f1
الأحد، 9 نوفمبر 2014
الثلاثاء، 4 نوفمبر 2014
السبت، 1 نوفمبر 2014
الجمعة، 31 أكتوبر 2014
الأحد، 26 أكتوبر 2014
الأحد، 19 أكتوبر 2014
السبت، 18 أكتوبر 2014
الخميس، 16 أكتوبر 2014
الأربعاء، 15 أكتوبر 2014
الأحد، 12 أكتوبر 2014
الخميس، 9 أكتوبر 2014
الأربعاء، 8 أكتوبر 2014
الجمعة، 3 أكتوبر 2014
annabelle
As regular readers know, I went into Annabelle fully expecting it to be a pro-socialist film like The Conjuring: in The Conjuring, the mother is possessed because she wanted to possess the house (the same with Bathsheba and Rory's mother); even though the house was expensive for them, they were going to get their slice of the American Dream on this beautiful property that was, I don't think by anyone's standards, lavish, just nice and most importantly, it was theirs (for full details, please see The Devil's Hour: The Conjuring Demonic "Possessions"). Given that, and Annabelle the doll is a material possession, I fully expected Annabelle to be another socialist articulation about how greedy and selfish anyone is who wants something. While the film intentionally constructs that path, it doesn't go down it.
The two young nurses from The Conjuring, who open the film talking about the Annabelle doll to Ed and Lorraine Warren, and discuss how they felt bad for the spirit who had lost her parents wanted to live in the doll with them, so they let it, and how it began haunting them, open Annabelle, too. This is one of many ties Annabelleintentionally reminds the viewer about, so we will be comparing the two films in our minds, and that's how we know which sideAnnabelle chooses. Then the film takes us to Santa Monica, one year earlier, before the girls got the doll. The film book-ends (opens and closes) with these two related scenes and, by the end of the film, we know what the doll symbolizes so we know what commentary the film is offering.
![]() |
John comments that the doll was expensive and they may be a bit short on the rent for the next couple of months; why? The doll is a symbol of Mia's virginity. The doll wears a wedding dress, something that tends to get lost in discussion about her. The white symbolizes her purity, and the red sash with flower is her virginity, the "de-flowering" that takes place on the wedding night (more on this below). The doll is valuable to Mia, and she wants it for their child, because the doll was her own role model when growing up, that is why it was expensive and may come up a bit short for the rent: virginity is expensive to maintain because of the "sacrifices" one has to make to protect it. The "rent" is the renting of the physical body because these bodies do not belong to us, they belong to God, so "coming up short on the rent" means they are going to have trials and difficulties that will make it to where they do not want to praise God, but be in debt to Him (when they are having difficulty with things, they go and see the priest). There is another way in which Mia's virginity is conveyed through the film, and that is her sewing machine. From the very first time we see Mia on the sewing machine, we are certain she is going to get her finger stabbed by the needle, but she doesn't, until just before the popcorn explodes and the house catches fire. The needle is a phallic symbol, and when it does puncture Mia's finger, the blood comes forth, as in the story of Sleeping Beauty when she pricks her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel (symbolic for losing her virginity, the breaking of the hymen and the blood that results). When that happens, it's a "second virginity" for Mia that she's giving up because now she has become married to the Lord, having survived the first set of hardships and difficulties, she will now be given even more difficult burdens so she can be perfected. Leading up to that, however, Mia is--as all good Christians should--making her "wedding garment" as in Matthew 22:12. The wedding garment is a metaphor for the soul that is to be wedded to Christ after death (think of the Song of Songs, and all the wedding imagery in that, this is the same thing). We see Mia sewing several times, but not what she is sewing, and that is because it's a metaphor for the mystical changes taking place in her soul. On a tangible level, however, we can see the sewing machine as being a sign of a traditional female skill, and a sign of her ability with traditional crafts; how many women do you know today who can sew? Besides some of my aunts who are all 50+ years old, I don't know anyone who can do more than sew a button, so we are seeing a task that Mia was obviously good at, and suited for 1970, but a task today that women would see as being a sign of a woman's oppression by her husband, like John's joke about "setting up your own sweat shop." This is another intersection of the film between Annabelle's significance in today's world--a feminist and liberal--attacking a woman like Mia, a traditional woman who chooses and wants everything a "liberated" woman like Annabelle rejects and despises. |
I was wrong.
