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Hey! Remember that movie “The Ring”? With that creepy girl that crawls out of the TV?
Did you know that it’s a serious work of existentialism that builds upon the legacy of Samuel Beckett?
No?
Do you feel like reading an article about “The Ring” that will make you consider the prospect of your own death?
No?
Of course not! You’re not on the internet to think about death! You’re here to AVOID thinking about death! (We’ll get to that in a minute but first let’s lay some ground work.)
FALL 2002
Gore Verbinski’s “The Ring” (based on the Japanese horror film “Ringu”) was given a limited release by Dreamworks in October, 2002. It became a surprise hit, eventually earning 5 times its budget at the box office.
“Siskel and Ebert” type movie reviewers liked it well enough but there was no recognition on anyone’s part that this was a “serious” film and deserved serious critical attention.
(I’m honestly not sure if anything “serious” has ever been written about it. I would imagine so but I didn’t look anything up. For this post, you guys are getting pure unadulterated Todd.)
Speaking of me, I first saw “The Ring” as a young man of 21, right around the time I began my brief experimentation with alternative lifestyles.
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I remember thinking it was pretty scary. And then not thinking about it again for 15 years.
FAST FORWARD TO 2016
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A few months ago, Audrey and I were watching boring old regular network TV. There was a Chicago Bulls game on WGN. When it ended, “The Ring” started. We were talking and happened to leave the station running. Eventually, both of us started watching the movie.
I thought “Wow. There’s a lot going on here. This is really well made.”
I bought the film on Amazon Prime and watched it all the way through. And then I watched it again. And again.
I started to form an idea of what the film was really “about”.
REWIND TO 1953
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Further back please…
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FURTHER BACK.
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Oh my God this is taking FOREVER.
FURTHER GODDAMMIT!
FURTHER BACK!
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TOO FAR!
TOO FAR BACK!
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PERFECT.
A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON
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(We’re gonna try and do this quick and dirty so no one gets bored.)
In 1948, Samuel Beckett wrote the play “Waiting for Godot”. It premiered at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris, France in 1953.
World War II had ended three years earlier.
In the first half of the 20th century, humanity witnessed two massive global wars, the second of which resulted in the invention of the atom bomb and a loss of life unrivaled in human history.
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Humans had unequivocally proven that, given the right conditions, they could easily transform into an unhinged collective of bloodthirsty monsters.
And now the monsters had armed themselves with a weapon capable of destroying hundreds of thousands of lives in a single instant.
You’ve likely heard the possibility of nuclear war termed an “existential threat”. In order to understand how “The Ring” fits into the oeuvre of existential art, let’s first make certain that we are on the same page about what is meant by “existentialism”.
EXISTENTIALISM.
SAD PHILOSOPHY? OR THE SADDEST PHILOSOPHY?
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Existentialist thinking began well before WWI with Søren Kierkegaard but it didn’t ramp up until the mid 1940’s, once the massive casualties and stunning brutality of the war between the Allies and the Axis powers were laid bare.
Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” and Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” are two very famous examples of existentialism in literature. The artist Francis Bacon drew heavily from the philosophy in his work.
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Today, Francis Bacon’s “Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” (1953) and “Figure With Meat” (1954) may look like shitty album covers from 90’s industrial metal bands but in 1954 they were about as dark as dark can get.
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(So now I get to attempt the high-wire act of summing up decades worth of philosophy, much of which is still debated by its adherents, in a couple lines without boring the shit out of everyone. Great.)
Here’s an impossibly reductive two-sentence description of “Existentialism” bolstered by a quote from author Umberto Eco.
Existentialism is a philosophy that views humanity’s existence as fundamentally meaningless. It asks how and why we infuse our lives with meaning despite our knowledge that death (and oblivion) is inevitable.
“I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” ―Umberto Eco
Pretty neato, huh?
Here are two sentences to describe the existentialist play “Waiting for Godot” and one sentence to detail the symbolic use of a tree in that play.
“Waiting for Godot” is Samuel Beckett’s ode to the absurdity of the human condition. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, distract themselves with all sorts of fleeting activities, amusements, philosophical musings, religious speculations and melodramatic intrigues as they await the arrival of the title character.
Shit. I need to cheat.
The play is about being alive. Godot never arrives. He is an abstract representation of whatever ideas, beliefs, emotions, or imagined outcomes we use to propel ourselves through the monotony and repetition of daily life.
Ok. Now one sentence about the tree.
There is a tree in the play “Waiting for Godot” and it’s important.
Take a look at some of the cover art that have been used to advertise performances or sell copies of the play over the past 60 years.
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SO WHAT’S ALL THIS GOT TO DO WITH “THE RING”?
Trees (and the recurring image of a single tree) are staples in “The Ring” as well.
