The Slipstream of Mixed Reality: Unstable Ontologies and Semiotic Markers in
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The Slipstream of Mixed Reality:
Unstable Ontologies and Semiotic Markers in
The Thirteenth Floor, Dark City, and Mulholland Drive
N. Katherine Hayles
Department of English and Design/Media Arts
Nicholas Gessler
Department of Geography and Design/Media Arts
University of California, Los Angeles
“slipstream fiction,” works that occupy a
A decade ago, a popular
borderland between mainstream and
construction of virtual reality saw it as a
science fiction because they achieve a
realm separate from real life, a
science fictional feeling without the
perception reinforced by cumbersome
usual defamiliarizing devices.1 He
Polhemus helmets that entirely encased
the user’s head. That view has writes, “the heart of slipstream is an
dramatically changed with recent attitude of peculiar aggression against
technological developments such as ‘reality.’ These are fantasies of a kind,
enhanced reality glasses that overlay but not fantasies which are ‘futuristic or
simulations onto real landscapes, ‘beyond the fields we know.’ These
embedded sensors, and wearable books tend to sarcastically tear at the
computers. Now the buzz is about structure of ‘everyday life’” (n. p.).
“mixed reality,” the promiscuous Remarking on this trend, Joan Gordon
mingling of computationally-intensive and Veronica Hollinger in Edging into
simulations with input from the real the Future: Science Fiction and
world. As Simon Penny has remarked, Contemporary Cultural Transformation
“Our children will not call [this observe that works set in the present are
technology] virtual reality. They will becoming increasingly important in
call it reality.” Similar trends have contemporary science fiction; “the
marked the development of certain challenge for science fiction today is less
strands of contemporary science fiction. to extrapolate a far future than to keep
Darko Suvin’s famous characterization up with a permanently mutable present”
of science fiction as “cognitive (2). They hypothesize that as the pace of
estrangement” has traditionally been technological change accelerates, we
associated with fictions that use perceive ourselves as already living in a
extraterrestrial settings, futuristic science fiction world. As a result,
technologies, alien creatures, and other conventional distinctions between
strategies to defamiliarize the fictional science fiction and ordinary reality
world and create works clearly different become increasingly difficult to
than mainstream fiction (3-15). By articulate and maintain.2
contrast, the last few years have seen the These developments set the stage
emergence of what Bruce Sterling calls for narratives, including novels and2
films, that have staked out a territory we construction? The questions intensify
call the slipstream of mixed reality. In when the markers separating simulation
mixed realities ontological and from reality are deconstructed as the film
epistemological issues tend to be progresses. If mixed realities are
foregrounded, for the represented worlds difficult to disentangle, can any level
often cannot be assigned unambiguously claim ontological priority over another?
either to science fiction or ordinary At once unsettling normal reality and
reality. To investigate the dynamics of normalizing simulated reality, The
the slipstream of mixed reality we will Thirteenth Floor occupies a middle
explore three recent films that range position in the slipstream of mixed
along a spectrum of possibilities.3 In reality.
The Thirteenth Floor the limits of By contrast, Dark City falls on
present technology are stretched to the science fiction end of the spectrum.
imagine a computational simulated Its version of a simulated world emerges
world in which “self-learning cyber from a distinction between implanted
beings” become virtually artificial memories and staged
indistinguishable from real-life humans. environments on the one hand, and on
The humans who create the technology the other an ineradicable core of
can download their consciousness into personality that retains its identity
the simulation, temporarily displacing independent of these manipulations.
the simulant’s consciousness and Again murder enters the narrative as the
occupying his body. As the boundaries acid test opening the seams between
separating the simulated and real worlds realities. When John Murdoch (Rufus
become increasingly permeable, violent Sewell) wakens and disrupts the
ruptures occur as borders are discovered, implantation of the memories that will
leading to assaults and murder. construct him as a killer, he embarks on
That all three films initially a journey of discovery that will pit him
present themselves as murder mysteries against The Strangers, aliens who
is not a coincidence. Plots tend control the Dark City through “tuning,”
deathward, as characters in Don their telepathic communication with
DeLillo’s novels frequently assert, machines that nightly alter the
because death (the inevitable result of citysppace according to their
being alive) bestows consequentiality on experimental plans. The purpose, their
events. Murders real and attempted minion Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer
occur in these three films but they prove Sutherland) explains to Murdoch, is to
to be misdirections, feints calculated to discover what makes human beings
conceal more disturbing truths different from them, which Schreber
underneath. The Thirteenth Floor identifies as “our capacity for
exemplifies the pattern, problematizing individuality, our souls.” Unable to
death’s ultimate finality and displacing remember anything before his abduction
its centrality with deeper ontological into the Dark City, Schreber, like all the
concerns. How seriously should one imprisoned humans, must take on faith
take bodily harm when the entity that there remains a core identity within.
occupying the body is a temporary When Murdoch discovers that he has
visitor? How serious is death when the undergone a mutation that bestows on
entity in question is a computational him the alien capacity to “tune,” he3
occupies a liminal status that restores the modified by the recognition that the
human and liberates the city but at the film’s idiosyncrasies are themselves
cost of becoming part alien himself. located in a broader cultural context that
Like The Thirteenth Floor, this has been moving toward the slipstream
ambiguous ending is able to recuperate a of mixed reality. In the slipstream,
stable ontology only by fundamentally simulation and real life, science fiction
changing the nature of that which has and everyday reality, merge to form an
been recuperated. ontologically unstable amalgam that is,
At the “ordinary” reality end of these films suggest, finally the only
the spectrum is Mullholland Drive, reality we can call our own.
which unlike the other two films does Leakage and Liminality in The
not rely on science fiction tropes or Thirteenth Floor
technological interventions to unsettle
The slipstream of mixed reality is
ontological security. Rather, its mixed
visually suggested by the simulator’s
reality effect comes from narrative
portal, portrayed as a laser-like layer of
sequencing that renders problematic the
green light rays covering Douglas Hall
distinctions between reality, dream,
(Craig Bierko) as he prepares for the
hallucination, and flashback. In contrast
transfer into the simulated 1937 world.