We meet the Higgins, John and Mia first during a Church service, during which, Mia and John are thumb wrestling instead of paying attention to the sermon (which of course looks bad) and, up to the very end, makes it look as if Mia is going to lose the upcoming battle. We find out the Higgins had "lost" their daughter Annabelle a year ago when she ran away and joined a hippie group and they hadn't hear from her since. Later this same day, Mia sits at her sewing machine (the first of several times we see her there) and watches TV: what's on the television? The story of Charles Manson and his cult.
This is perhaps the most important moment of the film in determining which way it's going to go. In bringing up Manson and "the Family," a family that was anything but, Annabelle draws attention to another film it's invoking: Martha Marcy May Marlenestarring Elizabeth Olsen. Not having known enough about the Manson murders to have successfully linked up the Olsen film to Manson, it's clear now that it was recreating Manson and his "commune" of family members and directly linking Manson to Obama and his "cult" of followers. Annabelle takes great pains to connect the characters of its story to the horrible story of Charles Manson; how?
![]() |
Evelyn is a great character in the story line. I have to admit that, while I was still suspecting a pro-socialist film, I was suspicious that both her and Father Perez were part of a cult working to get Mia to kill herself, but in fact, Evelyn is just a wonderful neighbor. Evelyn owns the bookstore in the background and, as Mia comes to her for help in understanding what is happening, we learn that Evelyn had a daughter named Ruby who died in a car crash she caused. So distraught at having lost her daughter, Evelyn slit her wrist to try and kill herself, but Evelyn told Mia that she heard Ruby's voice tell her that this wasn't her time and God was saving her for something. Evelyn, like Sharon Higgins, is a wonderful example of "motherhood" and mothers wanting to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the child, instead of the child being sacrificed in abortion for the sake of the mother, or father. At one part in the beginning, Mia and John are talking, and Mia expresses concern over something happening during the delivery and making John promise to choose the baby's life over her life and, reluctantly, John promises. This, again, is the exact opposite of what we saw in The Conjuring, where children were a curse. Ed Warren asks Mr. Perron if there is someone that he and the family can go stay with so they can get out of the house, and Mr. Perron says, "With eight of us?" because they have six kids. It's made clear that Mr. Perron must take extra work as a truck driver because of the size of the family, and because his wife wanted that farm house, then the whole family is in jeopardy simply because there is so many of them, which wouldn't have happened if Mrs. Perron had not had kids. Between Mia, Evelyn and Sharon, the film makers make sure the audience knows they believe in life (which was the first thing that tipped me off that this was not a pro-socialist film). Now, regarding motherhood, there is an important "quote" Annabelle makes from The Conjuring, and that is the part where Julie, Ed and Lorraine's daughter, goes into a room of the house and sees the rocking chair where her and her mother were sitting at the start of the film; now, however, it's Bathsheba sitting in the chair, as her mother Lorraine had done earlier, and holding the haunted doll Annabelle in place of Julie. In The Conjuring, you are the object that you desire, so because little Julie wanted to have the doll to play with, Julie becomes the doll sitting on her mother's (Bathsheba's) lap; why has Bathsheba replaced Lorraine? Because the film is commenting that the witch will be Julie's real mom if Julie continues to desires objects and material goods (this is a well-developed thesis in the film; please see The Devil's Hour: The Conjuring & Demonic 'Possessions' for more). In Annabelle, the exact opposite is true: when Annabelle Higgins steps out of the nursery holding the doll that will come to bear her name, and Annabelle says, "I like your doll," that is a revelation of how liberals and socialists view children and humans in general: as lifeless, will-less objects to be manipulative. Annabelle Higgins holds the doll as a mother would hold her child, not the way one holds a doll (with one arm around the waist). Annabelle doesn't understand what a soul is, apart from a piece of property that she is dedicating to Satan; she doesn't understand what free will is or virtue and sin. The reason this happens, however, is to insure that Mia does learn the difference (more on this below). |
Because many of the practices/beliefs of hippies are in direct opposition to God, which is what Satanism champions: free love (promiscuous sexuality as well as deviant sexuality), drug use (which impairs the gift of reason and is a form of self-destruction) and rebelliousness against authority, as Satan rebelled against God. Annabelle Higgins having first became a hippie (what we today call a "liberal") paved the way for her to become a Satanist and kill her own parents as a sign of devotion to her "new" father, Lucifer.
