Anti-Mystery in “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (Part 2)

What happens, this film asks, when an event resists the imposition of order, stands beyond the reach of logic or even language? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” Upcoming Episodes: Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”; Jaws, Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of Picnic at Hanging Rock. We just got done talking about the dangers of algebra and I don't need any convincing there. And I hinted at this in part one. I just want to talk about Australia itself and its status as a curious—what is it—cipher, which I think the film is working with. Maybe Hanging Rock itself is kind of a stand in for all of Australia, but I just, you know, I was reflecting on the fact that Australia is a kind of a nowhere. Its name is from the Latin Terra australis incognita, so unknown southern land. So I guess its southern ness is the thing that remains in the name of the place, but it's otherwise sort of unlocatable. It's of the west, and that it was colonized by the west, and yet it is not Western. It's not really east either. You know, it's sort of like too far east to be east. It's in the Southern hemisphere. So we have this topsy turvy quality to a Western sensibility in which February 14 is the height of summer. In terms of its landscape, you know, it's sort of tropical, but not really, and only on the edges. It has the outback, the bush, this arid landscape, which at the same time can't really be mapped onto the more famed landscapes in the Western imagination that are desert, like the Sahara or, you know, it has a sort of frontier quality, but it's not as recognizable or legible to us as, say, the American frontier, the American West. And it has this history of colonization, but it's as a penal colony. So that's kind of a whole other thing. Right? So we can say that, you know, this film has attracted a lot of comparisons to something like Passage to India, which in my mind has a far more legible colonial statement, in a way. Or it's far more. Right. Like we think of India, when we think of places that were colonized by England, we think of that place as being a place which has its own long culture, its own architecture, its own sense of itself, and this extremely lush, verdant, tropical place. And then we think of the British coming in, right, and trying to laminate on top of that some sort of something, you know, whereas. Whereas Australia just doesn't have, you know, it has obviously the aboriginal peoples, of course, but in the Western imagination, that there isn't that kind of easy parallel. We don't Think of Australia, you know, it's not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of any number of these categorizations that we have in the west of understanding either the parts of the world which are other from the west or the parts of the world on which the west has left its mark. And I think that the fact that Australia kind of stands outside of a sort of easy narrative really makes it this ideal place for a story like this, which I'm. Which I'm suggesting is a sort of anti. Mystery or which is deconstructing the mystery story. Because in the way. In a way that's kind of Australia's whole bag. That's Australia's whole thing. It's this thing that. That can't be classified, that can't be understood, that there is no language to encapsulate. And so what happens on Hanging Rock is kind of like, you know, that mystery, that central plot point, is kind of like Australia itself. Which then leads me to think about the kind of people who come to Australia and therefore the kind of people who end up teaching at a school like Appleyard College. Because of course, on the one hand the girls are these fascinating creatures because their teenage girls are kind of nuts and they're, you know, a lot of these girls are beautiful and they're wealthy and they're connected to nature and they're all, you know, at the bloom of youth and all that. But of course, in all of the. In every instance that is about a repressive school, of course, the most fascinating people are the teachers that are there because the teachers are in this bizarre position of being probably at best middle class and being thrust into this situation in which they have to provide for themselves by ministering to these girls who are very shortly going to entirely leapfrog over them. And yet they have control over these upper class girls in the environment of the school. And so, and, and that I think is complicated. Or further. Yeah, further complicated. That already fascinating relationship with this idea of Australia. Like, why are these women here? You know, like in England, of course they're there because they're English and they need a job, right. But in Australia it's like, how did you get here? What's your. Greta McCraw is Scottish, you know, and there's that shade of. Because it's a penal colony, you know, and Australians have embraced this largely. But, you know, there's that hint of, you know, even if you were born here and you didn't immigrate here, perhaps your family has this sort of Sordid history. What's your background? Why? How did you end up here? I don't know all of that to say, like the French teacher is a fascinating figure to me. McCraw is a fascinating figure, less so because she just seems to be very sour faced and very, you know, exactly the kind of person we would associate with the school. And Appleyard, too, is a fascinating figure. 5:50 Wes: I think it's a forbidding and in many ways alien environment. Don't forget the kangaroos, Right? And the koala bears and the. 5:58 Erin: Yeah, yeah, there's that koala in one species. 