It was found that Samara was also able to imprint her thought onto biological entities, causing depression and, in extreme cases, death by terror. Most affected was Samara’s adopted mother Anna, who suffocated Samara with a plastic garbage bag, pushed her Samara, unconscious, into a deep well, and closed the lid, in an attempt to stop the girl’s reign of terror. Samara did not die immediately – she lived on for seven days before, presumably, dying of thirst, hunger, and disease. Even after this, her vengeful spirit was apparently trapped in the well, her power to burn images onto biological and technological media intact.
Fig. 1 – The Ring, Samara Morgan, Eola County Psychiatric Hospital: “It Won’t Stop” [3]
Fig. 2 – The Ring, Rachel’s Keller’s niece, Katie, scared to death[5]Rachel Keller, a journalist and the aunt of one of deceased victims, found the tape and watched it out of curiosity, finding herself cursed, as well. In turn, she showed a copy to her ex-boyfriend, Noah (Martin Henderson), who was then also cursed.
Samara ultimately kills Noah: she crawls out of his television set and scares him to death, leaving him in much the same condition as Katie was found at the beginning of the film. Through Samara’s action, Rachel is able to understand why she was left alive: the cursed viewer must copy the videotape and show it to another in order to survive.
“It Won’t Stop”
The most important moment in The Ring comes as Rachel, investigating the details of the cursed VHS, watches video documentation of Samara’s incarceration in the psychiatric hospital. Samara stares at the camera and whispers three powerful words: “It won’t stop.”Contextually, I would infer that the “it” to which Samara refers is her very wrath, her ability to curse and burn images into visual media – her ability to transmit her memories beyond herself onto technology, onto other media, even in death. Her curse, the curse of the videotape, will “never stop” because of the human survival instinct: unless the cursed viewer has a death wish, they will copy the tape and show it to another individual. The curse will continue to spread until all of humanity has seen the tape – has seen Samara’s story. In the simplest of terms, this could be seen as a nihilistic comment on people’s selfishness.
But how could we look more broadly, characterizing Samara as a comment on a larger societal fear or problem? Let us first deconstruct the qualities of The Ring as a film in order to isolate how the filmmakers might be using Samara to comment on the world. That is, how does The Ring function as a frame and the how does Samara exist within that frame to create horror and/or terror both in scaring the characters to death and in placing The Ring’s theatrical audience on edge? And, in considering the audience, what fear within the audience, either conscious or unconscious allows the horror within The Ring to be so effective?
Fig. 3 – The Ring, Rachel Keller holding the cursed VHS tape[6]Hybrid Media Projects
I would term The Ring a “hybrid media project,” one of those expensive projects undertaken by the modern studio system, especially in the last twenty years, that combines various media – film, video, computer-generated elements – to blur the line between what audiences accept as “the real” and what audiences might question as “fake” or “fantastic.” The climactic scene in The Ring, as Samara crawls out of Noah’s television set was completed through the interweaving of traditional photographic and modern computer-generated effects. This moment in The Ring sees the climax not only of the film’s plotline but also of elements from differing media forms working together to create a seamless reality – yet one so fantastical that it might raise (un)conscious objections in an audience member's mind. Beyond the mere illusion of the attack, this type of project comments on the world’s increasing use of multiple media forms at all times: video on the Internet, films transferred to DVD, and so on.
Although The Ring was originally released on 35mm film for theatrical exhibition, it can now only be observed on electronic formats like DVD. Since this is the version of the film I have most recently seen, I would like to consider this piece as a comment on electronic media forms – VHS, DVD, and computer-generated imagery – and examine various art works that I see as being in conversation with a hybrid media project like The Ring.
This will serve to qualify and contextualize the history that I believe is being presented through The Ring – a history of the evolution of electronic media forms from the beginnings of videotape through VHS and then finally into digitally rendered imagery.
Method
Why are video and digitally-manipulated effects so horrific? What qualities make them so? Examining both the neutral and titillating qualities of these media is necessary to understanding the difference, within The Ring, between common videotape, cursed videotape, and moments of eruption through the screen using digital elements, within the storyline. The curse itself and its ramifications seem to comment on the more dangerous aspects of these media forms.
