"The Uncanny" Questions

1) Is Freud suggesting that all of the uncanny involves repression?

2) Why is deja-vu such an incredibly strange feeling for us?

3) What is the "critical faculty?"

Eddie Geller

1. Where does the uncanny end (especially repitition compulsion) and unhealthy obsession begin?
2. The repressed vs. the awakening of the uncanny (p 143); "the double" takes a demonic form that might cause similar anxiety as the return of the repressed: are they the same mental processes? how about the connection between the uncanny and extinct familiarity broached on p 124??
3. "...[O]ur unconcious has as little use now as ever for the idea of its own mortality." Use?

g hughes

1. Freud asserts that"dismemebered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at
the wrist, feet which dance by themselves all have something peculiarly
uncanny about them". Given the definition of uncanny, how does that apply to
Ronell's mentioning of the notion of limb without user in vaudeville correlate?

2. How is the castration complex practically applied in Freud's description
of Tales of Hoffman and the story of Nathanial? Sounds like bunk to me!

3. Freud seems to think that "seeing" apparitions in real life is refuted by
all people of quality education? Is that so improbable?

Ryan Wilson

2.) Is the idea of the "double" exist only in a dual nature (e.g. black/white, good/evil)? If this is the case, it might be fair to say that narcissism, such as looking in the mirror, shows the binary opposition between the good self and bad self.

3.)Freud spends much time indicating the link between the loss of eyes and castration. But does he also insinuate that the loss of one's eyes would be losing the link to the outside world, or in this case, the link to what is familiar? By losing your eyes, you can no longer see what is uncanny. But isn't that uncanny in itself? Weird. It makes me go back and think of all those films where characters, usually evil or flawed, lose their eyes (e.g. Minority Report, Event Horizon, Once Upon a Time in Mexico).

- Stephen Shuck

1. It seems that the translation of "Uncanny" for Das Unheimliche is approximate at best. While Freud goes to great lengths to define the German term in other languages in order to illustrate that the terms are all close enough of a translation, I wonder why the word uncanny was chosen. As a word with multiple different meanings, from dismal and gloomy, to haunted and repulsive, it doesn't seem quite specific enough. It is quite different from the Greek of simply "strange" and the Hebrew "Daemonic". Maybe sublime or ethereal would be more specific?

2. Is Freud's concept of the uncanny essentially an anxiety or fear of the familiar that has been repressed?

3. Why does Freud diminish the significance of the concept of the uncanny by placing it in the realm of aesthetics?

--
SADOW,ZACHARY FORD

1) Where is Freud going with the idea that "heimlich" becomes "unheimlich?" Is it simply that they contradict each other in some ways?

2) Does the Sand-Man in Hoffmann's Nachtstucken only exist because Nathaniel believes he is uncanny?

3) "A great deal that is not uncanny in fiction would be so if it happened in real life; and in the second place that there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life." Is Freud suggesting that the uncanny depends on what our beliefs are? Or is it that the uncanny must lie somewhere between what we are comfortable with, and what is too rediculous to believe?

- John Cassaras

1. Well, I think the story of the "Sand-Man" would make a hell of a movie. I like how Freud uses countless defintions of the word heimlich and unheimlich in order to display that one word eventually mutates into it's opposite, and how uncanny that all is, but it doesn't really prove much. What does Freud hope to achieve with this argument? How can you logically explain a sense of unease that affetcs everyone differently, and from different stimuli?

2. I don't understand how repression is automatically linked to the uncanny.- pg.150 "Considering our unchanged attitude towards death, we might rather inquire what has become of the repression, that necessary condition for enabling a primitive feeling to recur in the shape of an uncanny effect." I don't think that Freud has completely proved this.

In his paper, Freud talks about how uncanny it would be for dismembered limbs to move of their own volition. Then he comes to the conclusion that this sense of uncanniness is all due to the castration-complex, and that the fantasy of being buried alive is really a transformation of the desire to have an intra-uterine existence. How does this make sense? Is man's great quest for the ages to discover how to get back into his mothers womb?

3.I think it's interesting that Freud mentions the fact that all his examples could be interpreted another way, and could really mean nothing.
Freud brings up a good point. Towards the end of his paper he is discussing how strange occurences in fairy-tales are readily accepted, i.e. talking animals, flying carpets, ghostly apparitions etc.-we "regard souls,spirits, and spectres as though their existence had the same validity in their world as our own has in the external world...the situation is altered as soon as the writer pretends to move in the world of common reality."
Is this why Blue Velvet seems creepier or daresay more "uncanny" than Videodrome, because it is somewhat believeable? How does a man transforming into a human VCR make more sense to someone than a man walking around with a canister of nitrous oxide who has a tendency to say "fuck"?

1. Freud made the connection between eyes and genitals through dreams, myths, and fantasies. What other connections are there aside from the Sand-Man and Oedipus stories?

2. How can we connect the "double" as a way to preserve life to the VHS recording in Videodrome and The Ring?

3. By his dismissal of an afterlife, I will assume Freud does not believe in Christian mythology. If Freud says that the literary uncanny does not frighten us because it is not real, how does he account for people that fear the devil and Hell?

Michael Sarrow

1. At what point do more familiar childhood inclinations ( such as wanting a doll to come to life)turn into a precursor to more uneasy feelings?

2. Does heavy narcicism prompt or postpone the uncanny associated with the doppleganger?

3. Is there a more precise correlation between the fear of losing one's eyes and the fear of losing one's penis, or is the fear of losing any important organ automatically associated with castration anxiety?

Jordan Kynes

2. In the article, Freud paraphrases Jentsch saying that the uncanny is awakened by the "uncertainty whether an object is alive or not, and when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one." This seems to be one of the major focuses of our class (what is human and what is technolgy's role in the human world). If we are such scientifically oriented intelligent creatures, why do we have these fears? They seem silly.

3. Why does everything Freud analyzes get summed up by castration anxiety?

Ashley Gillett

2)Does Freud's interpretation of Jentsch assert that the act of an epileptic seizure is just as much a product of the uncanny as the uncertainty of the distinction between human and inhuman things?

3)How does the idea of a "Double" continue to function as an insurance against the destruction of the ego while simultaneously representing the identification one associates with mirrors/shadows?

eric

1)How does something that was familiar become uncanny
and frightening?
2)How does the fear of losing or damaging one's eyes
correspond to castration anxiety?
3)If a fear blindness goes along with the fear of
castration, does that mean that women fear blindness
more or less than men?

Sheenah Dunbar

Videodrome Questions:

1. Is the director trying to compare the magnitude of television in seeing the world with the television and its effect on how we see the world today?

2. What is the significance of implanting the video directly through stomach? Is it to mimmick a VCR or a rebirth?

3. Why does the director allude to several religious connotations such as "the Video Word of God" or "New Flesh"?

Marcelo BarahonaVideodrome Questions:

1. What was the significance of teh tape having to be actually insterted into his chest for him to view it?
2. Why did the tape seem alive and looked as if it was breathing as it got closer to being inserted into his chest?
3. What do you think the new flesh meant? Was this refering to technology?

Jen Rahimitabar

--I did not quite understand what was going on with the gun in his hand and why it was so connected to his hand, was he supposed to be some kind of super hero or something?

--The idea of watching something that causes such dramatic psychological effects is quite a reach, but I was wondering what findings were discovered in any studies on the effects of intense or very graphic material on adults and children. And any findings on rather or not the TV has an ability to control thinking or influence people after viewing?

Trey L.

1. Max is disgusted and turned on at the same time when Nicki burns herself. Is this act of hers a reflection of how he feels about videodrome?
2. The tape begins to look more and more like flesh. Is this because videodrome is becoming more and more real to Max? Even more than the tape becoming human, Max starts turning into a machine (the wires running through his hands). Is there some kind of a reversal going on?
3. Nikki Brand brands herself with a cigarette. Max O'blivion has no idea what is going on around him. Are these uses of developing a charcter clever? Or is there a cheezy comic-book villian similarity?
4. When max is told that videodrome has philosophy he becomes obsessed with it. Is this because he wants to know what kind of philosophy is behind S&M? Does he feel stupid for not being able to see something? Or is it just very compelling?

--
SADOW,ZAC

2)The hallucinations are sometimes real, what's the deal?

3)How is killing himself make him better able to fight videodrome?

