free thinking about backrooms dated: 31/05/26
Immediately considering hauntology as it relates to empty promises, looping capitalist structures commanding what and who we are, do, and become – example used:
In the movie, Mary is framed by this tragedy of her childhood. Her house is being torn down, a family home; she retains the cement print of her hand – it was next to three others. It looks like one at a time, but there’s potential it was done frog style (her, two hands, her mom’s two hands framing hers, idk)
This structure itself is like the carbon copy cookie cutters seen throughout 90s americana; the promise of affordable starter family housing units, customisable and built en masse through a bevvy of research and development linked to securing consumer happiness and trust by material acquisition while still having people remain in fixed bonds so to speak
Anyways this is being torn down while a new development is promoted right next to it; it’s an apartment complex
The image comes to mind of the interior of her home, replicated, copied, and stacked one on top of the other, segmented
Another lie developed for consumers: a new place to settle down, to build a life, at an affordable cost, with custom options available
We are haunted: by empty promises– we are doomed to replicate the same hopes, the same desires, because they never get fulfilled; the vacuum only grows.
Another idea is that hauntology demands togetherness because the collective creates the haunt. A haunted thing that lives alone. These empty things, created by replicate desires, crave security through the existence of Another; but it is a thing made from desire and is created to embody the Haunt – something existing, without purpose, with the hunger and desires fragmented through it of the collective.
Clark’s Monster is Clark, a corroded version of himself existing through thought and memory. His visage is to live on perpetually not what he was, but what people remember him to be: the pirate man, the furniture store, gesturing wildly and gesticulating.
The wide mouth and slack face and terrified, half moaned open expression, nearly fearful, is a still frame combination of he and a smattering of other likewise vendors that melt together into a thing made of fractures.
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So the thing is we’ve gotten from a place of experiencing vapourwave after experiencing Boards of Canada to looking at liminal spaces, which is fine and dandy, but also exploring the idea of the community-person experiencing in real time the after-effects of their own but also the collective’s built in design for cannibalism. And self-cannibalism!
If Clark is eating things in the Backrooms that are “just edible” which is itself insane, is it the Backrooms reflecting his desires onto him and making him part of this existing entity? Is it because the copy of him already exists down here and also eats and lives, so he is part-human part-entity?
Also the way that Clark’s monster picks up Clark is reminiscent of the Chronos eating Neptune painting; i wonder if there’s something to loving something so much and wanting to be part of it so much that you have to consume it, because that’s what i do…
And then there’s also the fact that Mary smashes his face with the last of her memories which is a fragment of something that insists and presents itself as a hauntological location and also liminal space within the context of the movie but also the understanding of the audiences (most of them?)
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Also kane has a portfolio of work that settles itself in the ideas of the forgotten, no matter how well it has been taken care of and noted down, becoming corroded and being taken back by the earth– only to have something built on top of it, using bones and the cadaver for fresh soil and tilling flowers (see: rolling giant) and the idea of those memories resurfacing being the thing that allows a dead thing to live again (see: rolling giant)
In our (the?) american conscious, we also have a considerable obsession with underground networks and the fact that so many things can be connected, can be buried right underneath our feet; we have created so much as humans but more specifically as Americans, in such a short amount of time, that all of that product has to be stacked on top of each other; we don’t have the bandwidth to properly archive and log all of these stories, and even when we do, the preservation can only go so far; web2 to web3 can be the difference between capturing a solid memory and having it live, or it being lost altogether or existing in a fragmented, broken-image populated site with only newspaper clippings and quote-stories to go off of………….
Kane’s ideas about memories, and people, are present in this movie but also something more cynical and less liminal, more hauntological and ontological, about the nature of our exteriors and interiors, our memories, the information age, and ummmmmm how cannibalistic we are and how greedy and hungry and scared we are of ourselves and of change and of our world :3
There’s also the idea of a good memory turning bad through the passage of time, through translation – time naturally erodes but we are the corrosive elements; through games of telephone, lost context, misappropriations… so a good memory can be a good memory, or it could become bad– oo it can become bad with additions of context
I also consider the roles of the protagonists who shape these experiences. Backrooms movie was like a conceptual take on exploring the world Kane and the original creepypasta created, and the viewer themselves touring and cautiously exploring. When we switch to Mary’s POV, we are a tourist again because Clark has become a part of the structure/world/entity/he himself is an entity; does this tourism and careful/wreckless exploration has something to do with the liiiiike vibe created idk
shame dated: 26/05/26
[>>] where are the origins of my shame :3
- Troubles with reconciling my physical sense of self on digital platforms
- Deep disheartening sense when posting online at all
- Excitement tempered immediately by negative self-talk when posting online
- Paranoia over being viewed, especially by people i don’t like
- Belief that i will be laughed at, ignored negatively, or contradicted
Where does this come from? :o
When i was a child, i liked to take pictures of myself and was in fact very fascinated and inspired to.
I remember trying to copy auntie cece’s topless photos where she flexed, the black and white ones i found one time; I remember my mom telling me not to do that and that it’s not appropriate, that i don’t do what auntie cece does
I remember Angelina commenting on the photo of my face i posted on my deviantart to be careful about posting myself, and my mom finding those pictures and telling me to delete them.
I remember editing parts of myself out to melt into referential screenshots, art pieces, photography during the #arthoe era on tumblr.
I can’t remember much beyond sharing photos with others, that go toward posting myself online again. I’m sure the paranoia is definitely a remnant of interacting with --- for even a short amount of time, and has become part of a superstition. And when I have superstitions, I usually believe in them so much.
The superstition made by --- is that: if I post something, if I do something, he will respond to that in some manner by downspeaking me or posting images and transcripts of our conversations.
:B so what does this mean for me!!1!!!