This Is The Street

Discussion of INLAND EMPIRE

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MichaelPW
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by MichaelPW »

jina wrote:Michael, great post!!
Oh, thank you, Jina.
she doesn't understand but she's not in a complete ignorance either.
As we have her in the confrontation scene and behind the clown mask she seems to be really despaired. MTTH suggests that she is also very depressed.
they just can't do something about it so it's only up to her to understand.
It seems that she wants to have the security of her own usually well-known thoughts. But they reflect that something`s wrong. Normally they (her thoughts) should see her without Persona. But she doesn`t lay it apart anymore. She should have fall in love with Billy in OHIBT, but she fell in love with Devon in reality.
they can't make her understand or give her familiarity, it's not something someone can give.
As her thoughts they should be familiar to her. But there`s someting inside the story. Maybe that something leads to a "frozen" Persona.
ha! like everybody else does in real life! :lol:
Assume that the concept of the Persona isn`t necessarily an absolute one in reality. Probably it`s a dimension. The more you trust the one who stands in front of you the more less you display your Persona.
their love is creating an illusion. and they are trapped in it.
It seems that there is no love from Devon to Nikki. His talking about feelings in the garden scene as Billy seem to had an effect on Nikki. Note the way she reacts to Devon after that scene and thereafter inside. And note the way she reacts after the "there is nothing to destroy"-scene.

The curse seem to target the leads in the moment they kiss. We have a turning point in their experiencing in the moment of their orgasm. Now the curse really seem to have trapped them.
and on the other hand, the Persona makes the one who has it unable to see.
She seems to be trapped behind her Persona. She has lost the control over her thoughts. She knows that things weren`t so good in the near past, but suddenly she discovers that things got even worse. I don`t know whether the one who smiles to and has a "good" time with the street girls is unable to see or decided to resignate in the past. Maybe both works.
but it seems that Sue's persona, gives Nikki's persona some insight.
The rabbits seem to have decided that Nikki gets the Persona Sue. They also gave her informations about how to solve the problem. She follows the alley and in the end the problem actually is solved.
she is the only one who has this deeper feeling that there's something wrong.
And somehow it seems that she doesn`t want to see the final truth.
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by Carl »

I think I agree witb MichaelPW that it is Lost Girl that is the 'someone familiar' that Nikki sees when she awakens.
I dunno if the 9 girls are 'guardian angels', though. They are quite malicious, charmingly so. They ae also 'freed' after the shooting at the climax. Representations of parts of Sue's thoughts, maybe so.
She is suffering from that particular fragmentation of personality characteristic of schizophrenia, it may be.
It goes against the grain for me to see the ending of the movie either as 'surreal' ( as distinct from 'expressionistic') or, to see it as the final, pyschotic, falsely joyful unification of Nikki with her Sue Persona, leading to her suicide.
MichaelPW
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by MichaelPW »

Carl wrote:I dunno if the 9 girls are 'guardian angels', though. They are quite malicious, charmingly so. They ae also 'freed' after the shooting at the climax.
Maybe the curse made them act like that. They give her guidance in some instances. "During the shooting" there`s probably a breakthrough from what is behind the Persona. The two halfs are unified, there again is harmony between Nikki`s thoughts and they (the thoughts) move in a free positive manner.
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jina
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by jina »

MichaelPW wrote:
they just can't do something about it so it's only up to her to understand.
It seems that she wants to have the security of her own usually well-known thoughts. But they reflect that something`s wrong. Normally they (her thoughts) should see her without Persona. But she doesn`t lay it apart anymore. She should have fall in love with Billy in OHIBT, but she fell in love with Devon in reality.
so you're actually saying that there's a part of her that knows what's going on but she's struggling to understand that part..?
they can't make her understand or give her familiarity, it's not something someone can give.
As her thoughts they should be familiar to her. But there`s someting inside the story. Maybe that something leads to a "frozen" Persona.
[/quote]

what do you mean "frozen" persona??
MichaelPW
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by MichaelPW »

jina wrote:so you're actually saying that there's a part of her that knows what's going on but she's struggling to understand that part..?
Assume that there`s a part in her somewhere to that she could get access under suitable conditions. These suitable conditions seem to come from following the alley. If she would be on the marketplace she would be lost and would have decided to resignate.
what do you mean "frozen" persona??
She seems to have lost her access to what is behind her Persona. If she would have access to it her guardian angels would say immediately: "Hey, how are you? Of course, we know you. No question." Maybe she tasted a little bit too much from the marketplace which led to that. It`s like that clown face we see - it`s a mask, it can`t move or change - it`s "frozen". Behind it we have her despaired and depressed, because she has lost access. When we see the projection on the phantom I guess we see the beginning of having access again.
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by applesnoranges »

Just to note that some people have seen the difference between the marketplace and the alley opposite to how it has often been discussed here. I read somewhere a description that saw the marketplace as the normal way of accomplishing something in the world and the alley as a hidden and perhaps criminal way of getting the same thing accomplished (e.g. getting a part in a movie).
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jina
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by jina »

but whatever the references to the alley and the marketplace stand for, she literally goes to the alley, where she sees that Axxon N sign.

so she's actually following a specific path, for some reason.

the weird thing is, that none of these would happen if she didn't fall for Devon.
the whole thing is triggered by her love for him.
MichaelPW
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by MichaelPW »

jina wrote:the weird thing is, that none of these would happen if she didn't fall for Devon.
the whole thing is triggered by her love for him.
And she would not have fallen for Devon, if she wouldn`t have get the role. And she wouldn`t have get the role, if one of the rabbits hadn't used magic. No guarantee for the tenses here :) .

