The Mythic World of the Navajo: The Guardians of the Four Directions

RAY: 

As I explained before, we think the spirit 

of a 17th-century Moldavian tyrant 

is alive and well in a painting 

at the Manhattan Museum of Art.

PSYCHIATRIC DOCTOR: 

Uh-huh. And are there any other paintings 

in the museum with bad spirits in them?

EGON: 

You're wasting valuable time. 

He's drawing strength from a 

psychomagnotheric slime flow 

that's been collecting under the city.

PSYCHIATRIC DOCTOR: 

Yes, tell me about The Slime.

WINSTON: 

It's very potent stuff. 

We made a toaster dance with it.

PSYCHIATRIC DOCTOR: 

A toaster.

WINSTON: 

And a bathtub tried to eat his friend's baby.

PSYCHIATRIC DOCTOR: 

A bathtub?

Peter raises himself up off The Table.

VENKMAN: 

Don't look at me, 

I think these people are completely nuts.

The White Man’s Burden

“ When I had a chance... when I was doing a story out in Denver, we went up to Estes Park. It was in the off-season. Went into the Stanley Hotel, and I asked to see the manager. 

And he came out, and we were just having lunch with him. And I said, "Can we talk to you? I write about The Shining." 

He said, "Really?" This fellow told me that he got a phone call from Stanley Kubrick, who said, "I think I want to make a movie about The Shining." 

And then he would keep this fellow on the phone for a long time. 

He said, "We had many long, long conversations in which he picked my brain about everything." 

And at that point, he said, "Kubrick was talking about maybe coming here to make the movie here," which I expect, at that point, that fellow liked the idea of, so it would make his hotel famous. 

And Kubrick said, "I'd like to send out a research team." 

And so he then sent out... the man said it was something like two or three people who came out here and stayed here for two or three months, taking photographs everywhere. 

And they spent a lot of time also down in Denver in the Colorado state archives, finding out, as I would now expect, the full history of Colorado, which... the flag of which plays a part. 

And the gold rush, the Colorado Gold Rush was also a very big event. And there's all... there's still a lot of American Indian/white people tension in Colorado with Navajos and Arapahos just to the south. 

This research team found out absolutely everything about Colorado, about Estes Park, about the Stanley Hotel, about its entire history, took photographs all over the place. 

Three months was the impression that I have of what he said about how this research team gathered absolutely everything. 

Kubrick unearthed an enormous amount about the real history of Colorado, where this takes place, because what he has done is found a way to dig into all of the patterns of our civilization, our times and our cultures, and the things that we don't want to look at. 

And this movie is very much also about denial of the genocides that we committed... we white folk from Europe... committed here and not that... not that white folks are the only people who do genocide. 

All humans do, as Kubrick makes clear in this movie. 

He would research everything and the full history and nature of everything you're gonna see in the movie on the screen and then boil it down and boil it down until he got the universal human and global patterns that make it so real. 

“White Man's Burden, Lloyd, My Man. 

White Man's Burden. 

I Like you, Lloyd. I always liked you. 

You were always the best of 'em. 

The best goddamned bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine, 

or Portland, Oregon, for that matter.”

“Thank you for saying so.”

What does it mean? 

Jack saying, "You always were the best of 'em." 

Starting in Timbuktu? 

Jack The Schoolteacher was never in Timbuktu, but Jack The Universal Weak Male hired by armies to go commit atrocities has always been there. 

Now, of course, the word "Portland" is neat because it means where we landed or where The British or The Europeans landed. 

And Portland, Maine... 

Oregon is where they may have taken off from to go further west. 

Kubrick is thinking about the implications of everything that exists. You know, The Power of The Genie is in its confinement, as the great American poet Richard Wilbur said. 

Boiling it down, you know, 10,000 years in a little lamp, you got to get your act together. 

But that's the essence of great art. 

It's like a dream. 

It's boiled everything down to an emblematic symbol that's got all of life in it. 

Now, if you'll allow me to make a little bit of a link here. 

As I've thinking of this more in recent years, what we now understand to be the nature of What Dreams Are, I mean, it seems to be, the general theory is, that it's a way for the brain to boil down all of the previous experiences and then add in that day's experiences as well to see what kind of overall universal patterns there are to be found, so that you can be aware of what the patterns are out there, so that your subconscious will be all the more ready to react suddenly when you see something dangerous happen or something important happen that may lead you to a mate or to some food or away from danger. 

And therefore, the way Kubrick made movies was not unlike the way, according to these current theories, our brains create memories and, for that matter, dreams. 