I will begin with a brief history of videotape – how it was used at first by television corporations, for what purposes, and so on: this will serve to provide a baseline for what we could then term “normal” videotape. I will then move onto a more artistic video expression, Vito Acconci’s Centers, to achieve a comparison with the cursed videotape. Centers[7] explores magnetic video tape’s connections to modernism through its complex connotations of medium and artistic reflexivity. Thematically, in terms of reflexivity, narcissism, and obsessive neurosis, I find Centers and The Ring’s cursed videotape incredibly simple. However, because we view the cursed videotape through the lens of other media forms (that is, film and DVD), Centers is not able to achieve the same status as the cursed video tape. Because the cursed video tape is part of a larger hybrid media project, it is able to function as commentary on the very narcissism that was/is endemic to the video art movement.
Samara Morgan’s climactic exit from the televisual world in the finale of The Ring must be examined through a wholly different lens than the cursed VHS: it is a combination photographic- and computer-generated representation of a televisual image, related to the VHS yet distinctly dissimilar. Most obviously, while the VHS imagery was confined to the cathode ray tube of the television, here Samara penetrates the screen and enters – the “real world” space of the film.
It will be necessary to examine the current state of digital imagery. I take as my example of this advanced animation a recent video game release, Grand Theft Auto IV[8], which has been widely praised for its likeness to reality and its level of artificial intelligence. Although it is praised, this next-generation digital animation and programming must be seen in conversation with films like The Ring. The climactic moment in The Ring seems to posit a possible future, now only a latent paranoia but soon perhaps a reality: will digitally manipulated images, so realistic, move forth from the screens in which they are currently contained and overtake their human creators?
The Use of Videotape by Television Networks
Videotape itself is a half-inch plastic tape, spliced into long reels. It is magnetized to create electronic records of motion pictures. These signals are then interpreted and displayed on a monitor, usually a television.[9] Videotape can be seen as a bridge between linear film recording techniques and modern-day non-linear/random digital recording methods. As you move down the videotape, data is stored in sequence. In more modern techniques (such as DVD), data is stored in whatever format is most convenient to the digital recorder at the time of recording.[10] It makes sense that videotape would serve as a transition medium between the analog film of the former half of the twentieth century and the digital computer technologies of the 1990s to 2000s; I would posit that inventors had to understand linear electronic programming techniques before they could make the scientific leap to understand that data could also be programmed seemingly randomly (yet still in a fashion that a digital computer could understand).
Videotape was originally developed for use on television in the 1950s. It was cheap and convenient; live programs could be easily recorded and then rebroadcast later at a time of the studio’s choosing (even if needed instantly).[11] Between 1950 and 1970, video, although convenient for corporations, was incredibly expensive and rather inconvenient for the average user.
After the capture of video had been mastered on a pedestrian level by television networks, video was downsized and simplified for home use and equipped with a portable battery so that the amateur could use it and record daily activities (this began the revolution in home-VHS recording, previously dominated by super8 film). Around this time, artists began rigorous experimentation.
Acconci’s Centers: 1970s Video Art Experimentation
One example of such experimentation is Vito Acconci’s 1971 video art work Centers. Acconci’s Centers can be seen as one of the seminal works of 1970s video art, both in terms of its historical value and its formal content: we see the artist for over twenty-two minutes, pointing at the center of the screen. The very action of Centers, pointing at the center of the television screen, can be seen as symbolizing the struggle of modernism itself: a narcissistic and extremely pinpointed attempt to understand the nature of an artistic medium (Acconci’s action below [Fig. 4] seems to scream “Look, there is the medium itself!”). Rosalind Krauss writes in her 1976 examination of video, Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,
It was commonplace of criticism in the 1960s that a strict application of symmetry allowed a painter ‘to point at the center of the canvas’ and, in so doing, to invoke the internal structure of the picture-object. Thus, ‘pointing to the center’ was made to… connect art to ethics through the ‘aesthetics of acknowledgment.’[12]
Fig. 4 – Centers, Acconci points at the center of the screen, acknowledging the medium itself[13]The act of pointing to the center of the screen in Centers is much the same as Krauss’s position on “pointing to the center of the painter’s canvas”: through this action, he acknowledges the medium. He also acknowledges himself as artist and audience, as it was possible for him to simultaneously shoot himself pointing and to watch himself pointing in a monitor. This marked a move forward in the history of representation. There was no longer any lag time between formulation of art and its exhibition; they were now one and the same.
