Thursday 27 August 2015

A Day or a Lifetime – Peeling Wallpaper #1 (and Mosquito Encounter #2)


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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