I watched the Ring DVD yesterday.
Naomi Watts
Her eyes on occasion have such a naked desperation. But it’s not her desperation. It’s my own desperation I’m staring at. It’s the desperation of the observer. Meanwhile she’s just playing a role. Or is it strength instead of desperation in her face. Awareness of some terrifying truth that words are insufficient to describe to any reasonable human being. So she just becomes overly intense and then microscopically trembles. Trembling, yet not backing down from whatever completely stupid and yet curiously compelling realization she is having. The black well that the ring girl spends seven days in before suffocating by herself. Everyone is or has been scared of loneliness like that because they remember it. They remember it from their own lives, but they also remember it in their bones and in their biochemistry. Its primal knowledge. Existence knows about loneliness. Existence knows about compassion and friendliness and all that other crap too, but holy terror and loneliness are twin sensations its been intimately familiar with since consciousness sprouted like a flower from the center of the void. Although its foolish and impossible, it would be nice to maybe distil some actual meaning out of the Ringu story because there probably is some interesting things there, besides the obvious madness of the entire thing from start to finish. Time to try a little alchemy now by adding some completely unrelated ideas to it, and seeing if anything starts fizzing, or changing states.
The little psycho killer girl Samara wants to “spread her nightmare.” She’s very upset. She wants revenge. She wants to become darkness incarnate. Although every other character in the movie has a traditional english name, Samara doesn’t. Hers is from some other world. What does the word Samara mean in english? A Samara is according to wikipedia a certain type of fruit that has a wing that is used to assist it in gliding away from its source. Interesting, considering that little samara was adopted, and from parts unknown, but just interesting, not really important it would seem. Also, the name Samara bears an obvious resemblance to the word “Samsara,” which is the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that certain people literally believe in. Though myself, I don’t believe in it at all. I think Samsara (birth, death, rebirth, repeat) is better understood as a metaphor for every waking moment. However, whether Samsara is literally true or not isn’t important. Since young Samara is a psycho killer, the whole cycle of death bit could possibly be relevant metaphorically. So what is death’s significance in a fictional story. Death is symbolic of change and endings, sometimes of an abrupt loss of an old identity / loss of an old way of behaving, followed by the awareness of a different world or the willingness to finally experience a new and hopefully more rich and deeply satisfying way of behaving, one that’s more befitting of ones current situation. Death in the movie, like the tarot card of death, is always about ends and beginnings. But Samara is not beginning things, she’s not creating a better world is she. Samara is like the goddess Kali in slow motion. The cycle of never-ending destruction is her game She freezes her victims in a state of terror. Its like they’re killed by their own compassion for her. And is this literal death they experience? No, its fictional death and therefore symbolic in a way that doesn’t make sense, unless you add a bunch of other ingredients to the mix. Samara, the latch-key kid, with her little TV set and bed, imprisoned in a single room by her neurotic adoptive parents. Making up images and rules, and making them up from the collective unconscious because she’s all alone in a barn, and therefore there aint a whole lot else to draw from.
James Joyce called art that terrifies the highest kind of art. He might have been wrong about it being the “highest,” you know it all depends on the individual, but art that terrifies us probably has a significance that is easily missed by critics, bored dvd watchers, beauty fetishists, and assorted dipshits.
The following quote about art is from Ken Wilber. The parts where he talks about arts ability to suspend time, and “suspend the desire to be elsewhere” remind me of the effect that Samara has on those that watch her VHS tape and who end up frozen in time
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Quotes from Contemplating Art, by Ken Wilber
[Some art has] the capacity to simply take your breath away. To literally, actually, make you inwardly gasp, at least for that second or two when the art first hits you…you swoon a little bit, you are slightly stunned, you are open to perceptions that you had not seen before… No wonder that from the East and West alike, until just recent times, art was often associated with profound spiritual transformation.
Some of the great modern philosophers, Shelling to Shiller to Schopenhauer, have pinpointed a major reason for great art’s power to transcend. When we look at any beautiful object (natural or artistic), we suspend all other activity, and we are simply aware, we only want to contemplate the object. While we are in this contemplative state, we do not want anything from the object; we just want to contemplate it; we want it to never end. We don’t want to eat it, or own it, or run from it, or alter it: we only want to look, we want to contemplate, we never want it to end.