So, what happens?
The night of the opening scenes with Mia, John and the Higgins, John and Mia's bedroom window is open and through their bedroom window, we see the events unfolding in the Higgins' bedroom: Mr. Higgins getting up and Mrs. Higgins screaming and being attacked in bed. Mia wakes up, John goes to check it out, and then as Mia calls an ambulance, Annabelle Higgins makes her way into Mia's house and starts walking around, stepping out of the nursery with the doll Mia just received that day, and Annabelle tells a terrified Mia, "I like your doll." Behind Mia, Annabelle's boyfriend comes up behind her and attacks her, stabbing Mia in her stomach (she is like 8 months pregnant) and then John appears, protecting Mia; Annabelle goes into the nursery as the cops arrive, and Annabelle kills herself by slashing her throat. So, what are the symbols and how are they working?
There are lots of open windows and doors, or shutting windows and doors; we see the Satanists first through an "open window," and it is jumping through an open window that Evelyn vanquishes the evil preying upon Mia towards the end. Windows symbolize our soul andour ability to reflect on our soul. Doors can symbolize either opportunities in life (the real world) or parts of our soul that we have "closed off" and don't want to go into (for example, when Mia and John get home and John didn't lock the door and she insists he start doing it, or when she's in the basement at the apartment building and opens the locked screen door of their storage shed). But, an important detail is, it's the audience watching the death of Pete and Sharon Higgins, not Mia, so this turns the table onto the audience;why are we supposed to see this?
![]() |
It's still difficult to see in this image, however, Annabelle has slit her neck just before the police arrived and killed her boyfriend (in the nursery of John's and Mia's home). Having slit her neck, she used the blood to make the symbol on the wall, and provides the "last detail" of her wedding dress for Satan. On the doll's dress, the red sash symbolizes a chastity belt, an old-fashioned device that was strapped on girls to insure they wouldn't have sex before marriage; the flower on the belt symbolizes the "deflowering" that takes place on the wedding night and the red color is the color of the blood from the breaking of the hymen of a virgin. The red is mimicked then, in Annabelle--not around the waist, because she hasn't been chaste, which is pleasing to Satan--but around the neck, showing that she was easily led to her death and destruction by her own hand in destroying what God created (rather like the Bathsheba hanging herself in The Conjuring). We will discuss this further below, because this image is the point of the entire film. The last difference between Annabelle and the doll is the hair: Annabelle has wild and frizzy hair that is unkept; the doll has perfectly kept hair, well-trimmed and braided. The hair symbolizes our thoughts, so Annabelle's wild hair reveals how wild she is, whereas the doll's hair that is all in place shows that she symbolizes "being in the rightful place herself," just like when Mia puts her on the shelf with the other dolls and says, "There, she fits right in," Mia also accepts her place, unlike feminists today who rebel at their place in society, the family and relationships. Why does Annabelle Higgins belong to the cult Disciples of the Ram? The "ram" probably refers to the ram that was caught in the bush when Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac but was told to stop and sacrifice the ram instead (Genesis 22: 13). What am I talking about? If the ram had been the last sacrifice of the Bible, instead of the ram being a prophecy of the sacrifice of Jesus, then Satan would still rule over us and have unlimited souls to claim. Adhering to the ram is to refuse acknowledging the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In the symbol on the wall above, the two arms of the "x" is the horns of the ram, while the little triangle caused by the third line going to the right is the head of the ram. |
Annabelle the doll was the role model of women: to be virgins on their wedding nights. Nowadays, however, that "model" has become tainted and twisted to being a model of a woman married to Satan: namely, sexually promiscuous, on drugs, a destroyer of the family (she murdered her parents) and a proponent of self-destruction (Annabelle commits suicide, but women today commit acts of self-destruction as well). There are two scenes that most clearly elaborate for us the differences between Mia and Annabelle, and the first one is the exploding popcorn.
