UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ M.A. PROGRAM IN DIGITAL CULTURE MEDIA CULTURE ANNIKKA SUONINEN / RAINE KOSKIMAA SÉRGIO LUIZ TAVARES FILHO 2008
    
    Young parenthood, anxiety and family ties:
    the allegory of The Ring The Archeology of Poltergeist
    As David Kelner analyzed Poltergeist in the chapter in Media Culture “Social anxiety, class, and disaffected youth”, this essay aims to analyze the contemporary film The Ring by the same optic: “media culture provides social allegories which articulate class and social group fears, yearnings and hopes” (Kelner, 125). In this simple and synthetic form, Kelner makes explicit what the entire “mass mind” audience reluctantly deny: films are – or may be, and this is the case – a strict expression of the audience’s conflicts, that are often too painful or too disturbing to discuss directly (Kelner, 127). In the Reagan era, Steven Spielberg, whose films are mainly about “family entertainment”, produced Poltergeist, a film directed by horror film director Tobe Hooper. It was an era of uncertainty and social downward perspectives, and the film depicts a family being haunted by spirits that want them to leave their house – a beautiful suburbia house, the whole ideal of the American Dream residence. There is, indeed, no better way to describe the loss of a house (caused by the inability of the family’s father to pay the mortgage, in example) than seeing it being completely destroyed and consumed by unseen forces – the unseen forces of unemployment, economical recession and political crisis.
    
    Two decades later, Spielberg again produced – and not directed, as if he wouldn’t like to have his public image as a director “tainted” by horror films – a blockbuster and widely popular horror film that again, apparently, transcoded to film the anxieties inherent to a specific social group.
    
    The Ring: symbols and anxieties
    This time, the focus is not on the typical American family, but rather more in a urban, independentminded couple with more egalitarian roles in the family support: Rachel (Naomi Watts) is a young journalist that raises her son without much help of the absent father (???), and that starts an investigation on the mysterious tape that, when watched, causes the death of the viewer in seven days. The early 00s is, therefore, a time where other characters (with another set of preoccupations) is depicted: no longer the post-hippie couple of Poltergeist, which remained together even under the storms of financial and supernatural crisis, but a much more individually-minded couple, each one with their own career, beliefs and with a child in common – but separate love lives. The anxiety of the main character, Rachel, is often shown in allegories – as the Spielberg classical horror film usually does – and they are mainly related to feelings of guilt, depression, self-esteem and abandonment. The surface of the young and courageous journalist, completely detached from the young woman with a sexual life without marriage, is not questioned in the “real world” scale: her fears and weaknesses are only allegorically depicted on the form of symbols that communicate much more with the unconsciousness than with the consciousness of the character, and – mostly important – symbols that communicate also with the audience in the same way; an audience that identifies with the stereotype (of the young emotionally independent and proactive journalist), and that as the character, is deeply impacted with the “coded” way of dealing with the same “contemporary” fears.
    
    A cast of symbols
    The film is a linear narrative following the content of the “cursed tape” (that leads the viewers to death in seven days). The tape itself is a symbol for the forbidden fruit: death, in this case, is not only taken as death itself, but as anything that would conduct to an unknown, cast away or marginal existence from
    
    the “normal” way of life. The tape therefore can symbolize the actions one might take that lead to death, or to “death in life”: depression or the feeling of lack of belonging, in example. The content of the tape is a series of deeply symbolic images that appear along the film, thus another way of linearity. In order of appearance, the images are listed: A circle of light over black background – running water with blood – an empty chair and a glass of water – an old mirror with a woman combing her hair, as an image from past times – a needle – a house – a fly – a nail with a finger being perforated by it – worms – water – a poisonous insect walking over the room with the previous empty chair – a horse – cut out fingers moving – a ladder on an empty scenario – a tree over a hill, on fire – a woman jumping over a cliff – a welt (that forms the ring image as the moon overlaps the sun over it). There is linearity also on the characters, contradicting somehow the basic theory of narrative, where every character should be transformed along the story. They are transformed in some way, but none of them is able to change themselves in a way of breaking the tape’s curse. Individuality and career is shown as a problem, since the first mother-to-son dialogue in the beginning of the film is about the boy complaining about Rachel’s “lack of time”. The first victim of the tape, as the boy affirms, “died because she hadn’t enough time” – a very basic and doctrinaire idea of “crime and punishment”. There is a very relevant scene where Rachel is arguing with her husband that he “can’t finish anything that he starts”. That is a very typical complaint about young adults that are not completely mature, and we might think that if the husband lacks maturity (and can’t change his destiny, for he have seen the tape and will die in seven days), Rachel lacks the husband’s figure, possibly one of the roots of her feelings that mark her as “cursed” – everyone who’s cursed by the tape appears on photographs with distorted faces: the main aspect of “distortion”, not only, for sure, in pictures but as inner distortions, feeling of being distorted. The absence of the husband is also shown when Rachel and her son are getting ready for the first victim’s funeral: she asks her husband (not well defined as ex or actual husband) for her black dress, and her son appears in the living room with a suit, knotting the tie, and with her dress put over the couch for her – a typical husband-and-wife scene.
    
