Under the Silver Lake

Movie Review

Under the Silver Lake, IMBD (2018)

Welcome back to the Land of the Bizarre! Tonight’s special feature is Under the Silver Lake, a movie that traveled far below my radar upon its release. In fact, I had never heard of it until I saw the review of it in IM 1776. Linked below.

Under the Hollywood Matrix by Thomas Millary

A movie review within a movie review, you say. Well yes, because it is a fantastic review and I am not here to recreate the wheel. Also linked is another IM 1776 essay that pairs well with the above review. I found both of them ample fodder for thoughts of my own. Like a crazy eyed alchemist, I am trying to give you the ingredients to replicate my hazy ponderings.

The Joker Cycle by Brett Carollo & Thomas Millary

I link both of these because they are well worth the read, and I plan on drawing heavily from them in what will likely be an essay and less of an actual review.

Under the Silver Lake is a bizarre A24 neo-noir, starring the mostly charismatic Andrew Garfield. The movie was released in 2018 and seems to have more or less gone straight to streaming after little attention at the theaters. All the makings of a cult classic.

The movie, if boiled down to its most primal parts, is an investigation into our culture and the Hollywood power matrix—the creators of said culture. The conspiracy inclined will immediately latch onto the ideas presented about subliminal messaging. But they will be pleased to find a more original take in the idea that the elites transmit secret messages to each other encoded within the media we consume.

Andrew Garfield, while typically likeable, plays a completely unlikeable character. And not even in the “literally me,” sense of the word. Patrick Bateman, Homelander, Ken, Nightcrawler, Driver—all at least have a baseline level of courage that allows them to be bad. “Literally me” characters, it should be noted, are most often admired by men not for their problematic views but rather their martial virtues. Driver’s courage. Patrick Bateman’s charisma. Ken’s fascination with horses and winning Margot’s heart. Nightcrawler’s competence. In a culture, purposefully devoid of the heroic, men everywhere squeeze it out of the anti-heroes and satirical loners they are left with. Even if they are presented as the bad guy and meant to make fun of masculine qualities.

But back to Andrew Garfield’s character, Sam.

Sam is thoroughly unlikeable. He’s a creep that spies on his female neighbors. He’s a porn-brained coomer without a job and no path in life. So bad is his plight, that for the duration of the movie he is about to get evicted. His car gets repossessed, and for all of his woes, he seems largely apathetic about it all. The only thing he isn’t apathetic about is tracking down his attractive neighbor, Sarah, who is surrounded by shady people, and moves out of her apartment (and Sam's life) in the middle of the night. And so the mystery begins.

This sends Sam on an LA spanning odyssey to discover what shady Hollywood cult she has gotten herself mixed up with. His clues largely revolve around the Hobo code left by the homeless around LA, and the hidden messages encapsulated in our mass media. As Thomas Millary points out in his review, these two things mirror each other. Both the overworld and the underworld have their own language and information systems, separate from what we use every day, yet hidden in plain sight. This is actually a quite genius story mechanic, as the largely documented and provable hobo code creates plausibility and believability in the audience for what should seem completely tin foil—the elite’s secret messages encoded in mass media.

Sam for the most part uses violence only a couple of times. Once, to impotently beat up on some ten year old’s who vandalized his car, and a second time when he meets the songwriter, the man who has written every single musical hit since the 60s. His breakdown upon meeting the songwriter is powerful, but ultimately empty. Like, no shit every hit since the 60s has been astroturfed. While this may not be technically true, its something we all grasp as spiritual fact. This is not by accident. The whole movie, casts our would be hero as impotent and hopelessly immature. There is no happy ending. There is only Sam’s return to mother. Sam’s escape back into the longhouse.

The spirit of the Divine Feminine, as Millary so expertly tags it, pervades the movie. It suffocates our would be hero and eventually defeats him. And so at the end of it all, we are left with a damsel in distress with no desire to be saved and a hero protagonist too impotent and out of touch with his martial virtues to do anything about it. He learns nothing from this odyssey except that it was a waste, and that he should retreat back to his porn and astroturfed culture. And that is what the movie wants you to do as well.