to other films that represent dream
Emerging from his first visit in which he
sequences after the viewer has been
dangerously pushes his immersion time
introduced to normative reality, thus
to the limit, he jerks his head upward
allowing a clear distinction to be made
while his body is still under the rays, a
between the real and unreal, Mulholland
vivid enactment of a borderland in which
Drive gives only the briefest initial
clear-cut distinctions between real and
glimpses of quotidian reality in contexts
simulated worlds blur as the two realms
that make understanding them as such
begin to leak into one another. The
almost impossible on a first viewing.
cyberbeings in the simulated world are
Rather, Mulholland Drive situates the
haunted by the experiences their users
establishing scenes in a “reality” that is
have while downloaded into the
already a dream. This narrative strategy
simulation. The simulant’s
was sufficiently opaque to confuse
consciousness is put on hold while the
reviewers when the film first opened so
user’s consciousness takes over the
that it was widely misinterpreted as a
simulated body, and the user’s
dream throughout.4 Careful study experiences manifest themselves to the
reveals, however, that the film is stimulant as almost-memories they
constructed according to an idiosyncratic interpret as déjà vu. As the memories
but nevertheless coherent semiotic of intensify, they function more like
reality markers that the viewer can learn hauntings. Grierson (Armin Mueller-
only by watching the film. Mary Stahl), the sedate sixtyish antique dealer
Sweeney observes in the documentary in the simulated 1937 world who has
The Art of David Lynch that Lynch does been modeled on his creator Hannon
not create his films by watching other Fuller, begins to recall with shame the
films but by projecting into exteriorized amorous adventures in which Fuller
form his internal landscapes. This indulged when he displaced Grierson’s
insightful comment illuminates the consciousness and occupied his body to
film’s signifying strategies; it should be have sex with young women.4
Retrospectively, these hauntings user who occupies his body. When he is
function as clues to the film’s central threatened by a low-life bartender who is
mystery: the present-day “real” world is attempting to blackmail him because the
itself a simulation created by a reality bartender has information about
above it. When the mysterious Jane Hannon’s murder, he surprises himself
Fuller (Gretchen Mol) appears on the by pushing his opponent’s head through
scene, claiming she is Hannon Fuller’s a car window so violently that the thug is
daughter, she actually has transported frightened and runs away. Other
into the present from her world set in complications arise from leakages
2024. Her world has created thousands between worlds. Hannon’s murder,
of simulated worlds, she tells Douglas, which occurs at the film’s beginning,
but only his world has created another was David’s attempt to keep the true
simulation in turn. Jane is immediately nature of the present-day world a secret
attracted to Douglas because he is from its inhabitants, for Hannon had
modeled on David, her husband in the stumbled across the fact that his world
2024 world. As if dimly tapping into too was a simulation. The boundary
David’s memories, Douglas comments between the worlds can be sealed, David
that she looks familiar, calling it déjà vu. thinks, by this act of ultimate violence,
Jane reinterprets the experience by made all the more vicious by the
assigning it a romantic significance, pleasure he takes in carving up his
claiming “they say that déjà vu is usually victim.
a sign of love at first sight.” She has Far from keeping the worlds
fallen in love with Douglas, she will separated, Hannon’s murder initiates a
later explain to him, because he series of events that ensures the worlds
embodies the goodness that her husband will increasingly become entangled with
David lost when he began to indulge his one another. Realizing how dangerous
sadistic inclinations by torturing and the knowledge is, Hannon leaves a
murdering people in the 1998 world. message for Douglas “in the system” by
Jane’s attraction cannot, however, put to entrusting a letter to Ashton (Vincent
rest the explosive implications of the D’Onofrio) the suave and explosive
revelation that the present-day world is bartender in the 1937 world modeled on
as unreal (and real) as the 1937 world. Whitney, Douglas’s mild-mannered
The traffic between worlds opens a programmer colleague. Instead of
Pandora’s Box of metaphysical and giving the letter to Douglas, as Hannon
psychological complexities that cannot instructed, Ashton reads it himself.
be stuffed back by a declaration of love. Following its instructions, he drives to
One complicating factor is the “the end of the world” and discovers
leakage that occurs between simulant where the edges of the simulation drop
and user. Not only can Douglas be off into nothingness. This forbidden
affected by the behaviors of the simulant knowledge goads Ashton into wanting to
whose body he occupies, as when he escape into the “real” world that created
lights up after denying twice that he the 1937 simulation. Tortured by
smokes (a habit Ferguson, his double in knowing his world is only a model,
the 1937 world, practices); he can also Ashton attacks Douglas when he returns,
be affected by the personality of David, asking “What is real?” Demanding “Is
his creator and the sadistic upper-level this real?”, he then shoots Douglas in the5
leg. “How do you like having your life answer to Ashton’s lingering demand to
fucked with,” he shouts. The fight know what is real. “They’re as real as
continues in a room with a heated pool, you and me,” he asserts, speaking truer
where the violent action contrasts with than he knows. Here the film loses an
misty air that blurs boundaries and opportunity to explore the ethical
makes unambiguous delineation complexities of the situation, for if the
impossible. When the two plunge into simulants are in fact “real” people,
the pool as Ashton tries to drown shutting the simulation down can only
Douglas, the jump cut to Douglas being amount to mass murder, since all the
pulled by Whitney from the simulation, simulants would then be wiped from
choking and gasping for breath, existence.
accentuates the similarity between being The omission is deliberate, for
immersed in the green laser light and this realization drives the later plot of
submerged in simulated water so real it Daniel Galouye’s Simulacron-3, the
was killing him. novel that provided the starting point for
We later discover that if someone the script. Like the film, the novel is set
is killed in the simulation while an in a present-day world that has created a
upper-world user is occupying the body, simulation so real it entrances the
the user’s consciousness dies with the programmers who download into it.
