Category: Reflections

so were mine, when i was a lad. then in high school i became really bad at math, and so here i am as an english grad student. this was my first time with darko, and let me tell you…quite a film. the montage of high school life that starts out with kids emptying out of the back of the bus, all set to tears for fears "head over heels" – simply beautiful…and i hate 80s music!

at risk of jumping around too much, let me focus solely on the music in the film. there are the suburban favorite band groups tear for fears and duran duran. the latter’s song "notorious" is used for the dance routine for the excruciatingly talented star search – bound ‘sparkle motion.’ this group’s positive attitudinal beliefs and ability to swallow vomit earns them a perfect score in my book, and i wish their routine was used more liberally in the film. meanwhile, sharita chen’s blase attempt at interpretative dance put me to sleep…those swans were fake, the futile attempt at throwing rose petals into a fan, the rich orchestral backdrop lacked a beat…a beat that i could clap my hands to. but seriously, a few of you have rightly given great attention to charita’s character, who I took as one of the main characters. certainly, the same people, like me, who vote George HW Bush, subsidize inspirational speakers/kiddie pornographers, influence educational policy, and are very outspoken on how they embrace god and cast away fear, also determine what accounts for sex appeal. overweight asian girls doing interpretive dance fall outside of their (and my) hegemonic rubric. and you cant beat duran duran.

the ending cover of tears for fears’ "mad world" is touching. the part of "and i find it kind of funny/ i find it kind of sad/ the dream in which im dying/ are the best ive ever had" is a fitting final song. donnie’s dream is where he got the girl, his mom felt  ‘wonderful’ in having a disturbed son, his father took his side every time, exposed the religious political right for what it is, and received intimidating test scores.

I agree with what everyone has been saying about fear being a constant topic throughout the film. But I also think that in recognizing the fantastic notions that are ascribed to the film through the website and additional material provided by the director, the idea of dealing with fear needs to be confronted. It seems to be undercutting almost every scene in the film. Dealing with fear is something each character must do, and how they go about it is one of the main ideas I believe the diredtor may be dealing with, even though it may be latently.

I kept asking myself the question "What is it the director fears so much that he would go and make a film that seems to bent on coping with fear"? The references that are used in the film all deal with having some sort of control over fear, from Graham Green’s short story to the quantum mecahnics and time travel that allow Donnie to control the future. Small or large, it all revolves around being able to control fear. Even Jim Cunningham’s entire "program" is a way for him to show that Jim Cunningham has control (when he obviously does not), however it was received by the public in the movie.

This is a constant theme in all the postmodern texts that we are dealing with. But in many cases, the method of dealing with fear often involves a regression into the past. Palahniuk does this not only in "Fight Club", but in almost every one of his other novels. The character is always dealing with fear by delving into the past, or at least making the world go into the past. Art Spiegelman uses cartoons that look like older newsprint comics to deal with very graphic material. Even "Donnie Darko" relies on going into the past to fix the future and relying on a childish idea of a superhero with amazing capabilities. So it would seem to me that the postmodernists ideas of dealing with fear is to return to the past. Maybe that explains all the intertextuality.

Either way, I think that the incredible amount of imformation that the director has given only proves this idea. He continues to create this mythology of "The Philosophy of Time Travel", not just to promote the movie, but to further the myth that there is control over fear,or at least the possibility of control. It just seems to me that it’s a bit of overkill, but it on a different note, it goes along with the notion that came up last week about the novel being published based on a novel that would be published in "Lost". Again we have almost an entire body of work (and a fan base for it) for something that didn’t exist and was created solely forthe purpose of furthering the sales of a movie. What does that say about all the imformation we are taking apart and dissecting? Can we actually make any real assumptions or conclussions about a completely fake text? or are any texts real since they are the creations of imagination? I don’t know anymore! Now I’m getting scared!

This was great; my wife and I hadn’t spent time geeking out like this since we were undergrads living in dorms. Big ‘ol postmodern cyberhunt at the Scalise household this weekend. Good stuff.