Ed Geller

1. what is Barry Convex?
2. Max Renn, it seems, has to commit suicide to gain access to the new flesh. Is this a comment on mental illness in the Catch-22-ish sense, that our ascension to a new level of conciousness will require a loss of the reality we know? That is, though our ascension is somehow guaranteed, we, as we know it, will only play a cursory role in it?
3. Videodrome was transmitted to Brian O'Blivion, minister of the cathode ray mission. Is the viewer supposed to suggest a complicity between Convex and O'Blivion through the distribution of television to all peoples? How can television be both a benign in the way that O'blivions daughter espouses? (O'Blivion, or course, has already become the new flesh in my opinion, and Convex looked like he was on his way)

Geoff

1. Videodrome starts with a wakeup call (which has appeared in other movies like Mothman, Vanilla Sky, etc.). What is the character supposed to be waking up to? Because it sure doesn't seem like reality.

2. This is the third film that we have seen with either sadistic or masachistic occurences and characters. What are the directors trying to say about these characters? Why do they wish to be out of control, ie. Nicki, Debbie Harry's character?

3. What is the new flesh?

"There is nothing real outside our perception of reality."
~Ashley Gillett

1) What was David Cronenberg smoking?

2) What is the significance of the gun becomming a part of Max's body? Was it simply that he became the violence?

3) Is the "new flesh" the tumor in his brain that is controlling him and causing hallucinations?

4) Why did the TV shoot Max? Wasn't that tape part of Videodrome?

-John Cassaras

!. WHat is the significance of portraying the television as an all-too real
medium of destruction and mayhem?

@. What is Cronenberg trying to say about the effects of repeated viewing of
"taboo" material on the psyche of the observer?

#. What is the significance of the use of the term of New Flesh to describe
the uprising against the malevolent television signals?

?1.) Was the "new flesh" really a resistance opposed to Videodrome's domination? The ending seemed to suggest that Max was ending his life to join Nicki in the "television" world. Isn't that what Videodrome was doing in the first place, using the television to act out real world terror?

2.) Maybe this is completely off, but since Max's station enjoyed exploiting sex and violence, is it fair to suggest that the "wound" on Max's chest, that was used when he commited acts of violence, looked strangely vaginal?

3.) The movie seemed to be about the combination between reality and television. Max defends his station as an outlet for peoples rage and frustration, but does it seem that Cronenberg doesn't believe in that fine line? Is it fair to say that the sunglasses and television symbolism reinforce this idea?

- Stephen Shuck

What was a hallucination and what was real? I didnt understand when the movie fliped into some weird Sci Fi mode or was he just going crazy.

What was his final transformation? Why did the movie end without anytype of resoulution? Whats the meaning?

What is this movie trying to say about the TV soiety of today? Is it trying to say that we are easly controlled by whats on TV. That we percieve everything on TV as real?

Edwin

I have an appointment that will be impossible to reschedule that I had forgotten about. It is not my week!

1. What happened to Debbie Harry's character? Did she actually die?
2. What do you think about the message of the cathode ray mission? Is television really what acculturates us?
3. What's the significance of all the, for lack of a better word, squishy stuff? Is this just blatant sexual imagery, or does Cronenburg actually believe that future technology will be really organic?

--Sarah Byrd

1) When James Woods' character enters the hallucination analysis, is it clear when the hallucination ends? Is it clear when the hallucination begins, or whether it ever stops?

2) Is the use of video tapes as causes of hallucinations, living objects, and objects of physchological programming suggestive of the multiple uses and side effects of all media?

3) Is the subject matter of their station's programming (violence, pornography) a foreshadowing of the Videodrome show, or an effect of it?
Eric Lachs

2. Why did Max's hand transform when he was shooting people? Does it have a connection with the television remote?

3. Does this film say that television is evil? Who is the New Flesh? Are they people who have overcome television/technology?

-Sara Duff

2) Why was the eyeglass salesmen toward the end of the film Jamaican? That
struck me as extremely odd. What is the significance of this? It happens at
a very tense moment, James Woods is in "the lion's den" trying to stop
Videodrome.

3) I understand that the film is most likely a complete hallucination from
James Woods' character Max, but why did the final man he assassinate burst into
strangeness? It was totally cool and disgusting, but why? What does it mean
Cronenberg???

Josh Stephenson
ENG4133

Long Live The New Flesh

2. I think this movie really questions how you define reality. Everyone thinks O'blivion is alive and well, when actually he exists only on videotape. Cronenberg seems to be suggesting that videotapes are something of their own entity, pulsating memories, if you will. Are videotapes to be considered living extensions of the human body? Kind of like how the telephone book talked about how man is constantly trying to achieve God-like qualities through artificial tools.

3. What is the the woman supposed to represent? (the girl who equates sex to violence and cuts herself)

Matt

Discussion Questions for Videodrome

1) This movie seemed to predict the reality tv craze. It's goal was probably to prevent further development of this genre. Why do you think it failed, or was reality tv inevitable (based on human psychology) and it was just a matter of time until the technology became more prolific?

2)Do you buy Max's excuse, its better on TV than on the streets, why or why not?

3) Leave it to a young guy to ask this question: Was there any significance that the whole in Max's stomach was vertically oriented (like a vagina) versus the horizontal slot one would expect for video tapes.

bonus) In Max's living room, was that a poster of hitler... in a nazi, gymnast leotard ?!?!?

~Mike Fogel

1. How do Nicki and Dorothy compare?

2. Even though Max is fighting videodrome he still seems to be programmed, so to speak. What is the "new flesh" and how is that different?

3. When did videodrome start affecting Max? It seemed to start after he first saw it, but then again he was part of the plan for over 2 years.

--Sondra M. Smiley

1. Was the entire film just a delusion of the main character?

2. What was the message of the film through the use of violent imagery?

3. What was the symbol of using the stomach VCR?

M Sarrow

Videodrome
1)Did Videodrome make Max more open to sadomasichicm?

2)Was Videodrome a peart of Dr. O'Blivion's Cathode
Ray Mission? What did the cathode rays have to do with
it?

3)At the end of the movie, Max bled as the tv did. Had
they become connected in some way?

Sheenah Dunbar

Schreber Questions:

1. On p77 he says, "From the human point of view, which on the whole still dominated me at that time, it was in consequence very natural for me to see my real enemy on only in Professor Flechsig or his soul and to regard as my natural ally God's omnipotence, which I imagine only Professor Flechsig endangered; I therefore thought I had to support it by all possible means, even to the point of self-sacrifice." Schreber sees himself as the Redeemer, but who is he trying to save? God?

2. On p64 Schreber recalls hearing "a recurrent crackling noise" which he labled as "interferences." This is a stretch, but does this have any relation to the crackling that Watson heard when listening to the noise on the telephone? They are both types of "interference." (p259)

3. What part does the sun play in Schreber's illness/recovery?


Siegert Questions:

1. Does Siegert see the telephone as something that turns the emotional into something mechanical?

2. Even though there is physical stimuli associated with a phone call isn't there still something personal and "touching" about a handwritten letter?

3. What is it about writing that encompasses the soul and why can't it be found in the telephone?


Kittler Questions:

1. Why do God and Flechsig find it easier to understand corpses rather than the living?

2. On p294, is Kittler saying that while Schreber was living that his book was seen a good substitute for dissection in place of his body?

3. Does Kittler believe Schreber's words should be taken as truth?


--Sondra M. Smiley

SIEGERT

1. The text says, "Women were married either to their machines or to a man"
What is the purpose of nullifying contracts upon marriage of phone operators?

2. What was the effect of the transference of the study of "nature of
speech" from a philosophical standpoint to that of a purely scientific exploration?

3. How does AT & T's slogan, "reach out and touch someone" correlate with
the use of the phone as a vocalized sexual medium?

KITTLER

1. Could someone please explain what the hell soul murder is supposed to
mean?

2. Freud asserts that the Schreber case is "the object of the analysis is
not actually a person, but rather a book produced by that person". What does
that say about the nature of schizophrenic behavior in relationship to reality?

3. What could someone having endopsychic awareness of brain function
translate into in a practical literal sense?

Ryan Wilson

g hughes

Kittler
1. Do you think that Kittler would agree that Schreber's writings are really all his thoughts or were somewhat skewed by the writing and editing process? Do you think the same things would have been said if he told his story instead of wrote it?
2. Do you think that by publishing the memoirs it is in a sense killing Schreber and using his body for a dissection or is it a way of healing him?
3. Do you think it was a single action that triggered Schreber's mental state or a culmination of events?

