateral, that universal truth,
no less universal for that reason, is
accessible only from an engaged position.
We don’t have, “you are saying this, I am
saying that, let’s find the neutral position,
the common.” Truth is unilateral.
This is where I think Agamben misreads
Badiou (because Agamben’s book is
explicitly in polemic with Badiou) precisely
concerning universality. What Agamben
tries to prove is that Paul’s position is not
universality but even double division—you
cut a line, a division between those who are
in and those who are out within every
community. But I would say that precisely
this is the Paulinian-Hegelian notion of
universality, not universality as a positive
encompassing feature. Universality is a line
that cuts universally and this is, how shall I
put it, absolutely unique in Christianity and
this is what we are losing with these gnostic
wisdoms and even with political correctness,
tolerance, and so on, because the notion of
truth there is not that of a fighting truth but
that of differences, space open for
everything. This notion of truth as painful,
truth means you cut a line of difference . . .
which is why for me, as I claim, you know
that mysterious statement of Christ’s “I
came here not to bring peace but a sword”—
I don’t think this should be read as “kill the
bad guys.” It is a militant work of love.

JPS: A cut within ourselves?

SZ: Yeah, yes! This is why again, in a
totally different way (you put it
wonderfully) this too, is in a movie that I
like, Fight Club, where at first, you hit
yourself. This is the most difficult part. The
change is a change in you. Herbert Marcuse
of the Frankfurt School, so sadly forgotten
today, put it in a very nice way in his essay
on liberation, “freedom is the condition of
liberation.” In order to liberate yourself you
must be free.
We see this today, with feminists, that
the first step in liberation is that you
perceive that your situation is unjust. This
already is the inner freedom. The problem is
not, at first, that the situation for women was
bad, but [rather] that they just accepted it as
a fact. Even in revolution it goes like this. If
you look at the French Revolution, the shift
was purely ideological. They overthrew the
king when they started to perceive that
position as unjustified. Look at it in an
objective way. The ancienne regime was, in
the second part of the 18th century, much
more liberal and open than before. It’s just
that the implicit ethical standards changed.
My big obsession with Christianity is that
there is something extremely precious in this
legacy that is being lost today.

JPS: This is a question about idolatry,
one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest
theme of monotheistic religion, and of the
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures.
You claim provocatively in The Puppet
and the Dwarf that “the ultimate idolatry
is not the idolizing of the mask, the image,
but the belief that there is some hidden,
positive content beyond the mask” (138).
What do you mean, exactly, by this
phrase?

SZ: The key point for me is that Hegelian
statement which I make all the time, which
is that what dies on the cross is not a finite
representative of God, but the God beyond
himself. So that “Holy Spirit” means
precisely, we are on our own, in a way. This
terrible opening, this freedom, which, and
here I am quite dogmatic: what we really
mean by freedom was opened only through
Judeo-Christian space. Freedom in this
radical sense only is or appears as a correlate
of what Lacan would have called desire of
the Other qua Other. Without the abyss of
the other, without perceiving the other in an
abyss, without not knowing what the other
wants, you are not free. If you know what
they other one wants, and you are the object
of his desire . . . Here it can be said also why
Christianity is the religion of love. It’s a
positive ontological constituent of love: you
only love someone who is an abyss, whom
you don’t know. Love always means this. . .
In order to love someone, it should be an
abyss . . . it should be a lacking in perfect
being, but at the same time a being with an
impenetrable excess. There is no love
without this. You have all that mystical stuff
where you say yes to the universe, but that’s
not what is uniquely Christian love.
And here I think, again, as for the essence of
Christianity Kierkegaard got it first. When
he emphasized that it is totally wrong to read
Christ as a metaphor in the sense that first
the truth appears just as a person but then
with the Holy Spirit we know that it’s not a
person but just a universal notion of love, or
whatever. The greatness of Kierkegaard is to
show that our only access to eternity is
through temporality. Not in this fake
Hegelian sense that eternity is just the
totality of the movement of the temporal, but
this crazy paradox that in a specific
historical moment something happened.
Only through that passage do you get
eternity. That is to say, if you go directly to
eternity, you get nothing, you miss eternity
itself. So if I were to pick out one writer
here who got it, it would have been
technically Kierkegaard. It’s also clear that
the Kierkegaardian triad aesthetic-ethicalreligious
is so clearly the Lacanian
imaginary-symbolic-real. It fits so perfectly.
Also, what interests me in some of my
works is to explain this relation between
sexuality and love. Not in some cheap New
Age religious sense where the ultimate
religious experience is to have good sex,
because you get the yin-yang balance and so
on . . . what I think is that something is
missing for me, in Kierkegaard. I develop
this, I think, in my Wagner book. It’s that
you have a.) the aesthetic mode of sexuality
which is, basically—I know it’s more
complex than this—seduction, Don
Giovanni, blah blah. Then you have the
ethical mode which is marriage. Then where
is the religious mode? I think it is courtly
love, this absolute logic, and so on. But
something is missing there. And the whole
trick of it, and Kierkegaard was approaching
it, is how (we should never forget it) with
Kierkegaard, it’s either/or: the three are not
at the same level, you always have to make a
choice between the two. Which is why (and
in some of his most radical formulations
Kierkegaard did get a presentiment of it),
paradoxically, once you make the
fundamental choice and you opt for the
ethical, from within the ethical the only step
toward the religious is, often in its
appearance, a regression towards the
aesthetic.
Which is why I refer, in the last pages of
my On Belief, to that weird English catholic
novel by Evelyn Waugh Brideshead
Revisited, where you have exactly this. For
the heroine, it would be ethical to marry the
guy, now [at the end], because she is
divorced. But she says no. Her only way to
maintain fidelity to God is to go on changing
lovers like crazy. Ethical would be, as
Kierkegaard puts it (in a wonderful way
apropos Abraham) the ethical is sheer
interpretation itself. To act ethically, as
opposed to religiously . . . from a religious
perspective ethics is not something you
should stick to against temptation. The
ethical, as such, is the temptation. Which is
why, again, this crazy leap of faith into the
religious, can well appear, to external
observers, to those not within the event, as
merely aesthetic, as some kind of aesthetic
regression. And again I think that to return
to a diagnosis of where we are today, I think
that precisely what I find horrible in these
new forms of spirituality is that we are
simply losing our sense for these kinds of
paradoxes, which are the very core of
Christianity.



For Example, Opera, For Example...

A Preface to Slavoj Zizek’s "Why is Wagner Worth Saving?"