Let’s take a look at how the symbolic tree is first introduced in Gore Verbinski’s film.
Rachel (Naomi Watts) stares at the cabin where she intends to watch the deadly videotape. (Oh yeah. There’s a deadly videotape. We’ll get to that in a second.)
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As she takes her first step toward the cabin, the tree is revealed.
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We get a closer shot of the tree.
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The sun moves behind it, presumably from east to the west.
Rachael stares at the tape contemplating if she should watch.
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Then this shot:
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Rachael inserts the tape into the VCR and begins to watch.
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Here’s what’s on the tape:
(Trigger warning. It’s scary. If you’re scared by scary things maybe don’t watch it?)
Obviously, the video is littered with symbolism. But we’re going to stick to the trees.
There are two trees in the video.
One is on fire.
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The other bends in the wind over a precipice where a woman commits suicide.
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When the video tape ends, we get one more shot of the original tree.
The sun has almost fully set behind it.
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So…what might a tree symbolize? How about a tree with a sun setting behind it? Or a tree that is burning?
Keeping in mind the existentialist view of our human condition, consider what we should take away from all these images of trees with colored leaves or no leaves…
“THE RING” AS A WORK OF EXISTENTIALISM
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In case you don’t remember the basic story of “The Ring”…
There’s a video tape. If you watch it, you get a telephone call. The voice on the other end tells you that you have 7 days to live.
On the 7th day one of the dudes from Soundgarden crawls through your television set and kills you.
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(Unless you get the guy on the right. He still crawls through the TV and but instead of killing you, he just keeps reminding you that he was in Soundgarden until you sleep with him.)
Recall the basic theme of “Waiting for Godot”. Human beings, condemned to an existence inherently devoid of meaning, struggle to ward off thoughts of death as they search for and generate the meaning they crave through daily activity.
Oh!
Hey!
Look at the chalkboard (in center frame!) from an early scene in “The Ring”…
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“Take a walk and observe trees”
TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE IN OUR POST-MODERN EXISTENCE
In “The Ring”, technology (which is inherently un-alive and, therefore, exempt from death) is being constantly harnessed as an anodyne in our struggle against existential dread.
After Rachel returns from the woods, she asks Noah (Martin Henderson), her ex-boyfriend and the father of her googly-eyed child, to watch the deadly videotape.
As he watches, Rachel steps onto her balcony and looks out at the oppressive wall of apartment buildings surrounding her.
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When she looks into specific apartments, here’s what she sees:
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It would appear that passive viewing of TV has become our central human occupation.
But is it working? Is television serving its existential purpose? Does it give life meaning? Does it, at the very least, provide comfort or distraction?
Here is the opening monologue from the film delivered while the two young characters face the camera and flip through television channels.
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I hate television. Gives me headaches. You know, I heard there's so many magnetic waves traveling through the air because of TV and telephones, that we're losing, like ten times as many brain cells as we're supposed to. Like, all the molecules in our heads are all unstable. All the companies know about it but they're not doing anything about it. It's, like, a big conspiracy.
As the film opens, the existential dread we’ve fought against for over a century is worming its way back toward the forefront of our minds.
Far from proving a worthy adversary against conscious morbidity, television may, in fact, be an working against us, hastening our appointment with the void.
Our technological trance is vacillating. Not only is our new passive distraction impossible to infuse with meaning, it is barely serviceable even as a distraction.
The opening scenes of the film are littered with moments of human disconnection amid an icy landscape of telephones and televisions. Everyone is plugged in and powered up. The mother of a murdered girl even mentions doing research on the internet for 4 hours!
4 HOURS ON THE INTERNET?!?!
And yet, as Rachel tucks her son into bed, he is clearly troubled by the dreaded questions of existentialism.
AIDEN
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AIDEN We don't have enough time. RACHEL Oh, honey, I know I've been working a lot and I'm sorry but I promise you, I'm going to make it up to you. AIDEN I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about time before we die. RACHEL You have lots of time. AIDEN So, you know when I'm going to die? RACHEL No. No one does but I know you don't have to worry about it.
NOAH
Further proof of our crumbling alliance with technology comes in the character of Noah, an audio/video engineer with a wealth of technical acumen.
His immersion in the tech world has left him a perpetual child. He is terrified of adulthood and adult responsibilities. Though he may be an expert in videography, his obvious Peter Pan complex betrays a deep-seeded fear of life’s singular journey towards expiration.
He very pointedly avoids being a father to his son. Instead, he lives in a bachelor pad, dates a college student and dresses like a teenager.
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In this shot composition, his childishness is accentuated through central framing. Posed between two well-kept and serious women, Noah’s small stature and grungy attire pull our focus.
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This scene ends with Rachel storming out of Noah’s apartment and imploring him to “GROW UP!”.