In that contemplative awareness, our own egoic grasping in time comes momentarily to rest. We relax into our basic awareness. We rest with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We are face to face with the calm, the eye in the center of the storm. We are not agitating to change things; we contemplate the object as it is. Great art has this power, this power to grab your attention and suspend it: we stare, sometimes awestruck, sometimes silent, but we cease the restless movement that otherwise characterizes our every waking moment.
It doesn’t matter what the actual content of the art is; not for this. Great art grabs you, against your will, and then suspends your will. You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction. And through that opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity; who can say otherwise, when time itself is suspended in the clearing that great art creates in your awareness.
Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future: we enter with it into the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by its content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere. And thus it undoes the agitated grasping in the hart of the suffering self, and release us--maybe for a second, maybe for a minute, maybe for all eternity--releases us from the coil of ourselves.
That is exactly the state that great art pulls us into, no matter what the actual content of the art itself--bugs or buddas, landscapes or abstractions, it doesn’t matter in the least. In this particular regard--from this particular context--great art is judged by its capacity to take your breath away, take your self way, take time away, all at once.”
End of quotes
----------------------------------------------------
So what I’m saying is that the demon girl Samara does just exactly that. Whether its good or bad, that’s what she does. Captivates those that watch her stupid tape. And in 7 days, their life is symbolically stopped. Eyes wide open. Mouth agape. Body apparently useless in its seized and petrified state. Everybody else is still going about there lives. Meanwhile, so and so seems dead or at least suspended in time. All because they watched her art project VHS tape. For what its worth, she’s basically the Picasso of fucked up demonic children. I still don’t know if I liked the Ring at all. But I liked Naomi Watts, it’s kind of pathetic, I’m completely pwn3d, so I had to watch it at least once. Not sure if I’m owned enough to watch the sequel though. Note: Australia women tend to be extremely sexy. While Australian men tend to be ordinary or else butt ugly. It might have something to do with the rugby. I don’t know.
Naomi Watts
Her eyes on occasion have such a naked desperation. But it’s not her desperation. It’s my own desperation I’m staring at. It’s the desperation of the observer. Meanwhile she’s just playing a role. Or is it strength instead of desperation in her face. Awareness of some terrifying truth that words are insufficient to describe to any reasonable human being. So she just becomes overly intense and then microscopically trembles. Trembling, yet not backing down from whatever completely stupid and yet curiously compelling realization she is having. The black well that the ring girl spends seven days in before suffocating by herself. Everyone is or has been scared of loneliness like that because they remember it. They remember it from their own lives, but they also remember it in their bones and in their biochemistry. Its primal knowledge. Existence knows about loneliness. Existence knows about compassion and friendliness and all that other crap too, but holy terror and loneliness are twin sensations its been intimately familiar with since consciousness sprouted like a flower from the center of the void. Although its foolish and impossible, it would be nice to maybe distil some actual meaning out of the Ringu story because there probably is some interesting things there, besides the obvious madness of the entire thing from start to finish. Time to try a little alchemy now by adding some completely unrelated ideas to it, and seeing if anything starts fizzing, or changing states.
