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On the surface: it starts out as a Scream-like telling of ghost stories between two teenage girls in school girl uniforms edging into fetish territory. It turns serious quickly, transforming itself in a Night Gallery/Outer Limits/ Twilight Zone plot with symbols and visual elements drawn from two major areas: Celtic mythology and the Jewish story of The Fall. The former supplies horses, islands, mists and a creepy critter, not quite human, with long hair somehow involved with water, a well, and an ambient curse, of shady origins. The latter supplies a legged snake, a tree, an idyllic beginning destroyed by a woman's search for knowledge? a child?, sucking in her reluctant husband and dragging them both down into pain which eventually seeps out to affect the entire human race -- or at least everyone within easy reach.
Well, creepy and all, but I had this nagging feeling (creepy and impossible to ignore) that I was missing something. As I lay awake in bed, I worked out part of what it was.
Urban legends that succeed in scaring, and arguably most if not all of mythology, contains a clear moral that supports a widely held belief or suspicion. My favorite example is still the woman-who-tans-in-salons-too-often. One day, she smells cooked meat and her doctor says she's cooked herself from the inside -- nothing she can do but die horribly. When this was circulating in the mid-80s, I was personally opposed to tanning, period, but I had a sister who tanned fairly regularly. When the story came 'round, I laughed. She believed it. She'd managed to talk herself out of worrying about skin cancer, mentally, but her gut knew what was up and sprang this puppy on her.
Myths serve a purpose. What purpose does The Ring serve?
Hmmm.
Anna Morgan repeatedly miscarries but won't give up. Despite the apparent opposition of her husband, who says she wasn't meant to have kids, they go off and come back with a kid, telling murky stories about her origin. Adopted? Natural birth? Just who was the father? Look how it turns out.
Moral: Women who put off bearing children should accept their reduction in fertility and not monkey with their fate. In particular, God Only Knows what Evil Man might have donated the sperm used in artificial insemination, and what Bad Seed might result. Further, whatever additional "treatment" is used to ensure fertility might further mess with the resulting offspring.
Like The King in Yellow and somewhat like The Sufferings of Werther by Goethe, all who view the tape which seems to have no origin (no control track) are rendered mad in a contagious manner, dying horribly by accident, at their own hand, or that of another, mysteriously.
Moral: TV is one thing, but when computers can create any reality imaginable, and propagate it instantaneously, monitors are scary portals to a dangerous, evil world. Don't invite shit in. It might savage you, and turn you into an infectious beast. Yes, the tape is analog, but the fear is digital and there's a strong viral sense to it. And whatever you do, keep it away from your kids, and don't copy it and save it for later.
Noah has a bad father, and decides to be an absentee father, then dies before he can be a real father. He's also unable to protect his son from evil, either directly or indirectly, through mom's complicity with the bad seed. Mr. Morgan denies responsibility for "his" daughter, and eventually has no escape but suicide.
Moral: Bad or absent fathers deserve to die, and go relatively unmourned.
Anna Morgan wants a child so badly she does all kinds of stuff to get one. Then she kills her daughter. Rachel chooses a father for her child unwisely, then leaves him out of it. She exposes her son to evil, and to protect him, corrupts him. In an effort to find stuff out, she encourages other children to think that drugs etc. are okay and/or cool. Rachel trusts the Morgan girl, and helps her, despite a lot of indications that she is Evil.
Moral: Women have relativistic morals, or no morals at all when children are in the picture. They shouldn't be trusted. See also (6) below.
The Morgan daughter is accused of a number of things: causing hallucinations or bad images in mom's head (post-partum depression? or just a woman with major baby-frenzy who doesn't like the fact that her daughter is growing up?), scaring the horses, ruining the crops and the local fishery. Dad accepts mom's story, and punishes the daughter. When bad stuff keeps happening, mom and dad get the doctor to lock her up and forget about her. The institution accepts the story so far, isolating her from other people in a very low-stimulus environment, and then is weirded out by her not sleeping or having a normal schedule, and by the art she produces. Mom eventually kills her. As it turns out, that wasn't good enough.
Moral: Someone who does Evil Things may have been horribly abused as a child. Who knows whether they started Evil or abuse made them Evil. It doesn't matter. Reform will never work. Locking them up won't work. Asking questions after they have been executed will just make all kinds of other people feel really bad, and maybe commit suicide, so just fucking well leave it alone. It doesn't even matter if they were the source of evil or whatever, as long as things improve after they are locked up and/or executed. Reporters who ask questions should be viewed with deep suspicion. Don't listen to them. They may poison you, too.
Moral 2? Self-expression is overrated. It just causes a lot of trouble. People should express themselves in predictable, understandable ways, just like everyone else does.
Rachel's sister sends Rachel to investigate. Rachel does, and infects Noah, her son and presumably the world with it. Sarama crawls rotting from the TV set to scare the cousin and Noah to death. Anna kills her daughter. Rachel asking questions induces Mr. Morgan's suicide.
Moral: Women are attractive, cryptic and hard to understand. But it doesn't matter. Eventually, they'll be the death of you.
I'd like to say something about how Jungian autumn, mist, darkness, wells, water and horses are. But I'm not sure just what. Then there's the penis like Lighthouse with the big rocks surrounded by water that could be balls -- notably off screen and hard to see.
ps Another reviewer pointed out that only multi-level marketers will survive in this new world. Hmmm.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created: November 25, 2002 Updated: November 25, 2002