Analysis of Twin Peaks The Return, Rock Muses

When the homecoming queen, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), is murdered in Twin Peaks, Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), a boyishly chirpy, yet noble FBI agent, who possesses a child-like wonder for the world around him, is sent to investigate the case. Mystically-inclined, Agent Cooper is open to any leads, no matter how metaphysical their origin. In one of the most iconic episodes we enter Dale's dream where Laura Palmer whispers the name of her killer in our hero's ear. This takes place in the Red Room, a Bardo-like realm where our characters meet otherworldly entities and tussle with the dark side of their souls (embodied in a shadow self) before passing through to the next plane of existence. Here they meet their evil doppelgänger, whom they have to face with "perfect courage" or "it will annihilate your soul". Or as Lynch puts it, "the unified field", where he believes all great ideas come from. Frost sensed the fans growing restless, thinking Lynch too absolutist in not solving the mystery. In a 2000 interview with Entertainment Weekly, he reflects on Lynch not wanting to reveal the killer: "I know David was always enamoured of that notion, but I felt we had an obligation to the audience to give them some resolution." It has been suggested that the BOB entity is thought up by Laura as a coping mechanism, and though the Twin Peaks storyline doesn't exactly confirm or deny this idea, BOB is a very much an evil entity that has purchase over the minds of other people too, particularly if they are those supersensitive enough to other realms. Acerbic Agent Albert Rosenfield, played by Miguel Ferrer, postulates that BOB "is just the evil that men do".

Lynch had been right about the primacy of the central mystery. The network was going to cancel Twin Peaks but, with some arm-twisting from Lynch, ABC allowed Frost and Lynch to see the thing through to the end of the second season. And then the unexpected happened: the final episode of season two, "Beyond Life and Death", airing on 10 June 1991, became one of the best episodes of the series. Lynch revived the show with the defibrillator that is his boundless imagination. Having nothing left to lose made him more ingenious than ever.

The season two finalé sees Dale Cooper enter the red room, now known as The Black Lodge, the realm from where BOB descended, to rescue his girlfriend Annie (Heather Graham), only for Cooper's evil doppelgänger to escape, with good Cooper left trapped in the Lodge. And to make matters ten times worse, Bad Cooper ("Mr C") is also possessed by the BOB entity. This is deeply wounding. Laura is able to resist BOB, but she's also in touch with her shadow side. Did this happen to Cooper because he hasn't acknowledged his capacity for darkness? Lynch was still haunted by his creation, in particular the character Laura Palmer. He wanted to make a prequel film, Fire Walk with Me, detailing the last seven days of Laura's life. 

Fire Walk with Me is an extraordinary piece of work. However, it is ruthlessly uncompromising. We see the last seven days of Laura's life, and there is a great empathy to the story. Here Laura is revealed to be a powerful messianic figure, whose light balances the darkness of BOB, who wants to possess her -- Laura's messianic status is confirmed in episode eight of season 3 when we see the Giant (Carel Struycken) making her and sending her to Earth as a reaction to the birth of BOB. At first glance, Laura doesn't appear to be much of a messiah. A contradictory figure, she helps the elderly by day and prostitutes herself by night in a coke-addled frenzy. There are times when her behavior is downright demonic. There's plenty of darkness in her, but (and here is the crucial difference) it's on a conscious level. She is actively engaging with her dark side, a necessary exigency for her to eventually counteract the darkness in the world.

This is the difference between Dale and Laura: Laura knows you have to concede that evil stirs within her/our own soul in order to conquer it, whereas Dale just wants to conquer it. Rather than be ensnared by evil she puts on a ring that weds her to the Red Room and then she dies. Understanding evil, in her mind, is the best defence against it. How often do you hear that a man who has killed his family was the friendliest neighbour on the street? Obliviousness to darkness means it can possess you more easily. Fire Walk With Me was not fully embraced by fans. Very little light was shed on Dale Cooper's fate, and the film was a commercial bellyflop and received no fanfare, probably due to how unflinching it is, the quirky tone of the show no longer present. In an article for Premiere magazine, David Foster Wallace wrote that he thought it was due to Laura's twofold nature, claiming multiplex audiences want escape, and not this kind of moral ambiguity, as they feel implicated by it. 

In Twin Peaks, good and evil aren't black and white. To Foster Wallace, Fire Walk With Me is a movie that requires that these troubling "features of ourselves and the world not be dreamed away or judged away or massaged away, but acknowledged." In 2014, the most wonderful thing for Twin Peaks fans occurred: Lynch announced on Twitter that the show was coming back with a third season. Having matured and cast aside their grudges, Frost and Lynch got back to work, with Frost admitting that it was Twin Peaks' fervent fandom that kept the show alive in his mind. The Return: The new season's pacing was glacial but in a hypnotic way, unfurling like smoke before our eyes. This slowness is entrancing. Our culture has sped up to a distressing degree, so to enter into a world with such a creeping pace at first feels peculiar, and then radical. Pretty soon, it becomes clear that Lynch is rewriting the rules of television all over again, giving us not what we want but what we need. For consciousness to be expanded, one has to ditch one's formulas. Something deeper is happening here.

Italian psychologist, Roberto Assagioli believed that within us there are "subpersonalities", multiple modes in our psyches that are triggered without us giving the green-light. These "subpersonalities" are autonomous and need to be integrated or else they have the capacity to subsume our whole identity, particularly if they are disowned or unacknowledged. They are our way of dealing with challenges throughout the course of our lives, and at one point they did prove useful -- that's why they've remained -- but they can thwart situations in which they are no longer appropriate. Assagioli was heavily influenced by Carl Jung, who coined the term Individuation, which is the process whereby someone integrates all their unconscious parts (or "subpersonalties"), bringing them to the level of consciousness. He also came up with the idea of The Shadow, all those elements of our psyche that we reject, which can be negative characteristics. 

Twin Peaks: The Return refuses to be itself, and thus becomes even more itself, growing into something better and stranger. Even though the show knows how to age, that doesn't mean its protagonist does. A lot of growing up is accepting the unattainability of heroism to the level of purity that Cooper aspires. To be a real hero in the real the world requires one to embrace darkness, which is impossible without embracing your own (à la Laura). So, in Twin Peaks: The Return, Cooper's identity is atomised into three separate individuals. We long to see the Cooper we know and love, but for him to achieve the wholeness the maturation process dictates, he has to move on from being that former Cooper and become something different. Even while practically lobotomised, there's a kindness, a purity to Dougie, that is redolent of Agent Cooper's essence. In episode 16, Cooper finally wakes up. And it's him, it's really him, the coffee loving Agent with a heart of gold. And when Cooper returns to Twin Peaks, he defeats evil with a little help from his lovable old pals.