Yes, or at least by the consequences of her love for him. Some people seem to see those as "wrong actions" which in turn lead to "bad consequences". "Dark they would be." Turned they out to be so?
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jina
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by jina »

what makes you think that the rabbits play this part?
i'm not sure about it.
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by Carl »

I can see that (rabbits-old seance men-Mr. K.--Nikki's hubby,...)++ may indeed have set Devon and Nikki up to fall in love.
It's still love, even if arranged, cursed or bought and sold, for that matter. Love ( folks still use that word, hunh?) is purely subjective, anyway.
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by MichaelPW »

jina wrote:what makes you think that the rabbits play this part?
I think that Visitor 1 is a rabbit, "but" entered the world of Nikki. She seems to habituate to that world in the first scene we see her. She comes from a place from which a rabbit could come from - from under a tree "in the garden". Think that she uses magic, because we have musically a high similarity to the Twin Peaks scene in which "David Lynch`s son" practices magic. "A single deep gong" so to say. But I don`t know whether David Lynch like to see magic as something with constitutional might. The maize is suddenly away again. And in the end of IE we have "Laura Dern" as if knowing what was before and was tomorrow.
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by MichaelPW »

Carl wrote:It's still love, even if arranged, cursed or bought and sold, for that matter. Love ( folks still use that word, hunh?) is purely subjective, anyway.
Some say that love can`t be bought. And probably most people say that Devon doesn`t love Nikki when he says things like "Maybe we met at the wrong place in the wrong time". And some religions offer concepts of objective love.
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jina
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by jina »

MichaelPW wrote:
Carl wrote:It's still love, even if arranged, cursed or bought and sold, for that matter. Love ( folks still use that word, hunh?) is purely subjective, anyway.
Some say that love can`t be bought. And probably most people say that Devon doesn`t love Nikki when he says things like "Maybe we met at the wrong place in the wrong time". And some religions offer concepts of objective love.

some things you can't buy for sure. lots of it in IE.
the unpaid bill is a mystery to Nikki as a medium person, it doesn't exist to her awareness.
so all these things, happen in another level.
her actions and her love for Devon, everything she does, has an effect.

about V1, i don't see the connection to the rabbits.

V2, by the way seems a bit confused and tired.
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jina
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by jina »

MichaelPW wrote:
Carl wrote:It's still love, even if arranged, cursed or bought and sold, for that matter. Love ( folks still use that word, hunh?) is purely subjective, anyway.
Some say that love can`t be bought. And probably most people say that Devon doesn`t love Nikki when he says things like "Maybe we met at the wrong place in the wrong time". And some religions offer concepts of objective love.
it's always the person that decides his/her feelings in the end.
if someone tells you for example something about a person and then you start thinking about that person, you'll probably fall in love with this person. but it is you who 'caused it. not the others.
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Re: This Is The Street

Post by Carl »

IMO, people don't fall in love with an objective, other person, at all. They project onto someone of the appropriate age, sex and mere appearance that image which they themselves seek, that Persona that will answer their own, quite selfish, emotional needs and then they fall in love with that image.
This typically leads to messy disaster. :shock:
Of course, there's that other kind of love, based more on affection than desire, but it's just good fortune if the original, deluded, romantic impulse is able to survive long enough to morph into it.

DIGRESSION: Sometimes, for a time, the delusion and self-deception are mutual. As Humbert creates a image of desire and projects this onto Lolita,, she, meanwhile, has concocted her own dream image and projected it onto Humbert. It all works as a love story, for a brief time, until she sees through her projected image and seeks to escape. Humbert, though, has 'that everlasting love' .

'Bought...Sold...'
Love is created in movies by choosing a person of a certain age, sex and appearance , carefully filming them as they enact an engaging series of behavior displays ( kindness, courage, loyalty...whatever is likely to turn the target audience on) The wonderful little people watching in the dark then are enabled to project their own desires onto this tailor-made Persona and...a star is born.
How often we hear about these patrons who are unable to distinguish their own fantasies of 'love' from their appreciation of a performance. They stalk, or whatever.
If there is a difference between 'thinking one is in love' and really 'being in love', let me know what it is.
The way the Curse may be set up in IE is similar: suggestible actors, immersing themselves in a Role ae given a skillfully fabricated Persona to focus upon and so Devon and Nikki fall in 'love.'
What I wonder is why Nikki's husband wants this to happen. Does he? Is he being sincere in warning Devon away? I doubt it.
**No, Devon does not love Nikki; Nikki might love Devon, though not as Sue loves Billy.

***Visitor 1 and Visitor 2 both do nose-wrinkling, rabbity head moves.
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