A Day or a Lifetime – Mosquito Encounter #1

Even before he is introduced to Charlie, Barton is never really alone in Room 621.  The room is also home to a mosquito who becomes active each night, disturbing Barton’s sleeping with her persistent humming and her tendency toward stealthily nibbling away at his face (since it feeds on blood then it’s safe to assume that this mosquito is a female, correct?).

Like the peeling wallpaper, the mosquito is a relatively mild, everyday type of intrusion that nevertheless comes to feel quite threatening.  On Barton’s first night at the Earle, the mosquito is introduced via an overhead shot that encircles him as he lies upon his bed, gazing helplessly above as if aware that he is being watched by forces beyond his comprehension.  For now the mosquito itself goes unseen, but its presence is indicated by an intrusive whining, just soft enough so that the cut to the next scene, in which Barton is stepping into Lipnick’s office to be greeted by his overly-enthusiastic hollering, comes as something of a sensory shock to the viewer.

Some see the tiny ectoparasite as a representation of the forces that have been draining Barton of his creative energies, possibly Hollywood itself.  To others, it’s just an elaborate set-up to one of the film’s more shocking reveals, which occurs after Barton and Audrey spend the night together.  Myself, I’m in two minds about the symbolism of the mosquito.  I’m mostly inclined to view it as yet another manifestation of Charlie/the Earle - its nocturnal predatory habits might foreshadow some of Charlie’s own sinister activities, but predominantly the mosquito’s menace arises from its invasion of Barton’s privacy and the sense that his every movement within the hotel is being pinpointed.  This is made all the more prominent by the mosquito’s initial lack of physical form – prior to their final encounter, the mosquito is represented only by camera movements and a disembodied whining.  Ben Geisler’s insistence upon the lack of mosquitos in Los Angeles prompts me to believe that we are intended to see the presence of this one as something quite spooky and otherworldly.

Given, as noted, the presumable femininity of the mosquito, my alternative reading leads toward it being a kind of counterpart to the beach-bathing beauty in the picture.  We know that the sexually-starved Barton is haunted by visions of femininity and that his perceived containment of it becomes a fresh source of creative energy in the latter stages of the film.  For the first half of the film, Barton is tormented by dual feminine presences that remain constantly outside of his grasp – one of which transfixes and tantalises him with a false window into a world beyond the Earle, the other of which emphasises his loss of control through its relentless disturbance, eroding his stamina while resisting all attempts to be located and disposed of.

If nothing else, the mosquito is useful as something with which to fill in the empty spaces – in an environment as eerily silent and alienating as the Earle, the soft whines of a tiny mosquito might very quickly be perceived as deafeningly intolerable.