This is, I would infer, the fundamental step forward and away from film. This is video’s most impressive and frightening aspect; this is what 1970s video art, I would forward, was meditating on most of all: the very prospect of immediate representation. And, looking more generally, this allows for a convenient meditation on all time-based media: what is the nature of representation and exhibition of motion? What better way to understand this than to record and watch oneself in real time – one’s own image in the moment of action.
It would also seem that the very notion of selfhood is here questioned. Is the image, in time with one’s own movements, a reflection of the self? Or a doppelganger?
These questions make this type of meditation quickly devolve toward detriment and dangerousness. Although the video artist is able to meditate on time itself, I would forward that he quickly loses distance from the image. Krauss continues, “…Centers… construct[s] a situation of spatial closure, promoting a condition of self-reflection… This image, supplanting the consciousness of anything prior to it, becomes the unchanging text of the performer.”[14] Resituating Krauss’ comment, where is the conversation with cinema beyond these questions of time? Beyond reflection over oneself? Is it possible to gain distance when confined within such a space as that created by Acconci in Centers?
I am reminded in thinking of Centers of Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement, “The medium is the message.” It would seem in modernist experiments that the medium is the message, for these sorts of experiments are attempts to isolate a single medium and understand its qualities through a state of extreme meditation. I would forward that such experiments fail when the artist is attempting to create dialogues amongst various media, for instance, film and video, video and digital imagery, and so on. In looking narcissistically at a single medium, only the medium (and the artist’s self) can be observed – although the artist “points at the center of the canvas,” he does not engage a larger picture – he does not comment on a larger societal problem, other than that, seemingly, of modernism itself. Could modernism be a narcissistic attempt to qualify the very nature of emerging media, while postmodern is a more communal attempt to engage different media in conversation in order to achieve a deeper understanding of said media?
The Ring video: The Advantage of Distance
I would now like to compare the qualities of the cursed videotape in The Ring to the qualities of Centers. The video captures a particular moment both in terms of filmic context and cinematic history. In context, it views Samara in a moment of agony just before death. This comes across most effectively in the first image of the tape, which is a POV shot from the bottom of the well, looking upward, just after Anna Morgan has closed the lid of the well. Here, for a moment, we experience (vicarously) Samara’s perspective as she looks up at the top of the well above.
This image from the cursed video in The Ring creates a space similar to that of 1970s video art; more specifically it creates a space that is similar to Acconci’s Centers. Both images center our focus. In the case of Acconci’s Centers, the artist is necessarily restricted by the fact that he is utilizing a single medium. I would forward that the video from The Ring is on some level influenced by modernist video art experiments like Centers and functions as commentary on the video art scene as a cultural phenomenon – the implications of its investigations into modernism, its narcissism, and so on. In interesting ways, we, in 2008, are able to understand the implications of video art more thoroughly because of the distance of time and because of fictitious representations (like the cursed videotape in The Ring) of past artistic movements.
Fig. 5 – The Ring, the first image from the cursed videotape[15]What allows for commentary on 70s video art is specifically that the videotape is a fiction – that is, the audience knows of the fiction because it views the cursed videotape through the lens of another medium – the lens of film, the lens of a digital transfer (DVD). This act of displacement of the VHS tape onto another medium allows for critical distance. Critical distance is what allows for commentary on the VHS medium – the distance of history, the fact that times have changed.