6:00 Wes: Lots of species we don't have. 6:02 Erin: Yes, yes, many unique, endemic. Yeah, but species that are not found anywhere else. 6:08 Wes: Right, right. We can go out west in the United States and have an experience in quite an alien landscape. But Australia takes it to a different level in some ways and it's more forbidding and more harsh and more remote. And so in that way, I think you're also pointing to more mysterious. So. Yeah. I think one wonders, given the history of it being a penal colony and people being exiled to this place, why have these girls been exiled to boarding school? Many of them are English. Right. Are they all English or. I mean, as upper class or are there any upper class Australian girls at that school? 6:45 Erin: I think Miranda. Yeah, I think Miranda. 6:48 Wes: Oh, she's, she is Australian, of course. Right? 6:50 Erin: Yes. And she, she has familiarity with the bush. 6:54 Wes: Okay, Right. 6:55 Erin: It's noted that she would probably survive. 6:58 Wes: So maybe I'm wrong. Are any of the girls English? Maybe they're all Australian. 7:01 Erin: Well, I think, I think what, what does it mean to be English in this circumstance? Right. You know, we have these colonial families, perhaps, perhaps largely military families, perhaps not. I'm not sure. My impression is in India they were largely either associated with the military or with the East India Company. In Australia, I don't know. But, you know, if you end up moving there and then raise a family there and then your kids are born there, are they Australian? You know, but there's that funny line. 7:28 Wes: I think I should backtrack here. I mean, is anyone really sending their English daughter to an Australian boarding school? I. Halfway around the world? 7:36 Erin: Perhaps not. I mean, one of the plot points, for instance, in A Little Princess, the Burnett novel that I mentioned, and others, is that the children of colonial parents in India were sent to England to boarding school because of the climate, which was thought to be not good for children. So many were separated from their parents, but in the, in the reverse direction when it comes to India, at least. And you would Think depending on what part of Australia they were in with the anxiety over malaria and various other things. I mean, maybe that's not a problem in Australia, but one could imagine, you know, if they thought heat would make you crazy or something like that, if you were a kid, then they would want to send you to a climate like England, rather send you out of Australia. And of course, England's the only place, so. Yeah. I don't know. 8:20 Wes: We get the sense though that Michael is English. He's the nephew of a colonial governor. 8:24 Erin: Yes. He's only been there for a few weeks, I think it said. Yeah. 8:28 Wes: And then he's leaving at the end. 8:29 Erin: Yeah. I love the scene with the party and the string quartet in the middle of the man made lakes in the middle of the bush. It's like, you know, talk about denial. There's just no, there's no beating that level of denial. It's really just classic English behavior. 8:50 Wes: Well, again, it's this attempt to use the natural landscape as a form of leisure. Right. Just like the string quartet, it belongs among those things. And that's what the picnic is about as well. Except that there are dangers. Classical music is a little less dangerous than going on a picnic at hanging rock. 9:11 Erin: That's right. Not to make too fine a point of this, then we can abandon the teachers if we wish. But I'm thinking about what you said with Ms. McCraw and this idea about algebra. I wondered too, what kind of education these girls are getting. Insofar as Sarah knows more than Mrs. Appleyard about poetry. It doesn't seem to be a good one. Insofar as they have that sort of really stupid looking calisthenics class that they're doing at the end or towards the end of the film. You know, I was thinking about the difference between Ms. McCraw and Mademoiselle de Poitiers in terms of the difference in the nature of instruction. So the French teacher's appeal seems to be that she speaks French and therefore she's just going to speak French to the right one. One doesn't need any kind of special training if one is French and just gets transported to an English school. Right. So something maybe about the naturalism of that or the sort of lack of instruction inherent in that instruction, which isn't to say that the Australian girls aren't being instructed properly or don't have to exert themselves to learn French. But the difference between the difference in those two intelligences and why those two particular ones end up on this trip together, why the One with a more natural intelligence doesn't end up being spirited away. It's just. It's a source of, I think, endless fascination for me. You have these two completely opposite women. I think I like Ms. McCraw quite a bit, and I love that actress. She has a great, intelligent face and 10:36 Wes: she has, you know, some of the best lines, I think. 10:39 Erin: Yes. Yeah. 10:40 Wes: But, yeah, it's a great contrast in characters. I think in both cases, though, we can wonder. I described the girls as exiled, not from England, but if you're being sent off to boarding school, you know, it is the thing to do. Right. And it's not necessarily a punishment, but one could ask, if it is like being sent to a penal colony, what did you do wrong? 10:59 Erin: Yes. 11:00 Wes: And then for the teachers, the question becomes even more relevant. Why would you leave France and go to Australia? Unless, you know, you really got yourself into some trouble. 11:10 Erin: Yes. Or some tragedy befell your family. Yeah, yeah. 11:14 Wes: And trouble. Trouble could mean a pregnancy that you gave up for adoption at that time. Trouble could mean a lot of things. But so. And Lumley. Yeah, I should have. Is Lumley English or Australian? 11:26 Erin: I think she's Australian. 