simulant’s body. Since the user’s Unlike the film, however, the novel’s
consciousness is no longer alive to re- simulation serves as the focal point for
occupy his own body, when the body political intrigue, for it can be used
emerges from the simulation, the either for research into the secrets of
computer places the simulant’s “human nature,” as Douglas Hall puts it,
consciousness—now the only or, in a more banal and ultimately
consciousness available—into it. In this sinister plot, as a data-mining
way the simulant’s consciousness is able replacement for the omnipresent public
to leap out of the simulation to the opinion pollsters, dubbed Certified
(relatively) real world above. The Reaction Monitors, who constantly
boundaries are thus in fact permeable in pester the citizens of the 1998 world for
both directions, allowing traffic to flow their views on commercial products. So
from lower to upper as well as upper to pervasive has this practice become that it
lower. This programming oversight is constitutes a sizable portion of the
foreshadowed by Whitney’s early world’s economy, fortified by the
warning to Douglas, “You could die!” powerful Association of Reaction
Monitors that has successfully lobbied
The revelation that the 1998
for laws compelling citizens to answer
world is a simulation intensifies the
the CRM’s ubiquitous questions. When
ambiguities that haunt the scenes with
the novel’s Douglas Hall realizes his
retrospective ironies. When Douglas
world is a simulation, he understands
barely escapes death by drowning in the
that it is being used for data mining by
simulated world, he is mobilized into
the world above, much as his company
furious action, insisting when he returns
intends to use its simulated world. If his
to his world that he intends to shut the
company’s simulation puts the CRMs
simulation down. “These people are
out of business, Douglas’s world will
real,” he shouts to Whitney in an
cease to fulfill the purpose for which it
announcement that can be taken as an6
was created by the upper world and will world, is as fully capable of a
consequently be wiped from existence meaningful life as the citizens of her
by its creator, the sadistic David. In the world. Echoing the concerns of
novel these ambiguities are carried not Galouye’s Douglas Hall, the filmic
so much by dialogue as by a complicated character insists, “None of this is real.
set of protocols that allows one character You pull the plug, I disappear, and
to probe and partially control the nothing I ever say, nothing I ever do,
consciousness of another, enacted most will ever matter.”
fully when Douglas struggles to retain Although the film swerves from
control of his consciousness against the novel in downplaying the suggestion
David. By reducing these complications that the plug might be pulled, the film
and omitting altogether the political effectively settles the argument in Jane’s
battle for how the simulation will be favor when David, knowing she has
used, the film reorients the emphasis betrayed him by falling in love with
toward metaphysical complexities rather Douglas, downloads into Douglas’s
than political satire.5 world to kill her while she is also
These perplexities provide the downloaded in the 1998 world. Since
central focus for the latter half of the her death in the simulation would mean
film, as characters in both the 1937 and the destruction of her consciousness in
1998 worlds struggle with what their the 2024 world, the death threat must be
lives mean if their consciousness, and seen as something more than a game,
indeed their entire perceived universes, restoring its status as an ultimate
are merely electrical impulses running in concern. If her death is real, then it
a computer. When Ashton’s body is follows that her life in the simulated
struck by a car while occupied by world must also be consequential and
Whitney, the death of Whitney’s thus in some sense real. Through this
consciousness automatically ensures that plot twist consequences are knitted back
the computer will upload Ashton’s together with actions, restoring the
consciousness into Douglas’s world, the possibility for ethical action that was
first time Douglas (and we) realize this threatened when characters could
reverse transfer is possible. By now apparently escape the consequences for
Douglas has discovered his world too is their actions by uploading back into their
a simulation. When the usually-cynical own world, as Douglas did when he was
Ashton, stunned by the superior being drowned by Ashton. From an
technology of 1998, proclaims that ethical viewpoint it does not matter, the
people in this world are like gods, film suggests, whether the lives one
Douglas replies ironically that he is little plays with are simulated or real.
more than a mechanical figure in the Sacrificing someone else to gratify
crude arcade game he keeps in his office, sadistic desires is always wrong and
capable only of making preprogrammed fraught with ethical implications. Jane
moves. He repeats this denial of free tells Douglas that her husband “made
will and ultimate meaning to Jane, himself a god, and it corrupted him.”
calling himself a “puppet.” Jane Douglas’s conclusion concerning the
responds, “A puppet doesn’t have a simulants in the 1937 world, “they are as
soul,” insisting that Douglas, and real as you and me,” can now be
implicitly everyone in the present-day understood in a positive rather than a7
negative sense, as a recognition of the to Jane and Douglas from the beach
rights of simulants in both worlds to where he is walking his dog.
meaningful lives. This trite ending is rendered
Throughout, the 1998 and 1937 more complex in the film’s closing shot.
worlds have been distinguished by As the screen goes black, the display
strikingly different visual styles. contracts to a white dot in the middle, as
Whereas the 1937 world has lightly- if a television or computer screen was
tinted sepia tones and is replete with rich being shut down. The implication, of
lustrous fabrics and crowded cabaret course, is that Jane’s world is also a
scenes appropriate to the nostalgic simulation, a suggestion slyly imported
function it serves for its creator Hannon into Galouye’s novel through its title,
Fuller, the present day world is rendered Simulacron-3. Although characters in
in saturated primaries, icy blues and reds the novel’s present-day world explain
reflected in cold glass and steel surfaces. the eponymous name of their simulation
When Detective McBain (Dennis by saying that it took three tries to get
Haysbert) cuts the plot’s Gordian knot the simulation to work, the title haunts
by shooting David just as he is about to the novel with the intimation that even
kill Jane, the bullet shatters a large glass the third uppermost world is a
window, metaphorically penetrating the simulation.
boundaries separating the worlds. As Instead of turtles all the way
David’s consciousness dies, Douglas is down, reality may be simulations all the
automatically uploaded into Jane’s way up, a view that renders every level
world, in effect allowing her to exchange ontologically unstable but nonetheless
the corrupted David for Douglas, who also restores the possibility for meaning
resembles the person David used to be at every level. Detective McBain, who
before he played god. We know that broods over the action in the 1998 world
McBain’s conscious act of killing was and functions as a kind of narrator for
initiated by a phone call from Jane. the film, sums up this view when, after
Although we do not hear their he has killed David in Douglas’s body,
conversation, we can infer that she has he tells Jane “Just leave us all the hell
clued him in to the situation. After alone down here, OK?” If every
killing David, McBain makes clear that available reality is a simulation, the
he understands the true nature of his reality markers that distinguish science
world when he asks, “Is somebody going fiction from mainstream fiction can no
to unplug me now?” This dark note is in longer function effectively, for the
sharp contrast to the final scenes differences that mark a world
showing Douglas awakening in the 2024 constructed through cognitive
world, where the predominant rose estrangement as distinct from the
colors and futuristic utopian style that everyday world are deconstructed. In
suggest all the problems have been the worlds depicted in The Thirteenth
solved. Douglas, united with Jane, even Floor, all realities are mixed—at least all
recovers in surrogate form his that we can know.