"We live inside a dream," it appears part of Cooper's identity is still in the Black Lodge, having gone so far beyond the human realm that time's linearity has been revealed as an illusion. Or, this timeline could be collapsing on account of Cooper meddling with the past. Or it could be a meta-commentary on the artifice of the show, and Cooper is now aware he's a character on a television show. Either way, in Twin Peaks dreams have just as much heft as reality, with which they are inextricably woven, and the same goes for our own lives. Dreams can point us where to go, or reveal to us something we've been overlooking. The invalidating of dreams is an unfortunate side effect of our more atheistic age. If you fall in love in a dream, you are really falling in love. This is why compensatory "subpersonalities" often show up in dreams. So it is in the last episode of season 3, with evil vanquished, that Cooper, now equipped with supernatural, lodge-like capabilities, can't resist going further, and sets out to reverse the past, specifically the death of Laura Palmer. He is incorrigibly upstanding in his purpose, his valiance giving him no sense of self-preservation.

Cooper is heroic, accepting harsh realities for himself, but not for others. While more admirable than being in denial about himself, it still counts as not accepting reality. He's so virtuous that he goes to monumentally self-sacrificing lengths to save Laura from her fate. It takes considerable hubris to bend the laws of nature, and this is exactly what Cooper does by going back to the night of Laura's murder and altering events. Another act of hubris so great that it tries to bend the very nature of reality occurs in episode eight - possibly the most groundbreaking hour of television that's ever aired. We go back in time to 16 July 1945. We see a long sequence in which the first ever atomic bomb is detonated in New Mexico. The Trinity Test as part of the Manhattan Project in New Mexico was the single most destructive technology ever commissioned, therefore it is the most evil act of technological advancement ever committed. Splitting the atom is an act of scientific hubris on par -- in storytelling terms -- with going back in time and changing the course of history. To assume the power of a god seems to be where the human race is inexorably heading, the unremitting progress leaving no space for self-reflection.

In Fire Walk With Me, Cooper entered Laura's dream and tries to dissuade her from taking a ring that would wed her to The Lodge. He can't surmise why her taking the ring is so necessary, as he's too hell-bent on saving the damsel from her fate. White Knights always think they know what's best for their seemingly helpless damsels. In one of the most moving scenes Lynch has ever directed, set in The Roadhouse, further examples of his intuitive ingenuity are demonstrated. Unaccountably, those congregated in the Roadhouse seem to just pick up on the sadness of this event in the air, and start crying. Foster Wallace marveled: "David Lynch seems to truly possess the capacity for detachment from response that most artists only pay lip-service to." Lynch's receptiveness to ideas, no matter their source, means he's open to some very troubling ones. People often puzzle over how dark Lynch's work is. They can't reconcile how terrifying his vision can be with his guileless, boy-scout demeanor. That said, when Lynch directs beauty he eclipses everyone else, too. The more you open yourself to darkness, the more you open yourself to the light. This is the healing effect of accepting one's own darkness. 

Twin Peaks The Return - The Ending:  Eventually, Laura remembers some of what happened to her in the other timeline. Some trauma persists through time and space and there's nothing anyone can do about it, no matter how heroic their efforts, except provide the victim a safe space. This is something Laura had already excelled at -- intentionally sealing her own fate, and Christ-like, accepting it. In the last moments, Laura remembers her life in the previous timeline. She lets out her blood-curdling scream. The lights in the Palmer residence go out, and the screen goes black. So what the hell was that ending all about? Some fans were ruffled by this inscrutable conclusion. Here are some possible explanations we can posit:

1. Cooper managed to lure Judy into the Carrie Page timeline, because Judy feeds on pain and suffering, so Laura's scream summoned Judy, and thereupon the timeline was collapsed essentially trapping the Judy entity, but also killing Cooper and Laura along with it.

2. Now that Cooper seems to have Bad Cooper in him, it could be that Bad Cooper took the reigns and brought Laura back to Twin Peaks to offer her up to Judy.

3. The Carrie Page timeline is a dream, and when Carrie realises she is dreaming she wakes up back in the Palmer residence as Laura Palmer.

However, unless Lynch decides to make a fourth season, we'll probably never know what the ending truly mean. The ending might be insoluble by design. This means Lynch has the last laugh, for there is only one thing he hates more than meddling executives: narrative closure. By being unresolved the mystery of Twin Peaks prevails once more. So, just like in life, we have to surrender to the mystery of it all. Is this an ending where good or evil prevailed? Source: www.popmatters.com

This destination of the "bright midnight" involves "bliss" and "light," unmistakable symbols of joy and euphoria. "Sweet delight" is involved, set against the contrasting "endless night." The darkness has come to an end. One of the themes of The End is internal travel. Morrison sings “there’s danger on the edge of town.” Danger here refers to one of the core elements of the hero’s journey: overcoming the obstacles. Morrison tells the listener to "ride the king's highway" and to "ride the highway West." In between is the line "Weird scenes inside the gold mine." The placement suggests that "the gold mine" is somehow associated with going West. This passage is an invitation to encounter what Morrison called the “dark forces,” symbolic of obstacles that must be defeated on the journey to liberation. We next encounter the image of "the blue bus," which is said to be "calling us." When he says “the West is the best,” he’s not talking about California, he’s talking about the mythological West, a landmark within that whole hero’s journey, to reach his Shangrila. Bernard Wolfe wrote, "What an ingenious formula: Morrison did resurrect something in the paved-over human potential, something at least assumed to be there, fantasy freedom, fantasy sex, fantasy departure, through the trick of escaping from the human realm or going through the motions of escape.” Despite the occasional darkness, from the haunting eeriness of End of the Night to the chilling visions in The End, Morrison’s overriding images are beautiful and positive. He ultimately emphasized light over darkness, but light cannot be achieved without first conquering dark and dangerous obstacles. Morrison was ultimately a “light-bringer and emissary of the light.” And Morrison, when you look at a song like When the Music’s Over, right after he screams out, “We want the world and we want it now,” he says, “See the light. Save us, Jesus, Save us.” And the light, meaning love, the sun and the dawn, are the prevailing themes in The Doors, not the dark, the night, the chaos and the abyss. —Jim Morrison and the Secret Gold Mine (2017) by David Shiang

Jim Morrison: “People have the feeling that what’s going on outside isn’t real, just a bunch of staged events, all I did was to record this feeling. Out in the social world people mostly live as if they are perpetually acting in conformity with what others believe about them. That's a way of living a lie. It’s a lie even if everyone else is right and you’re wrong.”