That's the ultimate shining that Kubrick does. 

He is like a mega brain for The Planet who is boiling down with all of this extensive research, all of these patterns of Our World and then giving them back to us in a dream of a movie... because movies are like A Dream... and that's related to why I think there's a lot of evidence that what Kubrick also gave us in The Shining is a movie about The Past. 

Not just any past. The Past. 

I mean past-ness. 

It's a movie about how The Past impinges. That's what ghosts are. That's what those skitter-y voices in the opening shot that are following are about. 

There's two phrases from T.S. Eliot that I often think of when I'm thinking about The Shining. One of them is "The night"... 

I think they're both from T.S. Eliot... 

[ It’s James Joyce. ]

"The nightmare of history... How can we awake from The Nightmare of History?

And the other is his phrase... T.S. Eliot's phrase... "History has many cunning passages." 

And I think both of those phrases are directly apt for The Shining, in which we see many cunning passages in The Maze and in The Hotel itself and in which The Past becomes a nightmare, and in which Kubrick shows us how you escape from the nightmare of The Past by retracing your steps, as Danny does in that last line, which means acknowledging what happened and learning about The Past and then getting out, only if you are going to be able to shine and see what the patterns are so you know to get away from them and avoid them and go for the good things. 

I mean, The Shining is his movie about how families break down, whether they are an individual family or the larger societal family that tries to break up individual families. 

And his hat movie, Eyes Wide Shut is the opposite. It's about a family sorely tried, Bill Hartford and his wife and child, that survives all the horrible temptations that are in our DNA.”

The Inner King and The Blessing Way

NAVAJO RESERVATION; TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO

(Mulder sits in a congregation of the Navajo. He is still draped in the blanket. Albert walks over and sits down across from him.)

ALBERT HOSTEEN: 

You must be careful now to end the ceremony properly. 

If you leave, you must not do any work, change clothes or bathe for four days.

MULDER: 

That's really going to cut into my social life.

(Everyone laughs.)

ALBERT HOSTEEN: 

The boys have a gift for you.

(The youngest boy walks up to Mulder and hands him a small pouch. Mulder opens it and pours out sunflower seeds. He smiles.)

You asked for them during your worst fevers.

MULDER: 

During my fever, I... 

I left here and travelled to a place.

ALBERT HOSTEEN: 

This place. You carry it with you. 

It is inside of you. It is the origin place.

MULDER: 

It wasn't a dream?

ALBERT HOSTEEN: 

Yes.

(Mulder stares at him, perplexed. A man stands and wipes out the design on the board that had been drawn on before. Albert stands.)

We are done now.

(Everyone else stands and starts to leave, except Mulder, who remains seated as the morning sounds ring in.)

Twin War Gods come to Their Father, seeking Magic and Weapons to eliminate The Monsters of The World.

“ Dear Son,

I hope this letter finds you well. I get reports of you from time.

I know these letters come as a surprise. You must wonder about me.

I remind myself of a Navajo story. Twin War Gods come to their Father, seeking Magic and Weapons to eliminate The Monsters of The World.

My Hope is the same for you, and that we might reconcile the differences between us.

Your Loving Father, “

But no name is printed. 

The paper is pulled out of the typewriter. 

Cut to the boy. 

Trudging through the white snow, he reaches a cabin and knocks hard on the door. 

The door opens, and a MAN, whose face remains unseen, hands the boy a red envelope containing the letter he just typed, and some money. 

The boy takes both.

BOY: 

Thanks, mister. I'll mail it right off.

The man closes the door, and the boy looks at the envelope and reads the address aloud to himself, querying it.

BOY: 

"Federal Bureau of Investigation?"

SCENE 6

Cut to a sign on a wire fence which reads:

WIEKAMP AIRFORCE BASE 

NO TRESPASSING 

BEYOND THIS POINT 

BY AUTHORITY OF 

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Moving over the fence, topped with barbed wire, we hear the steady whooshing of an aircraft, and suddenly, a huge fireball plummets into the ground and erupts in a gigantic explosion which illuminates the entire area. 

The aircraft is a UFO, now set ablaze, burning. 

After a while, we see a man dragging another man from the wreckage, and we hear the faint wailing of army trucks in the background. 

Four or five of them. 

From the trucks emerge men with guns, and they point them straight at the man dragging the body - a FACELESS MAN, 

with another faceless man lying dead on the ground. 

Cut to pictures of the Ruskin Dam. 

They are being held by Scully, 

who is still laying in her hospital bed. 

Mulder is by her bedside.