relationship with his father figure
Hannon Fuller, for in the 2024 world Memory and Authenticity in Dark City
Jane’s father, the model for Hannon, Whereas in The Thirteenth Floor
enjoys evident good health as he waves issues of ultimate concern are8
problematized because quotidian reality consciousness as it struggles to construct
is revealed to be a simulation, in Dark a coherent self from artificial memories
City the focus shifts to simulated and a subjectivity that proves to be more
memories and environments. Tampering than the sum of what it can remember.
with the minds of the simulants after The drama is played out primarily
they are created, a realized possibility in through the character of John Murdoch,
Galouye’s novel where memories are an inhabitant of the Dark City who
frequently erased or reprogrammed, is successfully (and unconsciously) resists
omitted from the film version. Rather the latest memory imprinting and
than introducing the additional awakens in midstream, with his previous
complication of “real” versus “unreal” memories wiped out but his new ones
memories, past events remain not yet installed.
consensually intact, allowing the focus The implantation is carried out by
to stay on the central ontological Dr. Daniel Schreber, a human who has
question of whether a simulated world been forced to work for The Strangers
can have meaning. By contrast, in Dark but nevertheless harbors subversive
City the split between the real and unreal ambitions. In sharp contrast to the ultra-
moves inward into the mind, creating a modern simulation equipment of The
dichotomy between an artificial past Thirteenth Floor, the technology here is
constructed by implanting false rendered anachronistically, the synthetic
memories, and an inaccessible yet still memories contained within an ornately
theoretically possible authentic core. antique syringe reminiscent of the
This dichotomy is reflected and inverted kludgey technology of The City of Lost
in the city’s architecture, split between Children. Like that film, the lighting of
an ordinary-appearing surface and an Dark City is inspired by the noir
alien core. Although the Dark City tradition, as Roger Ebert has noted,
appears normal to its inhabitants, using point light sources, dark shadows,
underneath are The Strangers, aliens and smoke-obscured rooms to create a
who control the machinery telepathically sense of visual impairment that prevents
through the “tuning” that nightly us from ever seeing the whole picture at
rearranges the city surface according to once. The absence of clear sight lines
their experiments. As with The gestures metaphorically toward the
Thirteenth Floor, anomalies function as condition of the human inhabitants, who
crucial clues to the truth, here the facts are periodically injected with memories
that day never breaks over the Dark City of completely different lives than they
and all roads circle back to their starting had led before. Dr. Schreber, mixing
points. and matching memories “like so much
The mixed reality of The paint,” concocts from them synthetic
Thirteenth Floor is created in part by lives that have no authentic roots in the
having two different consciousnesses past. When Schreber discovers that John
occupy the same body, a time-sharing Murdoch has attained the alien capacity
arrangement. Although leakages occur, to “tune,” he hypothesizes it is an
each consciousness retains its individual evolutionary mutation that has
identity. In Dark City the schism occurs spontaneously emerged as a survival
not between one consciousness and strategy. Realizing that John’s abilities,
another but within the same unique among the human inhabitants of9
the Dark City, have the potential to resist (Colin Friels), the previous detective
the aliens, Schreber confides to him investigating the serial murders, has
what he knows about their history: that apparently gone mad and had to be
they were abducted and taken to the dismissed. When Bumstead visits
Dark City as laboratory stock on which Walenski at his home, he is holed up in
to carry out the alien experiments. an empty room, the walls and ceiling
Possessing a group mind and painted with spiral-like labyrinths.
communicating through telepathy, The When Bumstead tells him he is
Strangers are a dying race determined to frightening his wife, he insists, “She’s
discover the secret of what makes not my wife. I don’t know who she is. I
humans unique individuals. Although don’t know who any of us are.” In
the rationale is only lightly sketched in retrospect it is clear that Walenski knows
the film, apparently they believe that if at least part of the real situation,
they can somehow discover the source of including that his “wife” is associated
human individuality, they may be able to with him only through a fictitious past
re-engineer themselves and reinvigorate and there is no way out from the Dark
their dying species. So they inject John City. Bumstead guesses that Walenski is
Murdoch with the memories of a reacting to something he learned while
murderer to see if, given this false past, investigating the case. Walenski
he will now act like a murderer. The explodes, “There is no case. There
irony, of course, is that by tampering never was. This is all just a big joke.
with the human mind, they are It’s a joke,” he goes on in a significant
eradicating the very individuality they pronouncement revealing that murder is
hope to understand, a dynamic that not primarily what is at stake here. A
makes their relations with the humans a similar dynamic occurs when Emma
zero-sum game. Murdoch (Jennifer Connelly), John’s
memory-injected wife, tries to apologize
Like The Thirteenth Floor, Dark
to him for the extramarital affair her
City initially presents as a murder
memories tell her she committed. At
mystery. John Murdoch awakens to find
that point John knows that her memories
a prostitute dead in his apartment, her
have been implanted, and he brushes
body gruesomely mutilated and spiral-
aside her apology like Walenski brushes
like labyrinths incised on her breasts.
aside Bumstead. Everything on the
Also like The Thirteenth Floor, the
surface, from an illicit romance to
murder is only a cover for deeper
murder, is trivialized because it operates
ontological issues. We never learn
in the service of what is concealed
anything about the dead woman and
underneath the Dark City.
come to understand that her body is
intended merely as set dressing for The plot evolves, then, as a
Murdoch’s identification as a murderer. struggle to escape from the labyrinth,
Death thus ceases to be an ultimate penetrate the surface, break through to
concern and becomes instead an opening the outside—metaphors for going from
move in a game whose stakes are illusion to truth, laboratory animal to
otherwise than they at first seem. The authentic selfhood. The outside assumes
chief detective assigned to the case, mythic proportions in the billboards
Inspector Frank Bumstead (William advertising Shell Beach, the promised
Hurt), is there because Eddie Walenski outside where the sun pours down over10
an ocean stretching to a vast horizon, give you some more pretty things soon,
signifying a geography diametrically Anna.” She objects, saying “I’m not
opposed to claustrophobically encased Anna,” but they override her protestation
Dark City. When John discovers a as an adult would that of a fractious
scrapbook he supposedly made as a child, responding “You will be soon.
child, it is blank when he first sees it. Yes.”