Joshua Delpech-Ramey

1. In an interview published in the last issue of this journal, Slavoj Zizek suggests that it was Soren Kierkegaard who finally clarifed the real, as opposed to the fake Hegelian sense of the significance of the paradox of Christ.
“. . .as for the essence of Christianity Kierkegaard got it first. When he emphasized that it is totally wrong to read Christ as a metaphor in the sense that first the truth appears just as a person but then with the Holy Spirit we know that it’s not a person but just a universal notion of love, or whatever. The greatness of Kierkegaard is to show that our only access to eternity is through temporality. Not in this fake Hegelian sense that eternity is just the totality of the movement of the temporal, but this crazy paradox that in a specific historical moment something happened. Only through that passage do you get eternity. That is to say, if you go directly to eternity, you get nothing, you miss eternity itself.”1

2. So Kierkegaard, of all people, is the Real Hegelian, the one who most clearly understands the paradoxical relationship between concept and concrete reality, between eternity and time. And Zizek, as many are by now familiar with, is the “Hegelian of the Real,” the thinker who for our time has argued most passionately that Hegel’s Absolute Knowing is not knowledge of an abstract totality, a summation of a whole, but rather the register of an absolute inability of each and every object, every event, to resist the temptation to be more than it is, to be not merely an object, but a Thing. Things in their absolute character insinuate at once a gap in what we took to be a whole and an excess where we thought to find only another part. The absolute truth of things is that the taking-place of things—things in their existence or eventfulness—are both incomplete and excessive with respect to themselves. It is this unhinged or out-of-joint character in things that speaks of a Real that is paradoxically Rational. Zizek’s way of teaching us this (absolute) truth is, famously and infamously, to render again and again a series of uncanny and persistent exemplifications of the Absolute at work in unworking modern times. From anecdotes of Eastern European life under Stalin to the macabre subtexts of Hollywood’s aparently most banal plot lines, to the paradoxes of Wagnerian opera and uncanny objects in David Lynch, Zizek is a master philosophical story-teller, forcing us to look at what Kant said we could not: at things themselves, at their inherently antinomical and self-incomplete character.

3. But in a recently-written preface to the re-publication of For They Know No What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, Zizek complains about our attachment to his examples—the stories, puns, movies, and memoirs that make his texts such an hilarious, grotesque, and sublime menagerie of modern times. Of For They Know Not What They Do, he writes,
“Although it was overshadowed by the more popular Sublime Object of Ideology, my first book in English published two years earlier, I always considered it a more substantial achievement: it is a book of theoretical work, as opposed to the succession of anecdotes and cinema references in The Sublime Object.”2

4. Apparently Zizek wants us to love him for his attachment to Hegelian dialectics and not for his attachment to the things he loves. And yet paradoxically, if not in outright self-contradiction, Zizek cannot do so without his favorite exemplars. Opera, for example, as the text in this issue attests, seems indispensable, unforgettable, irreplaceable . . . undead, even immortal?

5. Why should Zizek be uncomfortable with the exemplarity that populates his text? Especially when he himself, right in For They Know Not What They Do, gives us good Hegelian reasons for insisting on the irreducibility of exemplars and their uncanny mode of “contingent necessity.” If there is always something contingent about an example, a “case in point,” an “illustration,” does not this contingency nevertheless fit precisely the Hegelian project of reading in the apparent accidents of history the “ruse of reason,” the deeper truth? Zizek admits as much when he writes that “truth is not contained in the Universal, as such. Its emergence is strictly a matter of particular conjectures.”3 Are not the particularities of Zizek’s conjectures where the true magic of his discourse lies? Isn’t the power of Zizek’s presence in philosophy precisely the spell-binding power of his exemplars? And isn’t this obsessive exemplarity Zizek’s greatest contribution to the speculative tradition of dialectical materialism, and to philosophy?

6. Far from making of Zizek a mere rhetor or a sophist, his obsessive exemplarity demonstrates Gilles Deleuze’s notion that the true philosopher has “no ally but paradox.”4 The truly realist form of speculation, the thought gripped by real events and the real stakes of common (if unconscious) life is thought penetrated by the real itself, concepts split open by their own exemplars—their heroes, their demons, their angels, their friends. Only when this takes place does discourse remain attached to what gave rise to it in the first place.

7. If Deleuze was right in claiming that we think because we are forced to do so, the force of thinking is lost when the event that provoked thought no longer interrupts what we thought we had to say. If this is a riddle, it is the riddle of how philosophy can educate. If it is a paradox, it is the paradox that attempts to speak the relationship between communication and that to which our desire to communicate attests. It is the paradox of exemplarity, as such: the paradox of how what gives rise to concepts in experience can be present in the discourse of concepts. As such, exemplars are not the deep origin of a species or a type of event. They are the unconscious surface origin of what interrupts the present in its apparent normalcy.

8. The often humorous incapacity of speculative dialectics, in Zizek’s discourse, to keep up with the events that precipitate it might thus be the most revolutionary thing, at least philosophically speaking, about what Zizek does. Even if he himself can only misrecognize the way examples are communicating with each other, and wants always to say with Hegel that they are an effect of “the Notion’s self-relation,” should we be surprised? A true hysteric never gives up the ghost—especially if it is his master.

9. But how would we know Zizek without his things? Especially without that thing in question here, that bizarre and excruciating mix of music and melodrama that is the undead ghost of opera, an art form Zizek admits was dead even before it was alive? If, as Zizek himself concludes in this cabalistic exegesis of Wagner’s universe, we are identified most fully by the objects we have loved and lost, what more could we learn from Zizek than of his great attachment to this so very unchic egotist of an artist, villainized by Nietzsche and full of every incorrectness known to our time? Perhaps to truly pass beyond Man to what in humanity is worth saving it is necessary to entertain such grumbling ghosts as these. Ghosts like Wagner. Ghosts like opera, for example.

Notes

1. Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Spring 2004, Vol. 1, Issue 2.
2. Slavoj Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, (London: Verso, 2002), xi.
3. For They Know Not What They Do, 54.
4. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, Trans. Paul Patton, (New York: Colombia, 1994), 132.


Why is Wagner Worth Saving?
Slavoj Zizek


You will find printed in a previous issue of this journal (Volume 1, Issue 2) a companion interview to this article. At the conclusion of this interview, Slavoj Zizek generously offered the journal this additional essay as a way of illustrating many of the issues that had been discussed. See also in this issue Joshua Delpech-Ramey's brief essay clarifying the connection between his interview and this article.

1. With Romanticism, music changes its role: it is no longer a mere accompaniment of the message delivered in speech, it contains/renders a message of its own, "deeper" than the one delivered in words. It was Rousseau who first clearly articulated this expressive potential of music as such, when he claimed that, instead of merely imitating the affective features of verbal speech, music should be given the right to "speak for itself" - in contrast to the deceiving verbal speech, in music, it is, to paraphrase Lacan, the truth itself which speaks. As Schopenhauer put it, music directly enacts/renders the noumenal Will, while speech remains limited to the level of phenomenal representation. Music is the substance which renders the true heart of the subject, which is what Hegel called the "Night of the World," the abyss of radical negativity: music becomes the bearer of the true message beyond words with the shift from the Enlightenment subject of rational logos to the Romantic subject of the "night of the world," i.e., with the shift of the metaphor for the kernel of the subject from Day to Night. Here we encounter the Uncanny: no longer the external transcendence, but, following Kant's transcendental turn, the excess of the Night in the very heart of the subject (the dimension of the Undead), what Tomlison called the "internal otherworldliness that marks the Kantian subject."1 What music renders is no longer the "semantics of the soul," but the underlying "noumenal" flux of jouissance beyond the linguistic meaningfulness. This noumenal is radically different from the pre-Kantian transcendent divine Truth: it is the inaccessible excess which forms the very core of the subject.

