I Don't Know What This Is.

But it's something. 

I have been thinking about this weird phenomenon that happens to me all the time (and I'm sure happens to everyone to some degree). I had wanted to write something about it a while back but never got around to it until tonight when it happened again. Basically, there's this interesting thing that happens every now and again when everything I've been doing or reading or watching or whatever all connects in a strange, unrelated way. 

Occasionally, it's pretty mild. Like today for instance. I was looking for something to listen to while I washed dishes and because I am up to date on all of the podcasts I subscribe to, I decided to check out the back catalogue of The Joe Rogan Experience. And, for whatever reason, I was drawn to the episode where he talks to Marc Maron of the WTF Podcast. And it's a great episode! But what really stood out to me in the interview is Maron's stories about hanging out with late comedian Sam Kinison. 

Now, I don't know much about Kinison other than the standard stuff any fan of comedy knows. But hearing Maron talk about the wild escapades he had with Kinison just fascinated me. And so I was again drawn, this time to Reddit where, as is my go-to, I typed Sam Kinison into the search bar and sorted by top entries first. After reading a bunch of random articles and posts about Kinison, I came upon this article about the day he died. At the end of that story, there's this incredibly sad retelling of how Kinison spoke to an unseen presence in his final moments, asking why now and, after appearing to listen, accepting his fate and passing away. It was such a weird, depressing story and to cheer myself up I decided to search for Sam's name in the StandUpComedy subReddit in the hopes of finding some of his best material. But before I could even look anything up, there's the top post of the day.

"23 years ago today, the world lost Sam Kinison. RIP."

The day I happened to choose that particular episode of Joe Rogan's podcast. The day I happened to latch so firmly onto the stories Marc Maron was telling about Kinison. The day that I decided to go down the Reddit rabbit hole to find out more about this stand up comedy legend. The day I found an article about his death that depressed me so much that I needed to seek out the positives he created just happened to be the anniversary of that terrible day. 

And it's strange how that stuff works. There are strange connections like that that happen to me all the time and I'm still not sure why. I know there are weird perception phenomena like Baader-Meinhof, but this just doesn't feel like that. Why was I compelled to do the things that ended me up where they did? Why did I have the presence of mind at 15 before midnight to realize how weird it is that it happened? 

I don't know. But I know that it happens.

When I first wanted to write about this it was for a whole other reason. It all started with Stephen King's newest short story (it might not be now at the rate he writes) in the New Yorker called "A Death." The story has this fascinating structure where King manipulates you as the reader into believing that this guy who is being accused, convicted and ultimately hanged for the murder of this 10 year old girl is innocent. But it turns out he was guilty all along.

So, there's this weird theme about perception and how we view the justice system and the people on trial. It's kind of like this Schrodinger's Cat effect where Trusdale, the accused in the story, is simultaneously guilty and innocent and the only way to find out which one it truly is, is to open the box (i.e. kill him, which ultimately leads to the discovery of the little girl's coin that had been missing, seemingly proving that Trusdale did in fact murder her).

What I find intriguing about it is the idea that even someone who is convicted of a crime (and actually committed it), but who is convicted in an unlawful manner like is done in the story (biased jury, prosecutor acting as judge, etc.), even if the jury got it right, the act of conviction itself is still unjust.

Everything is about perception and the fact of the matter is that human beings can be unfair regardless of innocence or guilt. They can perform a witch hunt like the folks in the story who damned Trusdale to die the moment his hat was discovered at the crime scene. They can murder little girls without any conscience like Trusdale did. And they can sympathize with a man who murders little girls like the people that read King's story. None of it makes any sense, but we can all relate because of our perception.

Then, that same evening, I started reading about the O.J. case. Not because my interest was sparked from the ideas above, I didn't pick those up until all of this came into focus. I started reading about the O.J. case because Elizabeth mentioned a new show that I mistook for the upcoming American Crime Story about the O.J. trial. Regardless, I was off on another tangent and here we go again.