Pamela Courson was the muse who inspired many of Jim Morrison's songs and poems like "Love Street," "Queen of the Highway," or "Twentieth Century Fox." Pam was briefly enrolled studying art at L.A. City College and she liked to explore in particular the Sunset Strip zone. Jim first met Pamela Courson shortly after his break-up with Mary Werbelow in the summer of 1965. Although some versions of their first encounter date the spring of 1966, they had previously met in 1965 at a college campus party and they were living together in the Venice area, probably rent-free at a communal house with other friends. Pam had already run out of her parents' funds and danced occasionally in the Sunset Strip. Jim still received an intermitent allowance from his grandparents. Possibly he supplemented the couple's meagre incomes by dealing acid to students. January Jensen confirmed they'd met in 1965 at an UCLA campus party, prior to The Doors formation.

Pam was a rebellious spirit who looked after new adventures far away from her suffocating middle class family (although Pam felt close to her maternal grandmother, from who she had received her middle name Susan). “What are you wasting your time with this guy for? Get yourself someone with money!” Pamela’s older sister Judy advised Pamela in the fall of 1965, noting Jim didn't have any prospects by then. January Jensen recalls Jim's fixation with Pam: “Jim always carried a notebook with him. And every time we’d come to a restaurant, a general store, or a gas station, he’d have to stop and call Pam.” In November 1971, four months after Jim died, Pam filed a ‘declaration in support of widow’s allowance,’ claiming: ‘Since September 30, 1967, I have considered that I was married to James Douglas Morrison, and that I was in fact his wife at the time of his death and am now his widow’. In her court statement, Pam said, ‘Jim reported to me that he learned from Max Fink that to create a marriage in the state of Colorado it was sufficient if two people stayed together, had relations and agreed to conduct themselves as husband and wife. We spent the night at a hotel, had sexual relations and agreed that we would forever be husband and wife. We honeymooned in Colorado and then continued our the Doors tour.’ Pam’s statement went on to say that during their relationship, all her living expenses were paid from Jim’s earnings, and she and Jim were given $2,500 in cash each month. 

-Phil O'Leno (Jim Morrison's fellow film student at UCLA): Sandor Ferenczi. Hungarian, was Jim’s favorite psychoanalyst; Jung was too abstract for him, although he borrowed a lot of my Jung books, especially the alchemical ones. Ferenczi was very radical and wrote a paper that was called the “Dream Screen.” Jim loved it so much he tore it out of a book. Jim worked in the film library at UCLA. Patty Monk, a girl with an English accent who worked with him in the library, was his first sexual partner. But he was very naive when she sort of took him under her wing. And they were something of a couple for a short while.

Rich Linnell was an early member of The Doors entourage initially through his friendship with Robby Krieger’s brother Ronnie. Early on Rich was helping lug around the band’s equipment at concerts and he ultimately brought his good friend, Bill Siddons, into the fold. Siddons would soon become the manager of The Doors, and Linnell would carve out his own successful career as a concert promoter. -Rich Linnell: I knew nothing about the band at the time, I’d heard a song on the radio, but I didn’t know much about them or their reputation. The Doors were playing at Ciro’s that night [April, 1967], which is now The Comedy Store [8433 Sunset Blvd.], and we went up to Jim and Pam’s place in Laurel Canyon. We walk in and introductions were made, “Hi, this is Rich, this is Jim, this is Pam.” “Hello, how do you do?” And those were the only words spoken for about twenty minutes, while Pam and Jim got ready to go on down to the show, which we were taking them to. And they got in the car, we drove on down the hill, and again nothing was being said. So we dropped them off at Ciro’s, they went in the back door, and we sat on the floor in the front part of the stage and about twenty minutes later the band comes out. And here’s Jim who was previously just quiet—and that’s an understatement—who suddenly just lurches into incredible histrionics onstage, and screaming and rolling around, and I was just going, “What the…?” It was very hard for me to believe at that point that the same guy that I had spent the twenty or thirty minutes in his apartment was the same guy onstage. 

-Frank Lisciandro: So what was Jim really like?

-Rich Linnell: What was he really like? Well he was like a lot of things. Well, I think the initial description that I gave, the silence. Which, at the time, and even in retrospect, he was having moment of quiet contemplation. It was perhaps the way Jim centered himself before he went onstage. He was witty, he was charming. He was a challenging conversationalist. And we could talk about anything, and he was well versed with any number of subjects. I’m sure he drank a lot more than I did, but I never witnessed him throwing drinks or glasses around or becoming an obnoxious drunk.

-Frank Lisciandro: What about Pamela and their relationship?

-Rich Linnell: I never knew Pam very well. She was more of a mystery to me; probably because I didn’t know her very well, but she was around a lot on the road. From time to time I’d ask somebody, “What’s it like today? Are they together or not?” And usually the answer was, “I don’t know”, “Pam threw him out” or “Jim left.” It seemed to me to be stormy, although there always seemed to be a lot of caring and a lot of love there, too. Volatile; very volatile. So I didn’t have any strong feelings about Pam one way or another. She seemed a little standoffish, a little arrogant sometimes. At times when she was around giving him trouble, Jim was more of a drag. 

Salli Stevenson, journalist for Circus Magazine: "The only woman that Jim ever took seriously was Pamela Courson. They experienced every facet of a relationship that could be experienced together: friends, lovers, partners. She was his old lady. She is the only woman he ever allowed to say she was his wife. Jim for many reasons completely bonded to Pamela. I knew that nothing could come between them. I felt that they both deserved Purple Hearts for weathering the challenges of their journey together. I met and interviewed Jim on October 13, 1970. Jim and I were in contact after that until he and Babe Hill left for Miami on October 29th. When Jim returned, he called me. We got together for a movie with Frank and Kathy Lisciandro. We were in touch on and off until January 17, 1971. We finally spoke to each other twice in March, before he left for Paris."