2. In history of opera, this sublime excess of life is discernible in two main versions, Italian and German, Rossini and Wagner - so, maybe, although they are the great opposites, Wagner's surprising private sympathy for Rossini, as well as their friendly meeting in Paris, do bear witness to a deeper affinity. Rossini's great male portraits, the three from Barbiere (Figaro's "Largo il factotum," Basilio's "Calumnia," and Bartolo's "Un dottor della mia sorte"), plus the father's wishful self-portrait of corruption in Cenerentola, enact a mocked self-complaint, where one imagines oneself in a desired position, being bombarded by demands for a favor or service. The subject twice shifts his position: first, he assumes the roles of those who address him, enacting the overwhelming multitude of demands which bombard him; then, he feigns a reaction to it, the state of deep satisfaction in being overwhelmed by demands one cannot fulfill. Let us take the father in Cenerentola: he imagines how, when one of his daughters will be married to the Prince, people will turn to him, offering him bribes for a service at the court, and he will react to it first with cunning deliberation, then with fake despair at being bombarded with too many requests… The culminating moment of the archetypal Rossini aria is this unique moment of happiness, of the full assertion of the excess of Life which occurs when the subject is overwhelmed by demands, no longer being able to deal with them. At the highpoint of his "factotum" aria, Figaro es: "What a crowd /of the people bombarding me with their demands/ - have mercy, one after the other /uno per volta, per carita!", referring therewith to the Kantian experience of the Sublime, in which the subject is bombarded with an excess of the data that he is unable to comprehend. The basic economy is here obsessional: the object of the hero's desire is the other's demand.

3. This is the excessive counterpoint to the Wagnerian Sublime, to the "hoechste Lust" of the immersion into the Void that concludes Tristan. This opposition of the Rossinian and of the Wagnerian Sublime perfectly fits the Kantian opposition between the mathematical and the dynamic Sublime: as we have just seen, the Rossinian Sublime is mathematical, it enacts the inability of the subject to comprehend the pure quantity of the demands that overflow him, while the Wagnerian Sublime is dynamic, it enacts the concentrated overpowering force of the ONE demand, the unconditional demand of love. One can also say that the Wagnerian Sublime is the absolute Emotion - this is how one should read the famous first sentence of Wagner's "Religion and Art," where he claims that, when religion becomes artificial, art can save the true spirit of religion, its hidden truth - how? Precisely by abandoning the dogma and rendering only the authentic religious emotion, i.e., by transforming religion into the ultimate aesthetic experience.

4. Tristan should thus be read as the resolution of the tension between sublime passion and religion still operative in Tannheuser. The entreaty at the beginning of Tannheuser enacts a strange reversal of the standard entreaty: not to escape the constraints of mortality and rejoin the beloved, but the entreaty addressed at the beloved to let the hero go and return to the mortal life of pain, struggle, and freedom. Tannheuser complains that, as a mortal, he cannot sustain the continuous enjoyment ("Wenn stets ein Gott geniessen kann, bin ich dem Wechsel untertan; nicht Lust allein liegt mir am Herzen, aus Freuden sehn ich mich nach Schmerzen"). A little bit later, Tannhauser makes it clear that what he is longing for is the peace of death itself: "Mein Sehnen draengt zum Kampfe, nicht such ich Wonn und Lust! Ach moegest du es fassen, Goettin! (wild) Hin zum Tod, den ich suche, zum Tode draengt es mich!" If there is a conflict between eternity and temporal existence, between transcendence and terrestrial reality here, then Venus is on the side of a terrifying ETERNITY of unbearable excessive Geniessen.

5. This provides the key to the opera's central conflict: it is NOT, as it is usually claimed, the conflict between the spiritual and the bodily, the sublime and the ordinary pleasures of flesh, but a conflict inherent to the Sublime itself, splitting it up. Venus and Elisabeth are BOTH meta-physical figures of the sublime: neither of the two is a woman destined to become a common wife. While Elisabeth is, obviously, the sacred virgin, the purely spiritual entity, the untouchable idealized Lady of the courtly love, Venus also stands for a meta-physical excess, that of the excessively intensified sexual enjoyment; if anything, it is Elisabeth who is closer to the ordinary terrestrial life. In Kierkegaard's terms, one can say that Venus stands for the Aesthetic and Elisabeth for the Religious - on condition that one conceives here of the Aesthetic as included in the Religious, elevated to the level of the unconditional Absolute. And therein resides the unpardonable sin of Tannheuser: not in the fact that he engaged in a little bit of free sexuality (in this case, the severe punishment would have been ridiculously exaggerated), but that he elevated sexuality, sexual lust, to the level of the Absolute, asserting it as the inherent obverse of the Sacred. This is the reason why the roles of Venus and Elisabeth definitely should be played by the same singer: the two ARE one and the same person, the only difference resides in the male hero's attitude towards her. Is this not clear from the final choice Tannheuser has to make between the two? When he is in his mortal agony, Venus is calling him to join her again ("Komm, o komm! Zu mir! Zu mir!"); when he gets close to her, Wolfram cries from the background "Elisabeth!", to which Tannheuser replies: "Elisabeth!" In the standard staging, the mention of the dead sacred Elisabeth gives Tannheuser the strength to avoid Venus' embrace, and Venus then leaves in fury; however, would it not be much more logical to stage it so that Tannheuser continues to approach THE SAME woman, discovering, when he is close to her, that Venus really is Elisabeth? The subversive power of this shift is that it turns around the old courtly love poetry motif of the dazzlingly beautiful lady who, when one approaches her too much, is revealed as a disgusting entity of rotten flesh full of crawling worms - here, the sacred virgin is discovered in the very heart of the dissolute seductress. So the message is not the usual desublimation ("Beware of the beautiful woman! It is a deceptive lure which hides the disgusting rotten flesh!"), but the unexpected sublimation, elevation of the erotic woman to the mode of appearance of the sacred Thing. The tension of Tannheuser is thus the one between the two aspects of the Absolute, Ideal-Symbolic and Real, Law and Superego. The true topic of Tannheuser is that of a disturbance in the order of sublimation: sublimation starts to oscillate between these two poles.

6. We can see, now, in what precise sense Tristan embodies the "aesthetic" attitude (in the Kierkegaardian sense of the term): refusing to compromise one's desire, one goes to the end and willingly embraces death. Meistersinger counters it with the ethical solution: the true redemption resides not in following the immortal passion to its self-destructive conclusion; one should rather learn to overcome it via creative sublimation and to return, in a mood of wise resignation, to the "daily" life of symbolic obligations. In Parsifal, finally, the passion can no longer be overcome via its reintegration to society in which it survives in a gentrified form: one has to deny it thoroughly in the ecstatic assertion of the religious jouissance. The triad Tristan-Meistersinger-Parsifal thus follows a precise logic: Meistersinger and Tristan render the two opposite versions of the Oedipal matrix, within which Meistersinger inverts Tristan (the son steals the woman from the paternal figure; the passion breaks out between the paternal figure and the young woman destined to become the partner of the young man), while Parsifal gives the coordinates themselves an anti-Oedipal twist - the lamenting wounded subject is here the paternal figure (Amfortas), not the young transgressor (Tristan). (The closest one comes to lament in Meistersinger is Sachs's "Wahn, wahn!" song from Act III.) Wagner planned to have in the first half of Act III of Tristan Parsifal to visit the wounded Tristan, but he wisely renounced it: not only would the scene ruin the perfect overall structure of Act III, it would also stage the IMPOSSIBLE encounter of a character with (the different, alternate reality, version of) ITSELF, as in the time travel science fiction narratives where I encounter MYSELF. One can even bring things to the ridiculous here by imagining the THIRD hero joining the two - Hans Sachs (in his earlier embodiment, as King Mark who arrives with a ship prior to Isolde), so that the three of them (Tristan, Mark, Parsifal), standing for the three attitudes, debate their differences in a Habermasian undistorted communicational exchange.