Jennifer Rahimitabar

--
SADOW,ZACHARY FORD

--
SADOW,ZACHARY FORD

A couple of observations: I want to know if anyone else felt that given a more interesting setting ( say a planet long, long ago, and far, far away) Schreber's writing could be turned in to the best epic film trilogy ever made. If no one did have this thought I call dibs on it, so that I can make the millions of dollars it would generate. [And if someone takes my idea, I swear to the posterior realms I will track you down! ] To make a serious discussion question out of it: Does anyone see any similarities between the dire circumstances facing god that Schreber's explains in section II, compared with some brilliant and popular films and novels (ex. Illyad and the Odessy, the bible, Matrix, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and a particularly close similarity with Dogma)?

Doesn't Schreber's accounts, and certainly his eloquence, make you feel that he really is not as insane as your average "insane" person, or maybe even he is not as insane as we want to think he is?

Did you also find a lot of similarity between the original halucinations and 'crazy' theories proposed by Schreber and just about every religion? Elaborate explaination of the stars, god, supernatural phenomena, redeemers, etc. Further is there any similarity between religion and epic films and novels? Fundamental human beliefs and desires, how or why do these desires exist?

~Mike Fogel

--
SADOW,ZACHARY FORD

Schreber reading
1)How does Schreber explain knowing that God is purely
nerves and therefore "rays" which were used to create
the universe?
2)Where did Schreber come up with his idea of soul
murder and why does he feel its targeted at his
family?
3)Schreber says that Flechsig's soul refered to him as
"the seer of spirits" or "the greatest seer of spirits
of all centuries" and then he goes on to say that he
is the only case like this ever. How does he come to
the conclusion that he has God's omnipotence?

Schreber:
1) Freud seemed to fixate on Schreber's ideas about emasculation and (homo)sexuality far more than Schreber himself does in this passage. Would Freud have done better to simply psychoanalyze himself?

2) Schreber seems very intelligent and well-read; a lot of his ideas appear to stem from a combination of science and mythology. These days, would his problems be chalked up to chemical inbalance, and he be given medication and released into society? Was he a danger to himself and others?

3) What are some similarities between Freud and Schreber?

Relays:
1) Do you think women were really chosen to be telephone operators for purely reasonable reasons (smaller fingers, voices in better range), or do you think sexism had a good bit to do with it?

2) How often do you save letters? IMs? Record phone conversations? Do you ever wish you saved more of any of these?

3) There seems to be a Western notion that technology robs us of our individuality and/or our souls... would you agree or disagree with this notion?

Kittler:
1) Does Freud clear any doubts as to the condition of his sanity by doubting it himself?

--Lauren Vogelbaum

josh stephenson ENG4133

1) Were the motorcycles in Scorpio Rising representing something grander
than mere vehicles? There was a good bit at the beginning dedicated to the
construction or at least repair/cleaning of a motorcycle. And also, the ending of
the film drew from footage of a motorcycle race.

2) What was the significance of Scorpio Rising's homoeroticism? What does
it tell us about the film's overall presentation and message?

3) Why did Lynch end Blue Velvet with so much fakeness? It was one cliche
after another for the climax and ending. The film was a focused narrative in a
specific direction, until the end when everything turns into a total
mainstream cop-out.

1. Is Scorpio Rising attempting to suggest that Jesus and the 12 Apostles were somewhat gay? Is this a reference to Freud and the "Redeemer" complex?

2.Towards the end of Blue Velvet, why is the "man in the yellow suit" just standing there as if comatose? He's not dead, but he's not coherent either. He appeared to have been injured, but other than getting lobotomized, I can't figure out what could have happened to him to leave him in such an odd state.

3. What is the significance of the red flowers/white picket fence/blue sky shown in bothe the beginning and end of the film?

[email protected]????

What is going on with the homoerotic theme in Scorpio Rising?
Is it some sort of commentary on the homoerotic nature of male comradery, esp. in hyper-masculine activities like motorcycling?

In Blue Velvet, is it to be assumed that at one point both dorothy and Don were involved in the drug ring?

What is Dennis Hopper inhaling? It has to be something more mind-altering than nitris.

What is with the effeminate drug-dealer and his fag hags? He was frightening.

Sarah Byrd

What was the meaning of the bugs on the ground at the beginning of the movie?

And, what actually happend to the father?

The feeling at the beginning of the film provided a false sense of happiness, the kind of false happiness of the fifties comes into mind, but then Lynch disrupts the happiness for the duration of the film and then at the end things seem to go back to the happy days, so it makes me wonder what their lives were like after the film ended. Did they all live happily ever after?

Thanks,
Trey L.

scorpio rising:
1. is anger this person's real name?
2. why does anger make a point of never having dialogue in his films?

scorpio rising (#3) and blue velvet(#1) :
Has Lynch taken a cue from Anger in his selection of soundtrack?

2. Does Dennis Hopper's character represent libido, or does he need to get hopped up to get there? (is he ever not hopped up?)
3. What character represents superego? And if it is one of the detectives, what does their complicit involvement in criminal or libidinal activities entail?

g hughes

1. what happened with the yellow man and don? What were they up to
before ending up as jeffrey found them?

2. what's ben's story?

3. what happened to dorothy prior to showing up at jeffrey's naked?

--Robbie

Scorpio Rising:

1. What do Jesus, Hitler, and gay bikers have to do with each other?

2. What was with the mustard?

3. Is Anger trying to show us that sexuality cannot be bound or represented by symbols or clothing?


Blue Velvet:

1. Why is Frank obsessed with blue velvet?

2. There is a point in the movie where Frank says to Jeffrey "You're just like me." How so? Is it because he gave into Dorothy and hit her? Are they similar in any other ways?

3. Why is S&M a recurrent theme in these two movies and our text?

--Sondra M. Smiley

1) It seems like David Lynch must specifically direct all of his actors to be kinda stiff. What effect does this have on his dramatic scenes? Why would he want to create this kind of effect?

2) Are there any connections between Scorpio Rising and Blue Velvet (beside them both using old lounge pop songs)?

3) How is music used to create tone in these two films?

--Lauren Vogelbaum

What was the meaning of the guy in the begining of blue velvet that got hurt watering his lawn? It didnt seem to play any role in unraveling the plot of this really weird movie.

What period was this movie suppose to be in. 60's 70's 80's ? I dont even think the director knows that one

In the scorpion movie, what is the tie in with jesus, bikers, and homosexuality?

Does Lynch frequently use the 50’s style music theme in most of his films?

Who composed the soundtrack?

How old was Lynch when he made the first film from the screening?

-Gerald Bialka

1) What was the significance of the Father going to the hospital, and those bugs they showed afterwards?

2) What was the plastic thing that Dennis Hopper kept sniffing?

3) Was any part of the movie a dream? It seemed to me that some was fantasy, especially the ending, and they kept playing Roy Orbison - "In Dreams."

See you in class,
John Cassaras

1. The bikers in the film are portrayed to be acting in a homoerotic nature. Are they flirting with some of their inner desires, or are they just friends messing around and having a good time?
2. What is the correlation between bikers and nazis? Are young men looking to conform? Or is there just a similarity in the outfits?
3. Is James Dean seen as a role model or an object of sexual desire for those in the film?

SADOW,ZAC

Additional Question on Scorpio Rising:

1.) Was the director trying to create a link between the masochist sexual images and Nazism?
--
Stephen Shuck

1. In Scorpio Rising, what was the point of crossing up gay bikers with Jesus and Nazism?

2. In Blue Velvet, was the dialogue supposed to be campy?

3. In Blue Velvet, what was the point of Denis Hopper dressing up and what did he ultimately want, drugs or money or or the singer?

M Sarrow

SADOW,ZAC

2. It is clear that Dorothy, in some sense, enjoys Frank's torture and rape. If we think in psychoanalytical terms, does this correspond to Frank's kidnapping of her husband and son? Does the violent relationship with Frank parallel a relationship she may have had with her father, which then carries over into her relationship with her husband?

3. What does the ending suggest about humanity in general?

--
BERMAN,JOSHUA RICHARD

2) Is the blue velvet supposed to represent anything?

3) What exactly, psychologically, is wrong with Frank?