Raeanne Bartlett: I don't particularly trust Eve Babitz or her sister Mirandi. They are resentful, bitter storytellers, and unpleasant about absolutely everyone. I know the prostitution rumors, said by several people who hated Pamela (especially Mirandi Babitz and Max Fink). In a research of over 14 years, I've never found any evidence of it. Patricia Butler never found any evidence, nor in the early 60s phase, nor in Pamela's later days. Patricia Kennealy was upset when her cover-up was exposed by Jerry Hopkins, who wrote the foreword of Patricia Butler's book. According to Jerry Hopkins (who was not either the fairest judge towards Pam, whom he called 'manipulative'): "Except for Pamela, there was no one girl that Jim saw often for periods of more than a few days, in the months since they'd met. Jim and Patricia had been in the same room only a few times. Nor had there been many phone calls. Nothing that signaled a passionate courtship."  Kennealy, however, tried very hard in Strange Days to model the character of herself after Pamela Courson. Patricia describes herself as a stylish redhead who kept Jim in check and didn’t take any guff from him, making herself out to be the muse who inspires his work. Others, like German actress Nico, couldn't understand why were left behind for Pamela and dyed her hair red to no avail. Ray Manzarek talks about how Nico went gaga over Jim and tried her best feminine tactics to win him over, chasing him desperately for a while, but Jim only felt a romantic protective connection to Pamela that was irreplaceable. 

Henry Diltz (film editor and photographer): When it came time to record the pivotal track When The Music’s Over, Morrison insisted the whole track be played live in the studio. The band acquiesced, then sat there for more than 12 hours waiting for him to show up. He never did. Instead, he phoned the studio at 3am and spoke to Robby Krieger. “We’re in trouble here,” Jim told Robby. Morrison and his girlfriend Pam Courson were tripping on strong acid and wanted Krieger to drive them to nearby Griffith Park where they could “cool out”. Later we decided we needed a beer so we drove around Skid row and came upon the Hard Rock Cafe. The original one, way before the chain. We had a wild few hours buying drinks, hearing stories and laughing. Years later Peter Morton and Ian Schrager decided to start their chain Hard Rock Cafe, inspired by the Morrison Hotel cover. As a result of doing this cover I made a friend and drinking buddy in Jim Morrison and spent many afternoons discussing things that matter in the bar of Xavier Cugat's restaurant. We both loved film and he was editing his film in the same building I was making the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young documentary. Coincidently, it's also the building where Jim Morrison's girlfriend Pam Courson had her clothing store, Themis. I remember nights after hours on the floor of the mirrored and feather walls with Pam and Jim. Talking and laughing. How sweet it was. The coincidence is that, unknown to me or Jim, Pam and my wife at the time had been the two rebel girls in junior and senior high in the heart of uberconservative Orange County. Wow! Coincidence? I think not!" 

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (2020), a documentary directed by Nick Broomfiled, is an in-depth look at the relationship between the late musician Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian muse Marianne Ihlen. Cohen ballads from this time reflected what was happening: "So Long Marianne" and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye." In his dying moments Leonard recognised the value of his connection with Marianne.  "Dearest Marianne, I'm just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand. This old body has given up, just as yours has too, and the eviction notice is on its way any day now. I've never forgotten your love and your beauty. But you know that. I don't have to say any more. Safe travels old friend. See you down the road. Love and gratitude, Leonard" Source: www.spiritualityandpractice.com

Bob Dylan's "I Contain Multitudes", Jim Morrison's "Newborn Awakening"

"I Contain Multitudes" feels like Dylan saying his valediction. Now, he’s also been saying his valediction since his first album ("See That My Grace is Kept Clean," "Don’t Think Twice," "It’s All Over Now Baby Blue," every album seems to have one version of it), and I ain’t saying this will be his last album, but this sounds like a man who is summing it all up and saying goodbye, farewell, and good luck. But it also sounds like he got to that place where “I know my song well before I start singing.” He is filled with Americana -- chock full and he is opening the spigot and blasting it out at us. Except it isn’t a blast. It comes out with grandeur and dignity like a waterfall, but these two last songs are like viewing a waterfall from the top and bottom at the same time. From this stoic statement of mortality he peels away the details of his journey with the grace and conciliation of a master making his peace. Partners who wronged him are forgiven (“I’ll drink to the man that shares your bed”), follies of youth are relived (“I frolic with all the young dudes”) and secrets confessed (“Got skeletons in the walls of people you know”). In another flurry of pan-cultural references, he lays claim to the fear of Anne Frank, the guilt of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Tell-Tale Heart’, the adventure of Indiana Jones, the experience of William Blake and the danger of “them British bad boys” The Rolling Stones. His conclusion evokes Frank Sinatra’s: “I have no apologies to make”. Source: www.nme.com

Patricia Kennealy: "As a major Doors fan I wanted much more. As a practicing rock critic I was not slow to smack Jim and The Doors for it. I was rougher on Jim Morrison in print than on anyone else in rock & roll magazines. The pressure was on them all--on Jim far more than the others, as the perceived leader and public focus, the musical linchpin (they couldn't make it without him, and how well we all knew it; indeed, we have seen it proved every day, every hour, since July 3 1971). But it was almost impossible for Jim to write songs on the road when they were touring, they couldn't spend time in the studio making records for which Jim would have had to have written songs, which he couldn't write because they were on the road."

RidderOnTheStorm1969: Even that crackpot Patricia Kennealy announced Fireheart to be published on 3 July 2021, half a century since the day Morrison died. "This compilation of Jim Morrison's private communications to me during the years 1969, 1970 and 1971 -- his true 'lost writings' -- save for some confidences which are of such incandescent intimacy as forever to preclude publication poems of unapologetic eroticism." Again, we don't need to hear about your sex life, lady. Supposedly that one night stand was sexually awesome, although I have my doubts. "I have chosen to announce its future publication now, in this silver anniversary year of Jim's death. But then again, the Courson family is apparently in charge of Jim Morrison's estate. My original, long-held intention was to destroy all this before my own death, and so to take it with me back to Jim. Fireheart will surprise many and astonish most, will show a Jim that not even my memoir Strange Days could show; and what it will prove most uncontrovertibly is that this is a man of matchless spirit and sensitivity, by no means the drug-benumbed catspaw who is the only Jim his various biographers seem able or willing to understand or accept." And yet not only has Fireheart not materialized, but Kennealy has gone oddly silent about it. I don't think she's mentioned it in years. It's an ugly thing to say that somebody faked up stuff, but there are only two possible reasons for Kennealy to withhold this material when she could easily have published it years ago, thus "proving" herself to the fans. I think the material she claims exists does not exist, and she's invested too much of her love story in these never-seen letters and poems to ever admit it. Or the material does exist, but it's by Kennealy and not Morrison, and she does not want the material exposed to the scrutiny of handwriting experts. Either way, it's pretty damning. She never gives any kind of excuse for not publishing it except to get pissy and defensive. Honestly, the only material we've seen from her trove of alleged vast material is a single poem that she claims she co-authored with Morrison… which I guess is her excuse for it sounding nothing like any of his other poems. We'll see in 2021. I suspect that if Kennealy is still alive in that year, she will not release anything. This begins to smell of hollow blustering when you realize how far Kennealy has backed down on this Fireheart thing - all the way. It feels like someone is bluffing with a completely empty hand.