7. And one is tempted to claim that the triad of Tristan-Meistersinger-Parsifal is reproduced in three exemplary post-Wagnerian operas: Richard Strauss' Salome, Puccini's Turandot and Schoenberg's Moses und Aaron. Is not Salome yet another version of the possible outcome of Tristan? What if, at the end of Act II, when King Mark surprises the lovers, he were to explode in fury and order Tristan's head to be cut off; the desperate Isolde would then take her lover's head in her hands and start to kiss his lips in a Salomean Liebestod. (And, to add yet another variation of the virtual link between Salome and Tristan: what if, at the end of Tristan, Isolde would not simply die after finishing her "Mild und leise" - what if she were to remain entranced by her immersion in the ecstatic jouissance, and, disgusted by it, King Mark would give the order: "This woman is to be killed!"?) It was often noted that the closing scene of Salome is modelled on Isolde's Liebestod; however, what makes it a perverted version of the Wagnerian Liebestod is that what Salome demands, in an unconditional act of CAPRICE, is to kiss the lips of John the Baptist ("I want to kiss your lips!") - not the contact with a person, but with the partial object. If Salome is a counterpart to Tristan, then Turandot is the counterpart to Meistersinger - let us not forget that they are both operas about the public contest with the woman as the prize won by the hero.

8. Salome twice insists to the end in her demand: first, she insists that the soldiers bring to her Jokanaan; then, after the dance of seven veils, she insists that the king Herod bring her on a silver platter the head of Jokanaan - when the king, believing that Jokanaan effectively is a sacred man and that it is therefore better not to touch him, offers Salome in exchange for her dance anything she wants, up to half of his kingdom and the most sacred objects in his custody, just not the head (and thus the death) of Jokanaan, she ignores this explosive outburst of higher and higher bidding and simply repeats her inexorable demand "Bring me the head of Jokanaan." Is there not something properly Antigonean in this request of her? Like Antigone, she insists without regard to consequences. Is therefore Salome not in a way, no less than Antigone, the embodiment of a certain ethical stance? No wonder she is so attracted to Jokanaan - it is the matter of one saint recognizing another. And how can one overlook that, at the end of Oscar Wilde's play on which Strauss' opera is based, after kissing his head, she utters a properly Christian comment on how this proves that love is stronger than death, that love can overcome death?

9. Which, then, would be the counterpart to Parsifal? Parsifal was from the very beginning perceived as a thoroughly ambiguous work: the attempt to reassert art at its highest, the proto-religious spectacle bringing together Community (art as the mediator between religion and politics), against the utilitarian corruption of modern life with its commercialized kitsch culture - yet at the same time drifting towards a commercialized aesthetic kitsch of an ersatz religion, a fake, if there ever was one. In other words, the problem of Parsifal is not the unmediated dualism of its universe (Klingsor's kingdom of fake pleasures versus the sacred domain of the Grail), but, rather, the lack of distance, the ultimate identity, of its opposites: is not the Grail ritual (which provides the most satisfying aesthetic spectacle of the work, its two "biggest hits") the ultimate "Klingsorian" fake? (The taint of bad faith in our enjoyment of Parsifal as similar to the bad faith in our enjoyment of Puccini.) For this reason, Parsifal was the traumatic starting point which allows us to conceive of the multitude of later operas as reactions to it, as attempts to resolve its deadlock. The key among these attempts is, of course, Schoenberg's Moses und Aaron, the ultimate pretender to the title "the last opera," the meta-opera about the conditions of (im)possibility of the opera: the sudden rupture at the end of Act II, after Moses' desperate "O Wort, das mir fehlt!", the failure to compose the work to the end. Moses und Aaron is effectively anti-Parsifal: while Parsifal retains a full naďve trust in the (redemptive) power of music and finds no problems in rendering the noumenal divine dimension in the aesthetic spectacle of the ritual, Moses und Aaron attempts the impossible: to be an opera directed against the very principle of opera, that of the stage-musical spectacle - it is an operatic representation of the Jewish prohibition of aesthetic representation.

10. Is the buoyant music of the Golden Calf not the ultimate version of the bacchanalian music in Wagner, from Tannheuser to the Flower Maidens' music in Parsifal. And is there not another key parallel between Parsifal and Moses und Aaron? As it was noted by Adorno, the ultimate tension of Moses is not simply between divine transcendence and its representation in music, but, inherent to music itself, between the "choral" spirit of the religious community and the two individuals (Moses and Aaron) who stick out as subjects; in the same way, in Parsifal, Amfortas and Parsifal himself stick out as forceful individuals - are the two "complaints" by Amfortas not the strongest passages of Parsifal, implicitly undermining the message of the renunciation to subjectivity? The musical opposition between the clear choral style of the Grail community and the chromaticism of the Klingsor universe in Parsifal is radicalized in Moses und Aaron in the guise of the opposition between Moses' Sprechstimme and Aaron's full song - in both cases, the tension is unresolved.

11. What, then, can follow this breakdown? It is here that one is tempted to return to our starting point, to Rossinian comedy. After the complete breakdown of expressive subjectivity, comedy reemerges - but a weird, uncanny one. What comes after Moses und Aaron is the imbecilic "comic" Sprechgesang of Pierrot Lunaire, the smile of a madman who is so devastated by pain that he cannot even perceive his tragedy - like the smile of a cat in cartoons with birds flying around the head after the cat gets hit on the head with a hammer. The comedy enters when the situation is too horrifying to be rendered as tragedy - which is why the only proper way to do a film about concentration camps is a comedy: there is something fake in doing a concentration camp tragedy.

12. Is, however, this the only way out? What if Parsifal also points in another direction, that of the emergence of a new collective? If Tristan enacts redemption as the ecstatic suicidal escape FROM the social order and Meistersinger the resigned integration INTO the existing social order, then Parsifal concludes with the invention of a new form of the Social. With Parsifal's "Disclose the Grail!" ("Enthuellt den Graal!"), we pass from the Grail community as a closed order where Grail is only revealed in the prescribed time a ritual to the circle of the initiated, to a new order in which the Grail has to remain revealed all the time: "No more shall the shrine be sealed!" ("Nicht soll der mehr verschlossen sein!"). As to the revolutionary consequences of this change, recall the fate of the Master figure in the triad Tristan-Meistersinger-Parsifal (King Marke, Hans Sachs, Amfortas): in the first two works, the Master survives as a saddened melancholic figure; in the third he is DEPOSED and dies.