11:27 Wes: I can't remember. McCraw, you said, is Scottish. Yeah. 11:30 Erin: Yes. 11:31 Wes: So at least in the case of McCraw and de Poitiers, what happened to them that, you know, had them end up at this school in Australia. Yeah. It's the kind of thing where you can, you know, if you got yourself into enough trouble and you're not going to do what Sarah did, what do you do instead? You just go halfway around the world and start over. That kind of feeling. Yes, that kind of thing. So you do might be something, but 11:54 Erin: without the hope, without the hopefulness of going to America. You know, like, this is part of the difference, too. You know, I think there's the narrative about America. You can go there and you can have a fresh start and everything's going to be okay. The narrative about Australia is like, you go there because you're guilty, and then what, you punish them? 12:15 Wes: Manifest destiny. 12:17 Erin: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. 12:19 Wes: Foster's destiny. 12:20 Erin: Right. I mean, it's a lovely place, and I would love to go. And I just mean that there's no narrative about it that has to do with pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps or other obnoxious expressions. 12:31 Wes: So, yeah, I don't know if there's a. You know, the idea of a pioneer spirit, of course, plays a big role in the American psyche. 12:38 Erin: Yeah. There's the bushranger and the adventurer yeah, 12:41 Wes: but I don't know. It doesn't seem to mean the same thing in Australia. 12:47 Erin: That's right. 12:47 Wes: And that's why I mentioned Manifest Destiny. It doesn't. 12:49 Erin: Yes, exactly. 12:50 Wes: Yeah. What else do we want to talk about? I mean, there's Miranda's ineffable character or. I don't know how you would describe it. Dreamy and inscrutable maybe is a word I would use. 13:02 Erin: Yes. And her foreknowledge, or her. She seems connected to. I mean, of course, what she says about how she knows she's not gonna be here much longer could be related to other circumstances. In fact, she's this. In the book, the three that disappear are all senior girls. So, in fact, she's about to graduate. That's an element of it as well. 13:23 Wes: I mean, the film starts right, we have a girl's. There's credits. And as credits roll, a girl's voice. What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream. And that kind of sense of the unreal is pervasive. And Miranda, in a way, strongly exudes that. So I think we start out in Miranda's room. And there's flute music. And Miranda waking up looking very angelic. And having that kind of touched quality about her. It's a kind of self confidence, I suppose, that she exudes home with herself. Which I think you could. Could associate with class in a certain way. But it's not like adolescent youthful insecurity. She doesn't give that off. So maybe it's kind of a version of femininity which is fully at home with itself or something like that. As opposed to some more anxious form. And then I think Sarah looks back from a window, smiling at Miranda. There's a very loving relationship between them that one might wonder. You know, there's a homosexual element. Miranda is reading from Sarah's Valentine's card. Meet me love when day is ending. And at that point, actually, Miranda has just washed her face, but not dried her face, which I thought was quite odd. She has, like, beads of water hanging off her face. And reading that poem. 14:43 Erin: Probably because of the heat. 14:44 Wes: No, I think. You know, there's another scene where another girl has washed her face and dried herself normally. And then Miranda doesn't just leaves the water there. 14:51 Erin: But maybe Miranda's smarter about the heat because she's from the bush. 14:54 Wes: Yeah, maybe you're idealizing Miranda just like everyone else. I'm just kidding. 15:02 Erin: I think there's something to that. 15:03 Wes: Meet me love when day is ending with the Beads of water cooling your angelic Botticelli face. And then you get a shift to another scene where another girl's reading from another girl's card. I love thee for thy highborn grace. Quoting a real poem there. As opposed to one that's been written by one of the girls. Then you have Edith counting, kind of gluttonously counting all the Valentine's cards that she's gotten. 15:28 Erin: Even Edith has many admirers. 15:30 Wes: Maybe it's worth kind of going over the different cast of characters here. Because there's Sarah, who I think we've sufficiently described. And then Miranda. And then we have Irma. Right? 15:41 Erin: Yes, the dark haired girl. 15:43 Wes: At a certain point when they're on the rock. Edith wants to comment on the fact that Sarah's been writing love poetry in the dunny in the bathroom. And Miranda will say, she's an orphan. She's an orphan. And Irma compares her to a deer that she adopted that didn't live. So Edith says, Blanche said Sarah writes poetry in the dunny. She found one there on the floor. All about Miranda. Miranda, she's an orphan. Then Irma said, sarah reminds me of a little deer Papa brought home once. I looked after it, but it died. Mama always said it was doomed. Edith says, doomed? What does that mean, Irma? Doomed to die, of course. And then Edith says, I think I must be doomed. I don't feel well at all. She's the one who's not doomed. 16:32 Erin: Yeah. Anyway, anyone could tell she's the least doomed person on the expedition. Nothing could kill Edith. 16:42 Wes: And then there's Marian, who says, I wish you would all stop talking for once. And Marian has some great speeches earlier on about people being ants. 16:51 Erin: Yes, she's the little Miss McCraw. She's the class. 16:56 Wes: Right? Exactly. Whatever can those people be doing down there? Like a lot of ants. Surprising the number of human beings are without purpose. Although it is probably they're performing some function unknown to themselves. 