The little psycho killer girl Samara wants to “spread her nightmare.” She’s very upset. She wants revenge. She wants to become darkness incarnate. Although every other character in the movie has a traditional english name, Samara doesn’t. Hers is from some other world. What does the word Samara mean in english? A Samara is according to wikipedia a certain type of fruit that has a wing that is used to assist it in gliding away from its source. Interesting, considering that little samara was adopted, and from parts unknown, but just interesting, not really important it would seem. Also, the name Samara bears an obvious resemblance to the word “Samsara,” which is the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that certain people literally believe in. Though myself, I don’t believe in it at all. I think Samsara (birth, death, rebirth, repeat) is better understood as a metaphor for every waking moment. However, whether Samsara is literally true or not isn’t important. Since young Samara is a psycho killer, the whole cycle of death bit could possibly be relevant metaphorically. So what is death’s significance in a fictional story. Death is symbolic of change and endings, sometimes of an abrupt loss of an old identity / loss of an old way of behaving, followed by the awareness of a different world or the willingness to finally experience a new and hopefully more rich and deeply satisfying way of behaving, one that’s more befitting of ones current situation. Death in the movie, like the tarot card of death, is always about ends and beginnings. But Samara is not beginning things, she’s not creating a better world is she. Samara is like the goddess Kali in slow motion. The cycle of never-ending destruction is her game She freezes her victims in a state of terror. Its like they’re killed by their own compassion for her. And is this literal death they experience? No, its fictional death and therefore symbolic in a way that doesn’t make sense, unless you add a bunch of other ingredients to the mix. Samara, the latch-key kid, with her little TV set and bed, imprisoned in a single room by her neurotic adoptive parents. Making up images and rules, and making them up from the collective unconscious because she’s all alone in a barn, and therefore there aint a whole lot else to draw from.
James Joyce called art that terrifies the highest kind of art. He might have been wrong about it being the “highest,” you know it all depends on the individual, but art that terrifies us probably has a significance that is easily missed by critics, bored dvd watchers, beauty fetishists, and assorted dipshits.
The following quote about art is from Ken Wilber. The parts where he talks about arts ability to suspend time, and “suspend the desire to be elsewhere” remind me of the effect that Samara has on those that watch her VHS tape and who end up frozen in time
------------------------------------------
Quotes from Contemplating Art, by Ken Wilber
[Some art has] the capacity to simply take your breath away. To literally, actually, make you inwardly gasp, at least for that second or two when the art first hits you…you swoon a little bit, you are slightly stunned, you are open to perceptions that you had not seen before… No wonder that from the East and West alike, until just recent times, art was often associated with profound spiritual transformation.
Some of the great modern philosophers, Shelling to Shiller to Schopenhauer, have pinpointed a major reason for great art’s power to transcend. When we look at any beautiful object (natural or artistic), we suspend all other activity, and we are simply aware, we only want to contemplate the object. While we are in this contemplative state, we do not want anything from the object; we just want to contemplate it; we want it to never end. We don’t want to eat it, or own it, or run from it, or alter it: we only want to look, we want to contemplate, we never want it to end.
In that contemplative awareness, our own egoic grasping in time comes momentarily to rest. We relax into our basic awareness. We rest with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We are face to face with the calm, the eye in the center of the storm. We are not agitating to change things; we contemplate the object as it is. Great art has this power, this power to grab your attention and suspend it: we stare, sometimes awestruck, sometimes silent, but we cease the restless movement that otherwise characterizes our every waking moment.
It doesn’t matter what the actual content of the art is; not for this. Great art grabs you, against your will, and then suspends your will. You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction. And through that opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity; who can say otherwise, when time itself is suspended in the clearing that great art creates in your awareness.
Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future: we enter with it into the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by its content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere. And thus it undoes the agitated grasping in the hart of the suffering self, and release us--maybe for a second, maybe for a minute, maybe for all eternity--releases us from the coil of ourselves.
That is exactly the state that great art pulls us into, no matter what the actual content of the art itself--bugs or buddas, landscapes or abstractions, it doesn’t matter in the least. In this particular regard--from this particular context--great art is judged by its capacity to take your breath away, take your self way, take time away, all at once.”
End of quotes
----------------------------------------------------
So what I’m saying is that the demon girl Samara does just exactly that. Whether its good or bad, that’s what she does. Captivates those that watch her stupid tape. And in 7 days, their life is symbolically stopped. Eyes wide open. Mouth agape. Body apparently useless in its seized and petrified state. Everybody else is still going about there lives. Meanwhile, so and so seems dead or at least suspended in time. All because they watched her art project VHS tape. For what its worth, she’s basically the Picasso of fucked up demonic children. I still don’t know if I liked the Ring at all. But I liked Naomi Watts, it’s kind of pathetic, I’m completely pwn3d, so I had to watch it at least once. Not sure if I’m owned enough to watch the sequel though. Note: Australia women tend to be extremely sexy. While Australian men tend to be ordinary or else butt ugly. It might have something to do with the rugby. I don’t know.