Here is another trial, eerily similar to the one in "A Death," I realized. Black man murders a white victim (allegedly), he is beloved to so many people but hated by so many others, pleads innocent and is ultimately freed (the only portion majorly deviating from Trusdale) and it's all based on perception. With the O.J. trial you had two very clearly disparate groups of people - One in which people rallied around O.J. immediately and steadfastly championed his innocence. One in which people damned O.J. as soon they saw his white Bronco speeding down that L.A. freeway. But then there were the people like the Sheriff in "A Death" who look at the evidence (or lack thereof) and are genuinely conflicted about whether or not this person is guilty or innocent. And regardless of what type of person you're dealing with, what they believe is all based on their own personal perception of what they're seeing and feeling in the moment.

But, like I said, I didn't put all these pieces together until I was reading the booklet that came with the Criterion Collection edition of David Lynch's film Eraserhead. And lo and behold as I read it what do I come across? An interview where Lynch is talking about the film and references, of all things, the O.J. trial. And what does Lynch happen to be talking about in relation to the trial? Perception, of course. 

In the interview, Lynch remarks about how like with movies, people watching and reading about the O.J. trial experienced all of the same things as everyone else watching and reading about it. They heard all the same words and testimonies. They saw all the same witnesses and expressions, all of the same anger and frustration, all of the same evidence and yet they all came away with completely different interpretations of O.J., of what happened and of the truth.

Like with Sam Kinison earlier, I find it extremely interesting and slightly creepy when this happens to me. But I believe it happens for a reason. There's a reason I read that short story that evening even though I knew about it for a week prior. There's a reason Elizabeth mentioned that show and I mistook it for another one and went for a trip down the O.J. rabbit hole. There's a reason why I didn't read that David Lynch interview the same night I watched the movie and saved it for the same evening that all of that other stuff happened. Just like there's a reason I was drawn to that particular podcast, that particular subject, that particular article and that particular subReddit about Sam Kinison on what happened to be the anniversary of his death. There's a strange, unknown, maybe even cosmic reason that these things happen like they do and I know that there's something to be gained from my realization of these connections. There's a reason for all of this.

But, you know, that is just my perception.

What's really following those kids in IT FOLLOWS?

Pretty much everyone and their grandmother (please make sure that actually is your grandmother walking towards you) has been talking about David Robert Mitchell's latest horror film, It Follows, and I've got no intentions breaking that cycle. If you haven't seen it and you have any interest at all, GO SEE IT! Then come back and read what I've written here if you care enough. And to those of you who aren't interested in the film at all but still read this: U da real MVPs.

I'm just going to go ahead and get this out of the way: I really enjoyed It Follows. Like a lot. Sure it has some problems and I can see why some people might not dig it as much as I do. But on the whole it's a beautifully shot and amazingly scored and acted film. It's also both one of the best films I've seen from this year and one of the most suspenseful films I've seen in a long, long time. But really, even given how viscerally tense the film was when I first watched it, I think what actually makes It Follows such a potential horror classic is what lingers with you long after the credits roll.

And no, by lingering I don't mean the STD metaphor that everyone has been touting the film as being. While you can read it that way, I think doing so is frankly selling the film way short and doing yourself a disservice by sticking to a surface reading and not digging a little deeper. (Just a disclaimer: any statement that is construed as a crude double entendre isn't my fault. That's on you, pal.) I'm not going to go into why I think it's a faulty interpretation, that's not why I'm writing this, but I will just say that if that's how you interpret it, you need to ask yourself whether or not sleeping with someone else gets rid of an STD.

Personally, I think if you're going to go that route then the monster as a representative of sexual abuse/trauma is much more plausible. Besides the obvious things such as the monster forcing itself on its victims and quite literally fucking them to death (with a particularly awful incestuous twist that it often takes the form of the people in your family) and Hugh chloroforming Jay and tying her up before explaining the situation, there are tons of things you can read into. There's the idea of Jay's father being absent from the household (and not in the sense that basically adults aren't in the world of the movie), with her saying she can't be in the house at one point and eventually with the monster taking the form of her father who at one point she sees naked on the roof of her home. 

There's also the idea that maybe all of the forms the monster takes are either those of victims of sexual abuse (the old woman in the hospital gown, the half naked women in the kitchen peeing on herself) or a perpetrator of some kind of sexual abuse (we see Greg going from girl to girl through the early parts of the movie, the way the monster presents itself as his mother, the voyeuristic little boy who kept trying to sneak peaks of Jay naked). While some forms the monster chooses make this somewhat of a stretch too, I think the idea of one act of sexual abuse perpetuating itself into a vicious chain of similar actions - where the abused becomes the abuser - is much more plausible and an overall more poignant, powerful statement than a simple metaphor for herpes. 