17:08 Erin: Love that one. 17:09 Wes: And then Miranda says, everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place. And by which she meant our lives are going to end at the right time and place. The contrast that comes out here is the superciliousness of that kind of speech by Marian. But she's doing it from this kind of third person perspective. Aren't we all kind of like ants and purposeless in comparison to the forces of nature and the scale of things and all of that. And then Irma's relationship to Sarah, instead of being very compassionate, let's say like Miranda, even though there seems to be an element of condescension there for Irma, it is quite condescending and suggests. Right. Foretells the fact that Sarah is in fact doomed like the deer. So Miranda, I think is. She's a very special case among the girls. I guess I want to point out with her character and the way she relates to Sarah and her comfort with herself and the way in which she can become this sort of Pied Piper, I think, become this sort of idealized image of femininity, maybe. 18:17 Erin: Yes. 18:18 Wes: That can lead people to their ruin. 18:21 Erin: In the book, it's clearer. But Irma is supposed to be the beautiful one in the book. And I mean, much is made of Miranda's beauty as well, but she's supposed to be the sort of traditional, not classically, but traditionally beautiful one. And she's, she's an heiress. I think the class distinction is what's preserved in her speeches about Sarah there that you're pointing to. You know, Sarah's someone to be pitied. That has as much relation to us as a deer to the, you know, it's human adoptive parents who basically can't do anything to help. You know, there's no helping the poor. Right. The poor are poor. And that's, that's the end of it. The Marian speech, you know, that she has that curious disconnect, you know, whatever can those people be doing down there? Well, those are the people they were just with. Those are their schoolmates. There's a curious lack of recognition and as you suggest, is speaking from the third person. And I think this is where we can say, okay, Appleyard has, has permitted them to go beyond the yard into the, you know, the rock as representative of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Right. And they have at this point ascended to some sort of knowledge. And they have a wisdom now which makes where they came from somewhat unrecognizable. And of course, this is part of what is so antagonizing about Irma when she returns. And she has that fantastic scarlet get up that she wears before she leaves because she's crossed over now. She has big girl knowledge now. She has grown up knowledge. She's been through an experience. And of course that can be just simply the result of having been through a near death experience and to come out the other side. Or it could be the result of what happened to her on the rock, 20:02 Wes: which was, remember, she's quite intact. Quite intact. 20:06 Erin: Yes, yes, says the doctor repeatedly. 20:10 Wes: Yes, about her and Edith. And Edith, that's the Important thing. 20:15 Erin: Right. Yeah. And yet she's become a woman somehow. 20:20 Wes: But of course. Exactly. You know, as you point out, not. 20:22 Erin: Yeah. So it's as though all of these angry Eves. Children of Eve. Right. Still haven't eaten of the fruit and are quite upset about the fact that the one who has isn't sharing their knowledge with them. That seems to be the chief problem there. But I think Miranda. Miranda came into the picture already having eaten something thing. Right. And I think. I think that's the difference. So I think this is extremely common and related. You know, Miranda is the it girl there are in. Among teenage girls. And it doesn't necessarily have to be sexual or whatever, but simply this homosocial environment, which maybe exacerbates this. But this is the. The girl crush, specifically on the older girl who seems to know things. Everything that you don't know when you're just a freshman and she's a senior and, you know, you. If you're lucky, she's not a mean girl at the same time. No, not at all. Not at all. No. It's a very, very different thing. It's a very different thing that. 21:21 Wes: Yeah. 21:21 Erin: Very rarely are the mean girls, which is to say the popular girls, deserving of that kind of. That kind of status based on anything having to do with looks or intelligence or anything. They're usually like just the terrors of the school. And that's how they get all their power. But. But on an individual. But I mean, I remember being a freshman and having senior girls that I was that in. In the theater productions that I did who, you know, when they would give me attention, it was like, oh, my gosh, it was the most, you know, incredible thing to be given attention by these girls who were beautiful, mature, knew everything were kind to me. And, you know, I think this is. This is like a universal thing with. I don't know about the way things work with boys, but I'm sure there's probably a parallel to this. Yeah. And Miranda seems somehow to be the one that everyone in the school agrees is the top banana. 22:16 Wes: Is there anything to say about why they keep going? This is the thing that freaks Edith out so much. Right. So that they've been trekking on, and they kind of, at a certain point seem like they're walking in a kind of funk, in a kind of daze because they're so tired and hot and they lie down on the rocks looking very tired. You know, we get shots of the kind of peaks of the rock against the sky, and. And then there's a little. There's a little brief cut actually to McCraw. And the other girl's lying at the bottom of the rock. And McCraw looks up, like, what's going on up there? And then looks back down into her. Her geometry book. And then after that shot, we see top down, the girls lying on a kind of called a courtyard or a clearing, like a rock clearing. And that shot is through this very hot air and they're lying down and, you know, it's a kind of distant shot from up high. And then Miranda wakes up and then Marian and then Irma. And it's. Right. Without being alerted by Miranda. It's not like anyone wakes anyone else up. They just sort of wake up simultaneously and get up and Edith is complaining, when are we going home? And then Miranda goes off into a kind of a crag or crevice and the others follow her and they don't respond to Edith. Then they don't look back. And that's when Edith screams and runs down. So, yeah, what do we say there about what has happened psychologically or symbolically? I mean, what is that? 23:41 Erin: Much is made of the fact that Edith isn't looking at the rocks. She keeps looking at her feet. I might be one of them. You know, there's people who can't be hypnotized or something. 