Stepping Into Room 237

Okay, my turn!  I've posted some reviews of the documentary Room 237.  Michele asked me in a discussion about her review if I had seen the movie.  I had not.  Well, lucky me, I found it on Netflix.  Hard to pass up for free.

The movie leaves me dizzy.  Too many opinions all jumbled together.  It doesn't help  that  the movie relies solely on voice recognition for you to try and keep up with which crazy person is talking at the time.  I found myself thinking, "Now is this the moon guy, or the Indian guy?"

Here are my notes:

• Watching this documentary is more fun after reading The Girl Who Loves Horror review!  Yep, I laughed harder.  And indeed, cans of baking soda with American Indians on the label  do seem to be increasing.
• Watching this, I can see why Mr. King would want to separate himself from the movie!  Indeed, the movie does not reflect his book.  
• Conspiracies are fun.  It’s exciting to feel like you’re in-the-know; that you have deeper knowledge of something everyone else just took at a surface level. One guy says, “You have to be a fanatic to find all this.”  Yes.  Or just creative.  Because you’re not finding anything – you’re inventing it.
• The guy who thinks The Shining is about the genocide of American Indians says, “I thought afterwords, how come I saw this and no one else did.”  I DUNNO!  If you're the only one who sees the pattern in the carpet, maybe it’s not intentionally there.
• When paranoid people tell us they think the government will audit them because they think Stanley Kubrick created fake moon landing films – it makes them sound paranoid.  

So what do I think?  1. I think these people need to get a job and stop watching The Shining all day.  2. These people think Kubrick way over thought this film.

Here's a few lines from a guy who  thinks The Shining is really about the Holocaust -- Because the typewriter is a German brand.  “That struck me, why a German typewriter.”  And the number 42 is seen throughout the film, because in 1942 the Nazi’s decided to exterminate the Jews.  It is also significant that the typewriter changes color in the film."

I get the feeling each crazy was interviewed individually.  Imagine a convention of these people. what of the typewriter guy met the patterns in the carpet guy and they met the moon faker guy.

Do I like the film?  The short answer is no.  I think it’s funny, and in that sense it’s enjoyable.  But just listening to crazy people read nutso ideas into a film gets tiresome.  My brain is mush having watched this.

Room 237 moves from being funny to boring.  One crazy person is worth a good laugh.  A crazy guy in a story keeps the humor rolling.  Si on Duck Dynasty is fun.  But if everyone in a film is crazy, it leaves the viewer feeling overwhelmed.  I hope Obama Care covers psychiatric care, I know some people who need it.

My preparation: Seminary.
I’m well acquainted with crazy interpretations of seemingly straight forward accounts from taking religion classes at the University and simply hanging around enough seminary students.  Some people do to the Bible what these folk do to The Shining.  In fact, sometimes the History Channel studies the Bible exactly the same way Room 237 studies the Kubrick film!

Crazy stuff I hear. . . (that’s WRONG, do not think I’m endorsing this!) -- It was really aliens who lead the Hebrews through the wilderness; Lazarus was really the apostle Jesus loved, not John ; There is a secret number code embedded in the Bible; 666 is. . . you name it.  It's stuff seminary students or religion majors discuss in the basement of dorms or in the cafe over 30,000 cups of coffee.  Double predestination.  Pretribulation rapture.

Symbolism:
My experience with college and seminary students (not teachers) lead me to a simple decision: I would accept symbolism being read into Scripture so long as I believed the author intended to use symbolism.  But I refuse to read symbolism into everything.  When doing exposition, context matters.

This is why I get frustrated with readers who see symbolism in everything King; or in this case, Kubrick.  Of course, these people actually think Kubrick  intended to put all this crazy stuff in  his movie.

Symbolism is a powerful thing for us humans.  We use symbols in the marriage ceremony; in the elements at the Lord's Supper; as a nation in our flags.  But when everything is a symbol, then symbolism is emptied of its strength.  It loses it's bite.  Save symbolism and secret messages for the times when the artiest is actually sending us secret messages.  King does it all the time, but readers look goofy if that's all they see.  The story is lost in the search for deeper meaning.

The suggestion that the carpet had some kind of sexual energy in its swirl patterns is really just a slap at the viewers intelligence.  It's a cool pattern, but I wasn't thinking sex until someone started finding it in the carpet.  But hey, my eleven year old spots monsters in the carpet -- I guess she's right on track to play ball with these people.

Cartoon characters on the door -- the big one being dopey.  But when we see the door again, dopey is gone.  Could it be a symbol that Danny is no longer a dope?  NO!  It's a continuity error.  But I do think dopey is near by.

Too much symbolism can cause you to lose sight of the intended beauty. Does it matter that according to the floor plans there shouldn't be a window in the office?  No!  Because they're not doing a movie where you are supposed to keep up with the floor plan.  Kubrcik was making a movie about a haunted hotel -- and a window opens the scene up!  Frankly, it keeps the viewer from feeling like it's all happening on a set.  Have these people not seen Star Wars?  I'm pretty sure there were few windows in the original Cloud City floor plan, but Lucas added them later because they opened the scene up.  Kubrick has a window in the office for the same reason, because it opens the movie up.  It's good movie making, not symbolism.