Sam is in a lot of ways the final version of the archetype revealed in the Joker cycle (see essay above). While Sam is not necessarily an “incel,” the results are arguably worse, as he has 0 motivation to follow through on literally anything. He is lulled back into complacency by comfort and easy sex. He is the final culmination of the Joker cycle. The synthesis of both incel and r/niceguys.

And so the question that I was ultimately left with, is what archetype defeats the Joker.

As storytellers, especially those with an interest in men’s fiction, what can break the Joker cycle. Could it be as simple as just writing heroes and feats of daring do? Or is Captain America too old fashioned for this fight?

Cue Holding out for a Hero

I think as far as archetypes go, the archetype that combats the Joker isn’t the Hero—but the Magician. In Jungian psychology it is dysfunctions of the trickster archetype, whether as the know-it-all or the know-nothing dummy, that when fully integrated, creates the archetype of the Magician. The Magician is not a trickster, he uses his magic for good. He is a master of technology. A shaman and wise counselor to the King. The Magician is capable of being as “wise as serpents and yet as harmless as doves.”

But the trickster is not all bad. The trickster exists to teach us something. The American Indians knew this, hence why the coyote did double duty as the creator in many of their myths and legends. The trickster is there to help us break through. The key to breaking the Joker cycle isn’t a hero, it is in fact the Joker itself. It is the synthesis of the lessons the trickster is there to teach. Its his mature follow-on, the magician that breaks the cycle. Batman is the Magician to the Jokers trickster.

A movie that does not follow the Joker cycle, but could easily and I think mistakenly be lumped in, is Fight Club. The book follows the Joker cycle. It ends with Tyler Durden thrown in a little white padded room. The movie, however, ends with him creating a hero. At some point I want to try to do a full Jungian breakdown of Fight Club as I think it demonstrates the process of indivuation almost perfectly. This is part of the reason I think it has such timeless appeal. In leu of that lets stick to the climax.

Tyler Durden is a trickster. He is the Narrator’s shadow self, there to teach him the things he needs to progress to the next stage of his archetypal growth. As the Narrator’s shadow, he is in possession of both good and bad traits. All things that the Narrator has suppressed. Tyler Durden is a warrior, a shaman, and a lover. He is also a terrorist, a murder, and a psychopath. But unlike Sam, the Narrator achieves a happy ending. He gets the girl and realizes his goal of leaving the debt industry in shambles… or rather rubble.

The last few minutes of Fight Club and the order the events occur in, are key to this reading. The Narrator finds himself strapped to a chair, the buildings around him all rigged to blow, and Tyler Durden holding a gun on him. The Narrator’s only way out is through integration. It is only through integrating his shadow self that he can win. He already knows Tyler is him, and he is Tyler. The question is what will he do about it?

“Self improvement is masturbation, now self-destruction…”

The Narrator turns the gun on himself. The ultimate act of self destruction, except its not about actual self destruction. It’s about accepting one’s own inevitable death. Its about being willing to die for what you believe. That’s what makes a man, and that is the stuff that courage is made of. The willingness is the key, not the actual result.

And so, when the Narrator pulls the trigger, while yes he blows his cheek off, he also kills Tyler. Except does he? Where does Tyler go if he is Tyler and vice versa. No, he integrates Tyler. He takes on all of those martial traits (channeled for good or bad) that have been hidden in his shadow and brings them under his own conscious dominion. The next scene makes this explicit when the Narrator kisses Marla, something only Tyler did, because even the Narrator’s sexuality was trapped in the shadow realm. He was cucked by himself. Hilarious. But such is the state of “incels” everywhere. Such is the state of Sam.

Both the Narrator and Marla then watches in awe as the goal he has sought to achieve goes off without a hitch. I’m not here to prosecute the morality of blowing up credit card buildings, but freeing humanity from debt slavery is on its face and for analysis sake, the heroic goal of the movie. Which he achieved.

And that is ultimately the point. Tyler Durden was the trickster that made it happen. You see the trickster is a pathway to more. It is a path to full indivuation, and becoming a well rounded and balanced person. The trickster helps one integrate the traits that they have suppressed. These traits left to fester within the darkness of the shadow often present as dysfunctions in our waking life. The building blocks of courage present as rage and anger. Ambition becomes resentment. The will to competence turns to ironic apathy. Mass media and culture is alchemy. It won’t take a hero to fight the battle, it will take a wizard.

Where is my Mind