23:50 Wes: Well, it's like she counts the Valentine's cards, right? Look how many I got. She doesn't get lost in the poetry, reading them some love poem another girl's written for her. And it's just more about quantity. 24:03 Erin: Exactly. 24:03 Wes: I would be very much like Edith. Look at this stack of, you know, Valentine's girl. 24:14 Erin: She promises not to complain, but then she does. And then she says the thing about it being nasty here, which, you know, there seems to be an environment which it's not so different from where they just were with the other girls, but different enough in terms of the feel of the place, the atmosphere, that she finds it to be extremely nasty. And she never takes off her shoes, which is important, so she stays protected somehow from, you know, so her sole insulates her. 24:42 Wes: Not in touch with the rock. 24:44 Erin: That's right. She can't give herself over to the experience. Everything is about her discomfort, her this or that. She seems to be a complainer and she does not let go in the way the other girls are capable of doing. 24:56 Wes: Yeah, but what's going on with the other girls, I think was my question. 25:00 Erin: That's the million dollar question. 25:01 Wes: It might be an unanswerable. 25:03 Erin: Yeah, I Mean, have you ever been to a place like this before? I have an experience at a place like this. It was at Devil's Tower. Tower. Have you ever been to a place that was overwhelmingly beautiful in this? I mean, there are. There are places that are overwhelmingly beautiful. What happened at Devil's Tower was extremely unusual. And I think it's the closest parallel I can make to Hanging Rock, which is, nothing happened there. I don't mean to make that sound more, you know, like, oh, yes, what happened to me? At Devil's Tower. 25:35 Wes: Devil's Tower. Discovered two days later. 25:37 Erin: Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Ridiculous. 25:40 Wes: Englishman. 25:41 Erin: I'm putting this in a stupid way. No, you know what I mean. Or. Or you don't, and I'll explain it. So you go up there. If people don't know if they've ever seen Close Encounters. That's the rock formation from Close Encounters. I think it is the one that's the one with Richard Dreyfuss and his mashed potatoes, right? Yeah. So it's that, and it's enormous. You have no idea how enormous it is until you go up there. To walk all the way around it. There's a trail to walk all the way around it is like, over a mile. It's very much like Hanging Rock. It has this long history of people engaging with it. It has, I think, in the Kiowa tradition, a sort of mythology about it, about how it was formed with this bear with the claws. Anyway, it's a sacred site, and it is the spookiest place, one of the spookiest places I've ever been. I was there in broad daylight. The woods surrounding it and the rock itself, it's indescribable. And there is a sound, a very specific sound, which is. Which I've only ever heard in Picnic at Hanging Rock. It's the only other place I have heard a sound like this. And I have footage. I have video footage from Devil's Tower. You could hear this sound. It's like the sound of the wind going through the rock or on the flutes of the rock. It's an entirely different kind of rock than Hanging Rock, which I would imagine would create the sound because of the air holes that are probably created by the nature of the str. Of the structure. Devil's Tower is a completely different kind of rock. So I don't know why the sound was there as well, but it was an extremely loud, like, ringing in your ears kind of sound. It was extremely spooky. You just got this sense that you were not alone there, not just because of the Other people that were there, right? Yes. And I was very taken by it. 27:22 Wes: Now, let me ask you a question. What did you do with your mashed potatoes that night? 27:26 Erin: I did. I've never played with my mashed potatoes. Thank you. I'm very civilized. Didn't leave my senses or anything like that. But I. I kept getting goosebumps all over my body. I kept getting. I was very, very affected by it. It was a strange thing. I think that what these girls are experiencing is not unlike a very extreme version of whatever happened to me at Devil's Tower in terms of just this bodily. You have a bodily response to these types of environments. And I think it's this curious case of an environment in which one feels the presence of people, even where, you know, there's this curious quality of some of these rock formations in the west. And I'd imagine this is similar where they look like they're man made, but they're not. They're natural. And so one has this sense that it's an almost like an abandoned castle or an abandoned fortification or something, but it isn't. And that trick, too, is extremely hypnotic somehow. I don't know. This has nothing to do with anything. My personal experience is not an answer to your question. I'm sorry. 28:30 Wes: No, this is good. Can we point to any other similar stories where the hypnotic quality of nature leads them to play with their mashed potatoes, so to speak? Sorry. Leads them to their demise. Leads them to their destruction. 