DR. GRASNICK
In her quest to discover the origin of the tape, Rachel is led to small island community. There, she meets the island psychologist.
Before she has a chance to introduce herself, the doctor and her husband have this candid exchange.
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DR. GRASNICK You're getting a little old to be crabbing out there, Cal. Your body's about outlived its warranty, you know. CAL You ain't exactly the catch of the day. DR. GRASNICK Oh... let's see you catch one better!
It’s jocular enough but there’s an underlying sadness, particularly on the part of the husband.
RICHARD MORGAN
Near the end of the film, we witness the suicide of Samara’s father, Richard Morgan (Brian Cox). Samara is, of course, the girl “inside” the videotape.
He fills a bathtub with water and enters it wearing (ironically) a surge protector and loads of charged wires hooked into a television set.
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THE TRAGEDY OF TECHNOLOGY
The “horror” of “The Ring” (and the reason it deserves an important place in the cannon of existentialism) is the revelation that technology is failing in its role as a levee against the tempest of existential shock that churns beneath the sea of humanity.
Instead of remaining a lifeless, safe and consistent distraction, technology has willed itself into corporal existence.
It’s come to life in order to remind us of death assuring it’s message will be heard by wielding the same existential threat that humans use to manipulate each other in the age of nuclear fission.
We first witness this transmogrify when Rachel plucks a living fly off a screen playing the cursed videotape. The fly is initially part of the recorded image but somehow manages to segue seamlessly into Rachel’s physical reality.
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Of course, later the same thing will happen to Noah.
The film reinforces its major theme by subverting our narrative expectations.
Despite his positive character arc and despite all the meaningful lessons he’s learned along this “journey, Noah is no less subject to death than anyone else.
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His death at the hands of Samara comes after the film’s climax.
As an audience, our reasonable expectation at this point is for closure, reconciliation or transcendence.
For centuries, human beings have told stories that reinforce the basic idea that life has a progression. We tell ourselves that we, as individuals or as a collective, are constantly moving with purpose towards some transcendent goal or achievement. We expect to see our heroes succeed in this endeavor either by learning and growing through their journey or by dying with valiance in service of some greater good.
The nightmare of existentialism is that the stories we tell ourselves are lies. Both the fictional stories we use as cultural barometers and the personal stories we see ourselves “living out” are nothing but a figment of our imagination. There is no order. There is no positive progression. These very concepts are nothing but the constructs of our terrified consciousness rebelling against the utter meaninglessness of existence, the randomness of events and the indefensible disparity with which comforts, rewards and pleasures are meted out; the incomprehensible void that awaits.
(This is getting pretty dark, huh?)
(Maybe now would be a good time to point out that I don’t necessarily believe this. And even some existentialists don’t have nearly as bleak a picture of the world as I’ve painted here.)
(I’m basically just trying to describe how a horror movie would attempt to use existentialism as a mechanism of fear and point out how successful “The Ring” is in this regard.)
(Maybe one more Calvin and Hobbes?)
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DEATH INSISTS UPON ITSELF
Eventually, Rachel realizes she’s been spared the wrath of the videotape because she “made a copy”.
During a final montage, Samara tells us point blank that she does, in fact, want to hurt us.
It is her only intention.
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PSYCHIATRIST But you don't want to hurt anyone? SAMARA But I do. And I'm sorry. (Pause) It won't stop.
It’s a declaration that stands in stark contrast to Rachel’s very human justification of Samara’s bloodlust.
Rachel imagined that Samara was engaged in a meaningful quest to “have her story told”. The death and destruction left in her wake was a by-product of Samara’s very sympathetic desire to assert her claim to a life cut criminally short. Once she’d achieved her goal, Samara would be “set free”. She would ascend to a higher plane and transcend her cruel and anguished desire for “revenge”. She would be at “peace”.
But that story was invented by Rachel. Not Samara.
Samara is death.
And as the trees remind us every fall, death is inextricably tied to life.
It exists entirely outside purpose or meaning.
The students in Aiden’s classroom are taught to “observe trees”. It’s a lesson humanity has forgotten. We’ve turned to technology to generate an endless stream of false narratives, imagined meanings and escapist fantasies.
And yet, for all its ubiquity, technology fails us. It does not provide the meaning necessary to cope with the irreconcilable reality of death. Nor has it proved a sufficient distraction to prolong an existence blissfully ignorant of our inevitable non-existence.
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“Death” has invaded our phones and our televisions. It coerces us to spread our new awareness of its existence like a 20th Century chain letter come to life.
It’s frightening. Engaging with death on any level cuts against the very nature of our natural instinct toward survival.
But, in the end, maybe an acceptance of death is the only true transcendence available for creatures like us, at once blessed and cursed with the incredible burden of consciousness.
In other words, in the long run, maybe Samara is the true “hero” of “The Ring”.