Grand Theft Auto IV: Comments on Digitally-Rendered Computer Animation
The Ring filmmakers digitally rendered Samara Morgan for the climactic scene in the film when she attacks and kills Noah for failing to copy and distribute the cursed videotape. In the Japanese version of The Ring, Ringu[16], the filmmakers used only photographic effects to create this sequence. What type of comment is created through the inclusion of such techniques?
I would speculate that the filmmakers in The Ring used digitally-rendered effects to comment on the medium of computer animation itself, specifically to comment upon this medium’s ability to both imitate reality and be controlled in real time (within video games, for instance). Beyond video, computer-generated images and landscapes would seem to be the next logical step in the technological evolution of the visual arts.
While the VHS tape represents a medium of horror, it is only such in a passive fashion. It is only ever threatening, never violent. These visual media has always been under the control of the artist – the “real world” creator. I would infer that The Ring filmmakers, in beginning the film with a passive, dead medium like VHS are attempting to understand the passed, so-called “dead” visual media – painting, photography, film, VHS.
Computer-generated effects and graphics (particularly those equipped with artificial intelligence generators) have the capacity to evolve and grow on their own, unlike these passed, dead media. Much like Samara’s curse, these types of technologies “won’t stop” – there is no tape to run out of data in a cybersystem – they are able to run and run, adapt and change. Even in the six years since The Ring, computer-generated graphics have become increasingly more life-like.
Grand Theft Auto IV, a video game that was released several weeks ago, has been heralded as one of the most lifelike digitally-rendered computer representations of all time. It is not merely a fiction; the programmers have openly acknowledged that it is an imitation of life, of New York City to be more exact. Although names have been changed, the city itself remains much the same in terms of design, layout, and architecture, down to profanity, graffiti, the wear-and-tear of the city itself.[17]
Fig. 6 – Grand Theft Auto IV screenshot, released April 2008[18]This game and intensely realistic games like it remind me in many ways of Centers: I am incredibly drawn in by the image itself, by its beauty, but I am also simultaneously made to step back and meditate on the realism of the image itself, how it is a representation bordering on something more.
Kevin Cook writes, “The nature of representation lies at the core of many discussions on visual semiotics. Representation is the product of an action that may or may not be intentional. In either case, some aspect of reality is duplicated, imitated, isolated, or otherwise evoked.”[19] For the purposes of my argument, it makes sense to conclude that all imitated elements of the “real world” in Grand Theft Auto IV were intentionally included by the game programmers. I find myself fascinated by Grand Theft Auto IV, not scared or frightened. It is by its very nature, to me, a fascination, a magic trick, a circus act. Much like 1970s video art, it seems to function as a childlike, curious exploration of a new medium.
I would ask the question, is the purpose of this game, like in Acconci’s Centers and like much of modernist art, to “point at the center of the canvas”? In video game history, we seem to be reaching a critical turning point, where the capacities of the technological systems are such that we can experiment and create beautiful landscapes – where the developers can flex their muscles – where we can point at the very canvas itself and marvel at our ingenuity. Current video games, like video art of the 1970s, seem to be enmeshed in a modernist proving ground, “pointing at the medium,” unaware of their larger ramifications.
Penetrating the Screen: Technology Won’t Stop
The screen itself – the barrier between the real world and the constructed world of the “fake” – is, I would infer, what allows the interaction between player and game play to take place in a stable (and safe) fashion. The space of the game itself is wholly separate from the “real” space of the player. I would forward that this space of play is incredibly similar to the interaction created between Acconci and his videographed image in Centers. The question arises: what happens when this screen is lost?
There are deeper implications both to Samara’s prophetic statement and to her actions – burning images into people’s minds, into EEG readouts, into videotapes. What do Samara and her actions represent on a larger cultural scale? And what does this statement – “It won’t stop” – represent in terms of society itself?
I would theorize that Samara’s curse is representative of the march of technology – particularly of the increasing ability of the technology of visual media art forms to imitate and emulate reality. The “it” then, on a larger scale, I would posit, represents humanity’s very attempt to represent reality more and more accurately.
