You must hit the keyboard violently until a bloody erection

Trisha 2021-12-22 08:01:19

The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by William Burroughs. It is not the same as the brain earthquake shown in the novel. David Cronenberg combines William Burroughs’ autobiographical trilogy "Addict", "Queer", "Nude" The content in "Lunch" describes the process of writer William Lee escaping from drug control in half asleep and half awake, and facing the devil in his body. The two killings of wives constitute the structure of the film's cyclical development. It looks like a recurrence of fate, but in fact it is a symbol of the writer's breaking the dream, leaving the closed inner world, and escaping from the control center to the periphery. As the anthropomorphic typewriter "Crack Nova" said when he died, "the writer should live in a cruel reality."

The film uses "writing is dangerous" as William Lee's line, implying that the writer is about to embark on a dangerous journey of inner exploration. In fact, when the cockroach crawls out of the gap in the wall, the hallucination has already begun. The cockroach is a drug addict who has been alienated by drugs, and the exterminator is a street drug dealer. The exterminator is about to use the soles of his shoes to cover his face and give three combos. When William Lee complained that the insecticide powder was not enough for the first time, the street agent replied, "Not enough is because you eat too much by yourself."

Under the influence of drug addiction, William Lee killed his wife Joan by mistake. When he chose to flee in a panic, a pendant with a devil on his shoulder appeared in the camera, suggesting that William Lee’s heart demon had taken over his body. . At this time, a scrawny monster appeared in the bar. He told William Lee to leave New York and flee to Interzone, which was actually retreating to a closed inner world. He asked William Lee to bring a typewriter called "Crack Nova" to report inter-regional reports. "Crack Nova" is a brain reader that connects the writer's thoughts with his inner world.

Reality and fantasy intersect in a labyrinth-like area-Interzone (Tangier)-this heart-shaped city has all the elements of dreamland, castles, bazaars, cafes, sheltered sky and countless roads to darkness The promenade at the end. The sound of the typewriter is like a shadow. It is not only the peculiar sound of the steel age, but also the soprano saxophone that bursts into the writer's mind. The metal keyboard is like the skin of the female writer Joan who resembles the dead wife. When the touch is not enough to express love, you have to peel the keyboard to the inside, where the feeling is extremely strong, you have to hit the keyboard violently until you have a bloody full erection. The mouth, asshole, and genitals of the typewriter are integrated, because language is a virus. It is not only the unspeakable fear of loss of identity (homosexuality), but also an alternating current directly acting on the brain. It reflects one person's control over another , Through language, excrement and sex. When two typewriters quarrel in front of the writer, it is like a loud roaring noise ensemble in the brain. One has to be broken to parts to get a moment of peace, just like "Clark Nova" to William Lee. Second temptation: "To accept this new perspective (drug space), I live by beautiful words and sentences."

Dr. Benway is the spokesperson of the Interzone-Interzone control system. His female skin is his political disguise, like the icing on drugs, just like the first time he met William Lee mixing black meat (new drug). Insect powder (old drugs) said that new types of drugs will be invisible, just like spies who sneak into the world of old drugs. As the top of the pyramid, his job is to continuously develop new types of drugs to control the people who retreat to the inner world. The drug addict makes a living by sucking the ugly soul through the straw on the monster's head, surrendering the soul in exchange for Dr. Benway The so-called "freedom".

In order to find Joan, William Lee exchanged his love for his male prostitute Gigi in exchange for the address of Dr. Benway, but Gigi’s death forced William Lee to face his own ugliness again, which was also the ending credit for William. Li refused Dr. Benway's invitation, and chose to take Joan away to lay the groundwork.

At the entrance of Annex-Annexia on the fringe, two sentries stopped William Lee. William Lee took out a pen to prove his identity as a writer. The sentry said that a pen is not enough to prove that you are a writer, "What are you going to write? ", William Lee turned around and hit Joan on the forehead again. Killing Joan again in his dream made William Lee shed regretful tears. The nightmare was broken with one blow, but the stain in his heart could not be erased, only to face the cruel reality-just as the sentinel said, "You have to write something What"—Record this dangerous journey of inner exploration, and it may become the only way for the writer to redeem himself.

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Extended Reading

Naked Lunch quotes

  • Yves Cloquet: I've seen you around, but I had no idea you were queer.

    Bill Lee: Queer?

    Yves Cloquet: [leers] I saw you arrive with those three Interzone boys. What an entrance. You all looked very... familiar with each other.

    Bill Lee: [gulps] Queer. A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain - I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion. I would've destroyed myself. And a wise old queen - Bobo, we called her - taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see. Poor Bobo came to a sticky end - he was riding in the Duke Devanche's Hispano Suissa when his falling hemorrhoids blew out of the car and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstry. Even the eyes and the brain went with a horrible "shlupping" sound. The Duke says he would carry that ghastly "shlup" with him to his mausoleum.

  • Bill Lee: Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. This asshole talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called The Better Ole that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?" "Nah I had to go relieve myself." After a while the asshole started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his asshole would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him, "It is you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat AND shit." After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpoles tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous - except for the EYES you dig. Thats one thing the asshole COULDN'T do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldnt give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes WENT OUT, and there was no more feeling in them than a crabs eyes on the end of a stalk.