Ed Geller

2. During the film there were quick cuts where frames were inserted for fractions of a second. These could not always be made out. What were they of, and how did they influence the narrative and visual structure of the film?

3. There were subtle and not-so-subtle references to death throughout the film (such as the newspaper clipping in one shot and the noose hanging from the ceiling in another). These created a very different mood than the soundtrack. How did these influence the viewing of the rest of the film?

Blue Velvet:
1. Laura Dern and Isabella Rosselinni's characters appeared to be almost exact opposites. Was Kyle MacLachlan's attraction to both of them a representation of the duality of man (a hint of schizophrenia)?

2. A friend told me that David Lynch originally wanted Dennis Hopper's character to be taking hits of helium instead of oxygen. How much more distrubing would that have made this film?

3. The soundtrack was obviously very important to this film. With the exception of Angelo Badalamentti's score, why did the director choose to use songs from a different era? (In addition, it seems like all the cars in the film were from that 50s-ish era also)

-Sara Duff

2)In Blue Velvet, what was the significance of blue
velvet?

3)Why was Frank always breathing in the oxygen mask?
He seemed to get more violent after doing so.

-Shennah

1. What is Anger trying to say by contrasting the bikers with Jesus and his disciples?

2. In Blue Velvet, why was Frank dressed like the other guy (the well dressed one) at the end?

3. Is there a happy medium between the masachistic/violent relationship and the cheesy "I love you" "I love you too" one?

~A Gillett

2)Is the content of Scorpio Rising (Motorcycles, leather, hairy chests) indicative of homosexuality or biker life, or both?

3)Is there a connection between the missing father and the father who had a stroke?

Eric Lachs

Questions on Freud on Schreber:

1) When did transvestism and transexuality become recognized as such in Western/European culture? After Freud, obviously, but does anyone know when and why and how?

2) What's with the whole "phantasy" thing? Is this an archaic spelling, or it is one of Freud's terms?

3) May I please kick Freud in the shins?

--Lauren Vogelbaum

1)How did stress cause Schreber to believe that he was
becoming a woman?

2)How did becoming a woman have anything to do with
being the Redeemer?

3)How did Freud connect Schreber's father to God and
his brother to Flechsig and how did this manifest
itself into a feminine sexual fantasy?

--Sheenah

1. On pages 136-37Freud mentions the role of homosexuality with regards to paranoia. Is he trying to say that people who suffer from paranoia have homosexual tendencies because they are narcissistic? If so, why then do they feel persecuted by the object of their affection?

2. Does Freud think there is a logical explanation for every aspect of mental disease?

3. I don't understand what is meant by "upper" and "lower" God. What does that mean exactly?

--Sondra

Dr. Weber states that "as time went on, the paranoiac clinical picture [of Schreber] that we have before us today developed more and more clearly from the initial acute psychosis." Freud later states that "in his [Dr. Weber's] case astonishment is not the birth of comprehension."

1. By the former statement it is clear that Weber is working from a clinical picture; what picture is it?
2. Though Weber is astonished by the case, he is clearly working from a rubric. And in light of these facts, isn't Freud's statement presumptuous?

3. Schreber's illness is dissected so that Freud can show how it was "derived from the most general and comprehensible of human impulses." In light of modern psychopharmaceutical advances and how schizophrenia and other psychoses-inducing mental illnesses can be treated successfully, how can psychodynamic theories hold water? (said conflicts between id and superego can be "ignored;" freud himself was very unsuccessful with manic-depressives, who can be treated on the most part by lithium.)

g hughes

How does Frued differentiaite between paranoia and schizophrenia or delusion's of grandeur. They all seem to have very overlapping symptoms.

It seems unusual for a patient with a psychosis, like Schreber, to write his own case history. While I know that Schreber's take on his illness was taken with a grain of salt, I wonder how often a patient's perspective is considered when it comes to psychosis.

Frued seems to emphasize Schreber's fixation with being a woman over his obsession with speaking to God. Why is this?

Sarah Byrd

1. Did Schreber ever completely recover, and what was his mental state for the rest of his life after he overcame the "nervous disorder.?"

2. According to Freud, is everything related to sexuality and the relationship with one's parents?

3. What is the link between homosexuality and paranoia? I didn't understand that part.

4. The un-published parts of Schreber's book: were they ever published? Could you find them now?

???

1. Schreber's delusion has the unique quality of involving both God and himself in a relationship of extraordinary distance and closeness at once. For instance, he communicates with God daily but God does not personally understand men who are alive, only those who are dead or dreaming. This seems to imply something about Schreber's own distinction between his reality (conscious thoughts) and his delusion (uncoscious drives). The parallel of reality/awake and delusion/dream appears in many movies that we are analyzing, namely The Matrix and Mulholland Drive.

2. In Freud's anaylsis of Schreber's illness, he attributes the formation of the delusional system with the unconsious repression of his (unconscious) homosexual attachment to his doctor. Is it possible that the connection was more of a power relation than a sexual instinct? An intellectual being forced to submit to a "quack"? This may not exclude Freud's analysis, but the power relation could be thought of as a male/female relationship, a relationship upset by the (metaphor) idea of homosexuality.

3. Schreber, despite being entrenched in his own delusional system,
has the prescence of mind to distinguish between the spirit of his former doctor and the person in reality. Does he draw this disctinction in regards to himself? It seems like he attempts to justify his system of beliefs rather than explain it away.

--
BERMAN,JOSHUA RICHARD

2)Is Freud saying that homosexuality is a disorder caused by fixation or
repression?

3)What role might Schreber's mother play in his disorder?

Ed Geller

Questions on Feardotcom

1) If the dead girl (I forgot her name) just wanted
revenge on the doctor, why was she killing anyone who
saw the website?
2)Was there a point the director was trying for in
completely copying The Ring? (ex. rescuing the body
from the water, time she was tortured before dying
equals time it takes for the person to die, etc)
3)Was the director aware of how awful every single
part of this movie was while he was making it? The
whole thing was painful to watch and just funny at times.

Sheenah

1. Why did the little girl "play at a steel mill" if she was a hemophiliac?
What could that possibly lend to her character?

2. What is the meaning of the little girls attachment to the ball?

3. Are the people hallucinating about their worst fears, or actually
experiencing them (i.e. the guy in his car)?

Ryan Wilson

1. Why was the woman who worked at the Department of Health allowed to tag along with a cop and view all the state's evidence?

2. Why didn't anybody turn on the lights when doing their investigations? Did they like the dark?

3. If the cop/detective called his partner for back up, why didn't he want the feds to help and how did the partner get there first?

M Sarrow

1)As a filmmaker, what is the purpose of following a narrative structure if you are not willing to allow the audience to infer anything about the upcoming events?

2)The others that died after seeing the website apparently died from their greatest fears. Was Mike's greatest fear being shot? If so, why is he a police officer? Why did the Turnbull character have a car if he was so deathly afraid of being in a car accident? Anyone?

3)If the little girl that we see was the first victim of the torture, why doesnt she just haunt "The Doctor" instead of the innocent witnesses to the website?

Eric

1. What is this movie trying to say about new media and the people who use it?

2. Was the computer specialist afraid of bugs or were they just the "bugs" in the computer?

3. How old was the girl when she was killed? Why do we see her as a little girl?

--Sondra M. Smiley

1) Why the HELL did Stephen Dorff's character Mike call his partner Styles
(the incomparable Jeffery Combs) for back up when he discovered the location of
The Doctor? He said that "there's no time" to call the Feds, however, he
could have gotten more than one cop for backup.

2) Why was Styles so put out by Mike finally "cracking" the case. They are
about to finally catch a serial killer and Styles just wants to play cards.
What the hell was that? Was he in on it with The Doc or something?

3) Lastly, how did the woman manage to plant the address of her killer
inside her stomach before dying? The Doc had her tied up and tortured. How did
she know his address and how did she write it down for someone in the future to
know where he is? It is such BS.
Josh Stephenson ENG4133

1. is the white ball an intermediary through which guilt is translated into fear?
2. is the shot right before natasha mcE's boss' death a cheap inter-textual reference to 8 1/2? (similar anxiety possibly...)
3. the two phone calls to natasha McE at her apartment: are we supposed to infer a connection?

g hughes

1. What did the white ball that the young girl played with symbolize? Why did it whither when touched by others?

2. Why did Jeannine kill all those who went to the site?

3. Why did Jeannine appear in her young and innocent form (the young girl) before she killed people?

-Sara Duff

1. What was the significance of all the events that took place within elevators? Why did they occur there?

2. Why did the filmmakers decide to make the computer "bug" a roach?

3. How did the girl's spirit infiltrate the computer system?

Ashley gillett

I'm glad the screening list gets better after this.