Confiscated by Bumstead, it later shows At the center of John’s quest for
up in the detective’s office filled with authentic selfhood is his attempt to
pictures. Even this apparently hard recover his family and connection with
evidence, however, is revealed as an his childhood, including Uncle Karl who
illusion. When John insists to Schreber runs an establishment called “Neptune’s
that he can remember his childhood, Kingdom.” On display is not the vast
Schreber tells him “You still don’t ocean but only a few aquaria, allusions
understand, John. You were never a to the goldfish that John rescues when he
boy, not in this place. Your entire awakens disoriented from the failed
history is an illusion, a fabrication, as it memory implantation and knocks over
is with all of us. You made those the goldfish bowl. When Uncle Karl
drawings happen with your gift.” In an entertains Johnny with that most banal of
odd sense, the filled album does reveal family activities, a slide show of shots
who he is, not by pointing backward from his childhood, John discovers not
toward an origin that can connect him the authentication he seeks, however, but
with an authentic past but by gesturing discrepancies that reveal the slides are
forward to the mutant being he is artifacts concocted by The Strangers,
becoming. “all lies.” The creepiest sign of the
The specter of a childhood disjunction between a childhood severed
severed from its rightful function as from natural adulthood are the aliens
precursor to adulthood haunts the film who occupy children’s bodies, their
throughout. The aliens have usurped the diminutive forms in scary contradiction
parental role, regarding the kidnapped to their superhuman powers and
humans as laboratory rats under their bloodthirsty intentions. One of The
control, an image repeated in the spirals Strangers tells John “We use your dead
cut into the dead women’s breasts, the as vessels,” so these unnatural children,
obsessive drawings decorating in addition to their own monstrosity,
Walenski’s room, the rat running a spiral signify the deaths of human children
maze that Schreber is inspecting when who will never grow to adulthood.
Emma visits him, and the rat trap When Schreber confirms that
Bumstead finds in Walenski’s cluttered John has acquired the ability to “tune,”
office. With their vastly superior mental The Strangers are incredulous because,
powers, The Strangers regard the as their leader Mr. Book (Ian
humans “like lost children,” perhaps an Richardson) says, “It requires several of
illusion to that other City of Lost your lifetimes to master our gifts. The
Children where the sun seems never to idea that a simple man could develop the
shine. When The Strangers ominously ability to tune” seems to them to defy the
visit Emma to inject her with the order that constitutes them as the adults
memories that will eradicate her past, in charge and humans as the “lost
they tell her condescendingly, “We will children” under their control. Through11
his mutation, John has in effect been replays the previously implanted
able to break through to adulthood as it memories of Murdoch’s childhood.
is constituted within the regime of The Interpolated into these synthetic
Strangers. One of the first indications of memories are new elements, Schreber’s
his status comes when he resists The admonishments urging Murdoch to
Strangers’ command “Sleep,” their action and assuring him he can succeed
usual way of dealing with humans who against The Strangers. In effect,
inconveniently interfere with their Schreber is remixing Murdoch‘s false
designs. He can no longer be treated as childhood, giving him instead the
an overgrown child resisting going to childhood he needs to reach maturation
bed but must be reckoned with as a fully as a purposeful adult equal to the most
commensurate adult. His quest to play powerful alien.
this adult role leads him back in a circle The price Murdoch pays to enter
to a wall poster advertising Shell Beach, this god-like status is acceptance of his
the mythical outside he now realizes he alien powers. The film intimates that by
can never reach. Furious, he rips successfully resisting the aliens, he has
through the poster and finds a brick wall preserved his individuality. The epic
underneath. Bumstead at his side, he battle scene makes clear, however, that
begins tearing through the wall--only to he now possesses in full The Strangers’
expose the nothingness of outer space. powers of telekinesis. It remains an
The outside is thus revealed as an open question whether his mutant
absolute disjunction, the Dark City as an abilities have contaminated his “soul,”
immense artificial spaceship floating his presumed human essence. Following
through the dark vastness of outer space. the climactic battle, Murdoch again
Trying to defend Murdoch, Bumstead encounters his doppelganger, Mr. Hand,
breaks loose from the Dark City’s who tells him that his human imprint “is
gravitational shield and is lost in the not compatible with my kind” and that
blackness, giving us our first glimpse of he is dying. The scene’s composition
the Dark City from the outside. has been anticipated by an earlier scene
In a plot to find out what in which Murdoch fights with Mr. Hand
Murdoch is thinking, The Strangers have on the ridge of a peaked roof, a struggle
injected Mr. Hand (Richard O’Brien), resolved when Mr. Hand tumbles down
one of their group, with his memories, one side, Murdoch down the other. This
creating a monstrous doppelganger that foreshadowing sets up the later death of
is half alien, half Murdoch.6 Now they Mr. Hand as a hygienic separation of the
intend to inject Murdoch with their twins, with the alien contamination
group memories, converting him into the remaining with Mr. Hand and the human
mirror double of Mr. Hand, a human essence with Murdoch.
who possesses an alien core. In return Later events testify, however,
they expect that they will finally learn that Murdoch has become, if not an alien
the mystery of the human soul, for they mutant, at least a superhuman entity.
