Fragments of An Unknown Something Or Other: Thoughts on Donnie Darko

Disclaimer

This stream of consciousness conspiracy poetics is nothing but spoiler, so if you haven’t seen the movie a million times (or even once), you read the rest at your own peril.

One more thing: whether you choose to believe what follows is entirely up to you.

The Players

In Donnie Darko, Donnie plays our resident Christ. His story is The_Last_Temptation_of_Christ re-enacted in a messed-up white-bred, country-club town in the late 80’s.

Jim Cunningham, the attractive, single, secret pedophile, with the Tony Robbins- meets- Nancy Reagan motivational speaker shtick, plays our resident Antichrist.

And Frank, the “Evil Dead” in the big bunny suit, does the Satan thing, acting as the in-film tempter/trickster.

AntiChrist Superstar: Jim Cunningham is Indeed a Cunning Ham

Contrary to what Donnie proclaims at the school assembly, not everything Jim Cunningham says is a lie. He wouldn’t be a very good Antichrist if that were true. No, see he’s the Antichrist precisely because he says the truth, but presents it in a false way.  Take his whole chart of Fear and Love, for example.  This chart shows us how everything exists on some continuum between Fear and Love and that, where there’s Love and you love yourself, blah, blah, blue-dee-bloo, there is no fear. Conversely, where there is Fear, according to the chart, Love is not. This is basically true stuff. Deeply true. The real shit. However, Cunningham presents this truth in a very superficial way that doesn’t require folks to really do anything different than they always have.  In his presentation, no one is really required to be different, either–to be their true selves, without bullshit.

Jim Cunningham presents the truth about Love and Fear as if all one need do is watch his video tapes, buy a set of life line exercise cards, say the right answers and parrot a bunch of Jim Cunninghamisms in order to be saved and end hir personal suffering.  All Jim Cunningham asks is that you buy the illusion of facing Fear, the illusion of letting it go and accepting Love. All he asks is that you become a bad actor.

You can see the results of buying into Jim Cunningham in Ms. Farmer, with her maudlin histrionics over Donnie’s behavior, the palpable fear in her eyes when he seems to upset the way her Jim Cunningham patented lesson plan is supposed to go. And you can see it in the chi-chi female friend of Ms. Darko, with her studied wine glass dangle, her spouting of Jim Cunninghamism slogans, the way she fawns over the image of Jim Cunningham she has painted with her mind.  Neither of these middle-aged, fawning, Cunningham acolytes seems very self-aware, much less saved or born again in the true sense.

Now we’re ready for the biggest reason why Jim Cunningham is the Antichrist.

He’s the Antichrist because he represents himself as an embodiment of pure Love, of having his shit together, when, in fact, Love is a thing he knows nothing about. He’s an exploiter, riddled with fear and guilt: guilt over his kiddie porn compulsions–guilt and fear over what he’s capable of and what he can’t stop himself from doing, which is psychically eating the young, and selling their corrupted images. And of course, he is filled with the Fear of being found out as a fraud and a pervert. But maybe he’s only a fraud and a pervert because he’s never known Love. Sure, intellectually he knows it–how else could he sell his motivational tapes? He knows Love is, but he Fears giving up to it, sacrificing everything he’d need to sacrifice in order to experience it–which is his identity as a very respectable, wealthy, influential and inspirational faker and pervert.

Because he does not embody true Love himself, simply masked fear, he can’t help but sell a one-size fits all system for getting Love. In turn, he has to get the buyer to squeeze hirself into that one size, distorting and warping themselves. (See Ms. Farmer and the chi-chi painter above.)

That’s what makes Jim Cunningham the Antichrist: he’s a false image of the True and he promotes the creation of more mirrors of himself to obscure the truth that he is not.