I don't know what popcorn symbolizes, however the popcorn blowing up looks like Mia's belly when the doctor examines her after she's been stabbed. We would probably think of this scene with the house burning as putting Mia in danger, however, it's actually a promise (one of those situations that looks bad, but actually means something good). The popcorn exploding symbolizes what will happen in the next scene, Mia's belly will bring forth a baby and Mia will give birth to Lea; setting the house on fire is Mia's soul that will be set on fire with love for her daughter (think of the Burning Bush and Moses: the bush is symbolic of Moses as a precursor of Christ, who is the Tree; the fire consuming but not destroying the bush is the fire and love of the Holy Spirit that will animate Moses as a prophet, while the fire and love of the Holy Spirit will keep Christ upon the Tree of the Cross to fulfill His Sacrifice for sinners). and Mia's willingness to keep the doll after they have moved from the house is a sign of this confidence Mia gets after Lea is born; but the "force" trying to pull her back into the burning kitchen is the upcoming battle with the devil and his attack trying to use the fire of Mia's love against her to get Mia to give up her soul in place of Lea's soul.
The second scene (described in the caption just above), is when the little girl appears to Mia after John doesn't show up for dinner. After this scene, Mia will call the investigating detective again and ask to see him, and she will see a photo of this little girl that was Annabelle "long before she got involved with the cult," however, seeing her here, she is all ready wearing the Satanic wedding dress that she will die in, even though she is just a child; why? The sewing machine, seen beside Mia in the image above, provides a clue. The sewing machine turns on and starts running wildly, as it did earlier in the film when John unplugged it; because the needle is a phallic symbol, it suggests that Annabelle Higgins was introduced to sex at a young age, and that is why she was all ready on the path to Satanism when she was so young, as shown above. What validates this reading of the sewing machine is that, the little girl begins running at Mia, then turns into the adult Annabelle, suggesting that Annabelle's childhood was over very quickly and there wasn't much of one.
So, if the moral universe of a horror film is so rigid, what did Mia do to deserve all this torment? It's not that Mia is guilty of a sin, but she has--like most of us--an imperfection and, yes, God is perfectly willing to put us through terrible trials just to overcome an imperfection. As we have been discussing, the identity of Lea, as either a doll or human being, is important to the sub-text of the narrative; who Lea belongs to is also important, but it's not that Lea belongs to the devil or to Mia, but to God, and Mia not realizing that is the reason why she's going through this torment.
When Mia and John go to Father Perez's office to talk, Mia had her hand upon a small pieta, a statue of Mary holding the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion. Mary didn't keep her child, Jesus, to herself, but gave Him up to God to do God's work for all of mankind; in having her hand upon the pieta, Mia draws strength from it, even if she doesn't understand the lesson she is going to be taught. Towards the end of the film, Father Perez gives Mia the photo he took of Mia holding Lea, so we know the two are related.