13. Why, then, should we not read Parsifal from today's perspective: the kingdom of Klingsor in the Act II is a domain of digital phantasmagoria, of virtual amusement - Harry Kupfer was right to stage Klingsor's magic garden as a video parlor, with Flower Girls reduced to fragments of female bodies (faces, legs…) appearing on dispersed TV-screens. Is Klingsor not a kind of Master of the Matrix, manipulating virtual reality, a combination of Murdoch and Bill Gates? And when we pass from Act II to Act III, do we not effectively pass from the fake virtual reality to the "desert of the real," the "waste land" in the aftermath of ecological catastrophy which derailed the "normal" functioning of nature? Is Parsifal not a model for Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, with Laurence Fishburne in the role of Gurnemanz?

14. One is thus tempted to offer a direct "vulgar" answer to the question: what the hell was Parsifal doing on his journey in the long time which passes between Acts II and III? That the true "Grail" are the people, its suffering. What if he simply got acquainted with human misery, suffering and exploitation? So what if the NEW collective is something like a revolutionary party, what if one takes the risk of reading Parsifal as the precursor of Brecht's Lehrstuecke, what if its topic of sacrifice points towards that of Brecht's Die Massnahme, which was put to music by Hans Eisler, the third great pupil of Schoenberg, after Bert and Webern? Is the topic of both Parsifal and Die Massnahme not that of learning: the hero has to learn how to help people in their suffering. The outcome, however, is opposite: in Wagner compassion, in Brecht/Eisler the strength not to give way to one's compassion and directly act on it. However, this opposition itself is relative: the shared motif is that of COLD, DISTANCED COMPASSION. The lesson of Brecht is the art of COLD compassion, compassion with suffering which learns to resist the immediate urge to help others; the lesson of Wagner is cold COMPASSION, the distanced saintly attitude (recall the cold girl into which Parsifal turns in Syberberg's version) which nonetheless retains compassion. Wagner's lesson (and Wotan's insight) about how the greatest act of freedom is to accept and freely enact what necessarily has to occur, is strangely echoed in the basic lesson of Brecht's "learning plays": what the young boy to be killed by his colleagues has to learn is the art of Einverstaendnis, of accepting his own killing which will occur anyway.

15. And what about the misogynism which obviously sustains this option? Is it not that Parsifal negated the shared presupposition of the first two works, their assertion of love (ecstatic courtly love, marital love), opting for the exclusively male community? However, what if, here also, Syberberg was right: after Kundry's kiss, in the very rejection of (hysterical-seductive) femininity, Parsifal turns into a woman, adopts a feminine subjective position? What if what we effectively get is a dedicated "radical" community led by a cold ruthless woman, a new Joan of Arc?

16. And what about the notion that the Grail community is an elitist closed initiatic circle? Parsifal's final injunction to disclose the Grail undermines this false alternative of elitism/populism: every true elitism is universal, addressed at everyone and all, and there is something inherently vulgar about initiatic secret gnostic wisdoms. There is a standard complaint of the numerous Parsifal lovers: a great opera with numerous passages of breathtaking beauty - but, nonetheless, the two long narratives of Gurnemanz (taking most of the first half of Acts I and III) are Wagner at his worst: a boring recapitulation of the past deeds already known to us, lacking any dramatic tension. Our proposed "Communist" reading of Parsifal entails a full rehabilitation of these two narratives as crucial moments of the opera - the fact that they may appear "boring" is to be understood along the lines of a short poem of Brecht from the early 1950s, addressed to a nameless worker in the GDR who, after long hours of work, is obliged to listen to a boring political speech by a local party functionary: "You are exhausted from long work / The speaker is repeating himself / His speech is long-winded, he speaks with strain / Do not forget, the tired one: / He speaks the truth."2 This is the role of Gurnemanz - no more and no less than the agent - the mouth-piece, why not - of truth. In this precise case, the very predicate of "boring" is an indicator (a vector even) of truth as opposed to the dazzling perplexity of jokes and superficial amusements. (There is, of course, another sense in which, as Brecht knew very well, dialectics itself is inherently comical.)

17. And what about the final call of the Chorus "Redeem the Redeemer!", which some read as the anti-Semitic statement "redeem/save Christ from the clutches of the Jewish tradition, de-Semitize him"? However, what if we read this line more literally, as echoing the other "tautological" statement from the finale, "the wound can be healed only by the spear which smote it (die Wunde schliesst der Speer nur, der sie schlug)"? Is this not the key paradox of every revolutionary process, in the course of which not only violence is needed to overcome the existing violence, but the revolution, in order to stabilize itself into a New Order, has to eat its own children?

18. Wagner a proto-Fascist? Why not leave behind this search for the "proto-Fascist" elements in Wagner and, rather, in a violent gesture of appropriation, reinscribe Parsifal in the tradition of radical revolutionary parties? Perhaps, such a reading enables us also to cast a new light on the link between Parsifal and The Ring. The Ring depicts a pagan world, which, following its inherent logic, MUST end in a global catastrophy; however, there are survivors of this catastrophy, the nameless crowd of humanity which silently witnesses God's self-destruction. In the unique figure of Hagen, The Ring also provides the first portrait of what will later emerge as the Fascist leader; however, since the world of The Ring is pagan, caught in the Oedipal family conflict of passions, it cannot even address the true problem of how this humanity, the force of the New, is to organize itself, of how it should learn the truth about its place; THIS is the task of Parsifal, which therefore logically follows The Ring. The conflict between Oedipal dynamics and the post-Oedipal universe is inscribed within Parsifal itself: Klingsor's and Amfortas' adventures are Oedipal, then what happens with Parsifal's big turn (rejection of Kundry) is precisely that he leaves behind the Oedipal incestuous eroticism, opening himself up to a new community.

19. The dark figure of Hagen is profoundly ambiguous: although initially depicted as a dark plotter, both in the Nibelungenlied and in Fritz Lang's film, he emerges as the ultimate hero of the entire work and is redeemed at the end as the supreme case of the Nibelungentreue, fidelity to death to one's cause (or, rather, to the Master who stands for this cause), asserted in the final slaughter at the Attila's court. The conflict is here between fidelity to the Master and our everyday moral obligations: Hagen stands for a kind of teleological suspension of morality on behalf of fidelity, he is the ultimate "Gefolgsmann."
20. Significantly, it is ONLY Wagner who depicts Hagen as a figure of Evil - is this not an indication of how Wagner nonetheless belongs to the modern space of freedom? And is Lang's return to the positive Hagen not an indication of how the XXth century marked the reemergence of a new barbarism? It was Wagner's genius to intuit ahead of his time the rising figure of the Fascist ruthless executive who is at the same time a rabble-rousing demagogue (recall Hagen's terrifying Maennerruf) - a worthy supplement to his other great intuition, that of a hysterical woman (Kundry) well before this figure overwhelmed European consciousness (in Charcot's clinic, in the art from Ibsen to Schoenberg).