will share his essence even as he shares His status as a god is confirmed when he
their past. Forced by The Strangers to uses his newly realized power to
carry out this plan, Schreber overcome The Strangers and take over
subversively injects him instead with an control of their machinery, using it to
especially prepared concoction that reinvent the Dark City as a place full of12
light and water, the two elements they the city is no longer dark, it remains an
loath. As the sun rises over the Dark artifact run by machinery hidden from
City in a shot that shows it from an the view of all its occupants except the
exterior viewpoint as a huge metropolis omnipotent Murdoch (and Schreber,
floating in space, the parallel with who has conveniently dropped out of the
Genesis is unmistakable. Moreover, the picture). In a sense, then, the city is still
spirals that had earlier connoted an a simulation, a mixed reality that appears
exitless maze are now converted into real to the inhabitants but is actually
wispy clouds spiraling over the city. As circumscribed by the limited boundaries
Roger Ebert observes, this and disjunctive relationship to the
transformation plays off the spiral’s outside characteristic of all simulations.
alternative signification as an allusion to As with The Thirteenth Floor, this
the Fibonacci series. Found throughout mixed reality is the only reality its
nature in everything from the chambered inhabitants will ever know.
nautilus to spiral galaxies, the Fibonacci Time Sequencing and the Mixed Reality
series (created by adding two previous of Mulholland Drive
elements in the series to create the next,
as in 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . .) is associated Whereas in The Thirteenth Floor
with the ability of simple elements to the virtual reality simulation was created
self-organize, forming complex by a computer that can link to
symmetries. The clouds, arising from consciousness, and in Dark City by a
the moisture that The Strangers mind linked to machinery, in Mulholland
abhorred, are not static like the walls of Drive the virtual reality engine is the
a labyrinth but self-organizing patterns, mind alone. The sequencing makes the
always changing, always new. It would film virtually impossible to understand
be easy to see them as metaphors for the on a first viewing; only in retrospect can
openness of free will and fecund the viewer put together the pieces to
creativity, were it not that the city is still construct a coherent story. Significantly,
ruled over by a superhuman deity who the detective characters that play
conceals from the inhabitants its true prominent roles in The Thirteen Floor
nature. The promise (or specter) of and Dark City are here relegated to bit
godhood haunts Dark City as it did The parts that scarcely impact on the action
Thirteenth Floor because simulations at all. Their function is allocated instead
necessarily imply a hierarchy in which to the viewer, who must actively re-think
the creator exists on a superior plane the story from the beginning once the
from the created. ending has been reached, since the
contextualizing information that enables
The film attempts a naturalized
this reconstruction to take place comes at
ending by having John encounter Emma,
the film’s conclusion.7
now converted into Anna with no
memory of her past life, at the pier The first coherent set of scenes
overlooking the Shell Beach he has just depicts a plot to kill a beautiful woman
created. As the two agree to go to Shell (Laura Elena Harring) in the back of a
Beach together, the cozy reconcilement limousine, foiled when joyriders crash
is tainted by the audience’s knowledge into the car and kill everyone except her.
that they enter into their presumed new Dazed, she makes her way down the hill
relationship far from equal. Although into Hollywood from Mulholland Drive13
and conceals herself in an apartment wants to kill Rita and why. But as with
whose owner (later identified as Betty The Thirteen Floor and Dark City, the
Elms’ Aunt Ruth) is leaving on a trip. attempted murder covers a deeper and
When Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives more disturbing reality. Only in the final
shortly afterward, she discovers the scenes are we given the information that
woman taking a shower and befriends allows us to understand that the action
her. The woman, who has lost her takes place during the last two hours of
memory as a result of a head injury from Diane Selwyn’s life. Figure 1, “Time
the crash, takes the name “Rita” from a Sequencing in Mulholland Drive,: shows
nearby movie poster advertising Rita the temporal positioning of each section,
Hayward. Thus the film opens with an indicates its ontological status (real life,
apparent attempted murder, and much of flashback, or dream/hallucination) and
the subsequent action focuses on the the duration of each section.
Betty and Rita’s attempt to find out who
A clue is given in the opening shots
Seen from this retrospective
showing someone sleeping under red
position, the plot with Betty and Rita is
sheets, covered by an orange blanket.
encased entirely within Diane’s dream.
These colors reappear in Betty Elm’s14 spangle-studded sweater, visually the set that Adam Kesher orders cleared connecting the sleeping Diane with the while he passionately kisses Camilla, personae she creates in her dream. Betty another dig at Diane that suggests is the innocent self, the better self, that Camilla enjoys sadistically causing her Diane wishes she was, brilliantly played pain. Devastated by these by Naomi Watts. Since the film has developments, Diane meets with a been widely misunderstood, it may be scruffy lowlife hit man and gives him helpful to review the evidence that Camilla’s picture. He tells her that once indicates most of the film happens events are set in motion they cannot be within Diane’s dream. At the changed and asks her if she is sure this is engagement party shown in the final what she wants. “More than anything in scenes, we learn that Diane had won a this world,” she assures him, whereupon jitterbug contest whose prize was a trip he tells her that when the deed is done, to Hollywood (this contest is shown at she will find in her apartment a blue key the film’s beginning as the credits roll). that he shows her. When she asks This, along with a small inheritance “What’s it open?” he laughs, for from from her grandparents, enables her to his point of view this is entirely come to the place often called the irrelevant. The suggestion that the key nation’s dream factory to try to make it can nevertheless open something in the movies. She auditions for various important reappears in Diane’s dream parts, including The Sylvia North Story, and provides a central metaphor for the she says in a conversation with Coco dream’s logic. Kesher (Ann Miller), Adam Kesher’s The dream recycles nearly all the mother, but the director Bob Brooker characters that appear in the party but “didn’t think so much of me.” Instead assigns them different roles, appropriate the part goes to Camilla Rhodes, the to Diane’s agony at having ordered a beautiful woman who appears in Diane’s murder whose consequences are literally dream as the amnesiac Rita. Camilla unbearable for her. The casting is befriends Diane and arranges for her to immediately apparent to us once we get small parts in exchange for a lesbian have seen the party, since the same relationship. But when Camilla decides actors play both their dream characters to marry her director, Adam Kesher and real-life counterparts. The most (Justin Theroux), she tells Diane they important doublings, of course, are Betty must break off their relationship—a and Rita standing in for Diane and scene depicted at the end immediately Camilla, now cast so that Betty becomes before the engagement party scene. At the protective, nurturing friend Camilla’s insistence, Diane agrees to go altruistically trying to help a dazed and to the party, but clearly for her it is an confused Rita. Betty is the rightful exquisite torture. Not only do Adam and occupant of the apartment, transformed Camilla announce their engagement, but from the drab dump where Diane lives Camilla also kisses another woman in into a lushly decorated beauty, so her front of Diane while making sure she letting Rita stay with her is another sees it, a hint that she may continue her example of her largesse. Coco Kesher, lesbian affairs but not with Diane. In almost the only person to whom Diane similar fashion, Camilla had earlier talks at the party, is cast as Coco Lenoir, asked that Diane be allowed to stay on the well-intentioned busybody apartment
15
manager who disapproves of Rita would return, another re-writing that
staying with Betty (as Adam Kesher’s transforms Diane’s murderous intentions
mother, she could certainly be expected into loyalty and altruism.