Though much of this was covered in John’s post and the comments that followed, the most striking metaconstruct around this movie is its very functional role in a larger intertextual experience that is much, much more outwarldly-reaching than the events in the originally-released film. It seems as though the film exists only to create a world to perpetuate an investigation of its framework independent from the thing. For instance, go here to understand how to navigate the movie’s website, which is, in itself, an experience almost completely outside of the actions of the movie, and they both reflexively inform one another. The movie, itself, is in a way just a large dramatization of events related to the larger experience of The Philosophy of Time Travel, which seemed create a fully functioning "accidental subculture" reailty around the movie.

My question is: why the 80s? With the intertextual elements so clearly engrained, the broad events of this strory are intrguiing enough for it to be set in present day. I kept wondering the reasoning behind setting the backdrop in such a highly politicized time, with the space-time continuum opening up over the Fairfax/DC area a week before the 1988 election? (My only reading on this, and it’s a poor one, is that it’s an anti-republican commentary, that HW Bush’s defeat of Dukakis caused a corruption in the universe.) Casting Drew Barrymore and Patrick Swayze in lynchpin roles was clearly a move to create an homage to the decade that ushed them into popular culture, but is it just Gen X nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake? The soundtrack (and everything else) was so stylized as to create an almost obstructive pastiche of the time period (which, if you buy into the theories behind the film, is a slice of tangental time that never really should have existed anyway). The slow-mo, MTV-type of camera moves over Tears for Fears or Echo & the Bunnymen came off as a clear ironic answer to the 80s John Hughes films exploited so famously.

Something to think about. 

 

I thought I was following this movie pretty well until I got to the last few minutes of it and everything I had been watching for the past hour was rewritten.  One thing that surprised me in the scene of the second October 2, 1988 was the figure drawing the face of Frank the rabbit.  I assumed the person drawing would be Donnie, because he was so troubled by him.  When I saw that it was Frank the person, I thought that he and Donnie were probably similar on some level because they were both troubled teenagers.  Why was Frank driving to Grandma Death’s house on October 30?  He seemed to be misunderstood, like Donnie, so perhaps this was another reason why he was able to talk to Donnie and have such a powerful effect on him.  The movie creates suspense about Frank’s identity as a real person when the viewer sees the message on the refrigerator on the night of the party, claming that Frank was there and went to get beer.  The viewer is uncertain as to whether Donnie is now speaking for Frank and trying to acknowledge his presence, or if there is another Frank that other people can see.  At this point the movie is leading up to the end of the world, so the partial unveiling of Frank creates additional suspense.

Donnie’s death by the airplane engine falling on him seemed to be ironic to me because it showed that his life did change events around him.  Donnie was the only student at his high school who could see through Jim Cunningham and was not afraid to speak about it.  Donnie’s destruction of Cunnigham’s house led to the discovery of the kiddie porn and may have ended up saving children from a sexual predator.  Donnie also was a positive influence on Gretchen—he was her safe place when her mom went missing, and when the other kids mentioned her abusive stepfather, she turned to Donnie to create a beautiful moment so that it would erase the pain she felt.  On the other side, Donnie’s insistence on visiting Grandma Death did lead to Gretchen’s death and if events continued to progress the way they did, his mother and little sister would be harmed as well.  The ending was almost like a more realistic (and bizarre) version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” where you see the impact one life has had on people except for Donnie Darko it was only the impact his life made over a few weeks.  But was he more important and better remembered dead than alive?  He seemed to think so, but I wonder how the rest of the month of October 1988 would be without him.  Finally, one action that confused me at the end was Gretchen’s waving to Mrs. Darko.  Why does she wave, normally a happy gesture of recognition, to a woman whose son has just been killed in a freak accident, a woman whom she does not even know?  Does she sympathize with someone in that much pain?  I wasn’t sure.

Well, I’m a little surprised that no one has mentioned it yet, but Donnie Darko’s character distinctly reminds me of Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (which perhaps is ironic in and of itself since in the movie The Good Girl, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a guy who has renamed himself Holden after Holden in The Catcher in the Rye).  Both Donnie and Holden are on a mission to save the children of the world from pain.  In Catcher, Holden is a jaded teenager who has lived a life of self-inflicted and world-around-him-inflicted failure.  He continually finds ways to fail at school and at relationships (perhaps out of fear of failing at them), and he resolves that the whole (adult) world is “phony.”  He has one absolute love, though, for which he seems to live, no matter what else the world dishes up for him (including expulsion from yet another school) – his younger sister Phoebe.  The entire premise of the book is that Holden has this vision of being a “catcher in the rye” – someone who stands at the cliff at the edge of a rye field and catches all of the children from falling off (that is, losing their innocence and having to experience the pain and problems of adult life).  He talks about how he wants to watch out for his sister and protect her from falling off the carousel horse in attempt to reach for the golden ring above her horse.  Ultimately, he accepts the fact that he has to let her fall when the time comes. 

