The Ring

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WhiteLodge90
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The Ring

Post by WhiteLodge90 »

Talking about the 2002 movie of course ;)

Haha no in all seriousness I finally watched the missing pieces today (I know what took me so long right)

Well my biggest question is why does the ring cause Agent Desmond to disappear when touching it but Annie and the nurse and even Teresa Banks don't disappear obviously bad things happen when you touch the ring but was it just a coincidence that Desmond disappeared and not the norm for the ring?
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Shloogorgh
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Re: The Ring

Post by Shloogorgh »

Maybe the ring has an intent of its own. Maybe it judged that Desmond didn't have enough pain and sorrow to be worth the time, and so reset back to the lodge to put the ring back into circulation as quickly as possible
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Rudagger
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Re: The Ring

Post by Rudagger »

While I always read it as Desmond disappearing while grabbing the ring, with the freeze frame and reaction. Do we know for a fact that he literally disappeared and nothing might've happened over a couple hours after finding the ring? (I guess with the time zones, if it was dawn in Washington it would've been around 10 am or whatever in Philly, so I guess it could've been an instantaneous event anyway, and his vanishing and teleportation using the Lodge fucks with someone connected to it like Jeffries)
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Cappy
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Re: The Ring

Post by Cappy »

I've struggled to make since of the ring ever since watching FWWM in 2002. Now I'm at the point where it makes a degree of sense to me, at least on an emotional or personal level, but watching The Missing Pieces really threw me a monkey wrench with that nurse taking that ring at the end...

My only guess about the nurse is that she's not just some future BOB victim, but rather the force that reclaims the ring for the lodge.
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Xavi
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Re: The Ring

Post by Xavi »

I guess Chet Desmond is a male and the others are female. Back in those days it was impossible that two males could marry. So ... I mean, take a look at a ring; it's both a symbol of eternity and a hole in one - my two cents: Chet is caught in an endless time-frame, just like Philip and can pop up anywhere at anytime. All it needs is someone's dream, of course.
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Re: The Ring

Post by claaa7 »

my reading is that Philip Jeffries also found the ring in Seattle (at Judy's) which led to his disapperance ("i found something... and there they were"). after witnessing the meeting above the convenience store he followed Mike and BOB into the lodge which opens up as BOB claps his hands and MFAP chants out "Fire Walk With Me".

but when was Jeffries in Buenos Aires? in 1987? in 1989 simulatenously with Cooper checking the surveillance cameras?
if he had returned from witnessing the lodge meeting ("they sat quietly for hours"... maybe two years passed during the meeting?) why would he go to Buenos Aires while still being reported as missing.. that timeline is all messed up.. i hope Jeffries will be further mentioned in the new series.

the ring is one of the biggest mysteries of FWWM and given how different it affects people not one we can gain any singular answers from only studying the text at hand...
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Cappy
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Re: The Ring

Post by Cappy »

I think it's interesting that Phillip Jeffries makes such a big deal to tell us that he's not gonna talk about Judy, but by the end of the film, a monkey with his voice utters "Judy", as if now he's finally ready to speak on the subject.
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Rudagger
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Re: The Ring

Post by Rudagger »

One point of confusion or fuzziness I have;

So, the ring seems to prevent Laura's possession. By taking the ring, BOB is forced to kill her (I assume maybe this is LMFAP's way of .. sort of forming a binding contract in order to get his garmonbozia .. Bob would rather possess Laura). Coop's whole "Don't take the ring Laura" I guess must've been a conscious play of him trying to alter the past (whether to selflessly save Laura, even if he doesn't understand just how much she doesn't want to be possessed by Bob, or to somewhat selfishly alter his own destiny).
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Re: The Ring

Post by dronerstone »

Cappy wrote:I think it's interesting that Phillip Jeffries makes such a big deal to tell us that he's not gonna talk about Judy, but by the end of the film, a monkey with his voice utters "Judy", as if now he's finally ready to speak on the subject.
Interesting thought, definitely.

Are you sure it has Jeffries'/Bowie's voice? That'd put it in a whole new context, never occurred to me like that! :)
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Re: The Ring

Post by polishq »

dronerstone wrote:
Cappy wrote:I think it's interesting that Phillip Jeffries makes such a big deal to tell us that he's not gonna talk about Judy, but by the end of the film, a monkey with his voice utters "Judy", as if now he's finally ready to speak on the subject.
Interesting thought, definitely.