to disapprove of Diane’s lesbian The conspiracy provides
relationship with Camilla). Alone of the tantalizing clues to what the dream tries
characters Adam Kesher remains who he to conceal. One of its instruments is the
is, a hip up-and-coming director with an mysterious Cowboy, a fleeting figure at
attitude, but around him the dream the party whom Diane glimpses passing
builds an elaborate conspiracy plot through a doorway. In the dream, he
meant to explain why he cannot have the becomes the hokey but somehow still
real object of his desire, transformed dangerous enforcer who warns Adam
from Camilla/Rita to Diane/Betty. “You will see me once more if you do
Within this general framework good. You will see me two more times
are many details that complicate the if you do bad.” Since we see him twice
story, investing the transformations with more, at the party and when he appears
delicate irony and dramatic tension. In in hallucinated form to waken Diane, the
the dream Betty pulls off a dynamite dream logic implies she has done “bad”
reading for a part in The Sylvia North rather than “good.” The real life
Story, transforming a banal script into an conspiracy, of course, is between Diane
explosive scene fraught with the and the hit man. In the dream the hit
ambivalence of sexual attraction twisted man appears as a vicious punk who for
together with deep hatred—a vicarious some reason needs the black address
enactment of what Diane feels toward book of an acquaintance, presumably to
Camilla. The director Bob Brooker, who track down Rita. Rather than simply ask
“didn’t think so much” of Diane in real his friend for the book, the hit man cold-
life, is rendered as a near-idiot incapable bloodedly plugs him. When a stray
of saying anything that makes sense, bullet rips through the wall and hits an
never mind insightful. The woman obese woman in the apartment next
Camilla kisses at the party is cast in the door, the hit man goes after her as well,
role of the dream’s “Camilla Rhodes,” comically struggling with her in a scene
recycled as the actress that the ripe with black humor. This struggle is
mysterious conspiracy foists upon Adam witnessed in turn by a humble cleaning
Kesher. When Adam initially rebels man. Lured into the room supposedly to
against their suggestion (actually their lend aid to the screaming woman, the
command) that he cast “Camilla cleaning man is also killed by the hit
Rhodes” as the lead, the conspiracy man. The final victim is the vacuum
shuts down his production, bankrupts cleaner, whose smoking demise sets off
him with a phony credit rating, and a fire alarm. With these ludicrous
threatens him with violence until he developments, the scene enacts a sense
knuckles under, even though his longing of consequences spiraling out of control.
looks toward Betty plainly indicate that In sharp contrast is the
he would much rather have her instead. mysterious head honcho of the
Betty, for her part, runs out of this conspiracy, an impeccably dressed older
important audition despite Adam’s man in a wheelchair who is encased in a
encouraging stare because she has hermetically sealed room, apparently to
“promised a friend” (Rita) that she make sure nothing from the outside16
world, from germs to rival gangsters, This figure is introduced when an
touches him. Despite his ailing health unnamed young man sits at a booth in
and nearly immobile condition, he is Winkie’s restaurant and confides to his
able to pull strings that jerk other companion (perhaps his psychoanalyst)
characters into furious action. He that “I’ve had a dream about this place.
communicates with his minions with a It’s the second one I’ve had.” He tells
nearly imperceptible shake of the head, his companion that in his dream he sees
but this is enough to initiate a chain of his companion standing by the cash
telephone calls that move from one register in this very spot. In the dream,
beefy hand to another. Since his motives the young man then goes outside to the
and position are never explained, we back—and out pops a figure so dreadful,
may wonder if he represents Diane’s so monstrous that the young man
unconscious, communicating through declares, “I hope that I never see that
chains of intermediaries and pulling person outside my dream.” At his
strings while remaining unmoved and companion’s urging, he decides to
unmoving. confront his fear. With his companion
trailing behind, he goes outside and
Despite the dream’s attempt to
walks behind the restaurant. Just as he is
rewrite Diane’s character and transform
nearing the dumpster, around the corner
the consequences of her actions, real life
appears a derelict that we glimpse only
keeps breaking through more and more
for a second, scarcely human with
insistently. The unbearable truth of the
unkempt hair, a filthy face and obscured
murder Diane has purchased interrupts
features. The young man collapses. In
the sanitized construction of her dream
the dream logic the derelict represents
repeatedly through the voices of her
that which is so dreadful it cannot be
dream characters. At first the leakages
faced, the devastating truth that Diane
are subtle, as when Rita tells Betty “It
attempts to evade through her dream. It
will be OK if I sleep,” a hope dispelled
is no accident that the derelict’s double
when she wakens and still cannot
is within the dream itself, for he is
remember who she is. Rita’s
positioned at the crux where the
expectation that sleep will cure her
convolutions in the dream’s logic
parallels Diane’s hope that sleep will
become most intense. Nor is it an
restore her sanity. The interruptions
accident that when he appears again, it is
become more insistent when Louise
a signal that the truth cannot be kept at
Bonner, cast in the dream as a loony
bay any longer.
tenant in Betty’s apartment complex,
knocks at the door muttering The dream’s climax comes when
“Someone’s in trouble.” Here the dream the dream’s script breaks down,
logic is at its most self-referential, for revealing that it is powerless to change
Louise has no counterpart at the party; what has already happened in real life.