Donnie reminds me of Holden throughout several parts of the film; however, the especially strong parallel occurs when Donnie reads his poem to his English class on Poetry Day.  His poem reads, “A storm is coming, Frank says / A storm that will swallow the children / And I will deliver them from the kingdom of pain / I will deliver the children back to their doorsteps / And send the monsters back to the underground / I’ll send them back to a place where no-one else can see them / Except for me / Because I am Donnie Darko.”  This poem reveals that Donnie’s biggest concern is in saving the children from pain, pain which is caused by their fear (another HUGE topic from this film that no one has really addressed).  Donnie sees himself as the superhero (as noticed when Gretchen says his name sounds like a superhero and he replies, “Who says I’m not?”) in charge of saving the children.  Gretchen and Donnie invent the IMGs to give infants peaceful images instead of what the (scary) darkness gives them.  Contrary to (or perhaps similar to) Holden’s ultimate fate (allowing his sister and other children to grow up and experience life/pain), Donnie is able to sacrifice himself to spare Gretchen, Frank, and his sister from their painful deaths…though really, he is ensuring that they experience more pain (and fear) merely through living their daily lives.

Other big ideas to discuss in class?  How about the fear rampant in the world of Donnie Darko and in Donnie Darko’s world?  Also, there are the eye images everywhere, Donnie’s struggle with a belief in God or following God’s chosen path, and all of the dialectical images/montages that are so clear through the use of a visual medium like film.

I was very interested in the significance of the “cellar door.” Granted, it could merely be a foreshadowing element used to heighten anxiety when Donnie/Gretchen stumble upon, coincidentally, a cellar door later in the movie, but maybe there was more depth behind its choice. If a cellar door can be viewed as the deepest, darkest part of say, a house, then it could also represent similar things, such as someone’s deepest, darkest fears, vulnerabilities, dreams, etc. I think of crazy Tim Robbins out of his mind, lurking around the cellar of that old house in War of the Worlds, and the vision of a “cellar door” has a negative, creepy connotation. It’s where you hide the clutter and unwanted junk, or maybe the things too inappropriate for common living areas of a house. And so it is entering the cellar door that provides the catalyst to the climatic ending of the movie. Donnie is faced with his greatest, crippling fear, solitude, when Gretchen dies, and so I draw the conclusion that there is a connection between the image of a cellar door representing his fears, and the roll it plays in Donnie ultimately facing those same fears.

And then I read a whole Alice in Wonderland analogy on a website specifically titled “Cellar Door,” and well, it made a lot more sense.

I also think it’s interesting, and probably intentionally planned, that White Noise/Donnie Darko/In the Shadow of No Towers all share a very similar theme. The primary characters are all paralyzed by their fear. I’m not sure if you would say that Donnie was afraid of death as much as his lack of control of death, his fear of being alone in death. Jack and Babette’s whole “who will die first” was based on the same fear of being alone, dying alone. In the Shadow of No Towers is less about being alone in death than it is about fearing the uncertainty, the lack of control over death – something Jack and Donnie both grapple with. And then there’s Fight Club, and I just can’t bring myself to think about that yet. Anyways, my point is that I wonder if this is a postmodern theme – fearing, and fearing death specifically, because it’s something that we have no control over. Technological advances make it to where there is ultimately very little about your day that you can’t control. Jack went so far as to obsessively control his image. Donnie relies on medication to control his anxieties (Dylar connection). And so we begin to obsess on the things that we can’t control, such as death. But then we create things such as “time travel” to control even that. But then again, I’m pretty sure people have always obsessed over death, and it might not have anything to do with being postmodern, and it’s just a little coincidence that I noticed between the texts.