21. What makes Hagen a "proto-Fascist" is his role as the unconditional support for the weak ruler (King Gunther): he does for Gunther the "dirty jobs" which, although necessary, have to remain concealed from the public gaze - "Unsere Ehre heisst Treue." We find this stance, a kind of mirror-reversal of the Beautiful Soul which refuses to dirty its hands, at its purest in the Rightist admiration for the heroes who are ready to do the necessary dirty job: it is easy to do a noble thing for one's country, up to sacrificing one's life for it - it is much more difficult to commit a CRIME for one's country when it is needed. Hitler knew very well how to play this double game apropos the holocaust, using Himmler as his Hagen. In the speech to the SS leaders in Posen on October 4 1943, Himmler spoke quite openly about the mass killing of the Jews as "a glorious page in our history, and one that has never been written and never can be written," explicitly including the killing of women and children: "I did not regard myself as justified in exterminating the men - that is to say, to kill them or have them killed - and to allow the avengers in the shape of children to grow up for our sons and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be taken to have this people disappear from the earth."

22. This is Hagen's Treue brought to its extreme - however, was the paradoxical price for Wagner's negative portrayal of Hagen not his Judifizierung? A lot of historical work has been done recently trying to bring out the contextual "true meaning" of the Wagnerian figures and topics: the pale Hagen is really a masturbating Jew; Amfortas' wound is really syphillis. The idea is that Wagner is mobilizing historical codes known to everyone in his epoch: when a person stumbles, sings in cracking high tones, makes nervous gestures, etc., "everyone knew" this is a Jew, so Mime from Siegfried is a caricature of a Jew; the fear of syphillis as the illness in the groin one gets from having intercourse with an "impure" woman was an obsession in the second half of the 19th century, so it was "clear to everyone" that Amfortas really contracted syphillis from Kundry. Marc Weiner developed the most perspicuous version of this decoding by focusing on the micro-texture of Wagner's musical dramas - manner of singing, gestures, smells - it is at this level of what Deleuze would have called pre-subjective affects that anti-Semitism is operative in Wagner's operas, even if Jews are not explicitly mentioned: in the way Beckmesser sings, in the way Mime complains.

23. However, the first problem here is that, even if accurate, such insights do not contribute much to a pertinent understanding of the work in question. One often hears that, in order to understand a work of art, one needs to know its historical context. Against this historicist commonplace, one should affirm that too much of a historical context can blur the proper contact with a work of art - in order to properly grasp, say, Parsifal, one should ABSTRACT from such historical trivia, one should DECONTEXTUALIZE the work, tear it out from the context in which it was originally embedded. Even more, it is, rather, the work of art itself which provides a context enabling us to properly understand a given historical situation. If, today, someone were to visit Serbia, the direct contact with raw data there would leave him confused. If, however, he were to read a couple of literary works and see a couple of representative movies, they would definitely provide the context that would enable him to locate the raw data of his experience. There is thus an unexpected truth in the old cynical wisdom from the Stalinist Soviet Union: "he lies as an eye-witness!"

24. There is another, more fundamental, problem with such historicist decoding: it is not enough to "decode" Alberich, Mime, Hagen etc. as Jews, making the point that the Ring is one big anti-Semitic tract, a story about how Jews, by renouncing love and opting for power, brought corruption to the universe; the more basic fact is that the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew itself is not a direct ultimate referent, but already encoded, a cypher of ideological and social antagonisms. (And the same goes for syphillis: in the second half of the 19th century, it was, together with tuberculosis, the other big case of "illness as a metaphor" (Susan Sontag), serving as an encoded message about socio-sexual antagonisms, and this is the reason why people were so obsessed by it - not because of its direct real threat, but because of the ideological surplus-investment in it.) An appropriate reading of Wagner should take this fact into account and not merely "decode" Alberich as a Jew, but also ask the question: how does Wagner's encoding refer to the "original" social antagonism of which the (anti-Semitic figure of the) "Jew" itself is already a cypher?

25. A further counter-argument is that Siegfried, Mime's opponent, is in no way simply the beautiful Aryan blond hero - his portrait is much more ambiguous. The short last scene of Act 1 of The Twilight (Siegfried's violent abduction of Brunhilde; under the cover of Tarnhelm, Siegfried poses as Gunther) is a shocking interlude of extreme brutality and ghost-like nightmarish quality. What makes it additionally interesting is one of the big inconsistencies of The Ring: why does Siegfried, after brutally subduing Brunhilde, put his sword between the two when they lay down, to prove that they will not have sex, since he is just doing a service to his friend, the weak king Gunther? TO WHOM does he have to prove this? Is Brunhilde not supposed to think that he IS Gunther? Before she is subdued, Brunhilde displays to the masked Siegfried her hand with the ring on it, trusting that the ring will serve as protection; when Siegfried brutally tears the ring off her hand, this gesture has to be read as the repetition of the first extremely violent robbery of the ring in the Scene 4 of Rhinegold, when Wotan tears the ring off Alberich's hand. The horror of this scene is that it shows Siegfried's brutality naked, in its raw state: it somehow "depsychologizes" Siegfried, making him visible as in inhuman monster, i.e., the way he "really is," deprived of his deceiving mask - THIS is the effect of the potion on him.

26. There is effectively in Wagner's Siegfried an unconstrained "innocent" aggressivity, an urge to directly pass to the act and just squash what gets on your nerves - as in Siegfrid's words to Mime in the Act I of Siegfried: "when I watch you standing, / shuffling and shambling, / servilely stooping, squinting and blinking, / I long to seize you by your nodding neck / and make an end of your obscene blinking!" (the sound of the original German is here even more impressive: "seh'ich dich stehn, gangeln und gehn, / knicken und nicken, / mit den Augen zwicken, / beim Genick moecht'ich den Nicker packen, / den Garaus geben dem garst'gen Zwicker!"). The same outburst is repeated twice in Act II: "Das eklige Nicken / und Augenzwicken, / wann endlich soll ich's / nicht mehr sehn, / wann werd ich den Albernen los?" "That shuffling and slinking, / those eyelids blinking - / how long must I / endure the sight? / When shall I be rid of this fool?", and, just a little bit later: "Grade so garstig, / griesig und grau, / klein und krumm, / hoeckrig und hinkend, / mit haengenden Ohren, / triefigen Augen - / Fort mit dem Alb! / Ich mag ihn nicht mehr sehn." "Shuffling and slinking, / grizzled and gray, / small and crooked, / limping and hunchbacked, / with ears that are drooping, eyes that are bleary… / Off with the imp! I hope he's gone for good!" Is this not the most elementary disgust, repulsion felt by the ego when confronted with the intruding foreign body? One can easily imagine a neo-Nazi skinhead uttering just the same words in the face of a worn-out Turkish Gastarbeiter.3

27. And, finally, one should not forget that, in the Ring, the source of all evil is not Alberich's fatal choice in the first scene of Rhinegold: long before this event took place, Wotan broke the natural balance, succumbing to the lure of power, giving preference to power over love - he tore out and destroyed the World-Tree, making out of it his spear on which he inscribed the runes fixating the laws of his rule, plus he plucked out one of his eyes in order to gain insight into inner truth. Evil thus does not come from the Outside - the insight of Wotan's tragic "monologue with Brunhilde" in the Act II of Walkure is that the power of Alberich and the prospect of the "end of the world" is ultimately Wotan's own guilt, the result of his ethical fiasco - in Hegelese, external opposition is the effect of inner contradiction. No wonder, then, that Wotan is called the "White Alb" in contrast to the "Black Alb," Alberich - if anything, Wotan's choice was ethically worse than Alberich's: Alberich longed for love and only turned towards power after being brutally mocked and turned down by the Rhinemaidens, while Wotan turned to power after fully enjoying the fruits of love and getting tired of them. One should also bear in mind that, after his moral fiasco in Walkure, Wotan turns into "Wanderer" - a figure of the Wandering Jew like already the first great Wagnerian hero, the Flying Dutchman, this "Ahasver des Ozeans."