SCENE 7 

SCULLY'S HOSPITAL ROOM

SCULLY: 

I don't know what to say. I mean, I - 

I don't have the first clue. There's nothing here.

MULDER: 

Well, at least you're not alone. 

None of the other survivors have been able 

to give a cogent account, either.

SCULLY: 

Mulder, I have never been here. 

I couldn't tell you how to get here, let alone drive it.

MULDER: 

Do you remember when you last saw Cassandra Spender?

SCULLY: 

She was there, too?

Mulder nods.

MULDER: 

I ran more x-rays. 

I haven't told anybody yet what I found, though.

SCULLY: 

You found more implants?

Again, Mulder nods.

MULDER: 

That would explain How you were directed to the site, 

and Why you can't remember. 

It would explain the sensation 

Cassandra Spender was describing, 

her abduction fantasies. 

It would explain Skyland Mountain.

SCULLY: 

Yeah, but it wouldn't explain why They would want to kill me. And it doesn't explain why I survived.

MULDER: 

It all comes down to A Question, Scully. 

One that hasn't been answered 

or I don't even think honestly addressed. 

Who made that chip in your neck? 

That chip was found in a military research facility. 

Our Government made that chip, 

implanted it in your neck 

as part of a secret military project 

to develop a biochemical weapon, 

to monitor your immunity, 

or to destroy you like a lab rat, 

if The Truth were to be exposed. 

Your Cancer ... Your Cure ... 

Everything that's happening to you now - 

it all points to that chip. 

The Truth I've been searching for? 

That Truth is in you.

SCULLY: 

Mulder, when I met you five years ago, 

you told me that Your Sister had been abducted 

... by aliens. 

That that event had marked you so deeply, 

that nothing else mattered. 

I didn't believe you, but I followed you, 

on nothing more than Your Faith 

that The Truth was Out There, 

based not on Facts, not on Science, 

but on Your Memories 

that Your Sister had been taken from you. 

Your memories were all that you had.

MULDER: 

I Don't Trust those memories now.

SCULLY: 

Well, whether you Trust them or Not, 

they've led you here. And me. 

But I have no memories to either Trust nor Distrust, 

and if you ask me now to follow you again, 

to stand behind you in What You Now Believe, 

without knowing What Happened to Me out there, 

without those memories, I can't. I won't.

[Mulder stands and looks out the window.]

MULDER: 

If I could give you those memories, 

if I could prove that I Was Right 

and that What I Believed for so long was wrong ...

SCULLY: 

Is that what you really want?

From his expression, 

we know that he's not sure. 

We then cut to a black and white photo of the captured faceless man, along with two military officers 

(one who looks amazingly like Adolf Hitler!) 

The photo is being held by the First Elder, 

who then passes it along to the Second Elder. 

The members of the Syndicate (ie. the "Elders") are standing around a circular table, through which they can see the comatose Marita Covarrubias.

SCENE 8 

MEDICAL FACILITY

FIRST ELDER: 

The facial scarrings appear to be 

self-mutilation done as protection.

THIRD ELDER: 

Protection against what?

FIRST ELDER: 

Infection by The Black Oil. 

He was the lone survivor of a crashed spacecraft 

at a military base in West Virginia.

THIRD ELDER: 

What the hell is he?

WMM: 

An alien Rebel. This is what the boy saw in Russia. 

The last face The Dead saw at Skyland Mountain, 

and most surely who killed Our Man at the dam in Pennsylvania. 

He's a resistance fighter against the alien colonists. 

This is what Alex Krycek knew - 

That a War had begun.

FIRST ELDER: 

What good was that knowledge? 

Without The Vaccine against The Black Oil, 

no one can survive.

WMM: 

We have A Vaccine. 

Developed by the Russians, 

stolen by Krycek, given to me.

They watch as, below, Marita's doctor 

prepares The Vaccine for injection.

WMM: 

Do you see what this means? 

Resistance is Possible. 

We have The Weapons and The Magic in hand.

FIRST ELDER: 

We don't know The Vaccine works.

WMM: 

It will. And if it doesn't, 

we have a new alliance to be made.

FIRST ELDER: 

Side with The Resistance?

THIRD ELDER: 

Suicide.

FIRST ELDER: 

They'll squash us as They do Them. 

We must turn The Rebel over.

WMM: 

But first, 

wait till we know The Vaccine works.

The Well Manicured Man taps on the glass, indicating for the doctor to open Marita's eyes to see The Black Oil. 

It is still in her, and The Doctor carefully injects the vaccine.