There are a lot of outcasts in the movie, and a lot of people being cast out. Karen, the teacher, is cast out of the school because of her teaching methods. Cherita, as Ada pointed out, is often alone and left out. And then there is Roberta Sparrow, the town eccentric, and of course, Donnie himself.

These outcasts made me think, once again, about truth, and here, about how you have to go off the beaten path to find it. Like with the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland (as Julie G. mentioned), or, more specifically, in The Matrix. There, Neo also has to choose to follow the rabbit, in order to fulfill his destiny, just as Donnie follows Frank, seeks out Roberta, and learns the "cellar door" from Karen. It reminded something that Roberta said to Donnie: "Every living thing dies alone". Everyone’s going to have to go off the main path for the big choices – and Donnie is no exception. In truth, Donnie did die alone.

Julie’s blog also made me think about destroying and creating, and about how much power being a destroyer/creator allows a person. Donnie is given enormous power in the movie – he burns down houses and shoots people in the head. Yet, he also sacrifices himself so that other can live. If this last sacrifice is his destiny, I’m wondering if a destiny is a destiny if one chooses it (I think one of the characters in the movie talks about this). The word seems to indicate that one is pulled to such a place irrevocably, and if that is true, then there really is no choice. How much choice do you really have in your own destiny?

Here’s an unofficial, but as far as I know correct, text of "The Philosophy of Time Travel":  http://www.tonystuff.co.uk/darko-time.htm

Ahh. I have seven pages of notes and I still don’t know what to post at this point. Here are a few topics I have listed to discuss: Faith, the multiple Franks, Destruction, Jim Cunningham, Roberta Sparrow, Sex, Smurfs and Rabbits.

Rabbits:

Why are we the bunnies? After they watch Watership Down in English class, Karen (the teacher) says, “We are the rabbits.” I’ve never read Watership Down, but a quick glance at the sparknotes synopsis tells you that it’s about rabbits “in search of a home” and the main character is a rabbit who can tell good from bad. Donnie, in a way, is also searching for a home. As Julie posted, he is an outsider who doesn’t really know where he belongs. This is true in the Primary Universe, but he also has to decide whether his place is in the Primary Universe or the Tangent Universe, and not until he shoots Frank does Donnie realize his destiny. An even more convincing reason to believe that “we are the rabbits” is when Donnie sees the rabbit as he’s looking through the mirror. Literally, Donnie is the rabbit, at least according to his reflection.(This also brings to mind the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Like Donnie, Alice is continually following the rabbit and wanting to go home.)

Destruction:

It seems to me like Donnie says it all in the beginning when responding to his teacher’s question about “The Destructors”: “Destruction is a form of creation…they just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart.” There are many forms of creation in this movie. Donnie goes on a destructive streak and “creates” chaos through his destruction. He mentions that he burned down an old house before the start of the movie, he floods the school and he burns down Jim Cunningham’s house. Now, he tells Gretchen, he paints and writes in order to suppress the urge to create through his destruction. Donnie is also always concerned with sex, and sex (I guess) can be seen as a form of creation…at least at its most basic purpose. They do call it “procreation.” When he’s talking about the smurfs and how they have no sexual organs, Donnie says disdainfully, “What’s the point of living if you don’t have a dick?” Maybe he’s really saying, what’s the point of the living if you cannot create? What that means in context with the story I’m not quite sure. Perhaps this whole Tangent world is just a creation of Donnie’s imagination. He falls asleep right before it all happens. In fact, the story—or at least the tangent universe—begins and ends with Donnie in his bed. This is also somewhat similar to Alice in Wonderland. This theory also fits in with what Josh posted, that the entire story is basically a boy’s ultimate fantasy. Perhaps it really is.  

Unanswered questions:

Why are there so many Franks? Frankie Feeler, the boy who was “doomed” like Donnie and died before the prom. Frank who is “destroyed by fear.” Frank, the man behind the bunny suit.

Why does Donnie have to kill Frank in the end for everything to be okay? Why does that “ensure” his (and humankind’s) fate?