Jim Morrison used a sort of psychic stunt double, the Lizard King persona, as self-protection and a creative mask. Yeah, most of the Jim Morrison "biographies" out there usually have an agenda behind them. As do the "memoirs" written by aggressive one-night stands who want the world to believe that they were "the one". Judy Huddleston, Linda Ashcroft, and Eve Babitz claiming that Jim incessantly repeated how beautiful they were and he told them earnestly "I love you". All of these ladies seem nutters, exaggerating their affairs to the nth degree, although none of them reaches the depths of delusion of Ms Kennealy. I have no problems when the liaison is retold in a plausible fashion (Mary Werbelow, Pamela Zarubica, Peggy Green, Janet Erwin, Eva Gardonyi). But the honest ones always acknowledge they couldn't ever shadow Pamela Susan. Although he could have a roving eye with the ladies, no doubt, Morrison was clearly devoted to Pam Courson. Pamela Zarubica recalls how Morrison ignored the backstage mocks from Pam when he became the front man in The Doors. "He only would allow Pam make those jabs." I really question Eve Babitz's claims (she says Pam was "mean" and "controlling," she hints Pam had an abortion that wrecked Jim emotionally) or Mirandi Babitz's: "They could both be terrible to one another. Pamela could be an instigator, and Jim could be totally calm but she'd escalate things to a fever pitch. She would tear into him with her nails. Sometimes he slapped her back." Raeanne Bartlett: Some called friends as Mirandi Babitz are not fair to Jim & Pam's memory and spread lies. Both could be temperamental but I doubt those stories of violence. Mirandi also insinuated Pam had worked as "a semi-pro". What a nice friend! Pamela resented The Doors for wasting Jim's talents. They just took him for granted. I don't think it was inherently personal, but in Paris, she scoffed at them trying to complete L.A Woman without him. It also got worse after his death because she disagreed with them trying to sell the music for ads. They sued the hell out of her not long after Jim was in the ground, too. Jim was very polite and well behaved around Pam's family, including her grandmother, and they liked him even if they didn't fully approve of his wild image. Most of Pam's letters, photo albums, and mementos are in private family collections. Sadly, her family have absolutely no desire towards doing anything regarding Pam's legacy. I only recommend The Jim Morrison Scrapbook by Jim Henke, Frank Lisciandro's books Friends Gathered Together and An Hour For Magic. Florentine Pabst, from whom Oliver Stone got the Thanksgiving Day burnt turkey story, is thinking about writing a book of her own. She and Jim's friendship has been confirmed and acknowledged and Pabst can prove what she is saying is true, so that may be another book worth waiting for. She collaborated (as a choir voice) with Morrison in his poetry album An American Prayer.

“Newborn Awakening” (from An American Prayer) uses the Doors’ “Peace Frog” in the background and closes with a great solo piano from Ray Manzarek:

“Resident mockery. Give us an hour for magic. Gently they stir, gently rise. The dead are newborn awakening. With ravaged limbs and wet souls. Gently they sigh in rapt funeral amazement. Who called these dead to dance? Was it the young woman learning to play the ghost song on her baby grand? Was it the wilderness children? Was it the ghost god himself, stuttering, cheering, chatting blindly? I called you up to anoint the earth. I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin. I called you to wish you well. To glory in self like a new monster. And now I call you to pray.”

Horse Girl, Mental Illness, Straight Whisky

Alison Brie’s Sarah in Horse Girl (2020) is an intriguing part for her. Effortlessly empathetic, Brie has always had an interesting presence, and no matter how crazy her character gets throughout, she never loses our sympathy. Rather, it’s an occasionally frightening look at what it's like to have your sense of reality slowly snatched away from you, where, to a certain extent, you know you’re losing it but can’t help but go down the rabbit hole. Beana does something interesting by taking us right into Sarah’s mindset. From the start, we know she’s an oddball, spending all of her nights at home obsessing over a cheesy drama called Purgatory. We know she’s sick, and in a daring move, for the last act, we experience the world wholly through Sarah’s fractured perspective, a unique approach to dealing with mental illness that has an unsettling, open-ended effect. As a result, the movie takes on a surreal, dream-like quality, bordering on sci-fi. Overall, it works pretty well, even if the occasional surreal touches from the perspective of other characters feel a bit out of place, as if they couldn't make up their mind whether they were making a serious film about mental illness or a surreal, David Lynch-style mindf*ck. Composers Josiah Steinbrick and Jeremy Zuckerman help build the bizarre tone of the film. Shimmering music matches tender moments. Droning sounds match Sarah's dream sequences. Elements of her mind bleed into each other illogically, which is visualized by editor Ryan Brown's experimentation to portray the way her mind works: subtle cuts and slow dissolve transitions create time and space lapses; ominous sound edits portend her deteriorating mental state. The final scene elicits more than one interpretation, and viewers can find closure in the established ambiguity, but they won't experience a neatly tied-up ending -- just as lingering mental illness will not offer a clear resolution. Source: www.popmatters.com

Interpretation by Imdb user Palange Music: It seems that many people think it's about mental illness, but there is one detail that they seem to overlook in the very beginning. If you watch the first few minutes, when they are talking about ancestry-like dna tests, you will notice that when the conversation concludes, Sarah walks away and Joan notices out the window that there is a horse in the parking lot - she catches just a quick glimpse of it and makes a strange face (about 2:30 into the film). At the end of the film when Sarah is walking her horse (which she took without permission) she walks past the shop and it shows the exact same frame and Joan's reaction to the horse being in the parking lot (1 hour 35 minutes approximately). If you look closely the same cars are in the parking lot and you can also see Sarah standing with Joan proving this is intended to be the same scene as the one in the beginning. This would mean she actually did jump back in time. To me this proves that she is not crazy and that it was intended to be a science-fiction film (time travel/aliens or unknown creatures, etc.) Source: www.imdb.com

In his essay “The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years,” Greil Marcus writes of Jim Morrison, “Here’s this nice-looking person on the stage all but threatening you with a spiritual death penalty and turning you into a jury that convicts yourself.” As usual with Marcus we are not entirely sure what that means. One of the most infamous onstage jams was the fleeting union between Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison on stage at hip New York club Steve Paul’s The Scene in the spring of 1968, while Janis Joplin looked on. Peace and love wasn’t on the agenda when what should have been a supreme meeting of minds disintegrated into a chaotic brawl that ended with Joplin smashing a bottle on Morrison’s head. It sounds like Janis Joplin was just lying in wait because she felt Jim was being rude to Jimi Hendrix. Obviously Morrison could be crude, weird and obnoxious, but this just sounds like typical drunken stupidity on the part of all parties involved.