rather, her double is within the dream The tension begins to build when Betty
itself. The shape of her unkempt hair and Rita visit the same Winkie’s
and profile connects her to the dream’s restaurant in which the young man
most mysterious character, a figure recounted his dream, a setting nearly
invested with a fear so intense he is identical to the one in which Diane had
rendered almost monstrous. met with the hit man. In that scene,
Diane glanced at the waitress’s nametag17
and saw “Betty,” the name she will all recorded” and “It is all an illusion,”
appropriate for her alter ego in her despite the appearance he creates of
dream. In the dream sequence set in the having live musicians create the music
same restaurant, Rita glances at the on the spot. His colleague then
waitress’s nametag and sees “Diane,” a introduces “La Llorona de Los Angeles,
name that rings a bell with her (as well it Rebecca del Rio.” Literally “the crying
might!). Following this clue, Rita one,” La Llorona is the protagonist in a
produces the name “Diane Selwyn” and Hispanic folk tale about a woman who is
she and Betty visit Diane’s apartment. jilted by her husband. In despair she
Breaking in through the window, they drowns their two children in the river.
penetrate to the bedroom to make a After nights of weeping in remorse she
ghastly discovery, a decaying corpse on drowns herself, and her ghostly sobs are
the bed. The corpse is an unmistakable often heard in the night.8 The film’s
recognition within the dream of the deep version of “La Llorona” sings Rob
trouble in which Diane finds herself, as Orbison’s “Crying” in a faithfully
well as an indication that the dream rendered Spanish translation. Although
cannot sustain its illusions for much the vocalist’s hair is disheveled and her
longer. The discovery frightens Rita and makeup overdone, she sings so
Betty so badly that, retreating back to expressively and powerfully that Rita
Betty’s apartment, they cut Rita’s hair and Betty begin weeping. Betty in
and hide it with a blond wig, making her particular is so affected that she begins
into a double for Betty. Snuggling in violently trembling. The lyrics to
bed, Betty confesses her erotic attraction “Crying,” mourning a lost love that will
to Rita and they begin making love. never return, combine with the allusion
When Betty asks Rita if she has done to La Llorona to constitute the dream’s
this before, Rita says she does not know, most transparent recognition so far that
and when Betty confesses that she loves by ordering Camilla’s murder, Diane has
Rita, Rita significantly does not answer, not only lost her lover beyond hope but
another indication that Camilla’s also condemned herself beyond
rejection of Diane in real life is redemption. It is at this point that the
beginning to affect Rita’s behavior in the singer collapses, although the richly
dream. The dream’s illusions are further sorrowful voice continues as she is
emphasized by a camera shot positioned unceremoniously dragged off stage. We
to superimpose half of Rita’s face onto realize that she must have been lip-
half of Betty’s, creating a composite syncing and that the voice is, as the
portrait in which the two characters impresario warned, “all recorded,” just
merge. In retrospect we realize that all as the events that the dream attempts to
of the dream characters are being rescript and replay have already been
generated by Diane’s mind, speaking the irreversibly acted out in real life.
thoughts she wants them to have. With this recognition, the dream
The dream’s climax comes when can no longer maintain its illusions.
Rita awakens at 2 am and tells Diane When Rita returns to the apartment,
that they must go to the Club Silencio. Betty has disappeared, as if to signal that
Arriving at this eerily empty this idealized double for Diane cannot be
establishment, they find an ominously sustained. As Rita opens the mysterious
costumed impresario telling them “It’s blue box with a blue anodized triangular18
key, the camera zooms into the black grandparents crawling under the door in
interior and the Cowboy appears in the miniatures and then growing to normal
doorway, saying “Hey pretty girl, time to size, she flees into her bedroom, puts a
wake up.” Perhaps alluding to Pandora gun into her mouth, and pulls the trigger.
’s Box, the blue box functions Camera shots of the derelict’s face and
symbolically as the knowledge that ghostly images of Betty and Rita replay
Diane has ordered Camilla’s murder, the crucial realizations that led to this
opened with a blue key that alludes to moment. The final shot is of a blue-
the blue key she found in her apartment haired woman reminiscent of La Llorona
indicating that the murder has been sitting in the balcony at Club Silencio.
committed. Diane then awakens from She pronounces “Silencio” as if echoing
sleeping on the bed, the dream having the conclusion of Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
failed to solve her problems, which now “The rest is silence.”
confront her with renewed terror. As she A recuperative reading such as
goes into the living room, we see the hit we have given here must recognize that
man’s blue key on the coffee table, even if the film can be rendered as a
establishing that the murder has already coherent sequence, it nevertheless is
taken place and that the dream was an presented as if it were ontologically
attempt to evade this reality. The next unstable. Thinking about why this kind
sequences are a real visit from her of fragmented narrative has become so
estranged roommate, as well as widespread on the contemporary scene,
hallucinations where Diane imagines including films such as Memento and
that Camilla has come back to her. The Run Lola Run and contemporary fiction
most revealing scenes are flashbacks to ranging from Gravity’s Rainbow to
the breakup scene, the engagement House of Leaves, we speculate that as
party, and the scene where Diane meets the flow of information and the
the hit man to arrange Camilla’s murder, technologies of interconnectivity have
thus finally giving us the information we increased exponentially across the globe
need to put together a coherent with the advent of the microcomputer,
chronology of events. distributed processing, the Internet and
The conclusion comes when we the World Wide Web, the art of
cut to the derelict playing with the blue storytelling has dramatically changed.
aluminum box, now open to signify that As theorists Janet Murray, George
the cat is out of the bag. Indeed, out of Landow, Marie-Laure Ryan and Michael
the paper bag at his feet crawl miniature Joyce among others have argued,
versions of Diane’s grandparents, nonlinear modes of storytelling,
rescripted in the dream as a well- especially fragmented non-chronological
meaning couple Betty meets on the plane narratives, are becoming increasingly
but here transformed into demonic visible and important. The highly
creatures hysterically laughing, as if in nonlinear narrative of Mulholland Drive
recognition that Diane’s dream of further suggests that the technologies of
making it in Hollywood has turned into a virtual reality feed back into the culture
horrible mockery of success. We cut to to change perceptions of how stories are
her apartment, where she hears a knock conceived and created, even when the
on the door. When the truth enters in the technology is not literally present.
form of her hysterically laughing Thinking of the mind as a virtual realityYou can also read