What is going on with the foreign accents? The main character is French and there are other European accents throughout the film. What is the significance of this?

The texture of the fil seemed different to me, but I canot pinpoint it. It has a grainy, old look, when I know it is not an old movie. Can you explain?

What exactly does the viewing of the website purportedly do to the brain? I wasn't able to surmise.

-Sarah Byrd

1) Unless I dozed off at some point during the movie and missed something, none of the phone calls made in the movie succeed in connecting. Does this have any significance?

2) Feardotcom uses the same premises that The Ring does to try to scare the audience (that creepy little girls are scary, that misbehaving technology is scary, that hallucinations are scary), but in my opinion, Feardotcom failed to be frightening where The Ring succeeded. Do you agree or disagree, and why? What about Feardotcom was/wasn't scary?

3) Feardotcom and The Ring both play on the irrational anxiety that frightening images might be able to physically injure viewers (as do many other horror stories). Why is this a frightening concept?

--Lauren Vogelbaum

1.) If the little girl was Alistair's first victim, why was she killing all these people while he was running the site?

2.) Unlike "The Mothman Prophecies," in which the camera was always zooming in (sometimes with extreme close-up) on its characters, "Fear dot com" seemed to always show the characters walking away from the camera, usually ending the shot with them at a distance. Was there a purpose to this visual effect?

3.) As far as I can remember, there was no mention of what city these events were taking place in. That same effect was used in "Seven," and coincidently, it was raining in nearly every scene of that film. Is there a correlation here?

- Stephen Shuck

Honestly I couldn't figure out, did "The Doctor" have anything to do with the creation of feardotcom.com, and if he created it, why did he die from viewing the site he created?

Keeping in mind that this film is so similar to "The Ring," what qualities exactly is it that make this film so wretchedly unbearable? (There must be some fine lines that this film crossed, that "The Ring" handled correctly.)

Why did this film have dialog quality somewhere between Saved by the Bell and Miami Vice?

-Mike Fogel

1. Why does Terry access the website after warning detective Reilly against it and then being warned by detective Reilly not to go there?
2. Why is the little girl found in a steel factory that she played in? Why wouldn't she be somewhere logically closer to the doctor?
3. What is the significance of the old woman who points to the water before Terry finds the girl?

--
HELD,STEPHANIE LOUISE

1) How did the girls get stuck in "The Doctor's" hands?

2) Was the website at all connected to "The Doctor"? Or was it the Ghost?

3) If the Ghost was such a nice girl, and a victim, why would she kill innocent people, like the police detective, who was trying to help her? (i know the doctor killed him, but she would have even if he tried and didnt succeed)

see you in class
John Cassaras

1) Where the actually seeing the girl with the ball, or just imagining her?

2) Why would the girl on the website want people to hurt her?

3) What is the little girl's ball representative of?

Eddie Geller

Why is the background, while the male and female protagonist are driving from the coroner to the doctor's apartment, moving in reverse while they are driving forward?

What was the significance of the final phone call in the movie?

Why didnt the doctor suffer as much as the people the girl killed?

Nicholas Van Burren

1. Why were there pictures and video in the doctor's "lab" at the end of the film? Are these supposed to be connected to the feardotcom site or are they there to stand in opposition to it? Does this say anything about the relative immediacy of these media?

2. It seems like there is a heavy theme of voyeurism in this film. It reminds me of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" in that most of the main characters' actions are driven by an extreme perversion/voyeurism. How does this psychoanalytic trope advance the plot of the film or drive the characters?

3. The "informant," much like the character in Mothman Prophecies, offers an obviously eccentric, illogical explanation for the unexplained events in the film. In both films, the "informant" is an author, a supposed expert on the subject, and yet in both films they offer little or no logical explanation. What purpose do they serve? Is this correlation suggesting that "traditional" literature (and thought) can reveal no pertinent information in psycho-logical problems?
--
BERMAN,JOSHUA RICHARD

1. Although Stephen Dorff is great at playing a romantic role, how does "the production of the couple" add to the already trite plot?

2. Is this movie supposed to be a spoof or "mockumentary" version of The Ring?

3. Does a horror movie miss its mark if it moves its audience to vomit rather than scream?
Jamie Lawrence

1.) Why does the woman kill people who get on the site if what she really wants is revenge?
2.) Why did the girl / woman ever try to attack the doctor before killing all those people?
3.) What was the significance of the girl's ball?
- Christopher Glenn

1) Were the characters being punished for succumbing to temptation? How was their desire or ability to indulge become their tragic flaw?

2) Why were the characters' phobias significant to how they died? What does this say about how our mind works to create our own consequences?

3) What is the director's comment on voyeurism? Why could voyeurism be a mechanism through which each character finds their fate?

Dani Berrin

Why are the characters so curious and stupid enough to go to the site?

What is the reason for destroying the computer after visiting the site?

The wife of the man that was killed in his car seemed a little too calm considering the cicumstances. And why would she making a nagging comment about him smoking cigarettes when she is puffing on one herself during the scene?

What was the meaning of that last telephone call?

Who riped off who The Ring or Fear Dot Com.

Do you think the Doctor died or was his energy taken and put into the internet with the girl?

1. Was the website created because the doctor wanted people to watch his tortures and killings or was it created to kill people?

2. Who were the people watching his tortures if they died 2 days later and were driven insane for those 2 days?

3. Why was the woman shown as a little girl?

Jennifer Rahimitabar

Questions on Ronell:

1) Why does Ronell choose to write all the quotations in the strange font? Is it meant to look like sound waves?

2) Does Alexander Graham Bell think of the telephone as a scientific invention or something more, a form of art or even something supernatural? What do you think Watson believes?

3) How does Watson compre the invention of the telephone to the birth of a child and what meaning does this have?

Jennifer Rahimitabar

1. I think the comparison of the fork to the telephone is somewhat silly and overstretched- "The fork's scandalous capacity for unsubstantiality."??? Mabe I'm not psychoanalyzing it enough, but this comparison seems a bit overdone. Could anyone help me see the salient connection here?

2. I don't agree with how Ronell keeps describing (with Watson's notes) the telephone as something alive. It isn't, and I think Ronell goes to far with this. Why does Ronell implicate the telephone to be a living thing?- ex. "the time in which the telephone 'chooses' to speak."??????

3. I don't like the religious reference either. "It is as if Watson had to swallow Bell's invention, recieving it like a mettalic communion." I'm not religious at all, but these references seem to be a bit too overdramatic. "Whatever happened at the First Supper, Watson remembers an embarassment..." Come on already! How come we are given only Watson's explanation of these events?

Matt

1. re: pp 251-271-- Is this reading trying to suggest that schizophrenia is a result of the invention of the telephone?
2. pp366 second column-- Why is it that what can be explained is seen as horrifying (telephone), while what cannot be explained (ESP, mind reading), is not quite as scary?
3. Bell is set up as the receiver, while Watson is the sender (he yells the messages into the phone); if this is so, then why doesn't Watson set the standard for eating utensils upon their "First Supper"?

--
HELD,STEPHANIE LOUISE

1.) Is there a sexual metaphor or symbolism between the mouth (or transmitter) and the receiver on the other end of the line? Other parts of the book mention a dual nature of the mouth, in that it can transmit messages and sexual pleasure. I wonder if there is a sexual correlation between the transmitter and the receiver? (note the "I want you" transmission on page 252)

2.) The book mentions problems with the early telephones, particularly picking out the right message. It goes on to mention that these problems resemble something close to schizophrenia, picking out the right message. Does this suggest that all people are succeptible to schizophrenia if they do in fact pick out the wrong message? Are there multiple messages for everyone, and the only thing that differentiates a sane person from someone with schizophrenia is finding the right message?

3.) Also, if early models of the telephone were problematic and could send out wrong messages, could this be related to the mystery, and sometimes supernatural danger that the phone can represent? (e.g. The Ring) The book mentions that everytime we pick up the phone we expose ourselves to the dangerous unknown, Pandora's Box if you will, so even with technological advances, why does the phone still represent such a threat to humans?

?