Danny Fields (publicist, Elektra Records): I was working for Elektra, which meant I was working for Jim Morrison, but he and I didn’t get along. I knew Jim was at The Scene that night, and Jimi Hendrix was always there. And I was a teenage boy who worshipped Janis, so I knew she was there as well. Janis’s hatred of Morrison, I don’t know where it started. But if you mentioned Jim’s name she would say: “That asshole.” She was not going to put up with what she thought was his childish behaviour, wherever she encountered it. Janis stepped on the stage and hit Jim over the head with the bottle, then she poured her drink over him. The three of them, Morrison, Joplin and Hendrix, started grabbing and rolling all over the floor in a writhing heap of hysteria. They were in a tangle of broken glass, dust and guitars. Naturally it ended up in all three of them being carried out. Morrison had been sending off danger signals from the moment he got there. He was behaving like someone from the sewers. Morrison was the most seriously hurt. Source: www.amazon.com

Dawn’s Highway (2019), a short story by Jim Cherry:

A phone booth stands alone, empty in the Los Angeles night, its dull plastic light an island, in the sea of neon fused darkness. a car pulls up to the curb and a lone figure gets out. The car pulls away, the figure walks to the phone booth closing the door behind him. The inside light pops on illuminating him, a silhouette in relief against the night. He takes a dime out of his black jeans, and picks up the receiver, he puts the dime in the coin slot, waiting for the dial tone. As the phone rang on the other end, his girlfriend picks it up. “Yeah, it’s me,” he says, his voice a soft conspiratorial whisper, “we just got back into town tonight.” Jim was walking down Sunset Boulevard, he’d been wearing the same clothes for the last couple of days, black jeans, t-shirt, boots, a dark welder’s jacket. His pants still had some remnants of desert sand in the creases and folds, he had other reminders of the desert as well, the cuts and bruises on his face. It had only been six months since he’d come down off of Dennis Jacobs roof, where he’d subsisted on acid. Under the summer sun he burned away a lot of ideas of himself and while the rest of the city slept he took notes at a fantastic rock concert in his mind, as he wrote down the songs he heard. No one, not even his friends had understood that. Most of the time, they only saw the Jim they wanted to see, the Jim they expected. A police cruiser drove past, one of the cops was looking at him, suddenly it screeched to a halt and the cops jumped out. “Are you Jim Morrison?” “Yeah,” Jim said defiantly, “who wants to know?” The cops pushed him against the wall of the nearest building and pat him down before handcuffing and putting him in the back of the cruiser. The cops hustled him through the police station and they threw him into an interrogation room, his hands still cuffed in front of him. Jim understood the game they were going to run on him and wondered which would play the good cop, and which would play the bad cop. “I’m officer Ellison and this is officer Hanson, we’re the investigating officers.” The suit jacketed cop said. “Investigating what?” “Do you know the whereabouts of one Phillip O’Leno?” Hanson asked, taking the lead. “Not really.” “He’s missing, we think he may have been killed.” “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?” The cop stared at Jim hoping the silence would intimidate Jim. Jim returned the stare. “Where’d you get all those bruises from?” “Some bikers didn’t like our long hair.” “Do you have a job?” Ellison asked in a softer tone, trying to break through the barriers Jim had up. “No.” “What do you do for a living, son?” Jim thought a moment, considering the audience. “Nothing you’d understand.” “We really don’t care about you kissing some Mexican girl,” Hanson said with a look of mild distaste on his face. “Why don’t you just tell us what happened out in the desert son?” Smiling, Jim asked, “What if life is nothing more than an act of remembering?” The cops looked at each other, perplexed by the question. “What if we’re dead already and just remembering this?” The two cops just looked at each other, “What if we’re just sitting around remembering life and telling each other our stories?” “What’re you talking about son?” “You know, like Sunset Boulevard, Citizen Kane, Carousel.”

Flashback: “Manzarek isn’t like you, he isn’t a poet, he’s a capitalist, he wants fame, money, power.” Jim remembered Felix Venable's words. “Felix, since you're not going to let me drive,” Jim said, “wake me when we get somewhere,” as he lay down in the backseat. The car pulled up in front of a roadside bar, it was a sun bleached, weather-beaten wooden building with a porch running across the front, there were some motorcycles parked off to the side of the building. “Wake up Jim, we’re here!” “Where?” “Somewhere.” Felix said. They went inside, it was cool, quiet and dark, despite the soft moaning of the jukebox. The bar ran the length of one wall, a little farther in and across from it was a pool table, sitting at a table were five bikers with their girlfriends. All the guys were dressed in leather jackets, white t-shirt, jeans, and biker boots. The girls were all dressed in low cut flowery blouses and tight pants. They all watched as the outsiders came in, Jim was the first to get to the bar. “What can I get for you?” The bartender asked. “Beer, por favor,” Jim said, smiling broadly. “We’re on a mission of discovery,” Jim chimed in smoothly, “looking for a new world.” “A new world?” the biker said, “you mean a new world like when Europeans came here and killed our ancestors?” “No, it’s like space, but instead of going outwards we want to go inward.” “You college boys are tourists slumming, looking to get high.” Phil and Felix turned to their beers, While Jim looked around taking in the surroundings trying to memorize everything about the place, he caught the eye of one of the girls. Her blouse was low-cut and there was the undulation across the top of her breasts as she walked, came up to the bar, ostensibly to get a drink. She sidled up next to Jim, and he started talking to her. The bikers started to notice and get agitated, the talking amongst themselves grew louder. Phil was the first to notice and leaned over to Jim, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea Jim.” “Why not?” “Well, for one,” Phil said, “you almost got us busted in L.A. when you jumped out of the car and kissed that chick.” “Phil,” Jim said innocently, “she was a beautiful angel, and I just thought I’d break the ice.” “That’s beside the point Jim, all those guys over there are getting upset.” Jim looked over at them, and roared, “Well, fuck them!” The bikers all stopped talking and the leader walked over to Jim. “You like my girlfriend, gringo?” “Who says she’s yours?” Jim questioned. “We’ll see who she leaves with.” “You like girls?” the biker confronted him. “Why? You want to fuck me?” Jim said in a mocking tone. “More like fuck you up.” The biker punched Jim, Felix jumped up and blindsided the biker and then there was an explosion of sound, as chairs crashed to the floor, and the bikers jumped on them. The bartender started yelling, “You’re not going to break up my bar!” Jim, Felix, and Phil jumped into the car, the tires spinning out a cloud of dust and rock in their wake. Jim was thoughtful and he didn’t want to expose himself, Phil would understand, but Felix would think him naïve and mock him. “I want to live a life without regret.” “You think that is possible?” the shaman asked, “for every choice you make you may later mourn what you’ve lost or suffer what you’ve gained.” 