28. And the same goes for Parsifal which is not about an elitist circle of the pure-blooded threatened by external contamination (copulation by the Jewess Kundry). There are two complications to this image: first, Klingsor, the evil magician and Kundry's Master, is himself an ex-Grail knight, he comes from within; second point, if one reads the text really close, one cannot avoid the conclusion that the true source of evil, the primordial imbalance which derailed the Grail community, resides at its very center - it is Titurel's excessive fixation of enjoying the Grail which is at the origins of the misfortune. The true figure of Evil is Titurel, this obscene pere-jouisseur (perhaps comparable to giant worm-like members of the Space Guild from Frank Herbert's Dune, whose bodies are disgustingly distorted because of their excessive consumption of the "spice").

29. This, then, undermines the anti-Semitic perspective according to which the disturbance always ultimately comes from outside, in the guise of a foreign body which throws out of joint the balance of the social organism: for Wagner, the external intruder (Alberich) is just a secondary repetition, externalization, of an absolutely immanent inconsistency/antagonism (of Wotan). With reference to Brecht's famous "What is the robbery of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank? ", one is tempted to say: "What is a poor Jew's stealing of the gold compared to the violence of the Aryan's (Wotan's) grounding of the rule of Law?"
30. One of the signs of this inherent status of the disturbance is the failure of the big finales of Wagner's operas: the formal failure here signals the persistence of the social antagonism. Let us take the biggest of them all, the mother of all finales, that of The Twilight of Gods. It is a well-known fact that, in the last minutes of The Twilight, the orchestra performs an excessively intricate cobweb of motifs, basically nothing less than the recapitulation of the motivic wealth of the entire Ring - is this fact not the ultimate proof that Wagner himself was not sure about what the final apotheosis of the Ring "means"? Not being sure of it, he took a kind of "flight forward" and threw together ALL the motifs. So the culminating motif of "Redemption through Love" (a beautiful and passionate melodic line which previously appears only in Act III of Walkuere) cannot but make us think of Joseph Kerman's acerbic comment about the last notes of Puccini's Tosca in which the orchestra bombastically recapitulates the "beautiful" pathetic melodic line of the Cavaradossi's "E lucevan le stelle," as if, unsure of what to do, Puccini simply desperately repeated the most "effective" melody from the previous score, ignoring all narrative or emotional logic.4 And what if Wagner did exactly the same thing at the end of The Twilight? Not sure about the final twist that should stabilize and guarantee the meaning of it all, he took recourse to a beautiful melody whose effect is something like "whatever all this may mean, let us make it sure that the concluding impression will be that of something triumphant and upbeating in its redemptive beauty." In short, what if this final motif enacts an empty gesture?

31. It is a commonplace of Wagner studies that the triumphant finale of Das Rheingold is a fake, an empty triumph indicating the fragility of the gods' power and their forthcoming downfall - however, does the same not go also for the finale of Siegfried? The sublime duet of Brunhilde and Siegfried which concludes the opera fails a couple of minutes before the ending, with the entry of the motif anouncing the couple's triumphant reunion (usually designated as the motif of "happy love" or "love's bond") - this motif is obviously a fake (not to mention the miserable failure of the concluding noisy-bombastic orchestral tutti, which lacks the efficiency of the gods' entry to Walhalla in Rhinegold). Does this failure encode Wagner's (unconscious?) critique of Siegfried? Recall the additional curious fact that this motif is almost the same as - closely related to - the Beckmesser motif in Meistersinger (I owe this insight to Gerhard Koch; Act III of Siegfried was written just after Meistersinger)! Furthermore, does this empty bombastic failure of the final notes not also signal the catastrophy-to-come of Brunhilde and Siegfried's love? As such, this "failure" of the duet is a structural necessity.5 (One should nonetheless follow closely the inner triadic structure of this duet: its entire dynamic is on the side of Brunhilde who twice shifts her subjective stance, while Siegfried remains the same. First, from her elevated divine position, Brunhilde joyously asserts her love for Siegfried; then, once she becomes aware of what Siegfried's passionate advances mean - the loss of her safe distanced position - she displays fear of losing her identity, of descending to the level of a vulnerable mortal woman, man's prey and passive victim. In a wonderful metaphor, she compares herself to a beautiful image in the water which gets blurred once man's hand directly touches and disturbs the water. Finally, she surrenders to Siegfried's passionate advances and throws herself into the vortex.) However, excepting the last notes, Act III of Siegfried - at least from the moment when Siegfried breaks Wotan's spear to Brunhilde's awakening - is not only unbearably beautiful, but also the most concise statement of the Oedipal problematic in its specific Wagnerian twist.

32. On his way to the magic mountain where Brunhilde lies, surrounded by a wall of fire which can be tresspassed only by a hero who does not know fear, Siegfried first encounters Wotan, the deposed (or, rather, abdicated) supreme god, disguised as a Wanderer; Wotan tries to stop him, but in an ambiguous way - basically, he WANTS Siegfried to break his spear. After Siegfried disrespectfully does this, full of contempt in his ignorance for the embittered and wise old man, he progresses through the flames and perceives a wonderful creature lying there in deep sleep. Thinking that the armored plate on the creature's chest is making its breathing difficult, he proceeds to cut off its straps by his sword; after he raises the plate and sees Brunhilde's breasts, he utters a desperate cry of surprise: "Das ist kein Mann! / This is no man!" This reaction, of course, cannot but strike us as comic, exaggerated beyond credulity. However, one should bear in mind a couple of things. First, the whole point of the story of Siegfried till this moment is that while Siegfried spent his entire youth in the forest in the sole company of the evil dwarf Mime who claimed to be his only parent, mother-father, he nonetheless observed that, in the case of animals, parents are always a couple, and thus longs to see his mother, the feminine counterpart of Mime. Siegfried's quest for a woman is thus a quest for sexual difference, and the fact that this quest is at the same time the quest of fear, of an experience that would teach him what fear is, clearly points in the direction of castration - with a specific twist. In the paradigmatic Freudian description of the scene of castration (in his late short text on "Fetishism"), the gaze discovers an absence where a presence (a penis) is expected, while here, Siegfried's gaze discovers an excessive presence (of breasts - and should one add that the typical Wagnerian soprano is an opulent soprano with large breasts, so that Siegfried's "Das ist kein Mann!" usually gives rise to a hearty laughter in the public?).6

33. Secondly, one should bear in mind here an apparent inconsistency in the libretto which points the way to proper understanding of this scene: why is Siegfried so surprised at not encountering a man, when, prior to it, he emphasizes that he wants to penetrate the fire precisely in order to find there a woman? To the Wanderer, he says: "Give ground then, for that way, I know, leads to the sleeping woman." And, a couple of minutes later: "Go back yourself, braggart! I must go there, to the burning heart of the blaze, to Brunhilde!" From this, one should draw the only possible conclusion: while Siegfried was effectively looking for a woman, he did not expect her not to be a man. In short, he was looking for a woman who would be - not the same as man, but - a symmetric supplement to man, with whom she would form a balanced signifying dyad - and what he found was an unbearable lack/excess. What he discovered is the excess/lack not covered by the binary signifier, i.e., the fact that Woman and Man are not complementary but asymmetrical, that there is no yin-yang balance - in short, that there is no sexual relationship.