Is the author of this book trying to make the reader better understand what its like to be mentaly ill by comparing it to voices heard over a telephone line?

How is the occult linked to telephones?

How did the telephone magnetize Schizoprenia?

--Edwin

1. Is Ronell advocating a non-scientific belief in the occult?

2. What is the point of distorting Watson's quotes, or is it like a vaudevillian magician's act of smoke and mirrors?

3. What is Ronell's thesis and what are her supporting arguments?

- Mike Sarrow -

1) What is the significance of the dinner utensil scene with Bell and
Watson? I am not following their connection to the experiment and task at hand for
Watson and Bell.

2) How did Watson and Bell begin to work together? They seem to be somewhat
of an odd pairing.

3) In the early days of the telephone’s existence, what exactly were the
noises that Mr. Watson would listen to throughout the night? Was it the sounds
of electricity? This is a fascinating part of the text, but I am confused as
to how these sounds were generated in their telephone.

Josh Stephenson -

1. What is Ronell saying about the nature of Watson's admiration for Bell?
(piano, eating)

2. What is the meaning of recurring theme of silence within the telephone
receiver?

3. What was so imposing about the image of a limb "without a human subject"?
--?

Also, Here are my three discussion questions on the reading due by midnight tonight for class tomorrow...
1.) Why does the author choose to use unusual font sizes and layouts in the text? Doesn't this distract from the words themselves?
2.) Is there any hidden or symbolic value to Watson's "listening to noise"?
3.) What does this book imply about the advent of new technologies and its relation to moulting identities?

- Christopher Glenn ENG 4133 (psycho-cinem-analysis)

Firstly, there are a couple of passages I'd like you to unpack if possible:
P.258 (in middle of second paragraph):
"In a sense, like the tabernacles, the phone box is destined to remain empty, making dissemination inevitable"-This one really eludes me, I would love to hear your thoughts!

P. 263 (also in middle of second paragraph): "One day a prominent lawyer tried the instruments with me. When he heard my voice in the telephone making some simple remark he could only answer after a long embarrassed pause..." -Does this embarrassment perhaps spring from the knowledge that one has illimitable freedom and a bit of ananymity in the hyperreal space of the telephone?

p. 364- "The so-called occult is calling"(in the telephone). Can you explain the significance of Ronell repeatedly associating the telephone with the paranormal or supernatural?

Another more general q- Why the focus on the shizophrenic form and style of the telephone book- it must be very purposeful, but it sort of seems arbitrary and an attempt at being postmodern for the sake of weirdness.

That's all. See you tomorrow-
Sarah Byrd

1) Is the text personifing the telephone, saying that it itself is schitzophrenic, or is it saying that the telephone develops schitzophrenia in those who use it?

2) Do you think it's natural for people to personify projects they are working on, or is that level of obsessment with a project a little crazy?

3) Can anyone discern any purpose that all the typographical antics serve in the text? I've read poetry that plays with format to make some sort of point, but I can't figure any reasoning behind it here.

--Lauren Vogelbaum

One page #265, Watson has a fit of frustration and decides to remember his experience with "the spirits" to help further his studies. What was the extent of his experience with these "spirits"?

Aside from the "spirits" discussed in the previous question, in the readings from pages #364-#367, the masses seemed to look at the telephone as some sort of an odity, even to weird for the side show of a circus,this makes this makes the masses seem so nieve, are these reactions accurate? Why were these audiences so skeptical of a new invention? I mean wasn't there other great advances in technology occurring at that time that may have prepared the audience for new ideas or was this invention so far ahead of it's time that they couldn't even concieve the possibility, leaving the masses with only the super natural for the explaination?

Thanks,
Trey L.

1)Is Ronell trying to suggest a homosexual love of Watson for Bell?

2)If the telephone seems to be a medium for schizophrenic voices, what could
be the equivalent cure?

3)Is there any technology that exists today that instills the fear that the
telephone did for people of that era?

Ed Geller

1. I don't understand Ronell's example of the fork in relation to the telephone. How are they related?

2. Why is the hand/mouth relationship "[invading] the boundaries marking the essential relationship of writing to speech..."? Does Ronell not realize that the hand, like the mouth, is mulitfunctional?

3. Why is Ronell focusing on Watson's notes when it is obvious that Watson doesn't understand how things work (eg, the piano)?

How does "the telephone as shredder" apply to today's problems of terrorist "chatter" in electronic communication?

What brought Watson and Bell to create a "telephonic bloodline," talking "through a circuit made up of a dozen persons clasping hands" to try "to make the telephone talk"? There is no way they decided to experiment with this following any kind of purely scientific procedure.

Ronell mentions that the telephone "did not come into being as an effect of some demand or generally articulated desire" but today it is absolutely necessary. So many of today's necessities were invented in the exact same manner. Some people are now calling this the iPod effect; company's making consumers feel like need to purchase something they have survived happily with out forever. Is it possible we genuinely need these things and merely do not know it? For example, the internet did not arise from any "generally articulated desire"

--Mike Fogel

1) Why are parallels drawn between eating utensils and forms of communication?

2) Does Watson intend to assert that electrical disturbances in the telephone circuit are from distant explosions on the sun, or extraterrestrial signals sent intentionally?

3)How does the concept of Mise-en-scene apply to the telephone or its use? (365)

--Sondra M. Smiley

1) were watson’s superstitions and beliefs in ghosts remnants of salem’s past (witches, et cetera)?

2) what makes schizophrenics latch on to some idea like a telephone, especially when it is still in its infancy?

3) when does the phone make the jump from occult to acceptance?

rig a jig, and away we go.

--Robbie.

1. Does Nietzsche surmount science by deposing the "horror" that fuels it? is proclaiming that he is beyond the horror enough for him to be beyond it?
2. What is the difference between being the first philospoher and the last philosopher? is there a difference?
3. what haven't we read about watson's mouth? (his fixation on the dead cat, etc.)

--Geoff

1. Why do Watson and Bell refer to themselves along with the telephone as a family?
2. Why is there excessive personification regarding the telephone?
3. Was there a rivalry between Watson and Bell or did Watson enjoy assisting him?
psycho-cinema analysis
Zac Sadow

Questions for The Mothman Prophecies:

1. What is the phone supposed to represent in this movie? Almost every
significant even in the story takes place over the phone.

2. Does the Mothman cause these events or does he just relay the message?

3. Is the Mothman evil?

Bonus Question: When did making good movies go out of style?

--Eddie Geller

1. Paraphrasing the guy that Richard Gere went to see, "if you sit high enough, you can see farther." So where was the Mothman sitting that he could see the future?

2. Since there was no chemical leak detected and the crazy shotgun guy died of exposure, did the Mothman kill him?

3. Was it the wife's tumor that allowed her to see the Mothman or was she getting a warning of her illness from the Mothman before the crash? And couldn't the Mothman have picked a better time than when she was driving?

--Michael Sarrow

2) What was the symbolism or significance of both the powerlines, and also glass and mirrors? Why were they featured so prominantly but barely acknowledged in the storyline?

3) What was the significance of Gordon asking John when the last time he was happy?

--Mike Fogel

1. What was the purpose of the Mothman contacting these people? Is he trying to help them? Hurt them? Neither?

2. There is a part in the movie where John is standing in front of a mirror and his reflection doesn't match his movement. Why is that?

3. I have a few questions about Mary. The very first scene of the movie shows John on the phone and he's talking to someone about Mary. Was he refering to his wife Mary or another Mary? Why didn't the Mothman try connecting with Mary before the accident like he did with the people of Point Pleasant? Connie didn't seem to have experiences like everyone else in town (only the dream), so when she saw Mary was that a hallucination?

--Sondra M. Smiley

-What is the significance of the wakeup call that Gere's character receives? And Linney's character; "Wka up number 37?" Wake up from what (in a non-literal sense)?

-Who is looking back at the characters from behind the mirror and the tv set?

-Where are you when you are lost?

~Ashley Gillett

1. what meaning does gordon's death hold?
2. how true to fact is the movie?
3. why does the deceased mary decide to contact kline--and if it is the mothman, what are his motives?
4. why is there a medical explanation for mary's illness and not for gordon's?