That Devil Frank is Frankly Tricky

Frank plays Satan, the tempter and the trickster. He seems to help Donnie out by saving his life, thereby establishing himself as trustworthy. Yet soon enough, he performs the greatest mind-fuck of all, like any good Ascended Master or Beneficent Space Brother who has whispered to a Madam Blavatsky, David Icke or a thin Rael. The mind-fuck Frank performs is the mind-fuck of prophecy. He tells Donnie exactly when the world will end, a feat which no one is given to know (at least per the Good Book Lollipop). Having “saved” Donnie from a brush with death, he dangles the Ultimate Death in front of him: Apocalypse. But this, is really just the Anti-Death, in the same way Jim Cunningham is the Anti-Christ. (More on that later.)

Through this prophetic mind-fuckery, Donnie is entrained to frequencies of Fear, which is why he so easily can suss out Jim Cunningham. Those enthralled by Fear can recognize each other; where Cunningham’s and Darko’s respective character differs  lies the source of the enmity between them.

Having gained Donnie’s trust with his tricks, Satan-Frank then offers Donnie a taste of power through chaos. He sets him the task of flooding the school, sowing suspicion and tension, but also laying down a temptation-traps for Donnie in the form of a bevy of ego-attachments: to a romantic love, to a new-found rebel identity, to further pain and suffering and adolescent disconnection from his mother and his peers, not to mention torment at the hands of coked-up bullies (future Senators, no doubt).

Frank then tempts him with the gift of secret knowledge: the knowledge of Time Travel. (Kal /Ahriman/the Demiurge represents Time and Entropy, Fear and Eternal Recurrence, so it’s only natural Satan-Frank would offer Power over Time.) Finally, he offers Donnie the chance to play righteous judge, through a public confrontation with Jim Cunningham and the burning of the Antichrist’s mansion. This seems at first to lead to good things, but of course, it is a set up for Frank to trap Donnie in Time, to trap him in Fear, through the Apocalypse of losing everything and everyone his ego’s attached him to–his girlfriend, his family, his friends: everything.

Donnie Christ SuperDark

What makes Donnie the Christ is his realization about the nature of the End of the World. The End of the World as he has perceived it is a false image of Death. It is everything one fears death to be, which is the taking away of everything you’ll ever have and care about against your will. The End of the World has been an eight-foot tall idea of Death, wrapped in a bunny suit and a calendar date, but the Apocalypse is not Death. So, it is the Anti-Death.

And here’s where Satan-Frank’s trick is undone, because Donnie realizes he must face Death directly, with calm. He must face the real End of the World, which is the end of him, of his finite existence. Satan-Frank gave him just enough knowledge to set Donnie up for a fall, but only if Donnie had failed to piece it together. Of course, Grandma Death herself gave Donnie a little hint:

Every living thing dies alone.

But it was up to him to figure it all out. If either Satan-Frank or Grandma death had presented him with the Truth on a silver platter, he would have never really learned it or embodied it. So, Satan-Frank is only so bad as you are stupid–or willing to blindly believe what you are told before you’ve made yourself capable of experiencing the real thing as it is on your own.

The End of the World is happening every single second. And you’ve gotta face it without fear if you’re gonna Live. And if you’re gonna Live, you’re gonna really Love and let go of suffering.

Donnie figures it out and the responsibility it entails: a certain quality of action. This is why he travels back in time to face Death head on, paradoxically saving everyone, even though they will never know it (that would never be a consolation to the false-self, would it?); and, perhaps giving them all the gift of really seeing Death for what it is, through him. In this way, he gives them the opportunity, the chance to save themselves. A choice, rather than a guarantee.

(It would be a false, Jim Cunningham guarantee, anyway. Good for the ego, not good for life.)

That’s what makes Donnie Darko the Christ.

***

P.S. Donnie is also a Conspiracy Theory Samurai. Do you see it?

P.P.S. Each one of us have, are now playing or will play Jim Cunningham, Frank and Donnie without knowing it, in some aspect of our personality or some period of our lives. Or maybe that’s bullshit. But who do you wanna play? Are you playing who you think you’re playing or someone else? How can you start to know?

P.P.P.S. 3 (But it doesn’t compare to the “We”): I totally left the goddesses out of this. But they compliment the three main dudes of this movie. Do you know who they be?

Feel free to take all this stuff anywhere you want.

Phone lines are open!