Jim didn’t know what to say, ever since he could remember he knew what answers a teacher was looking for. He knew which buttons to push to impress a school teacher. The shaman said, “You can’t expect knowledge to be given to you.” “Why not?” “Knowledge is power you have to earn it and if you risk not using it wisely, it can destroy you.” “What will happen when we take the peyote?” Jim asked. “It will change the way you see the world.” “How?” Phil asked. “Each of you differently, what you fear is out there but you will also find the greatest joy.” “And afterwards?” Jim asked. “You will awake on dawn’s highway,” the shaman said, pointing towards the road. “What’s at the end of this dawn’s highway?” “No one knows what’s at the end of the highway, madness or bliss.” Jim looked enthralled for the adventure, Phil, hesitant, not sure if this was a trip he really wanted to go on. Jim looked to the sky, it was dark, and the moon was full and bright and held dominion over the desert. The music throbbed, he looked around and saw the concert in his head, clearer than he ever had. The scene was bent, curved, as if he looking through some other lens, there was a sea of people. The music pulsated through his body, it was scintillating, a scream came ripping through the atmosphere and he realized it was from him. Out of the darkness he saw a silvery spiderweb, he felt the prickling of fear at the edge of his consciousness, then some silvery nails pushed down out of the darkness and he knew he was in a coffin, he told himself not to be afraid if he let the fear in it he couldn't return from his trip. “What about all those aphorisms you’re always spouting from Nietzsche and Rimbaud? Aren’t those your rules?” “I’m beyond that, man. Nietzsche and Rimbaud are just signposts in the wilderness, they tell me I’m on the right trail.” He is already missing the horizon, thinking they should have lingered on the beach. They are in West Hollywood now. Vegetation contending with sidewalks, palms leaning in over cornices. Billboards obstreperous, affronting the senses. “Nietzsche gave us Zarathustra. And then the lights went out. He went mad.” Jim looks now over at his friend. “Oh come on, Jim.  You’re not mad. Just back off on the booze.” Smiling now, but eyes widening, Jim's stare is vacant: “Madness begets madness.” That stare unnerves him. The flatness of it, as though James Douglas Morrison had turned into pure ice at the center of hell. In his movie mind, Jim saw the final scene of the sensuous wild west for a turned-on generation, in disconnected images with the mind choosing the order, creating its own context. As he neared The Whisky he could feel the music thumping through the walls, the doors. He walked in and was swallowed by the music. Source: medium.com

Straight Whisky (2004) by Erik Quisling & Austin Williams: With varying degrees of success, Quisling and Williams reconstruct 40 years of hip-shaking, altered consciousness and groupie-love at Sunset Strip nightclubs Whisky A Go-Go and its sister establishments the Roxy Theatre and the Rainbow Bar & Grill, in an attempt to bring to life the L.A. music scene since 1964. Focusing on random events meant to emblemize the Whiskey ambiance and demonstrate its cultural impact, the authors chronicle the club from its early Tinseltown days to the Black Flag riots. The list of acts that have graced the stage of Whisky is a veritable who's who of rock, with compelling tales of Jim Morrison passed out back stage. Williams recounts the time Charles Manson dropped by the Whisky just days before the mass killings at Benedict Canyon, harassed a waitress and was thrown out by the owner, Mario Maglieri. Central to rock 'n' roll history, the Whisky was a place of raw, untethered emotion, debauchery and mayhem. As Henry Rollins claims in his surprising foreword, "When you think about who's been at the Whisky, it reminds you that LA actually used to have some culture. Now LA seems just to be sort of a cultureless wasteland. But back then, there was a real scene. Something worth real documentation." Source: www.amazon.com

Mario Maglieri, who presided over a rock ’n’ roll mini-empire on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood at the Whisky a Go Go and the Rainbow Bar & Grill, where he nurtured generations of musicians with encouragement, food and tough love, died on May 4, 2017 in Los Angeles. The Whisky a Go Go was opened in 1964 by a former policeman named Elmer Valentine, who soon asked Mr. Maglieri, a friend from Chicago, to help run the club. It became a critical part of the Los Angeles rock scene. For a time, the Doors were the house band. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin also played there. So did Led Zeppelin, the Byrds, the Who, Otis Redding, the Turtles and Neil Young. The Beatles demanded to visit the Whisky when they toured the United States in 1964. Mr. Maglieri understood that some needed a free meal at the nearby Rainbow Bar and others a kind word. “I don’t think it was innate in him to love rock ’n’ roll people,” Lou Adler said in a telephone interview. “But being around it for all those years, he just took a fatherly, grandfatherly, feeling toward these people. He loved those kids with problems, like Jim Morrison.” Mr. Maglieri told The Los Angeles Times in 1993 that he had warned Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, and Janis Joplin to straighten out, without success. Jim Morrison, Mr. Maglieri said, “was a good boy” who “would look at me all goofed up. I couldn't help liking him for his lack of guile. The reprimanding I gave him didn’t do any good. Too bad he’s not alive. I’d give him a spanking. When The Doors were the house band, I saw Morrison two or three times a week. He was drunk or stoned but he could talk. A bit pathetic, but Jim was a good kid. His girlfriend Pam, a redhead looker, danced as a go-go for a while, but Jim got jealous and he told her to learn to cook instead." In Pamela Courson, Jim Morrison finally met his match. In many ways, she was as bizarre as he was, always looking for something exciting, something special. While Pam entertained a fantasy of one day settling down with Jim and living a normal life, she must have known the reason they thrived together was because both were tormented souls." -Straight Whisky (2004) by Erik Quisling & Austin Williams

"I will never be untrue/Do anything you would want me to/Never stay out drinking/no later than two (two thirty...)/I will never treat you mean/and I won't cause no kind of scene/Tell you all the people/all the places I have been/I will always treat you kind/try to give you peace of mind/Only you tell me that you love me/one more time/Now darling/please don't be sad/Don't run off like that/when you get mad/Cause if you do you gonna lose/the best friend that you ever had/That's no lie/I will never be untrue/Do everything you want me to do/Bring all my loving/all my money/bring it all home to you." -"I will never be untrue" (1969) by The Doors, written for Pamela Courson.