Are you sure it has Jeffries'/Bowie's voice? That'd put it in a whole new context, never occurred to me like that! :)
I've had a pet theory that the little boy and the monkey are both aspects of Jeffries, like that's how he appears in the Lodge. Don't forget that the monkey's face appears behind the mask that the little boy had been wearing.
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Cappy
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Re: The Ring

Post by Cappy »

dronerstone wrote: Are you sure it has Jeffries'/Bowie's voice? That'd put it in a whole new context, never occurred to me like that! :)
I'm actually not 100% certain that it is Bowie's voice. It sounded a lot like Bowie to me.
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Cappy
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Re: The Ring

Post by Cappy »

polishq wrote: I've had a pet theory that the little boy and the monkey are both aspects of Jeffries, like that's how he appears in the Lodge. Don't forget that the monkey's face appears behind the mask that the little boy had been wearing.
The fact that the monkey hides behind a mask early in the film, then appears unmasked at it's conclusion, seemingly mirrors the repression of 'Judy' as a topic, and also Laura unmasking and confronting her trauma.

Oddly enough, the only other mention in Twin Peaks of a 'Judy' is from Maj. Briggs in a drugged stupor uttering "Judy Garland?", which opens the floodgates to parallels between Laura and Judy Garland's life, and also the Wizard of Oz symbolism that Lynch utilized in Wild at Heart, where Sheryl Lee herself portrayed a version/homage of Glenda the Good Witch.
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tmurry
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Re: The Ring

Post by tmurry »

Well my biggest question is why does the ring cause Agent Desmond to disappear when touching it but Annie and the nurse and even Teresa Banks don't disappear obviously bad things happen when you touch the ring but was it just a coincidence that Desmond disappeared and not the norm for the ring?
This end of the Twin Peaks pool is an interpretive bouillabaisse, with everything having multiple allusions and correspondences, so individual questions get tied to other questions real fast. The first tie-in question is what the ring "is." I think the ring is a certain kind of agency the having of which implies a state of control/responsibility related to difficult to face/unsafe truths about the world. It is the ring of the "magician" stepping out between the world of the known and that beyond, which is a "fire walk" - dangerous and tending towards making the wearer "used up." So it is a thing of facing truths, making a choice that confers responsibility over yourself to you, and attempting to control what happens and not just reacting.

So lets ask whether the Deer Meadow stuff is Cooper's dream, which would make the grab-the-ring-disappear-presumably-to-lodge a metaphor for what happened to Coop in the show (in his investigation, in which the flaws of the Coop analogue and those of the town are more manifest, he makes the choice to "take the step" and is annihilated). If real, it could be a non metaphorical version of the same... Chet's more primitive, alpha-y approach cannot withstand the decision to grapple with things he doesn't understand.

Tracking the ring in the film is kind of interesting. Theresa had it, then Desmond reaches for it and disappears, followed by the MFAP presenting it and talking to Coop about it (in Laura's dream where Coop says "Laura, don't take the ring"), then Laura having it in her hand after Annie talks to her (it disappears when she wakes up), then Gerard has it in the camper, and finally he throws it to Laura. As to how Theresa gets it physically, there is no data, but it to some extent represents her as a self possessed woman making the decision to blackmail Leland. Not thinking to hard, it seems like MFAP tried to give it to Laura who didn't "take it" in her fear. She was not yet ready (I guess?).

Another run: This stuff is very unconscious and thus ineffable, but I think the track of the ring goes like this: The ring is a symbol of radical responsibility for the self - it is meted out by the MFAP, who I think of as the ego or author of the self as a subconscious function. In the TP language, putting on the ring is becoming the magician, a dangerous act of trying to meet the mysteries of existence head on. It leaves most of its wearers in shit shape. The "ego" has lost control of the Bob impulse in Leland (this is the point of the above the convenience store scene). He (MFAP) tries to regain control and the ring is an element or this struggle. It becomes obvious that Laura must take radical responsibility to break the cycle, or she will replace Leland as abuser, which will proceed cyclically.