But, believe it or not (at this point I'm sure it's not hard at all), even THAT's not what I wanted to talk about going into this. Though admittedly I've spent a lot of time on it already. No, what I actually wanted to talk about is what It Follows has to say that really, truly terrifies me and I'm sure terrifies every man and woman at some point in their life. And how it maybe suggests to combat it. 

I think ultimately the reason why the monster in It Follows is so genuinely scary is because it represents one of the greatest universal fears of mankind. And it's not death necessarily. It's the inevitability of time running out.

While all the characters in the film differ in age, they all, especially Jay, are either about to or find themselves entering that strange post-high school world where you're not really a kid anymore but you're not quite ready for what's next. Jay herself is already in college and finds herself reminiscing about her girlhood dreams of being old enough to go on dates with boys without parental supervision. Her friends similarly often seek comfort in childhood memories of first kisses, sleepovers and finding secret stacks of Playboys by accident. In an early scene where Hugh takes Jay to a movie before passing the curse onto her, the pair play a game revolving around who in the crowd of strangers you'd most like to switch places with. To her surprise, Hugh chooses a little kid out with its parents. "Imagine," he says to her, "having your whole life still ahead of you." The characters in It Follows aren't just running from a mysterious, deadly shapeshifter. They're running from adulthood.

Take the use of technology for instance. Though it doesn't really play any major role in the plot, the presence of television and other media is almost constant. Nearly every time the characters are in a room together, there's a TV. And most of the time it's on and showing some kind of magical, escapist film from a bygone era. Then there's Yara's strange, clamshell e-reader. Anytime the gang isn't on the run, she's got it open and is reading from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot - unsurprisingly a book about a young person trying to adjust to the various tensions of life. Though perhaps not intentionally on their parts, the characters are constantly searching for forms of escape from the reality that is swiftly approaching them.

"But what about all the sex?!" you say. I'm getting to that! While I can see the above interpretation of it representing sexual abuse (and to a much lesser extent STDs), what I saw the portrayal of sex as was another form of escape. For me, it's a more positive representation of sex - the idea that sex has the power to make us forget about death, to free us of even our most deep-seated anxieties if only for its duration. Sure, literally the kids have sex in an attempt to pass the monster on to another person, but in those moments where it's simply two people sharing an unparalleled intimacy, every worry and fear about the future, about time running out is gone. For those few beautiful moments, what's happening is all there is and it feels like it might just last forever. 

But it can't. "Do you feel any different?" Paul asks Jay after the two finally have sex. "No, do you?" she replies. Despite how it seems in the moment, the reality of adulthood and of the future is inevitable. And so Jay ends up in a community pool surrounded by plugged-in appliances.

If I may get a little English major-y on you for a second, among the plethora of things water can symbolize, typically when there's a body of water playing a major role in a story, a character is going to face a great decision and/or engage in some major introspection. Though water often symbolizes life and generally cleanses a character, it inevitably becomes a symbol of a crossroad - a point where a character or group of characters have to deal with an extremely difficult life situation. How appropriate then, that the community pool is where It Follows decides to have its characters' final confrontation with the monster. And though it's unclear whether or not they actually defeat it, it seems very clear that it is where the characters - Jay and Paul in particular - make the difficult choice that leads to the end of the film.

It is here that they seem to decide, perhaps even unconsciously, to accept their fates and decide that no matter what happens in the future, they're going to enjoy their lives together for what it is and for however long it lasts. It is here that they decide to accept who they are, take life as it comes and try to not worry so much about adulthood, death and everything else that awaits them down the line.

It's that famous quote "find what you love and let it kill you" and it's all right there in the final shot - Jay and Paul holding hands as they walk together down the street mutually clad in white like a bride and groom walking down the aisle, a "marriage" signifying the pair's advancement into adulthood. In the beginning they were both nondescript college kids with no real lives or motivations, avoiding all thought of the end of the their childhoods. But now, here at the end, they are able to build identities for themselves, embrace the horror of the unknown, let go of their guilt and resolve to enjoy their lives for what they are now without fear of the inevitability of time running out that follows them and that follows us all.