Jarrod, my take on the sister being on the plane is this: at the beginning of the film, the engine travels back in time because of a random disruption in the Primary Universe’s space-time continuum. At the end of the film, Donnie uses his super powers to send the jet engine from his mom and sister’s plane back in time from the Tangent Universe to the Primary Universe, but in doing so, he indirectly kills himself. If he is killed in the Primary Universe, Donnie won’t be alive to rip the engine off 28 days later in the repaired Primary Universe; therefore his sister’s plane will land safely…assuming there is not another random disruption in the space-time contiuum at the exact same moment in time, which I think, even for science fiction, is a statistical improbability. 

Julie, I interpreted Frank as “The Manipulated Dead” from “The Philosophy of Time Travel.” The way I saw it, the Frank in the bunny suit was not the same Frank whom Donnie’s sister dates in the Primary Universe. I interpreted the bunny-suited-Frank as Donnie’s guide in the Tangent Universe; his body was simply a puppet that the manipulator was using to lead Donnie to his destiny.

What I found interesting about the film is its Web site, www.donniedarko.com. The original version of Donnie Darko is almost indecipherable — in terms of its overall meaning — without help from outside sources, i.e., the full text of “The Philosophy” on the film’s site. I know of very few films where you most consult the Web site to fully understand it.  As one of my sources points out, Kelly uses material originally only available on the Web site (and later the DVD extras) in the film’s director’s cut (director Richard Kelly introduces scenes with images of pages from “The Philosophy”); he seems to be one of the first filmmakers to do this. One thing to note, though, is that Kelly wrote the text of “The Philosophy” during the film’s editing process. He had already filmed the movie, and in writing “The Philosophy,” he was trying to interpret his creation. Therefore, the “The Philosophy” is by no way a definitive interpretation of the film, and he explicitly states that he does not intend it to be. But it makes the most sense to me.

Donnie Darko and his rabbit friend reminded me of another film friendship between a strange and yet happy guy and his invisible white rabbit. Anyone ever hear of Harvey, starring Jimmy Stewart? If I remember correctly, Jimmy Stewart’s character causes a lot of embarrassment for his sisters (because he goes around talking to an invisible being), so they try to have him committed. Because this is a comedy, there’s a bit of confusion about who is getting committed and the hospital ends up mistaking the sister for the one who sees invisible rabbits. Jimmy Stewart’s character continues his friendship with Harvey, and the sister, once released, realizes she liked her brother as he was, seeing invisible rabbits somehow made him nicer than other human beings.

While darker than Harvey, Donnie Darko is about a young guy who sees a rabbit; of course, Donnie Darko’s invisible rabbit is a source of aggression and violence for Donnie, who aside from his vandalism and a single incident of pyromania seems to be a likeable guy who goes against the status quo and who suffers from schizophrenia. Like many characters who defy social codes and speak against them, tragedy and death awaited Donnie. While I understood the sci-fi explanation which reasoned that Donnie was a link between the real universe and the alternate future universe, I had a difficult time making meaning of Donnie’s death. To view Donnie’s death as a sacrifice he made for those occupants of a depressing universe which he inhabited seems to be a copout; why should Donnie have to die to make things okay for everyone else? I thought this part of the film’s plot was an easy way out for the writer and director; the lead character saves the day and gets to escape a life that seemed almost meaningless for him. If the director is pointing to the despair felt by many people in the postmodern world, I suppose Donnie’s death pulls us to consider how unfair and meaningless many parts of life can be. I wondered whether Donnie laughs in the end because he understands this about his world.

According to the universe of the film, won’t the sister still die in the plane crash?  The mother won’t be on the plane, but Donnie’s death won’t necessarily prevent Sparkle Motion’s performance and subsequent invitation to perform on Star Search.  Or, are we to infer that the sister will be too distraught to perform, thus preventing the dance troupe from their "destiny?"  This begs the question, if the girls aren’t on the plane, wouldn’t that minutely shift the weight balance on the flight?  At that altitude, wouldn’t the slightest shift alter the trajectory of the severed engine, propelling it into a different home?

Julie, strangely enough, I had less of an issue with Frank’s motivation.  I believe this is due to the fact that I read the Frank in Donnie’s hallucinations as being different than the "real Frank."  I thought the hallucinatory Frank was a composite character created from the images Donnie saw in his future.  The voice was different, he encouraged Donnie to Destroy things, and he flittered in and out of reality… In fact, is there any reason to assume that the actual Frank would be able to travel in time the way Donnie did?  Again, I think the rabbit only existed in Donnie’s mind, perhaps a survival mechanism, or a specter of the things to come.