The question I find the most slippery is why Coop told her not to take the ring. My answers to that get real complicated real fast - I start talking about the conflict between male and female hero myths, and why Coop was always a flawed character whose fall was inevitable (and how Dale and Laura in the waiting room is a project about the resolution of gender insolubility). Dale is an interesting study in how relative "goodness" and real likability engenders an expectation of perfection that bullshits everyone, especially the chosen one. But then again, Beowulf had to die slaying a dragon because (paradoxically) the lesson is there will always be dragons. This is the deep end.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Ring

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

I'm reading all the scripts throughout my rewatch. One interesting note: in the Episode 24 script, there is a scripted close-up on "a glistening emerald ring on [Windom] Earle's left hand" as he plays his flute (emphasis mine). The episode does feature such a close-up, but the ring seen onscreen is a gold band with no jewel setting (albeit an interesting-looking band). Wonder if the emerald ring image/idea was something that bounced around the S2 writers' room and maybe Engels brought it to FWWM?
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Ring

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

DAVID BUSHMAN: “Did you and David ever have a conversation about what the ring is?”
MARK FROST: “Yes.”
DAVID BUSHMAN: “And do you think you’re on the same page with respect to the ring?”
MARK FROST: “Yeah, I think we were.”

I’m getting to the end of my rewatch, and it’s time to address one of the more ethereal/tough-to-pin-down elements of the franchise, the jade ring. (I’m still putting off trying to think/write about the Tremonds until after Part 18. That’s a future Reindeer problem.) I think the first thing that has to be acknowledged is that, despite the above quote, Frost and Lynch seem to have fundamentally different views of the ring and how it functions. In the books, the ring seems to exist primarily in our world, being a talisman of power (albeit with Monkey’s Paw-type consequences) passed from one historical figure to another. For Lynch (or in the case of TR, it might be fairer to say for Lynch/Frost, since they cowrote the show as a unit), the ring seems to be much more ethereal, only leaving its pedestal in the Red Room when it has a specific function to fulfill.

I’m going to lay out all the appearances of the ring, then see how much sense or consistency can be found. Hopefully others will chime in and use this list as a guide to provide their own thoughts.

I’m also going to refer to the times when the ring is displayed inverted, in case anyone wants to read any significance into that. Just for the sake of consistency, I’m assuming the ring is “right side up” when the “wings” are on top of the diamond, forming a very abstract owl. When worn, I am assuming the ring is “right side up” when the “wings” would be on top if viewing the wearer’s hand flat on a table, from the perspective of someone sitting on the opposite side of the table. Hopefully that makes sense.