VIVARIUM AND THE BODY SNATCHERS

Based on Jack Finney’s 1954 serialized novel in Colliers magazine, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was first brought to the big screen in 1956 by director Don Siegel with Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter as the protagonists in peril. In the Kaufman's version Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) the story begins from the point of view of the alien migration itself. Landing in the shadow of the iconic Transamerica Pyramid building (at the time, Transamerica Corporation owned United Artists) under the guise of undetectable spores and flowers, the beginning of the assimilation of the human race occurs remarkably fast. The invaders creep in as we sleep, forming a duplicate human in a pod, transferring thoughts and memories, then wiping away all sense of individuality and throwing away the shriveled husk of the original body. 

Lorcan Finnegan‘s Vivarium is about the reverse of the idyllic 50s suburbia turned into a nightmarish trap in the 21st Century. Gemma and Tom’s situation begins to unravel. All their escape plans fail but someone is delivering boxes of food and supplies, meaning if there’s a way in, there has to be a way out. But they’re not even close to finding it when their next delivery box brings the biggest challenge yet: a baby boy, presentably human but utterly otherworldly in his biology and behavior. Finnegan makes good work escalating the dread in the second part (more bleak and punishing), swapping laughs for gasps during surprising moments of cruelty. Vivarium leans hard on the tradition of absurdism, staging a suburbian ‘No Exit’ with moments of Kafkaesque horror that dig into the meeting point between cosmic and intimate terrors, from the slow exploration of the boy’s mysterious inhumanity to the existential dread of being stuck in an eternal cycle you can’t control. 

Another common thread between Invasion of Body Snatchers and Vivarium is the resilience of the romantic relationship between Miles & Becky and Tom and Gemma, although Miles survives in the 1956 Don Siegel's classic. It’s fascinating to see Imogen Poots’ modulations as Gemma is at first petrified in disbelief at, then at the threshold of brainwashed by, her conundrum son. Her final snark as she confronts the reality of awful events makes Poots an ideal Final Girl material. “I’m not your fucking mother” is the most badass kiss-off line in any recent horror movie. Vivarium might be dismissed as a deeply cynical view of suburban life, but its take on the strength of relationships is ultimately uplifting.

Metaphors: Besides the “the suburban trap is hell” trope, there are indeed aliens involved. They can bend the rules of the world they've created. They know they have to involve humans in their plans or their offspring won't survive. The aliens have no conscious, they are truly non feeling sociopath beings. Like any insect predator that hides in wait. The bulb neck when he does the impersonation, the walking like a crab under the sidewalk, the alien screeching, the way the clouds change when they turn onto the street from stormy to those lame little puffy clouds, obviously, they get brought to the trap. Tom and Gemma should have been able to recognize this kid was an alien and use a lot more psychology on it to escape. If you can trick that kid into telling you what it saw then you could trick it into taking you out of there. Ultimately, it is an alien invasion/parasite movie.

Maybe it is a metaphor for how hidden black psyop control groups are invading our minds and lives through mass media (education, news, entertainment and social networks). They have us trapped in a fake world of brainwashing we can never find our way out of. The child/monster is the media and the unwilling/unwitting parents are the average victims of our present society controlled and trapped by Main Stream Media (MSM). Who built that "virtual suburbia world", these aliens who are driven by copying human interactions? Indeed it is a hint what these aliens have created new dimensions through which they intend to take over the human field. Imagine if you could 3D print a whole world using nanites. Not unlike a "holideck" on Star Trek, you can even drive a car into it. If aliens were to invade in this way, they would have technology we don't. Such as, nanotech that can 3D print and they could arrange molecular structures on the fly. As we see in the movie they created a solidified whole looped world based on a software engineered program.

Also, notice how this "suburbian world" is painted almost all the same color to save on resources. Not unlike a video game, you "re-use" everything you can. Shapes, sizes, colors etc, to cut down on the taxation of processing power.

*The cuckoo bird implants it's eggs into another birds nest. A reference to what the aliens are doing to grow their own invasion force.

*The realtor alien's name tag they hand off is "Martin". Very close to "Martian". Suggesting these creatures might be from a planet similar to Mars.

*When the Older Boy bags up the dead alien he is replacing, he easily folds it into a very small package that fits in a drawer. With almost no lifting effort because it is so lite. The drawer doesn't buckle, it slides easily. The true form of these aliens is much smaller and lighter than humans. Or are these alien robots that are retractable through 3D printed nanites?

*When ´Gemma crawls under the sidewalk she falls into many other traps other people are in. This hints to many other aliens being raised by humans. The aliens are preparing for invasion.

*The other houses are lit in red, green or blue lighting. As if, they are other dimensions entirely.

*Clouds change from real to fake when they turn onto the road.

*The aliens are heartless, cold and calculating. Like an insect, or spider that tends their trap and discard their prey's shell when they are done with them.

*When the alien is shoveling the dirt into the hole the top of his head begins to become pixelated with white squares, but only for a moment. This is another one of veiled hints this is a computer generated simulation. But, not only the world has a shroud of graphics, but so does the alien itself. Its body is very much different than the human form we see. The grass then fixes itself instantly.

*Things can disappear or appear because it is nanite 3D printed computer generated.

*The TV was teaching and communicating with the alien/robot through encryption codes.

*Tom finds a body at the bottom of the pit he dug. This means it is not uncommon for people to dig in that exact spot. He inadvertently dug their graves! It made seem scripted and intentional. Mind controlled.

*They could have been mind controlled like a MKA Ultra project. Or drugged by a clandestine government agency. Did you notice they slept a lot? Seemed they were always kind of sickly and out of shape.

*These may not have been "aliens". They might have been robots doing this job for aliens. After all what advanced race would risk their own people for war casualties when they could just nanite 3D print their own callous machine to do all the work. Source: screenrant.com