As with the soft whines of the mosquito, the Coens’ ability to milk honest-to-god fear from something banal as wallpaper peeling is one of one of the things that I relish and admire most about Barton Fink. For my money, this beats The Shining and its iconic imagery of blood gushing from a hotel elevator hands down.
Wallpaper is a fairly prominent motif in Barton Fink - the
film is book-ended by images of the Earle’s wallpaper, which form the backdrop
to both the opening titles and the end credits.
An obvious interpretation, and one that I’ve never seen much reason to
argue with, is that it symbolises inner tensions and demons being covered up
and kept below the surface. Even the
cheap and unattractive wallpaper of the Earle is a preferable sight to the
sheer horrors that lurk beneath it. Unfortunately
for Barton, this façade is destined to come crashing down sooner or later, and
the perpetually-peeling wallpaper becomes one of his greatest nemeses for the
first half of the film.
Barton’s futile struggle with the wallpaper in his room
originates after his first meeting with Charlie. Despite his initial indifference towards
Charlie, Barton admits that he is “alright” (he gave Barton the opportunity to
behave self-importantly for the first time since coming to Hollywood, after
all, so he’s not without his uses) and is glad that he stopped by. His satisfaction is cut short, however, by
the sounds of a strip of wallpaper peeling at one of the corners from above his
bed. As Barton attempts to reaffix the
paper, he discovers that the walls are dripping with an unpleasant
sticky substance.
As noted, dripping in Barton Fink is indicative of malaise
and exposed ugliness, and it’s one of Charlie’s defining characteristics. At this stage in the film, a first-time
viewer, however attentive they may be, is unlikely to connect the substance on
the walls to the moisture seen dripping from Charlie’s face, but the connection
is reinforced in subsequent encounters, where Charlie discusses his chronic ear
infection and his need to staunch the flow of pus with cotton. Like Charlie, the Earle subsists in a state
of perpetual sickness, and its feverishness makes it highly volatile.
Charlie seems to exude heat, or at the very least it follows
him, so we might assume that it was his presence in the room which caused the adhesive to
melt and the paper to peel. It’s surely
no coincidence that he was sitting on the bed, directly beneath it, during his conversation with Barton. What’s particularly curious,
however, is the suggestion that the picture of the sun-bathing woman may even
have had something to do with this.
After Charlie has left the room, Barton’s gaze falls dreamily upon the
picture, and it is at this point that the wallpaper begins to peel. As Barton turns away from his desk and goes
to investigate, the camera shifts its focus, intently, to the picture. It’s as if the Earle has reacted with
jealousy to Barton’s fantasies about a world outside of its own walls, by
dragging him back into his immediate surroundings (personally, I subscribe strongly to
the interpretation that Charlie is in love with Barton, and that there is
indeed a homoerotic subtext to their relationship – more on that later).
Barton’s world, fragment by fragment, is falling apart. To top it all off, we hear the whines of that
troublesome mosquito from above him, reminding him that things are only going
to continue spiralling out of his control.
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