![]() |
The family going to Church at the end of the film when Father Perez hands Mia the photograph of her and Lea. This is as good of a place as any to discuss it. At the start of the film, John and Mia had a disagreement about naming their baby "Phyllis" if is was a girl, after John's grandmother; no one liked Phyllis so the name seemed to be ruled out. "Lea" is an English name meaning "meadow," whereas "Phyllis" is a Greek name referring to the myth of Phyllis that no one would want to have to go through. When her husband of one night, King Demophon, failed to return to her as promised, Phyllis hung herself; an almond tree grew where she was buried and, when Demophon finally did return, it blossomed. Yea, no one would want to name their child after this, however, this is the fate of nearly all Christians. As is spoken in theSong Of Songs, Christ will come to us like a Bridegroom, like Demophon, and it's wonderful when we feel Jesus with us and He sends us warm fuzzy feelings and consolation,... then He leaves, and there is desolation. We wonder if the consolations were real after all; at this point, many fail and fall away, wanting to find pleasant "meadows" to live in rather than doing the hard work of the Cross we are called to. Phyllis hanging herself is a way of saying that she hung upon the Tree of the Cross, because that is what we are called to do, to be faithful to Him and makes ourselves like Him, which means allowing ourselves to be crucified; that Phyllis was successful is validated by the tree blooming when Demophon returned (remember Matthew 21:19 when Jesus comes to the fig tree and curses it because it had no fruit). None of us would choose the hard and difficult path (well, a few saints would consciously choose the hard path, but I am not one of them) so God has to choose it for us. |
So, for the nearly last item of discussion, what about the ending? What Evelyn does in taking the doll and jumping out the window may seem like an act of suicide, however, love is what overcomes evil (not that anyone would recommend doing this). Evelyn is acting just as Jesus did for us, she takes the evil upon herself and and sheds her blood so her blood will wipe out the blood of hate (this is what the color red signifies); we see the same thing with the death of St. Maximilian Kolbe at Auschwitz when he laid down his life to save a man who had a wife and child and the saint died in this man's place. Evelyn, to be sure, isn't giving her soul to the devil, the way the devil hoped Mia would do, rather, Evelyn shows "no greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his friend," (John 15:13, and John is present there in the room when Evelyn does this, and after she jumps, we hear the words of Father Perez repeating this Scripture). Evelyn jumps through a window, meaning she is making an act of reflection (she reflects on what Ruby meant when she told her mother to wait) so instead of taking her life for grief over losing Ruby, Evelyn offers her life to God to rid the world of this evil.
The last item is the bookends.
The mother finds the doll in the store and buys it for her daughter who is going through nursing school, the young lady we saw in the beginning talking about the doll with her roommate, which was also in The Conjuring. How is the end and beginning related? This brings up another important sub-text throughout the film: healthcare professionals. John is studying to be a doctor, the two girls are studying to be nurses, and we hear the theme for General Hospital; why? Because after failing to successfully destroy everything traditional about women and the family, the next institution Annabelle attacks is healthcare. Does that sound familiar? Is there someone today who is trying to apply a hippie alternative to the US healthcare industry? (hint: Obamacare)
![]() |
Here we have the third wedding dress of the film. Evelyn wears a white dress that signifies she is about to wed herself to Christ, and the red sash is on her head, symbolizing her thoughts, that she is truly thinking of love when she does what she does. Evelyn holding the Annabelle doll is a completely different experience from Annabelle Higgins holding it. This may seem far-fetched and if it is, I apologize, however, given that--at the start of the film--Mia watches a show on TV about the Charles Manson family, then they are attacked that night by like-minded Satanists, it seems relevant. The reason Charles Manson had murders committed was to start Helter Skelter which would bring down white people in America: "Ghastly murders of whites by blacks would be met with retaliation, and a split between racist and non-racist whites would yield whites' self-annihilation. Blacks' triumph, as it were, would merely precede their being ruled by the [Chalres Manson] Family, which would ride out the conflict in 'the bottomless pit,' a secret city beneath Death Valley," (Wikipedia). Between Barack Obama and Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, there is plenty of material suggesting that the federal government is attempting to implement Charles Manson's plan today; but Evelyn didn't buy it. She is a business owner--she owns the bookstore Mia goes to--and she is well-adjusted, if not sad, but friendly and ready to help anyone she can. If we consider Annabelle the doll, as a symbol against traditional women, marriages, families and tradition at large, (because remember, Annabelle Higgins was a hippie, and a Satanic hippie at that: she wanted all order and institutions to be ended because those are what reflect God, whereas chaos reflects Satan), then Evelyn laying down her life to end the evil of Annabelle Higgins was laying down any "grudges" she might have, and making sure she was not a victim of evil, but a hero. In other words, in being active on her own part, Evelyn successfully avoids becoming a "doll" for people like Charles Manson (who was a master manipulator of women) and Obama (who is also a master manipulator of women) to control the way Annabelle Higgins herself was being controlled by her boyfriend and the devil. |
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner
الاشتراك في:
الرسائل (Atom)