28:44 Erin: Not to destruction, but there's a moment which is very evocative for me in a movie which is also based on a novel called Enchanted April, in which these English women escape this particularly rainy spring by going on a trip to Italy. And there are scenes in that film and in the novel on which it's based in which the women are laying on the rocks on the coastline of Italy. And at one point, one of them is lying so still that a lizard. You know, it's a very similar scene where a lizard kind of comes in, she's actually awake, she's aware of it, and she's just lying there, but she doesn't react to the lizard kind of crawling over her and then crawling away. It's such a peaceful moment, you know, they've all gotten their groove back in one way or another, and they're at one with nature, you know. So there's that, which I think is a trope that I've seen more times than that, but that's the one that I could think of because that's a film I love. And that's another experience that I think is extremely common. I don't. I don't think the Devil's Tower experience is extremely common because those places aren't so extremely common. That's. You know. 29:50 Wes: Yeah. I don't think I've had that experience. I don't think I've. 29:53 Erin: The Devil's Tower or just the feeling at one with nature while you're lying on the rock. 29:57 Wes: I've had the feeling at one with nature experience on a rare occasion. 30:01 Erin: Oh, you've talked about that before when we did the Wordsworth. 30:04 Wes: Oh, did I? After taking a hike. 30:05 Erin: Mm. 30:06 Wes: I was in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yeah. After climbing. Doing a lot of climbing. Being very, very out of shape, being exhausted, but then reaching a lookout point right at sunset and sitting down and being very in the zone. But. Yeah. No. So. Well, getting to the point where I have a. Maybe I'm hypnotized to the point where I want to keep going. Enter into the fugue, whatever fugue state those girls are in. To the point where they could just take the stairway to heaven. 30:34 Erin: That's it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I've been in that a few. A few times. 30:41 Wes: It's like, girl, we gotta get. I'm determined to do this whole hike. We're gonna go to the top. This would be a good Chevy Chase vacation moment. Going all the way up. You know, scene where they're all dying of heatstroke. 31:01 Erin: Well, so what do we make? I mean, we haven't yet addressed, really, Michael or. 31:06 Wes: Yeah. What's his deal? 31:07 Erin: What's his deal? Yeah, yeah. So we have this sort of parallel homosocial. You know, Michael and his buddy Albert, who watch girls cross creeks and drink from the same bottle of beer, you know. So you have a sort of parallel there. 31:23 Wes: Yeah. And you wonder, in a way, if it's a bit of a curse that they've cast on the. On the girls. Right. The idea that they've. That they might have been involved in some malfeasance is not. The film doesn't seem to entertain it very seriously, at least at length. You know, we do get Albert lusting after the girls, and then he'll say something to which Michael objects, which is that she'd have a decent pair of legs. He's talking about Miranda all the way up to her bum. Michael says, I'd rather you didn't say crude things like that, Albert. 31:58 Erin: Shocking. Shocking. I say shocking. 32:01 Wes: And Albert says, I say the crude things. You just think them. So there's saying them out Loud. There's thinking them and then there's doing. There's acting on them. And as we know, people can feel guilty about just thinking them without even acting on them and think people can even have the irrational idea that their thoughts maybe are like deeds, that their thoughts might actually harm people. And so if we take that idea seriously, we can think of this concupiscence of these boys as cursing or harming the girls. If we look at it the way someone with OCD might look at it, or someone with omnipotence of thought might think about this, might wonder if it's this kind of desire which wrecks things, so that the feminine, in a way, is set up to elicit this kind of desire, but in one way or another is destroyed by it. 32:57 Erin: What do we take then, of the fact that the movie, I think, toys with and then very swiftly abandons the possibility that Michael and Irma will have a relationship? Right. Am I making that up? Yeah, I think that's right, because he saved her. So they both had this experience, and now perhaps they're going to be together. 33:20 Wes: That would be a nice natural development. And he's looking kind of fondly at her as she's lying in bed, right? 33:27 Erin: Yes. Yeah. Crucial to this development is the lack of conversation between them at all. So. 33:32 Wes: Yeah. 33:34 Erin: Then they talk and realize other than this one terrible thing that happened, they have nothing in common. 33:40 Wes: We don't. Yeah. And we don't really know exactly why Michael is so intent on finding the girls. You know, it almost is as if he feels personally responsible for what's happened to them. 33:52 Erin: I don't mean this to sound like quite as much of a condemnation as it will, but there's a great deal of paternalism there. You know, he was on the rock that day, too, and therefore what happened to them was somehow his fault, even if it wasn't his fault. I think that the film plays really cleverly with the. You know, we see his innocence at the same time, and yet we see the guilt that he carries, which looks like guilt over what's happened to them at first. But there's. Yes, there's this paternalism that something happened on his watch. He just happened to be there, and yet it's his responsibility, which I think is indicative of the kind of attitude of the colonial. 34:30 Wes: Okay. If it's colonial, he goes native in a way, because he. 34:34 Erin: Yes. 34:35 Wes: He falls subject to the same spell and ends up in the same spot, in a way, as the rest of the girls, which is he's dying on the rock. And it's only because Albert comes and gets him that he's saved. 34:47 Erin: Right. 