34. No wonder, then, that Siegfried's discovery that Brunhilde "is no man" gives rise to an outburst of true panic accompanied by a loss of reality, in which Siegfried takes refuge with his (unknown) mother: "That's no man! A searing spell pierces my heart; a fiery anxiety fills my eyes; my senses swim and swoon! Whom can I call on to help me? Mother, mother! Think of me!" He then gather all his courage and decides to kiss the sleeping woman on her lips, even if this will mean his own death: "Then I will suck life from those sweetest lips, though I die in doing so." What follows is the majestic awakening of Brunhilde and then the love duet which concludes the opera. It is crucial to note that this acceptance of death as the price for contacting the feminine Other is accompanied musically by the echo of the so-called motif of "renunciation," arguably the most important leitmotif in the entire tetralogy. This motif is first heard in the Scene 1 of Rhinegold, when, answering Alberich's query, Woglinde discloses that "nur wer der Minne Macht versagt /only the one who renounces the power of love" can take possession of the gold; its next most noticeable appearance occurs towards the end of Act 1 of Walkure, at the moment of the most triumphant assertion of love between Sieglinde and Siegmund - just prior to his pulling out of the sword from the tree trunk, Siegmund sings it to the words: "Heiligster Minne hoechste Not / holiest love's highest need." How are we to read these two occurrences together? What if one treats them as two fragments of the complete sentence that was distorted by "dreamwork," that is, rendered unreadable by being split into two - the solution is thus to reconstitute the complete proposition: "Love's highest need is to renounce its own power." This is what Lacan calls "symbolic castration": if one is to remain faithful to one's love, one should not elevate it into the direct focus of one's love, one should renounce its centrality.

35. Perhaps a detour through the best (or worst) of Hollywood melodrama can help us to clarify this point. The basic lesson of King Vidor's Rhapsody is that, in order to gain the beloved woman's love, the man has to prove that he is able to survive without her, that he prefers his mission or profession to her. There are two immediate choices: (1) my professional career is what matters most to me, the woman is just an amusement, a distracting affair; or (2) the woman is everything to me, I am ready to humiliate myself, to forsake all my public and professional dignity for her. They are both false: they both lead to the man being rejected by the woman. The message of true love is thus: even if you are everything to me, I can survive without you, I am ready to forsake you for my mission or profession. The proper way for the woman to test the man's love is thus to "betray" him at the crucial moment of his career (the first public concert in the film, the key exam, the business negotiation which will decide his career) - only if he can survive the ordeal and accomplish successfully his task although deeply traumatized by her desertion, will he deserve her and she will return to him. The underlying paradox is that love, precisely as the Absolute, should not be posited as a direct goal - it should retain the status of a by-product, of something we get as an undeserved grace. Perhaps, there is no greater love than that of a revolutionary couple, where each of the two lovers is ready to abandon the other at any moment if revolution demands it.

36. What, then, happens when Siegfried kisses the sleeping Brunhilde, so that this act deserves to be accompanied by the Renunciation motif? What Siegfried says is that he will kiss Brunhilde "though I die in doing so" - reaching out to the Other Sex involves accepting one's mortality. Recall here another sublime moment from The Ring: in the Act II of Die Walkuere, Siegmund literally renounces immortality. He prefers to stay a common mortal if his beloved Sieglinde cannot follow him to Walhalla, the eternal dwelling of the dead heroes - is this not the highest ethical act of them all? The shattered Brunhilde comments on this refusal: "So little do you value everlasting bliss? Is she everything to you, this poor woman who, tired and sorrowful, lies limp in your lap? Do you think nothing less glorious?" Ernst Bloch was right to remark that what is lacking in German history are more gestures like Siegmund's.

37. But which LOVE is here renounced? To put it bluntly: the incestuous maternal love. The "fearless hero" is fearless insofar as he experiences himself as protected by his mother, by the maternal envelope - what "learning to fear" effectively amounts to is learning that one is exposed to the world without any maternal shield. It is essential to read this scene in conjunction with the scene, from Parsifal, of Kundry giving a kiss to Parsifal: in both cases, an innocent hero discovers fear and/or suffering through a kiss located somewhere between the maternal and the properly feminine. Till the late 19th century, they practiced in Montenegro a weird wedding night ritual: in the evening after the marriage ceremony, the son gets into bed with his mother and, after he falls asleep, the mother silently withdraws and lets the bride take her place: after spending the rest of the night with the bride, the son has to escape from the village into a mountain and spend a couple of days alone there in order to get accustomed to the shame of being married. Does something homologous not happen to Siegfried?

38. However, the difference between Siegfried and Parsifal is that, in the first case, the woman is accepted; in the second case, she is rejected. This does not mean that the feminine dimension disappears in Parsifal, and that we remain within the homoerotic male community of the Grail. Syberberg was right when, after Parsifal's rejection of Kundry which follows her kiss, "the last kiss of the mother and the first kiss of a woman," he replaced Parsifal-the-boy with another actor, a young cold woman - did he thereby not enact the Freudian insight according to which identification is, at its most radical, identification with the lost (or rejected) libidinal object? We BECOME (identify with) the OBJECT which we were deprived of, so that our subjective identity is a repository of the traces of our lost objects.

Notes

1. Gary Tomlison, Metaphysical Song, (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999), 94.
2. Bertolt Brecht, Die Gedichte in einem Band, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999), 1005.
3. When, in his Der Fall Wagner, Nietzsche mockingly rejects Wagner's universe, does his style not refer to these lines? Wagner himself was such a repulsive figure to him - and there is a kind of poetic justice in it, since Mime effectively is Wagner's ironic self-portrait.
4. Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
5. This love-duet is also one of the Verdi-relapses in Wagner (the best known being the revenge-trio that concludes the Act III of The Twilight, apropos which already Bernard Shaw remarked that it sounds like the trio of the conspirators from Un ballo in maschera). Gutman designated it as a farewell to music drama towards the rediscovered goal of the ultimate grand opera. See Robert Gutman, Richard Wagner, (New York, 1968), 299.
6. As if referring to this scene, Jacques-Alain Miller once engaged in a mental experiment, enumerating other possible operators of sexual difference which could replace the absence/presence of penis, and mentions the absence/presence of breasts.