-g hughes

1.) Films like The Mothman Prophesies (and The Ring) seem to have rather Hitchcockian setups and payoffs, but unlike Hitchcock's movies, the protagonists of these new films are not ordinary everydaymen (e.g. Cary Grant in North by Northwest), but professionals whose jobs require them to be intuitive and ask questions (e.g. reporters, cops, etc). Even Pellington's Arlington Road, which dealt with terrorism, had a protagonist who taught a course on the subject. Why has this change happened?

2.) This film is consistently shot from an angle where the camera seems to be looking direcly at its characters. Even long shots were continually rushed forward to show a close-up of the character. And scene transitions seemed to fade away using a television static-like effect. Was their a reason for these effects? Horror films have always relied on these shots (e.g. The Silence of the Lambs), but why were they so pervasive here?

3.) Was Point Pleasant, VA a ground-zero for these forewarnings of horrific events? It would seem so since Gordon kept hearing the death numbers for natural disasters. But then why did John's wife have a vision outside of Point Pleasant? Why did it effect John two-years later to enter that town?

1. How is the telephone used as a mechanism through which each character confronts his/her fears?

2. What imagery suggests that (Richard Gere) is closely related to the "mothman" and perhaps inhabits the secret to his wife's death? How are certain characters framed as responsible for the mysterious and dangerous happenings around them?

3. How do you explain the vocal projection on the phone represented by the evasive "mothman" if it is indeed not a human voice? How is the phone used as a device for people to communicate with themselves?

--Dani

1. In the beginning of the movie when the wife dies, her death is shown through a phone call (the phone rings, he answers with the questioning 'yes?', then it cuts to the funeral). Why is it that we connect the phone call with death? The audience knows before the funeral what that particular phone call means, why? besides context of course
2. What would change about the film if it were made from a different person's point of view?
3. How does the movie differ from the real story/sightings? Does this "mothman" stay in a specific town for some given time and then leave, or are there sightings of him in different parts of the world simultaneously?
--
HELD,STEPHANIE LOUISE

1) not really the kind of question you're looking for, more like a call
for confirmation: i thought, in the scene right after richard gere finds
out his voice left a message about the chemical plant (when he was back
in the hotel), that his reflection in the mirror that was hanging on the
door wasn't doing what he was doing. i was wondering if that really
happened or if i'm an idiot.

2) what's going on when people do things they didn't really do (e.g.,
the guy calling richard gere on the phone so that he could talk to the
mothman)? parallel universes intersecting?

3) what if richard gere had picked up the phone when his wife called at
noon?

Roberto

1. Was the thing Richard Gere's wife saw the same entity that spoke with him on the phone later? My interpretation is that the actual "Mothman" (the person both Will Patton and Richard Gere spoke to individually) was something separate from the tall dark shapes that people sighted.

2. What did the chemical plant have to do with the final disaster on the bridge? Or was it a clue for Richard Gere to realize the situation once on the bridge?

3. Why was Richard Gere so hell bent on driving all the time? Was it something to due with working out his wife's accident? For instance, toward the end Laura Linney told him that she had booked him a flight back, however he drove there. He also drove to Chicago once or twice.
josh stephenson ENG4133

--

1)What was the connection between Mary's mothman sighting and those in West Virginia? Why is it exclusive to one town except in her circumstance?

2)What is it that motivates John to constantly try to stop the disasters he is made aware of, despite the forewarning of inevitability from the author?

3)Why does Gordon die? What is the explanation of John's reception of a phone call post-mortem?

Eric

Was the Mothman possibly a personal demon or symbolizing anything on a personal level?

For certain disaters it seemed as if the mothman was giving a warning, but at the beginning the mothman was the one that cause the disater car wreck, why?

It said this was based on a true story, are there many occurences of this sort of thing, or are there any other "phrophecy" super natural beings that have communicated or predicted things?

--Trey

What does it exactly mean when a movie is based on true events?

Do you think the moth man is pure evil or is he part good? He does seem to try to warn people of inpending doom.

What is the mythology of the mothman? who much of the movie is true?

--Edwin

A. What exactly occurred in "real life"? The movie can't be verbatim concerning the events it was based on.
B. What exactly was "Mothman"
C.Did "Mothman" heve malicious intent?
See you tomorrow,
--Sarah Byrd

1) What exactly causes telephone/radio/television static? (I know this isn't a really deep philosophical question, but I don't know the full technical explaination and I'm curious).

2) I know there isn't that much concrete knowledge about how the brain works, but are there any relatively solid theories about what causes people to hear voices or have hallucinations? Could such phenomena be considered brain static?

3) Has anyone else played the Silent Hill series? I ask because there's some really striking similarities between it and The Mothman Prophesies -- I wonder whether

one borrowed from the other, or if they're both based on the same/similar folklore, or if they both coincidentally drew from the similar concepts of scary.

--Lauren

1.In order to be "based on a true story," how many accounts need to have documented truth and how much can be fabricated?

2. What about the "good Christian townsman" makes him more susceptible to seeing Ingrid Cole and receiving premonitions about the mothman's wrath?

3. Was there a positive result from Richard avoiding the predicted phone call, following the professor's advice?

--Jamie Lawrence

1. I guess the telephone in this movie is like the the "megaphone from beyond" referred to in the telephone book. I kept thinking of the noise you hear when you try to go online via dial-up- that odd cycle of electric noise you hear as your modem attempts to connect. Richard Gere encounter this at many points throughout the movie. How come it is never from his cell phone? How come cell phones are never used as the "megaphone"? Why is it always a landline?

2. Is this movie based on real events?

3. One of the main themes of the movie is that things appear different and strange because we can't see them from the proper vantage point. If we could, everything would make sense. Is death the only vantage point?
--Catpektacular

1. What does the Mothman represent and what is his connection to the corporeal world which the protagonist inhabits?
2. How does the telephone function as a means of communication between the real and the sipritual worlds?
3. Does this movie reflect a view of determinance or free will? Were the events coincidental or determined?

--
--BERMAN,JOSHUA RICHARD

Discussion Questions for the The Ring:

1) Is Samara human, machine, or demon? Is she a metaphor for some part of modern society? SAMARA / ORIGINS

2) Why does machinery become so frightening when we can't turn it off? What other horror media (movies, books, whatever) have used disobediant machines to inspire fear? TECHNOLOGY

3) Why could the little boy sense so much more of the paranormal than the other characters? CHILDREN

and a bonus problem: I kinda think that the movie is a metaphor for how people are scared of technology and try to control it, but ultimately fail because, once created, technology takes on a life of its own. It's sort of a modern Frankenstein story. Does that make sense?

--Lauren Vogelbaum

1. Why does Rachel watch the movie after she heard about the fatal myth behind it? PROHIBITION

What unconscious desire drives humans' innate curiosity, even when threatened with

death? Along the same thought process, what is about conundrums that we find so

unsettling? Why can't we accept that riddles don't have concise answers?

2. Explain the significance of a "mother's role" in the film. What common traits do all

the mothers in the film share, and how does that affect the plot line? MOTHER

3. Throughout the film, technology (the phone, the tape, the television, the electricity)

is juxtaposed to elements of nature (human life, horses, trees, natural light, water).

Explain how the combinations of these elements blend together to create the

horrifying tone of the film. TECHNOLOGY

--Jamie Lawrence

1. Throughout the film, the Director chooses to highlight and lowlight the screen in various shades of green, to distort the perspective of the lense. What is the significance of the color and how is it used to enhance narrative coding in telling the story of the film? COLOR

2. How is the juxtaposition of the mother/son relationship and father/daughter relationship significant in the film? Why are these two relationships the subject of psychoanalytical scrutiny throughout the narrative? MOTHER / FATHER / CHILDREN

3. Why are children who are marginalized as sweet, innocent, and pure posed as myterious, strange creatures (quite often used to frighten) in the film? How does the role-reversal of parent-taunting-child used to reveal weaknesses in adults? CHILDREN

--Dani Berrini

--Questions regarding The Ring

1.) Why do films and television regarding the supernatural many times show children as being able to see/hear/communicate with the otherworldly as opposed to adults. CHILDREN In addition to The Ring, films such as The Sixth Sense, Stir of Echoes, and television shows like Quantum Leap have used this approach. It also continues thematically with other films like ET: The Extraterrestrial and stories like Peter Pan. Why is this?