34:47 Wes: You know, he's shaking and he's mute. Right. He can't even tell Albert that he's found Irma. He just has to, you know, hand off the piece of the dress as he's being taken away. So he's in a really bad state. But you can see how his. His fascination with Miranda, in a way, is of a piece with the fascination of the other girls. And he's been kind of led up the rock by the Pied Piper as well. And then you can contrast that fascination. So there's a hybrid quality to his interest in a way. Right. He's an investigator and he's more successful than Sergeant Bumpher. But he also has this other fascination which motivates him, which is precisely what Sergeant Bumpher doesn't have. Bumphur seems perplexed and a bit put off. We never quite, you know, we never fully understand what's going on with him and why, you know, is he just incompetent or what's going on that. But there seems to be a way in which this whole thing. And maybe it's the possibility of a sex crime, basically that's what's. Which interferes with Bumpher's ability to do his job because it's distasteful. Anything sexual is too much to take. But he. He doesn't have enough motivation to get the job done. And he's even right to the point where after Irma is found, there's a bit of an uprising among people in the town. Like this boy found her and you weren't able to. And what are you doing anyway? I was trying to speak to. Not to get us on the Bumpher, the sergeant, necessarily, but just speaking to Michael's complicated motivations. 36:23 Erin: Yes. Yeah, I think they're both. Bumpher and Michael are either attracted to or repelled by forces which they themselves can't name or acknowledge, but which they feel are there. 36:34 Wes: Right. 36:34 Erin: So the. The. The sexual implication for Bumpher is the. The fate worse than death. The thing that he does not want to be sort of infected by or he doesn't even want to imagine, because that. That seems to be the worst thing that this society can think of. You know, I like what you're talking about in terms of the idea of his having infected them with his thoughts. That seems to be crucial. Like there's a guilt element which is crucial here, and then also a paternalism at the same time, and the idea that he is responsible somehow for what's happened to them and for their protection, so that he's in a sort of loop of colonial paternal responsibility, which Bumpher can't sort of rouse himself to feel on behalf of these women because he was not personally taken under their spell or something, and therefore can stand a bit apart from it. But, yeah, the spell of the girls seems to be an extension of whatever was the spell they were under that caused the disappearance in the first place. And maybe Bumpher is more like an Edith and Michael is more like, you know, one of the girls. But it does seem to be, you know, a Rorschach test for the people in the town. Their response to this, because it is so fuzzy, so utterly incomprehensible. 37:44 Wes: There's the suggestion that the uptightness and the aversion to sexuality is what makes the girls unfindable and what leads to their ruin. Right. One of the things that. So at that T where Michael's saying, you know, young ladies wouldn't be allowed to go walking in the forest like that, the last line in that scene is the sergeant saying, as the girls were jumping the creek, what were you thinking of? 38:08 Erin: Yes. Yeah. 38:09 Wes: That's the closest we get to him suggesting to Michael that he had had some illicit desires that he might have acted on. There's a class element there as well. Right. We might see the sergeant's reluctance having to do with the fact that he is not going to accuse a person of this standing, of committing a crime like this, maybe. 38:32 Erin: Right. 38:32 Wes: But at the very least, there's this aversion to the potentially sexual component. And we find out, right, we hear from Edith that McCraw was just in her underwear and that Edith saw her at a certain point. And then later on, a maid will conceal from the police the fact that Irma was, what, missing her underwear or something? Missing her corset. So maybe, you know, at a thematic level, the girls are not findable because of their sexuality, let's say. 39:04 Erin: Yeah. 39:05 Wes: And they're lost because of. 39:07 Erin: That's great. And it gets. At the extent to which the film kind of has it both ways, because we keep seeing these images of Miranda after she's gone, which. Which leads me to think a little bit more about this idea of photography. But we have, on the one hand this. Well, we have a sort of two pronged thing on the one hand, which is the Victorian idea of, you know, there's nothing. And maybe even a romantic idea that there's nothing more beautiful than a dead girl. Right. And we also have this idea that to kill the Girls or to get rid of the girls somehow is to, like, get rid of the temptation that they represent, the sexuality, they represent, whatever. Whatever is threatening about them in Victorian society. So that's. That's sort of on the one hand, but on the other hand, we have the fact that they are gone, the fact that there's no image, so nothing more beautiful than this image. But then the image isn't there. There are no dead bodies of these girls. So that we're denied that dead girl. Beautiful dead girl. What is it? Satisfaction, you know, the dead girl satisfaction, actually. You know. You know what I mean? We're denied the image of what's. What's happened, and therefore denied the supposed beauty that accompanies this. I hope listeners will understand I'm, you know, saying all of this in air quotes that comes from this idea of beauty cut down in its prime or. Or whatever. We're denied that image, and yet the film provides it. Right. The film keeps showing us images of Miranda and the. There's an association as well in Michael's mind with the swan, the idea that Swan might be, you know, twinned with her. So we keep seeing the swan over and over again. We do see the image in the newspaper of Miranda's face, 1900. Sort of looks almost like a sketch drawing, slightly more. More involved than a sketch drawing. Black and white, fuzzy image of Miranda's face, a photograph printed in the paper. And it makes me think of Sontag's On Photography. You know, the idea of the photographic image is the thing which is something akin to a colonizing force, you know, the desire to own the world, to capture the world in the way that a safari hunter would try to