Like Josh, I was enamored by visual aspects of the film.  Yet, at the risk of providing a less intelligent analysis, I was most interested in the appropriation of tropes from B horror films.  It had teenage heroes and love interests, decidedly unhelpful adults, a strangely costumed "monster," and a murder on Halloween.  Finally, there was that terrific finale, the young boy waving that caused the mother to wave that spoke to the deterministic nature of reality.  This struck me as a David Lynch moment.  Though this was not a “horror film” per se, the elements lent themselves to the mis-en-scene. 

Of all of the elements at work in the film Donnie Darko, I am often struck by the smaller details and the minor characters.  With all of the interwoven narratives, it is soothing to find a constant in the character of Donnie Darko, even if he is unreliable and off-kilter.  One of these minor characters which with each viewing becomes more and more complex is Cherita, the girl who is crushing on Donnie, who is the symbol of unrequited love and so much more. 

In my continued viewings of Donnie Darko, I find myself drawn to Cherita in a way that I think complicates and enhances my understanding of the film. Cherita, who is set apart and portrayed as completely different, through her ethnicity, her interactions and the way she is presented in scenes with other characters and then most importantly, in her interactions with Donnie.  They are more alike then they seem, I think, and their unique characters and the ways they are played off one another in the film, suggest a stronger connection.  Cherita, if you may have noticed, appears in several scenes, usually off to the side.  Her constancy suggests that she is perhaps a larger part of the narrative.  I would venture to say that she is very aware of what is going on this world of the film and that she may, on some level, move in the same time-traveling circles as Donnie Darko.

In a poingnant scene, the two time travelers share a moment.  Donnie and Cherita, awkwardly and fraught with fear, engage one another, somewhat one-sidedly to come to an understanding.  In this scene, after Donnie has left Karen’s  (Drew Barrymore) classroom, the camera moves in an eyeline match to Chertia, standing at her locker.  This reaction to her being there is similar to the reaction that Karen had when she discovered her at the sports field.  Surprised but not shocked, almost as if he expected or even wanted her on some level to be there.  The mobile frame shows Donnie as he approaches her, and she backs away.  When Donnie goes to grab her earmuffs and confront her, the camera moves into a medium close up.  Donnie says, “I promise that one day everything’s going to be better for you.”  This statement is, on one hand, Donnie reacting to what Karen had told him in the previous scene, when she was packing up her things.  When Donnie asked what he should tell the other students when they ask about her, she says, “Tell them that everything is going to be just fine.”  This statement, a bit dark and biting, is reflected in Donnie’s assurances to Cherita.  On the other hand, the statement is a true moment of understanding between the two, but the paradox of Cherita’s character is reflected in her reaction the moment- running away.  Cherita knows that everything is not going to be just fine and that everything is not going to be better for her one day.  This knowledge is shown in the way that she is filmed in the scene, running away.  Upon first approach, Cherita moves backwards, then when Donnie makes the statement, she hesitates slightly before turning to run.  In this hesitation she again utters the two words she say throughout the film, “Chut up.”  At this point, the “shut up” has lost meaning as an imperative, asking the other person to be quiet.  Instead, the shut up at this point is more, “I don’t want to hear it.”  She doesn’t want to be assured because she knows that things will not be well.  The camera follows her for a bit, but then cuts to Donnie and then to a close up of her notebook, the revelation of the crush.  The camera then cuts to Cherita running away.  It is stationary, having taken Donnie’s point of view.  As Cherita runs down the hall, she is framed by the lockers, and slowly shifts out of a clear focus.  When she gets down the hall, running out the door, she is haloed and also disappears into the bright light of the door. 

The shot of Cherita out the door dissolves into a shot of Donnie, walking with her earmuffs on his head.  The camera moves from a start at a high angle shot and in slow motion Donnie’s head becomes visible as he is walking, until he is at a medium shot.  In this scene the camera slowly reveals him, so that the viewer takes note of this moment.  The earmuffs, which he has now appropriated, signal to the viewer that he has reached an understanding. 