2.) The continuity of this film is enough to make my head spin, so I'll try not to nitpick, but it seemed that Samara was still able to use the tape to kill others (e.g. Katie) while her body was still trapped within the well. So why did freeing her make anything worse? Did it hasten the death of Noah? Was she now (living) dead? It seems like a distinction between the dead (when she was trapped) and now the living (being free). It's rather cynical. ENDING

3.) It seems that even horror films that attempt to be different, such as this one, still get caught in generic cliches. One in particular occurs early, when Katie sort of admits to her friend that she slept with her boyfriend. This continues the overused theme of slasher movies: to be impure means death. Katie loses her virtue, loses her life. Why is this cliche so time honored in horror films? Is their a psycho-analytical theory to explain this?GENRE

--Stephen Shuck

Questions about the Ring,
1.) Why do the colors in the film seem faded and not crisp? COLOR
2.) Why does it never explain how the fly and girl come out of the television? FLY
3.) Why was the motel abandoned at the end of the movie?
--W. Connor Castelli

1. In the well, does Rachel actually witness Samara's decay? And if so, is it proof that Samara isn't wholly human?

2. Is Samara's intentional evil-doing (evil being a uniquely human quality) proof that she is at least part human? And if so, is the tape and the rest of her legacy only a reflection through which mankind is made subconciously aware of its internal rotting in the modern technological world? And is this, perhaps, what leads to their inexplicable death? SAMARA / ORIGINS

3. Is the symbol of the ring used in order to express the idea that man or woman kind cannot reinvent themselves in a "trancendent" manner? i.e. That the "evolution" of an inherently pastoral human society into a technological world is an impossibility?

--Geoff Hughes

1. Why does she leave the tape out for her son to pick up and watch? MOTHER

2. Couldn't there have been a less evil way to share the tape, rather than leaving it a video store for an unknowing, innocent person find it? She knows the secret to the tape, shouldn't she try to pass it on in a way that lets the next person know how to not get killed? ENDING

3. Is Gore Verbinski trying to make a statement on the media? MEDIA

--Eddie Geller

What it Samara's motive to kill Noah after she is "laid to rest" and her father has been driven to suicide? SAMARA / ENDING

Why wasn't Rachel supposed to help Samara?

How would Samara's spirit kill a victim who wasn't nearby a television?

--Greg Gamewell

1) Was the video they watched supposed to be a recollection of the daughter's experiences or a collection of views from an external perspective?

2)Were the autonomous actions of random televisions supposed to suggest the objects themselves being possessed, or the hallucinations of those who saw the video?

3) What was the significance of the blurring of the faces of those who had seen the video? DEFACING

--Eric Lachs

Why were the people's faces distorted in pictures after seeing the movie? DEFACING

What was the mother's motivation to kill her daughter?

Why does the girl go on killing after being let free? ENDING

1. Was Sumara adopted? SAMARA
2. How is the film different from the original story (novel)?
3. How did helping Sumara change anything? (when the son was afraid after his mother told him she had helped her.) SAMARA

-- STEPHANIE LOUISE HELD

1. We talked in class about how some people belive we survive because of technology and can not live without and some say just the opposite. This film, I think is saying that we can not live without technology, and we need it to survive. Would you agree with that? And why is the girl given such a demain like presence. Is the writer trying to say that technology is evil? TECHNOLOGY

2. what is the symbolism behind the distorded faces in the pictures and after death? she was never disfigured in death so what is the deeper meaning behind that? DEFACING

3. why do you think the telephone is used so much in the film. Its not just the dead girl calling it all throughout the film? TELEPHONE

--Edwin Rivera

1. What made the boy able to see the visions before even viewing the tape or encountering it? (i.e. when the teacher said that he began drawing death pictures a week before his cousin died) TELEPATHY, CHILDREN

2. Why did Rachel still have symptoms of the video, such as the burn on her arm, even after she made the copy and was effectively cured? ENDING

3. Did the video tape just materialize at the cabin or did it have something on it previously that was mystically erased? ORIGINS

--Michael Sarrow

(1) What is the significance of the swarm image from the video tape? All of
the other
images from the video tape are shown in reality as the story unfolds except
this one
particular image. In fact, it is hard to tell what the image is of because
it is never
demystified. I believe it appears to be a large number of people struggling
in mud. The only significance I can theorize is that this image represents
all of the victims the
videotape has already taken. Their struggling is symbolic of the limbo or
unnatural death they all experienced after viewing the video tape. VIDEOTAPE

(2) What is the significance of the little girl’s thoughtographic pictures
in the mental
hospital? I only assume they are in fact thoughtographic photographs because
of the
reading suggested in our syllabus. If this is what the pictures are, then
perhaps this offers some explanation of how the video tape was itself created.
Thoughtography is the process of telepathically creating images in
photography. This concept, theoretically, can then be extended to video tape as well.
If the little girl can easily create such vivid photographs, then why can’t she
make a video tape by simple will power? TELEPATHY, CHILDREN

(3) Why is there such a similarity between the hospitalized survivor of the
film’s opening and the evil little girl from the video tape? Not only are
they both institutionalized, but they also share the same long dark hair which
hangs over the front of their face and they have the same dark eyes. Is this
character merely foreshadowing the full appearance of the little girl? DOUBLE

--Josh Stephenson

1. There is a scene in which the leading lady stands on her balcony and looks at 4-5 different people sequestered in their apartments, all watching their T.V.'s. What is the significance of this? SPACE / TVs

2. Why do all the outside shots seem to have a bluish tinge? (The same effect was used in Minority Report) COLOR

3. Why did we watch this version and not the original? (Ringu)

--Matt Lehtola

1) Why could Aiden, a child, see what Rachel and the other Adults could not? How did he know what he knew? CHILDREN / PSYCHIC
Further, Why was he often depicted as the superior (normally reserved for adults) against Rachel's inferiority (child like imagery)?

2) More of a discussion prompt: What is the importance of those lifeline monitoring cables with the suction cups at the end, that Rachel pulled out of her throat after see went into the recording room (I do not know what they are called)? (the physical connection between man and machine, the device that translates organic impulses to a signal that a machine can understand). (CABLES / STRINGS)

3) Why is the job of a reporter criticized through most of the film and the justified by the very end, where the only way Aidan can survive is if he passes the story on to others? JOURNALISM

--Mike Fogel

1. Why doesn't Samara stop killing once she is released from the well? She says that it will never end but what was resolved by her body being found? SAMARA / ENDING

2. Why does she chose the television and phone to target the people she kills? LETHAL MEDIA

3. Why didn't Samara kill her father? CHILDREN (FATHER)

--Jen Rahimitabar

1. Why does Rachel continue to have hallucinations after she has copied the videotape? ENDING

2. What is the significance of the fly coming out of the video? FLY

3. Why does a persons face become distorted after they watch the video and why do they scribble out the faces in pictures? DEFACING
--Sondra M. Smiley

1. According to all the references in The Ring, does life come from technology or vice versa? TECHNOLOGY
2. What is the significance of the scribbled out faces? DEFACING
3. How are the images/visions projected? The ones on the video and the ones in their minds? ORIGINS

--Ashley Gillett

1. What is the meaning of showing objects coming through the TV screen to
inflict physical harm on its viewers? (i.e. the girl, the water, the fly) FLY, SCREEN

2. In the opening scene, the two girls are talking about "billions of little
particles" flying from the TV screen and scrambling brains. What is that
saying about the effect of media on impressionable minds? MEDIA

3. What is the symbolism behind the smeared faces in the pictures of the
people who have viewed the tape? Is it an indelible scar derived from the
viewing of the material? DEFACING
--Ryan Wilson

1. Why did the horses become so terrified of the
protagonist? Is it because the spirit of the child is
seen through her, thus making the child an "evil"
spirit? HORSE

2. Is the film seeking to criticize our dependence
upon technology for our source of information, and
subsequently, life? TECHNOLOGY

3. What is the significance of the faces being
written over and disfigured on camera? DEFACING

__--Marcelo Barahona________________________________

1. Was the girl really evil?

2. What did Richard Morgan mean when he said that his wife was never supposed to have a child?

3. Why do the victims see the Ring before they die?

--Sara Duff

1.) Why had no one involved in watching this tape not destroyed it (and all copies) in an attempt to spare those down the line? ENDING
2.) Why does the horse freak out when he encounters the protagonist? Wouldn't he be afraid of perhaps the girl, but not the protagonist? HORSE
3.) Why does the girl lead the protagonist woman into believing she is innocent when due to her obviously evil nature she would just kill her?
- Christopher Glenn