capture something of the world and mount it on one's wall to prove some kind of dominance over it, to prove that one has had these experiences and. And preserved them, or come back with proof that the experience was. Had this idea of capture and of making sense of a world which is scary and dangerous and nonsensical. This is another element of Sontag's essay, in which the camera is the protective screen between you and, you know, very often the foreign culture that you are encountering. So you protect yourself by taking the photo. You don't know what to do with yourself. You take a photo, you know, you come up against something which is foreign and strange, and rather than really looking at it, you put a lens between you and the thing. All of these complexities, I think, are inherent, very, very submerged, but inherent in this, with these images. And, you know, we see people with photographs Going to the hanging rock and trying to photograph the rock in order to understand what has happened there. Right. And so, in a way, the film is like, by virtue of being a film, is working against its own message or working against the impulses which are motivating the film's plot. Because there is something being captured there. And it's about. The whole movie is about this sort of inability to capture, the inability to pin down and to quantify and categorize and colonize the ways in which it works against that, through collage, through slow motion, various other things which are manipulations, which are, in a way, sort of hyper photography. But at the same time, they work against the singularity of the image or of easy readings of certain images. 42:47 Wes: Yeah. No, you're making me think of the imaginary in cinema. I think there's a book called the Imaginary Signifier by Christian Metz. Yeah, it's about psychoanalysis in the cinema. So just briefly, I think for Lacan, the imaginary has something to do with. He's thinking of a phase in early childhood when you see yourself in the mirror and you identify with the image and you're identifying with its cohesion physically. You know, just seeing your body and you're identifying with its efficacy. Right. Limbs that can actually do things. And we all know how toddlers delight in being able to use their bodies as they become more. Get greater mastery over their bodies, and then that becomes the way in which they develop the fantasy of their own ego being, or subjectivity and identity being something stable and cohesive. So they use this image as a way of forming an identity. So it's a kind of identification that's the imaginary as opposed to the symbolic. And the symbolic is more representative of what happens after you are inducted into the social world and are following all. You know, get to the point where you're following on society's rules. The name of the father, Lacan would say, which he sees as metaphorical castration. There's a wholeness in the imaginary which is disturbed in the symbolic realm. But I think so when you have these other girls identifying with. So they're taken with Miranda. But it's partly erotic in the broad sense. You could say it's partly about love, but it's also about identification, about wanting to be her, to become like her and to be as whole and perfect as she seems. But as you've pointed out, there's something deathlike about that wholeness and perfectness. So you can follow the imaginary image. Right. It's like, ultimately, Narcissus, that's what Narcissus is doing. Right. Being entranced with himself in the pool. In the pool. The image of himself in the pool to the point where he doesn't take care of himself and dies. So the imaginary can be something with which we identify. Can be very dangerous. It can. Or another way to put this is our ideals and aspirations or ego ideal can come at the expense of our real self. 45:16 Erin: Hmm. Sure. But then how does this work for. For Miranda? Because I think part of Miranda's appeal is that she's not like this narcissist. I think you're suggesting the other girls are like that. They're idealizing her. 45:30 Wes: Yeah. I mean she just gets to be what she is. 45:32 Erin: She just is. Right? Yeah. And she doesn't have to. She's not part of that wholeness seems to be about the fact that she isn't self obsessed. So the fact that she's the ringleader. 45:42 Wes: Yeah. She comes across. I think it's important she comes across as authentic and authentically whole. Not that anyone is of course completely. But she has a self possession to her. 45:52 Erin: She's more self actualized than the other girls. 45:54 Wes: Yeah, she's. Yeah. As much as a 18 year old. Is she 18? But no. Yeah. I'm thinking of the relationship of. And she wouldn't need to be actualized of course at all. Or she just needs to give that appearance. And of course again, we can do it with our own. We don't need another person necessarily. But we kind of do. You know, if it's not Miranda, it's celebrities or it's teachers or authority figures. People you want to be. 46:24 Erin: Yeah. You have to have an identification with someone to model adulthood. Or normal. Even just normal behavior. Never mind idealized behavior. Right. 46:33 Wes: So in other words, going up the rock is like getting excited. You know, despite the fact that you're already a doctor. About becoming an actor. I'm becoming an actor. 46:46 Erin: The world's first analrapist. 46:50 Wes: You can follow your aspirations to your total destruction. 46:55 Erin: There you go. I did not know we would get to Arrested Development here. But we normally do. Okay. Well, that was fun. I hope. 47:03 Wes: Sorry to stop halfway up the mountain, but more cautious than some people. 47:08 Erin: Yes, yes. Lest we be carried away. We won't continue talking about this film and fall deeper under its spell. That wasn't nasty here at all. I'm glad I came to paraphrase and turn Edith on her head. Thank you. 47:23 Wes: Thank you. 47:27 Erin: And thanks to everyone who listened. 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