    Lacking the father’s presence and the mother’s attention, the kid is obviously conflicted. The film, defined by its genre, does not show parental discussions or the attempt to overcome family problems: instead of that, Rachel is worried about the kid being in touch with the supernatural. This is a main metaphor for losing touch with reality, society and known grounds of a “normal” life to join feelings of depression, obscurity, numbness and emotional conflicts. Several other symbols translate Rachel’s anxiety and inability to deal with her conflicts, and they are the guide for the plot development, appearing accordingly to the tape’s images: when Rachel is investigating the instances of the deaths along with the tape, a fly comes from out of the screen: Rachel’s nose immediately bleeds.
    
    Reading the symbols
    The symbols on the screen, on this essay, were analyzed as part of the common sense symbols that cast the subconscious and unconscious areas of the individual on contemporary culture (mainly western culture). On dream symbols and significations, Sigmund Freud’s and Carl Jung’s interpretations, under the light of psychoanalysis and common-sense mythology. In order to transcript these significations to the form of an essay Barthes’ Mythologies were used as reference. Having that said, we can go back to Rachel’s investigation: by the moment she sees the “magic” event of the fly coming out of the screen, she has a nosebleed. By the nosebleed, we might think Rachel has been affected by the conflicts she’s struggling with. The fly most likely relates to feelings of guilt and breakdown of plans, as well as fear of sicknesses and the feeling of being surrounded by unpleasant enemies. It is important to remember that the character depicted is facing relationship conflicts on contemporary urban society, and the fear, hysteria and paranoia over the woman’s responsibility to keep the house, raise the children and to be successful come along with the inner desire of being independent (both financially and even sexually) and conflicts with the patriarchal society that finds a woman guilty of having sex without being married, as well as the fear of being in a never-ending and unsettled relationship with a man that has other partners (as the male character introduces her to his new girlfriend, also a journalist, but younger than her).
    
    Along the investigation, Rachel goes on a ferryboat and a wild black horse is onboard: the dark horse is often perceived as the symbol of the unknown, and in the scene the animal goes wild and threatens the character – till it falls in the water and is killed by the ferry’s engine. The dead horse is also seen on the tape, and this is claimed to be a symbol of a force that once gave one’s strength, but that now is gone, a significance deeply connected to the distant absent husband and her feelings towards the situation. The tree appearing in the tape, a single tree over a hill, is considered to be a representation of hopes, growth and desire of individualization. On the tape, the tree is depicted burning, thus the tape is the concretization of her fears (within seven days, no need to say that this is a most symbolic representation of “in certain time”). The same tree appears on the landscape of the house, on a constructive scene, when Rachel finally finds in the end of her investigation: a single house, empty, where only Rachel is in – a typical symbol of a character exploring its own mind. The last image on the tape is of a woman combing her hair. Think of the image as a dream, studies on dreams claim that this represents an attempt to organize thoughts and sort out unclear situations, which is precisely what Rachel is trying to do along the whole film. Ending her investigation on a welt, we see a woman facing the corpse the “murdered ghost”, a girl in black clothes that appears to be the personification of the feelings of guilt, depression and inadequacy. The weld is the place for drinking water, in other words, to the element that will ultimately constitute oneself, and water is as well a primary Freudian symbol for sex and sexuality: the ghost is haunting Rachel’s deep intimate feelings. We might think that Rachel finally has the chance to exorcize that ghost and move on with her life, freeing everyone from the tape’s curse. In conformity with the symbols presented on the tape, Rachel’s life is full of conflicts and fear, and the investigation is very much personal: her relationship ends with the death of her husband in consequence of the tape (as for say, in consequence of his inability to change his mind and his vew on the world), so she has to resolve the problems that are on her mind, and they seem, all in all, unsolvable: unless she changes her mind.
    
    Conclusion
    
    The pessimism is explicit on the final scene, when Rachel is close to the seventh day of her curse: in the car, going home (and it is indeed curious that she drives an old Volkswagen car and not a typical American SUV), she tries to figure out who was the woman on the tape or the girl in the welt, and it is possible to understand that she is in fact talking about her own character, even though reflected on the ghost image: “A woman that thought she could take the right way… but she didn’t. She just won’t stop”. The film propagates a pessimistic idea of immanence, that the characters can’t change their lives, their way of living and for consequence, their destiny and the curse of the tape – a circle (a ring), endless, cyclic, with no change. What we might conclude is that the social anxiety of contemporary society has not an objective solution: it is not as an economical crisis or the threat of social downward. It is a deep restructure of family that is needed, and there is no answer for that on the present moment. If in Poltergeist the television set is cast out of the Holiday Inn bedroom (the house was destroyed and the source of evil, the TV, was cast away from the room), and so the family can have a new beginning; in The Ring the anxiety of the young couple living independent lives and suffering unsolved emotional conflicts finds no practical solution or catharsis. On the contraire of what commonly happens, the film does not show a conservative path for salvation, but, apparently, the solution depends on themselves and on their ability to deal with their conflicts and overcome the obstacles – but they simply can’t do that. Society as a whole is still figuring out how to deal with all these questions: we are all still trying to comprehend not only what we are able to do with our lives as individuals, but also trying to understand how much of individuality and empowerment we can take without the need of others, without succumbing to fears, and without having to retrocede to previous ways of thinking.
    
    References Kelner Barthes Freud Jung Dream symbols / interpretation

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