First of all, I thought Julie/Jules does us all a service by digging beneath the surface of the narrative.  I think films lend themselves to a type of pleasurable consumption, maybe because we watch them rather than read them.  It’s like a critical switch is turned off.  Of course, that could just be me.  But I was trying to make this point when I said of Memento that it was soooo cooool.  The ‘visual pleasure’ of a film is sometimes irresistible.  The first time I watched Donnie Darko, the same thing happened.  I thought it was pretty far out; radical, even (in its true 80s usage rather than its political meaning).  Actually, the problem I’m having might be best articulated through the dual meanings of that word, ‘radical.’  It feels like the film is too ‘totally radical’ and not politically radical enough.

I’ll use the Sparkle Motion scene as an example.  As a festival of light and sound, it was just so inviting — quite a radical spectacle.  The audience members, including the teachers and judges, start clapping in unison, bobbing their heads, and generally becoming swept up by the whole thing.  But then comes the eerie disruption of that performance; with a sweeping rumble, the picture cuts to Donnie in Jim Cunningham’s house, the dancers slip into slow motion, and shots of the delirious audience are interspersed with images of the burning mansion.  The viewer is positioned to scorn the dance spectacle and all its hypocrisy.  That is, the talent show audience roars in appreciation at the sexualization of pre-pubescent girls while Donnie burns down the Cunningham’s “kiddie porn dungeon.”  Case closed.  The film effectively criticizes a dangerous cultural trend.

But the viewer’s dissociation from the spectacle threatens to open up its own spectacle.  The narrative doesn’t hang together in a sustained critique.  In some ways, the film seems to enact the spectacle rather than disrupt it.  The pleasure of Donnie Darko isn’t in the spectacle so much as a spectacle that ironicizes the original spectacle.  One way it does this is to service the (adolescent male?) viewer’s fantasies.  From “Sit next to the boy you think is the cutest” (female attraction); to “He asked me to forcibly insert the Life Line exercise card into my anus!” (telling off authority); to the fact that  the entire fate of several characters hinges on Donnie (megalomania).  His actions can right the universe.  But strangely, it’s not his actions that actually ‘right the universe’; it’s his death.  In fact, the entire movie, from his escape of death to his actual death, is essentially an aberration, a not-real, a fantasy.  And it pulls in the viewer.  It disturbs us, but we’re not quite sure how.  And, without being able to define the difference, we aestheticize the unsettling experience.  Off-kilter narratives merely titillate a different pleasure center.  But is it radical?  At one point, Gretchen asks, “And what if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?”  But all they come up with for ‘something better’ are images.  Which prompts one to ask, are the images that make up Donnie Darko paradoxically these better images?

Just kidding. While the film makes mention of Dukakis as "a miserable failure," and perhaps Donnie Darko could be interpretted as such, this simplistic, yes, Wikipedia analysis might be the most insignificant feature of Richard Kelly’s cult classic. At its most basic layer, the movie is structurally based on Philosophy of Time Travel, a novel that is simultaneously the central text around which the film’s plot and characters orbit, creating a vision of hypertextuality at its most postmodern. However brilliant the film, I find that there are several inconsistencies, which may reflect my inability to comprehend the profuse and scientifically complex themes of Donnie Darko. 

Donnie Darko is an outsider, a character on the fringes of his community and even his family due to his psychosis (sleep walking, hallucinations, insomnia, etc.), so it makes sense that he is the outlet to the alternative universe that comes to pass on October 2, 1988. Since each event seems to happen as a result of a previous event, the themes of cosmic fate and causation also fall in step with the premises of Philosophy of Time Travel. Since, Donnie Darko is "the living reciever of the tangent universe that spins off the primary universe," the tangent universe being the alternative reality that occurs after Donnie Darko lives when he is supposed to die on October 2nd and the primary universe being ‘the true reality’ that existed before Darko’s death and immediately after he is killed by the plane engine that warped through a worm hole to the past, the tangential or alternative reality begins and ends with ‘the dark hero.’ But why does Frank, his sister’s friend in the bunny Holloween costume, come back from a future that hasn’t happened yet to pull Donnie Darko from his cosmic fate, death by his mother’s and sister’s plane engine? Why didn’t Frank just let Darko die and allow the primary universe or God’s path to take its course naturally?

