in their 6.02 apartment argument, tabitha and jughead are in parallel to ‘demonologist’ partners ed and lorraine warren of the conjuring series.
in the climax of the conjuring 3, pictured here, the warrens have entered an occultist’s lair to find a way to break a murder/suicide curse she set (affecting 3 pairs of victims including the warrens) before it’s too late. the occultist possesses ed and forces him to attack lorraine with the hammer he used to break into the lair. before he lands a blow on her, lorraine uses her clairvoyant ability to telepathically speak in ed’s mind, encouraging him to see her and focus on the memory of how they met and fell in love. ed is able to break thru the possession and destroy the occultist’s satanic altar, ending her curse and ultimately causing her death.
this conjuring scene is itself an homage to the shining, when jack is possessed by the hotel’s demonic forces and swings at wendy with an ax. but it uses this parallel to make a point - the warren’s love and faith in each other sets them apart and enables them to defeat forces that would overcome others.
ed and lorraine’s relationship is the heart of the three main films in the conjuring universe. their dynamic in this particular scene is best understood as a culmination of their trials throughout the series.
in the first conjuring film, ed is fearful about lorraine participating in the investigation at hand bc at a previous job she was deeply traumatized by a vision. lorraine counters by reminding him he once said to her ‘god brought [them] together for a reason,’ to help people, and they do it best together.
in the conjuring 2, lorraine sees the traumatizing vision again - revealed to be a portent of ed’s death - and she decides it’s too risky to keep taking cases involving demons. ed counters with a similar idea: ‘[lorraine’s] visions are a gift from god’ and she must receive them for a reason - so that they’re better prepared to face danger. he reminds her they don’t run from fights when people need their help.
so in this third film, there’s no question between the two that they’ll confront their opponent together. even tho ed is weak after a heart attack and lorraine is fearful of what is able to look back at her thru ‘the connection’ of her clairvoyance, they both understand that their power is their faith in each other.
the takeaway from this 6.02 storyline between jughead and tabitha seems to be this same conclusion - that their love and trust in each other is their grounding strength against adversity, whether mundane arguments or supernatural ghosts.
to support that tabitha and jughead’s parallel to the warrens extends beyond the one film, the conjuring 2 is also referenced in their argument scene.
in the second film’s opening sequence, lorraine visits the amityville house (located, interestingly, in babylon LI) and enters a trance to view the past defeo murders. when she crosses a mirror we see the one whose steps she’s retracing.
tabitha’s mirror check is visually very similar to lorraine’s vision of the past, altho tabitha is physically in the present and holding a weapon for real.
i think this aspect of the rd scene also bears influence from 2021′s candyman wherein mirrors reveal the ghost possessing a character. candyman and the fear street series are another two subjects of rd’s film homage in early s6 and the interplay between these films and the conjuring series upon rd’s canvas is really interesting.
there’s similarities between the fear street series and the conjuring 1 and 3, with a witch possessively haunting her land and a curse from a satanist with an underground altar affecting locals, respectively.
there’s also a parallel between painter ed warren, who takes inspiration from a demonic vision, and anthony mccoy, the artist in candyman who becomes obsessed with the local legend. rd’s sam, one of the apartment ghosts, resembles anthony in action and literally resembles a character, the warren’s assistant drew, in the conjuring 2. cool shirt
but while rd’s sam and diane don’t overcome their trouble with love alone, like candyman’s anthony and brianna or even fear street’s sam and deena, tabitha and jughead take after ed and lorraine and do <3
hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality
5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:
- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on
- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable
- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there
- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat
- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol
- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift
- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.
- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?
- i have arrived at the point
- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky
- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’
- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth
- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner
- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note
- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there
- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward
- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?
- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out
- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself
- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)
- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent
- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king
- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon
- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’
- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train
- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment
- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump
- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time. and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.
- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??
- however,,,
- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)
- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.
- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show
- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go
ok. except for the bunny mask (look at those teeth) and the porn collection, this one felt like kind of a reach to me. at least, it did until i finally put together that there’s a virginia/d.c. urban legend, the bunny man. you can take ras out of d.c. but nobody stopped ras from adding d.c. lore all over this season (see also: mr. dupont, shady grove treatment center, etc.)
bret’s masked axe moment bears a strong resemblance to the bunny man legend. this film, which is set in virginia, most likely also draws on the bunny man.
the eponymous donnie, a possibly-schizophrenic high school senior, begins hallucinating a man in a rabbit suit who directs him to commit seemingly random acts of trespassing and destruction. the rabbit, frank, is in fact (probably? i guess??) a time traveling ghost who is leading donnie through a sequence of events to resolve the dangerous split dimension they’ve accidentally become the center of. or maybe not, idk. interpretations vary.
item 1. a count down of days until death
item 2. school’s closed, axe pranks and inexplicable bunny masks
item 3. the third of his name
item 4. knife + a prophetic wound to the mask. note that rd’s mask has jughead’s head wound. in the film, donnie, sick of being controlled, attacks his hallucination in the same location that he will later shoot the real frank as retaliation for accidentally killing donnie’s girlfriend - none of which donnie knows about in this scene
item 5. area teen’s actions lead to the reveal of a secret illegal porn stash, reported on local news
i personally wish there was more here to explain why jughead put on the mask and what exactly his plan was, but neither riverdale nor this film are big on definitive answers.
however there are lots of other things that rd’s bunny mask could be playing on as well. the ill-fated bunny corcoran in the secret history, the white rabbit in alice in wonderland (lightly ref’d this season), or maybe even david lynch’s ‘rabbits.’ bret’s parallels to american psycho’s bateman also add an interesting flavor to the axe-wielding urban legend comparison. *update: i haven’t watched it but, you’re next (2011) looks like another possible influence.
earlier this season i took note of the placement of this oscar wilde poster and romeo & juliet poster in 4.02.
it’s fascinating to me that this scene did not, as i originally interpreted, feature queer subtext of the sort that sometimes floats impotently in the bg of the show... but instead presented a portent that ras was going to take an explicitly queer musical about gender identity and make it about something else.
fp thinks he’s michael but the camera knows he’s not
[ continued in parts one and three ]
#1 dad award narrowly misses fp once again when he implies he’s going to disown jughead and then have him killed and dumped in a lake.
in this godfather ii scene, michael and his brother fredo, in havana for business, attend a new years eve party on the cusp of the chaotic revolution. michael reveals that he knows fredo has betrayed him - fredo, the resentful elder brother who was passed over as heir to the family business, traded info to an enemy that resulted in an assassination attempt on michael and his wife and children.
following this exchange, michael disowns his brother and doesn’t speak to him for years. as soon as their mother dies, he has fredo disposed of.
at fp’s failed retirement party, after jughead used penny’s help to get him out of decades of prison, film buff jughead possibly picks up on the threat fp is making. no but seriously fp gave his own son the fucking kiss of death?? anyway, the scene parallel reinforces the new tense power balance between father and son. but the camera lingers on jughead, suggesting that, if either of them is (a leader? betrayed?) like michael, it’s him.
also, another angle on this is: michael spends the film attempting to disengage the family business from criminal activities and go legitimate, in the process alienating his family to protect them; this goes so so poorly for him. compare fp’s journey: he intends to retire from the serpents after prison but changes his mind and allows himself to be drawn into penny’s criminal dealings, pushing jughead away in an attempt to protect him. this also goes not so great.