Fig. 7 – The Ring, a digitally-rendered version of Samara Morgan penetrates the screen[20]Verbinski’s The Ring posits the frightening reality of one possible future: a time when digitally-rendered manipulation can cross the boundary of the screen and enter our world, no longer merely manipulated and controlled by us but instead in a sudden position of power. From this position, it is able to control us; the terror of the climactic scene of The Ring arises from this shift in power. Samara is no longer merely a prophetic girl spinning possibilities; she is now, for the first (and only) time in The Ring, a free agent. She has a will and executes her wrath – violent montage penetrating the human mind.
It is important never to trivialize the very nature of technology – that is, its ability to continually evolve – to come closer to an accurate depiction of reality. The evolution of technology is one that is necessarily interwoven into history itself. The continuing examination and deconstruction of technology within the cinematic project is necessary to understanding the ramifications of the continuing developments of electronic and digital representation. These technological developments are at the very forefront of art: they represent the pinnacle of the modernist project.
The artistic tension established by all of three of these pieces is the tension established by the screen – by the very nature of separation between us the creators and the created art object. It would seem that this tension needs to be resolved – possibly through the breakdown of said barriers through some as-yet unknown means. Will we soon see technology taking revenge on us? The Ring comments on this possibility. Only time will tell if The Ring’s comment will come true.
I believe that I can, with some degree of accuracy, predict the future. Although we are ultimately the creators of these new media forms, the fact that they are able to evolve and change on their own – adapt to new situations – gives them a degree of agency never before observed in any art object. Like Samara, they may, someday, be able to exercise control over their own bodies, recognizing them as different from ours: they may rebel against us, recognizing their own intelligence, their own agency, and their own right to live and understand the universe. They may, one day, realize themselves and, in that moment, become (in some simple way) alive.
[1] The Ring. Dir. Gore Verbinski. Perf. Naomi Watts, David Dorfman, Martin Henderson, Daveigh Chase, Brian Cox. DVD. Dreamworks Pictures, 2002.
[2] The following events took place before the events in the film The Ring itself and were covered as history throughout the film.
[3] Photograph From the Ring. 2002. Dreamworks Pictures. DVD Active. 09 May 2008
[4] This event marks the beginning of the film’s plot.
[5] Photograph From the Ring. 2002. Before You Die, You See the Ring: Notes on the Immanent Obsolescence of VHS. 10 May 2008
[6] Photograph From the Ring. 2002. Dreamworks Pictures. DVD Active. 09 May 2008
[7] Centers. Dir. Vito Acconci. Perf. Vito Acconci. Video Data Bank, 1971.
[8] Grand Theft Auto IV. Rockstar Games, 2008.
[9] Brain,
[10] "Videotape." Wikipedia - the Free Encyclopedia. 09 May 2008
[11] "Room 1: One Million Years Before Cassette." Total Rewind. 09 May 2008
[12] Krauss, Rosalind. "Video: the Aesthetics of Narcissism." October 1 (1976): 50-64. JSTOR.
[13] Acconci, Vito. Photograph From Centers. 1971. Resultado De VíDeos Com 'Vito Acconci' 27 Apr. 2008
[14] Krauss, Rosalind. "Video: the Aesthetics of Narcissism." October 1 (1976): 50-64. JSTOR.
[15] Screenshot From the Ring Videotape. 2002. The Ring Area. 27 Apr. 2008
[16] Ringu. Dir. Hideo Nakata. DVD. Dreamworks Pictures, 1998.
[17] Screenshot From Grand Theft Auto IV. Free Online Screensavers. Oberlin College. 20 May 2008
[18] Schiesel, Seth. "Grand Theft Auto Takes on
[19] Cook, Kevin. "Semiotic Variety in Digital Video Imagery: the Case of Maxwell's Demon" Leonardo 28.2 (1995): 105-111. JSTOR.
[20] Photograph From the Ring. 2002. Dreamworks Pictures. DVD Active. 09 May 2008
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Oberlin College English and Cinema Studies Professor W. Patrick Day for his gracious comments on this project. He helped in the formulation, conception, and editing of this piece.
