The Ring

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LateReg
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Re: The Ring

Post by LateReg »

Truly epic and insightful post, Reindeer!

Pardon my simplemindedness, but isn't the simplest explanation for Cooper telling Laura not to take the ring that if she takes it, she will die? He doesn't want her to die (as The Return makes crystal clear), so he tells her not to take it. Wearing it means that Bob cannot inhabit her, and since that is his ultimate goal in FWWM, he will have no choice but to kill her. In this basic reading, the ring does the opposite of buy her salvation (and I was very surprised to read you refer to it as such since, no matter how you look at it, it is precisely the reason she is killed, though I of course realize you are referring to a deeper form of salvation). The only way I've ever wrapped my head around this, admittedly in far less detail than you, is that Cooper views Laura staying alive and being inhabited by Bob as the better option than dying. This actually vibes with your theory that if an already inhabited someone is wearing the ring, then Bob can't leave the body; therefore, oppositely, if an uninhabited someone is wearing the ring then Bob cannot inhabit the body, the ring serving as an impassable threshold. That was always the best I could do with the info presented in FWWM and TMP. The question still remains whether Cooper was right or wrong to tell her not to take it, no matter how you interpret the ring itself.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Ring

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

LateReg wrote:Pardon my simplemindedness, but isn't the simplest explanation for Cooper telling Laura not to take the ring that if she takes it, she will die? He doesn't want her to die (as The Return makes crystal clear), so he tells her not to take it. Wearing it means that Bob cannot inhabit her, and since that is his ultimate goal in FWWM, he will have no choice but to kill her. In this basic reading, the ring does the opposite of buy her salvation (and I was very surprised to read you refer to it as such since, no matter how you look at it, it is precisely the reason she is killed, though I of course realize you are referring to a deeper form of salvation). The only way I've ever wrapped my head around this, admittedly in far less detail than you, is that Cooper views Laura staying alive and being inhabited by Bob as the better option than dying. This actually vibes with your theory that if an already inhabited someone is wearing the ring, then Bob can't leave the body; therefore, oppositely, if an uninhabited someone is wearing the ring then Bob cannot inhabit the body, the ring serving as an impassable threshold. That was always the best I could do with the info presented in FWWM and TMP. The question still remains whether Cooper was right or wrong to tell her not to take it, no matter how you interpret the ring itself.
My thinking was that Laura was already resigned to die that night, ring or no ring. We hear this time and time again: from her diary entries on both the show and in Jennifer Lynch’s book, from Jacoby in the therapy scene with Bobby, and even without all that, I think it’s super clear from Sheryl’s acting/body language that last day in the film. She will never let Bob inside and has chosen death instead. I think Leland/Bob also realizes this and, as much as he would prefer to inhabit her, fully plans to kill her that night—again, ring or no ring.

The most widespread interpretation I’ve seen for the ring in that train car scene is that, while she was going to die either way, the ring somehow gives her peace in the afterlife (the angels). I’m not quite sure why so many people seem to make this connection. I guess it’s the way the scene is edited and scored, with that seemingly defiant/triumphant shot of her holding up her hand with the ring on it. It feels like a victory, but I think it’s more complicated than that.

I do like your theory and the way it ties into my thinking about Bob. I don’t think the ring directly causes Bob to kill her; I think he was going to do that anyway to cover his tracks. I think it marks Laura’s garmonbozia as being the shared property of the spirits, so now Bob can’t just feast on it on his own. But I like your idea that Cooper thinks being alive and inhabited by Bob is preferable to being dead, since some part of him does end up inhabited by Bob!
LateReg
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Re: The Ring

Post by LateReg »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
My thinking was that Laura was already resigned to die that night, ring or no ring. We hear this time and time again: from her diary entries on both the show and in Jennifer Lynch’s book, from Jacoby in the therapy scene with Bobby, and even without all that, I think it’s super clear from Sheryl’s acting/body language that last day in the film. She will never let Bob inside and has chosen death instead. I think Leland/Bob also realizes this and, as much as he would prefer to inhabit her, fully plans to kill her that night—again, ring or no ring.

The most widespread interpretation I’ve seen for the ring in that train car scene is that, while she was going to die either way, the ring somehow gives her peace in the afterlife (the angels). I’m not quite sure why so many people seem to make this connection. I guess it’s the way the scene is edited and scored, with that seemingly defiant/triumphant shot of her holding up her hand with the ring on it. It feels like a victory, but I think it’s more complicated than that.

I do like your theory and the way it ties into my thinking about Bob. I don’t think the ring directly causes Bob to kill her; I think he was going to do that anyway to cover his tracks. I think it marks Laura’s garmonbozia as being the shared property of the spirits, so now Bob can’t just feast on it on his own. But I like your idea that Cooper thinks being alive and inhabited by Bob is preferable to being dead, since some part of him does end up inhabited by Bob!
Interesting observation about Cooper later being inhabited by Bob. Again, I hadn't thought of that!

I admit that I am having a little bit of befuddlement here myself. Numerous times in the past, randomly, pre-The Return, have I become obsessed with deciphering Fire Walk With Me, and somehow I have never come into contact with such a detailed analysis and theory behind the ring. It is as though I was never on the right forum page, or never reading an article that addressed it in full. Rather, in my own analysis, I had focused on exactly what was concretely on the screen relating to Cooper telling her not to take the ring, and what happens directly after she takes it, and had seemingly never come into contact with any deeper analysis. Truly strange. I just googled and the first article that appeared was great, and pretty much echoed everything you just said: https://filmschoolrejects.com/i-thee-we ... 86c774627/

However, the article also does specifically state that Bob kills her because she puts the ring on, and, without watching it again with everything else in mind, that still feels right to me. Granted, the article clearly states that it has to do with the more in-depth soul/garmonbozia stuff and how it relates to the lodge spirits that you're talking about, but that ultimately it is the putting on of the ring that seals her fate. She may have been ready to die, but I think she chose to die by putting on the ring, and that was her ultimate choice. I don't know that she could have fended Bob off from inhabiting her if he wanted. I think he would have continued to try to break her down, until she gave in, but once she put the ring on, it was moot, for one reason or another.

Regardless, I just want to point out one other thing here that I failed to mention in my basic analysis. The Return makes it clear that Cooper doesn't want Laura to die, but prior to The Return the reason I focused on the ring in this way was because the only thing we absolutely, concretely know is that it was Laura's death that led Cooper to Twin Peaks, and therefore led him to the lodge, from which he time-paradoxically appears to Laura in a dream. If Laura doesn't die, then the good Cooper never goes through his own ordeal, getting trapped in the lodge, which is also concretely referenced in Fire Walk With Me by Annie. That was always compelling evidence to me that his "Don't take the ring" was centrally so that she wouldn't die, thus preventing the tragic chain of events that we all know later took place (and which we now know were attempted to be undone), including Cooper's 25-year imprisonment and all that entails (and, in light of The Return, the delay of a plan to conquer Judy, but again, I'm trying to only focus on what we know c. 1992, even if The Return ultimately helps my basic reading).
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Ring

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

I like to think Laura was strong enough to keep Bob out, and that’s part of what the gold orb was about symbolically. Despite all the ways he tarnishes her and abuses her and wears down her self esteem, she remains pure on some level.

Laura herself seems not to agree with me, though, since she views death as the only option to keep Bob at bay. I think she might have underestimated herself, but I can certainly understand reaching a breaking point and needing an end to suffering, especially in those unimaginable circumstances.
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