The appearances of the ring:
— Chief Twisted Hair receives the ring from “white people” who live near White Tail Falls (impliedly spirits) (TSHoTP)
— Twisted Hair gives it to to Meriwether Lewis, warning him never to remove it from its pouch or to wear it (TSHoTP)
— Upon reaching the Falls, Lewis impliedly puts the ring on (“I should have heeded his warning”) and seems to briefly travel to the Red Room and possibly other spaces (TSHoTP)
— Lewis keeps the ring afterward in a pouch around his neck (TSHoTP)
— Major James Neely impliedly murders Lewis and steals the ring (TSHoTP)
— Jack Parsons wears the ring while conducting his Thelema rituals, and still has it two days before his death by explosion (TSHoTP)
— Richard Nixon wears the ring when he is President (TSHoTP)
— Teresa Banks wears the ring, and is murdered by Leland/Bob; it is gone when her body is found (FWWM)
— Agent Chet Desmond subsequently finds the ring on a mound beneath the Chalfonts’ trailer (inverted); he reaches for it and seemingly vanishes (FWWM)
— At the convenience store meeting, MfAP says to Bob: “With this ring, I thee wed.” (FWWM)
— Phillip Jeffries mentions the ring while rambling during his brief reappearance in Gordon’s office (TMP)
— Laura dreams about the ring in the Red Room on its pedestal (inverted); Man from Another Place holds it up (inverted), and Cooper tells Laura not to take it; after waking up with a numb left arm and seeing Annie next to her in bed, Laura finds she is holding the ring (inverted) (this is still part of the dream); in the morning she wakes up and the ring is not there (FWWM)
— Mike wears the ring on his pinky as he unlights candles in his motel room (TMP)
— Mike wears the ring on his pinky when he confronts Leland (FWWM)
— Mike throws the ring into the train car; Laura puts it on just before Leland/Bob murders her (immediately after, Leland screams, “No! Don’t make me do this!”) (FWWM)
— Dougie Milford appears to be wearing the ring when he dies (Episode 19) (Tammy in TFD erroneously says it was listed as being on the bedside table)
— The ring is given to Lana as part of Dougie’s effects (TFD)
—The ring is not on its pedestal in Episode 29
— Cooper asks MfAP where the ring is; he says, “Someone else has it now.” (TMP)
— Annie is wearing the ring after exiting the Red Room; a nurse, B. Roundtree, steals it off the comatose Annie (TMP)
— Donald Trump has the ring in the 1990s when he is dating Lana (TFD)
— Tulpa Dougie Jones wears the ring; he returns to the Red Room at 2:53 and subsequently shrivels up and disappears, the ring falling to the floor. Mike places the ring back on its pedestal (Part 3)
— A prison guard gives Ray the ring and Jeffries tells Ray to put it on Cooper’s doppelganger when Ray kills him (per Ray, Part 13)
— Ray shows the doppelganger the ring; the doppelganger kills Ray and puts the ring on Ray’s corpse. The ring disappears and drops on the Red Room floor while Ray remains in our world; however, Ray’s corpse then appears on the Red Room floor, bleeding. Mike returns the ring to its pedestal (Part 13)
— When Cooper wakes up in the hospital, Mike gives him the ring (Part 16)
— Cooper puts the ring on the doppelganger’s corpse (inverted) after Bob is defeated. The corpse disappears. The ring falls on the Red Room floor. The doppelganger is later seen on fire in the Red Room (Part 17/18)

In the books, the ring is consistently a talisman of power and insight into the occult, but one which leads to insanity, obsession and misfortune (much like another, more famous ring in a different fantasy series). It’s not really clear why the spirits gave it to Twisted Hair, or for that matter why Twisted Hair gives it to Lewis. But it seems that the ring briefly gives Lewis a vision of the Lodge realm, or perhaps transports him there physically, and he is greatly distressed afterward. We don’t know if he puts the ring on again, but he eventually dies tragically (impliedly murdered while attempting to expose a conspiracy). The ring seems to inspire/aid Parsons in his quest to birth Crowley’s Moon Child (Judy?) through rocket-fuel experimentation, and he is impliedly murdered by Dougie Milford. I think the inference is that Dougie takes the ring off Parsons and gives it to his boss, Dick Nixon. Nixon had some political misfortunes, but ultimately gets off the easiest of Frost’s historical ring-wearers, surviving to a ripe old age.

Now we have our first chronological Lynch use of the ring. Teresa Banks has it, through unknown means. Unlike Frost’s ring-wearers, Teresa is not a power player in the international conspiracy/political/magick scene, but rather a small-town drifter, a waitress and a prostitute. The ring doesn’t seem to have brought her any great benefit. In fact, it seems far too coincidental not to believe that there’s some correlation between her ending up with this ring and Bob’s host Leland picking her out as his object of desire, and eventual murder victim once she attempts to blackmail him. Is he drawn to her because of the ring? I think so. My theory currently is that the ring marks a target of garmonbozia-harvesting for the spirits. Note that, unlike characters in TR who wear the ring, Teresa’s corpse does not vanish to the Lodge but rather stays on Earth. I believe this is because her garmonbozia was harvested by Bob, and they thus have no further use for her. It’s unclear if the ring simply disappeared when she died, or was taken off her by Leland/Bob. I suspect the former, but see below...

Next we have Chet Desmond finding the ring. Again, I’m not even going to try to articulate what the Tremonds/Chalfonts mean right now, but their trailer may have provided Bob with his killing venue, and the ring is subsequently left on a mound below, much like Laura’s half-heart necklace in the Pilot. Why? The half-heart is just a piece of cheap decorative jewelry (albeit one that drew Leland’s attention). The ring, in contrast, seems to have great power and significance. It seems odd that Bob would treat the two interchangeably. My main takeaway is that the spirits left the ring to trap Chet because they wanted to capture him for their own strange purposes. We can theorize what those might be based on what we see of Jeffries and especially Cooper after their disappearances from our world, but it’s impossible to know since we’ve never heard of poor Chet since. This is the first instance of the ring transporting someone somewhere, which seems to be its standard MO.