If Donnie had not been pulled out of bed by Frank at precisely midnight, Donnie would have been taken out by the engine and everything would have been as it should have been. Frank, in that case, would not have lost an eye, and then die. Gretchin would have never met Darko, but yet, she wouldn’t have been run over, and, of course, killed, and Darko’s mother and sister never would have been on the plane home from his sister’s Star Search performance. However, if Darko’s mother and sister had not been on that plane home, the engine that was supposed to kill Donnie Darko and ‘make everything right’ and therefore, terminate the tanget reality, which ultimately claims so many lives at its end, might not have hit the worm hole and the alternative reality, the one in which Darko lives beyond October 2nd, would have destroyed the true reality and its alternatives, hence Frank’s repeated utterence and daily count down to ‘the end of the world.’ So perhaps Donnie was meant to live out the tangential reality and survive for an extended 28 days, triggered by Frank’s "Get Up" at midnight on October 2nd just minutes before the engine crashed into his room, in order to realize he would inevitably have to die in order to save Frank, Gretchin, his mother, and little sister.

Darko lives at the center of the alternative reality for 28 days, and all the characters in the film gravitate toward him. He is ‘the gifted’ or hallucinatory one that can physically see the immediate future actions of every person he encounters, including himself, at given times. But it seems that this ability or curse only leads him to play out the tragedy, once again, that had resulted in Frank’s and Gretchin’s deaths, and sent the future’s dead Frank back to Darko’s "primary reality" on October 2nd before the engine crash. After all of this rambling, I still don’t understand why Frank time travelled back from the alternative reality’s future to the real universe minutes before Donnie’s fated death, if all Donnie had to do was die to maintain reality for everyone as it should be and prevent the end of the world? Someone help me out.

My favorite quote from this book: “For most peole there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set” (66).

The one thing I noticed first in White Noise is the obsession with death, although I don’t think I need to prove that this book is about death and fear. All of this fear seems to be instilled by the media and culture around Gladney and his family. It reminds me of that documentary by Michael Moore…the first one, Bowling for Columbine. I haven’t seen the whole thing, but there’s a part in it that talks about how we become violent and fearful as a society because of the tactics of the media. Just look at what we see on the news…rarely is a happy story broadcast as the headliner. Everything causes cancer or heart disease or sudden infant death or clogs your arteries. This is evident in White Noise when the train crashes right outside Blacksmith. The whole family is listening on the news to reports of what has happened and what they should expect. At first it’s just a “plume” of smoke, and then it becomes “a black billowing cloud” and then a “cloud of deadly chemicals,” each instilling more fear into the Gladney family. And with each report the newscasters come up with new and more terrible symptoms of breathing in the deadly cloud. When they say sweaty palms, Denise and Jessie have sweaty palms. When people are supposed to be vomiting, so do the girls. I see a parallel to this in my own life. My roommate is a constant worrier and health nut. We had to replace perfectly new pots and pans because they were Teflon and “could potentially cause cancer.” There was a report that eating too much tuna or seafood can cause reproductive problems in women of childbearing age, so my roommate will only eat tuna or salmon once a month. She scoffs when I put Splenda or Nutrasweet in my coffee because, well, you know the story about laboratory rats. I feel like I had the same conversation with my mother that Denise and Babette had about sugar-free gum (except I was the one being chastised). There is fear here and it is all coming directly from the media in one way or another. And these facts could be completely true…but I think DeLillo brings up the point that our whole world is based on facts, or misinterpreted facts. What do we really know about what we’re being told? All we know is that the media is constantly barraging us with fear and death and distaster. People can’t believe it when the news isn’t there for the plane crash or the chemical leak. The man at the Boy Scout camp wants validation for his fear. He asks, “Isn’t fear news?”

I was also struck by how relevant this books still is. DeLillo mentions events that relate to our current events. His son, Heinrich, is excited by death and the sensationalism. He reminded me a bit of the Columbine shooters…and Jack even mentions long trench coats when speaking to Heinrich about death. Before they evacuate their house, Jack refuses to leave because fleeing is only for poor people. Sounded like Hurricane Katrina to me. Some other people also mentioned the plane crash that sounds a lot like our recent crash. I can’t remember the other allusions, but there were more that I picked up on. I would say it’s prophetic, but really I think we’ve been heading this way for quite some time.