So. . .
What is the secret message hidden in The Shining?  Is it about Indian burial grounds?  Is it about the Apollo moon landing?  Should we try and play the movie forward and backward at the same time?

The secret message is: Stanley Kubrick likes messing with crazy people.

The Drawing Of The Three Journal #2: Doors and Cards

photo credit christopherdemarti.com

I’ve been reading the second Dark Tower bok, The Drawing Of The Three.  This is great stuff!

As one person posted at goodreads.com,

"...There's going to be shooting.""There is?""Yes." The gunslinger looked serenely at Eddie. "Quite a lot of it, I think."
. . . And so begins the coolest, most intense gun fight I've ever read.

The second book is much easier to read.  The tone is more of what we expect of King – chatty, conversational and intensely character driven.  The first novel was surreal.  Also, this novel has a lot of “hooks” that keep the reader engaged.  King might be world building, but it is easier going in this novel..

In the first novel, it was me going “huh?”  I had no context or history with Roland’s world to help make things make sense.  What’s a “Ka”?  But in Drawing it is Roland who is in our world.  I know what a Big Mac is.  And, to make things even better, Eddie is often confused by Roland’s terms and is right there to ask him.  In fact, Eddie flat out tells Roland that he does not know what a “ka” is, except that kaka is something babies do in their diapers. Turns out, Roland explains, that Ka is destiny.  Or, a form of mid-world predestination.  So the reader is introduced to themes from Roland’s world without the total immersion required in The Gunslinger.

The Dark Tower itself moves closer to center stage in this book. Roland invites Eddie on his quest.  Of course, Eddie doesn’t really have a choice, but it was at least nice of Roland to invite. Eddie calls Roland a “tower Junkie.”  That’s great!

1. Doors: Roland encounters doors on a beach.  An earlier discussion about where the doors come from and what they symbolize lead to the general conclusion that fantasy doesn’t require a lot of answers.   Further, many of you insisted that symbolism doesn’t have to originate with the author.

Doors have a lot of Biblical symbolism – used much the same way they are used in The Drawing of the Three.

• Movement between realms.  In Revelation, John sees an open doors.  Stepping through the door ushers him into another world – the heavenly realm. (Revelation 4:1)  
• Spiritual receptivity.  Jesus most often used the symbol of a door to represent spiritual openness or closed heartedness toward the Gospel.  (Matthew 7:7-8 , Revelation 3:20) 
• Opportunity.  Jesus also used the symbol of a door as one of opportunity (Revelation 3:8) Paul used this same analogy.  (1 Cor. 16:9 , 2 Cor. 2:12, Col. 4:3)

Doors in The Drawing of the Three move the characters between worlds or realms.  Roland enters our world through the open doors. . . but there is a catch!  Roland enters our world through the body of another.  It’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers here!  Or, Richard Laymon’s “Body Rides.”

I found this article interesting on the symbolism of doors and windows in modern literature HERE.

By the way, there are more than just doors on a beach in this novel.  There are a lot of locked doors.  The door on the airplane.  The bathroom door at Balazar’s.

Throughout this novel both Eddie and Roland are sizing one another up.  Roland sees potential in Eddie if he can break free of his prison (drugs).  Interesting, since King when he wrote this was a prisoner to many substances. In fact, King displays more than a working knowledge of drugs and guns!

Back to doors.  Doors lead to “opportunity.”  For Eddie, Roland’s world is a way out of his prison.  The prison door is open for him to walk away – but it does not open on his world.  In order for him to be free, he must shut the door on his own world.  King was in much the same situation.  He would have to stop relying on things to keep him going.  What was his “door”?  His Roland was his wife – she drew the line and demanded change.  His door out was writing.

King narrates, “needed a fix.  More: He served a fix.”  This is exactly how a junkie thinks!  He needs, he deserves – thus anyone who denies him what he needs and deserves is the enemy, not the help.

King shares in On Writing that a lie artist tell themselves is that their art is better because of whatever substance abuse they are beholden to.  King reveals that this is a lie he told himself.  However, he also acknowledges that it is indeed a lie.  In order to escape out of a world of drugs,  he would have to walk away from the lie and into his craft with a sober mind.

photo credit: goodreads.com

2. Cards play an important role in this novel.
In the first book, the Gunslingers fortune was told with three cards.  Those cards now play out throughout The Drawing Of The Three.  Also, Balazar loves to play with cards, building complex houses and buildings out of the cards.  I love it when the gun battle begins and the cards go flying!  As Balazar’s cards fall down, so will his destiny.

King uses a midpoint devise with the cards titled “Shuffle.”  This describes Eddie’s nursing the Gunslinger and their conversations.  However, as the cards shuffle, time is lost.  The reader is left with a sense of disorientation.  How much time passes is not clear.  King uses this to move easily from one scene to the next without being required to fill us in on how they moved from point to point.  The narration takes an overview method that I actually like quite a bit.  King usually moves a story carefully – building scene by scene like a television show.  Sometimes it’s nice when he just fast forwards to the important parts.  That’s what he does in the “shuffle” sections.