The main takeaway from Laura’s dream is that Cooper tells her not to take the ring. This has always been one of the more befuddling elements of the movie, as it seems at the end that the ring buys her salvation. I’m not so certain, though...

Consider this: Mike wears the ring (on his pinky, NOT the spiritual mound...also on his right hand because he of course doesn’t have a left) when he’s yelling about garmonbozia to Leland and Laura. Mike throws Laura the ring in the train car, and immediately afterward, Leland says, “Don’t make me do this!” It feels to me like the ring is drawing him in to kill Laura and drain her garmonbozia. Mike’s bizarre demented grin as he runs away, as well as the subsequent Red Room scene (where Bob is forced back to share his garmonbozia) all confirm to me that the ring isn’t actually a salvation mechanism for Laura, but rather a way for the other Lodge spirits to control Bob. Or perhaps it’s both. Note also that, like Teresa, Laura’s corpse does not vanish.

Back to Frostland, Dougie Milford has the ring when he dies. I guess the implication is that Nixon eventually gives the ring back to him. Nixon was still alive at this point, so that would be pretty generous of him. This also doesn’t check out with the comings and goings of the ring in FWWM, which occur between Nixon having it and Dougie having it, unless there are multiple rings. Like Tricky Dick, Dougie had a nice long life, and he certainly doesn’t suffer a particularly unpleasant death, all things considered (although Garland Briggs speculates that Lana may have been an assassin, and she does subsequently get her paws on the ring). Finally, note that Dougie’s corpse does not disappear. Hrrm.

Back to Lynchland: For some reason,the spirits put the ring on Annie when they release her from the Lodge. It’s not clear why they release her, or why she should have the ring (which typically signifies someone being pulled in to the Lodge, not released). A nurse who we never see again steals it. According to TFD, Annie has a pretty unpleasant fate, like many of the ring-wearers.

One last time, back to the Frost books...seemingly contradicting the Annie scene in TMP, the books depict a continuous path for the ring in our physical world, with Lana having inherited it from Dougie and then seemingly given it to Donald Trump, in an irresistible bit of political satire directed at Mark’s current favorite target. It remains to be seen if The Donald will meet with the sort of ignominious end that befell some of the prior wearers, but so far he seems to be doing just fine.

Now we’re in Lynch-Frost terrain: Like Teresa Banks, it’s a mystery where tulpa Dougie Jones got the ring. Although maybe not quite as big a mystery, as the doppelganger created Dougie (perhaps ironically named in honor of Dougie Milford?) and may have given him the ring so that he would be drawn back in instead of the doppel. The ring’s wearers being drawn to the Red Room is a recurring theme...generally as corpses, but there may be special rules here due to the Doppelganger messing with the established order by creating this decoy.

Ray is told to put the ring on the doppelganger after he kills him. My current thinking is that the ring can keep Bob imprisoned inside of the person he’s inhabiting, and drag both host and Bob back to the Red Room. Instead, the doppel turns the tables on Ray, killing him and putting the ring on him. Strangely, the ring disappears and drops into the Red Room, leaving Ray’s corpse behind. It’s only slightly later that Ray’s corpse ends up in the Red Room.

Finally, Mike gives Cooper the ring to put on the doppelganger. Cooper arrives at the Sheriff’s Department too late, as the Woodsmen seemingly try and fail to keep Bob inside the doppelganger (YMMV on whether that’s what’s happening there). After Bob is defeated, Cooper puts the ring on the doppelganger inverted (presumably because he’s a doppel/negative image), and he disappears.

The books’ take on the ring seems pretty straightforward, as stated above. In terms of the filmed material, it’s a little more complex/convoluted. My takeaway is that the ring is primarily a method of marking garmonbozia targets and of controlling Bob, keeping him trapped inside hosts, pulling him back to the Lodge, and forcing him to share garmonbozia from targets who wear the ring. It also sometimes serves to to pull people into the Red Room, be they living (Chet) or dead (Ray), but Laura, Teresa and Dougie Milford interestingly stay behind at the moments of their deaths.

What are other people’s thoughts?
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