michaeltillotson

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SILENT HILL (2006) dir. Christophe Gans

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looking forward, looking back.

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THE SHINING (1980) HANNIBAL (2013-15) THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

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A road leading to the small town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an underground fire has been burning since 1962

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It’s going to take more than killing me to kill me, Zhiyong Jing

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New minizine, colored digitally so it's going to be a minute before I can print a nice version 😭

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the thing blood sample

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(x)

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I've tried to kickstart a TP rewatch a few times recently, and I've ended up watching the pilot like thrice in a month. Something that's really been standing out to me is the way that Sarah Palmer is straight up abandoned right out the gate.

Mrs. Briggs isn't necessarily dismissive of her when she calls looking for Laura, but she very much downplays how worried Sarah is. This, to be fair, is a normal response-- she had no reason to think that being with Bobby or Leland wasn't the most likely answer, and she was being kind.

But still, the first conversation Sarah has, and it's someone telling her to relax, that nothing is wrong while, elsewhere, her daughter's corpse is being rolled over.

When they discover that it's Laura on the beach, neither Harry nor Doc Hayward-- men who know the family well-- express any sentiment about her mother. This could make sense, if they're keeping it brisk and professional and trying to hold it together. But there are plenty of asides about Laura, or other deaths occurring, or gently scolding Andy. But the man who delivered Laura doesn't say even a TV-stereotype "God, her poor mother!"

(And, really, the big takeaway there is that these guys aren't prepared for a murder investigation, much less that of poor Laura)

Neither of these points is particularly heavy-handed, and one can certainly point to good reasons for them, but then they go get Leland. No officer is sent to the Palmer house. Harry doesn't tell Lucy to call Sarah, or even make an offer to Leland to retrieve her. She's the first one to look for Laura, and is briskly clipped out of the developments.

She doesn't even get to hear it proper, as Leland muffles the phone in his chest. (And I think that there's something there: Sarah knows but doesn't know, and actively has her line to the truth of it muffled in his sweater. Leland hides the receiver and makes a scene: Sarah may as well not exist, except for her tinny, distant pleas.)

The last we see of Sarah for a long while is her screaming, eyes closed and a hand pressed to her head. Phone cord dangling pointlessly down to the floor-- nobody on the other side of it was telling her anything anyway.

The next time we see her is when Harry and company need something from her. She's violently, physically grieving and then they drug her up so they can ask her questions. Leland gets a hug and several expressions of sympathy, and Sarah is left for hours wailing, driving herself mad, alone in that house with the fan while her daughter's murderer identifies the body, and receives comfort and compassion. Sarah gets a needle.

I don't think that they were making too splashy of a point with it, but the return absolutely hammers in that Sarah has been left to rot in her grief-- I think that even in the pilot, there was a certain intentionality to how she's sidelined and only picked back up when the cops need to question her, or a point needs to be made with Donna/Maddy.

Tremendous attention is paid to Leland and his grief, his violence, his antics, and very little is paid to Sarah. After her husband is revealed to have raped and murdered their daughter, he kills himself brutally: the funeral scene after may as well have come from a different show for how little they mention it.

There's a lot more to be said-- and that has been said--of Sarah as a representation of passive evil/enablement/self-delusion, but the way that she's abandoned with so little fanfare has really stuck with me of late. It feels very much intentional-- she can scream, right, mothers do that, but what else is she going to do? Throw herself into the open grave too?

Trick question: she is the open grave.

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and i guess i found some sweet relief ripping hair out of my own head

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Carne Vescens (Out of the Ordinary World, 2024)

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Manuel Amado (1938-2019) — Here I Am [oil on canvas, 2004]

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Do you enjoy normal things

no

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"James, honey, did something happen to you?"

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Rotem Balva