Barbed wire symbolism in climax sequence

Discuss the original 2006 movie.

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JKristine35
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Barbed wire symbolism in climax sequence

Post by JKristine35 »

I recently noticed that concept artworks of Alessa's revenge scene show a different origin of the barbed wire than was shown in the final film. In the movie, the barbed wire comes out of the back of Alessa's hospital bed, writhing around to in front of the bed and attacking the cultists. However, in concept artworks, the barbed wire actually appears to be coming out of Alessa's own body. Three sections of barbed wire are depicted, with two of them coming out of Alessa's ribcage area, and the largest section of barbed wire appears to emanate from her genital region. One of the artworks in particular makes it clear that all of the barbed wire that rapes Christabella is coming from Alessa's genitals, while the strands from her sides simply hold Christabella in place.

This would be an obvious allusion to her rape at the hands of the janitor, which was facilitated by the cultists and their children. However, I believe the major symbolism would be to show that Alessa is "impure", her once innocent soul having become corrupted by hate and pain. Thus, Alessa would be removing Christabella's purity with her own impurity. It could also tie into the motherhood theme that is so prevalent throughout the movie; Alessa is, in a sense, "giving birth" to the destruction of the cult.

I'm assuming this never made it into the movie because the censors would probably be very harsh on such a scene.

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mikefile
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Re: Barbed wire symbolism in climax sequence

Post by mikefile »

I can see the rape correlation. It was always clear that while all of the cultists were simply shredded by the wire vortex, Christabella's death was much more personal. The previous concept simply depicts that much more transparently.

From a more banal perspective, Alessa is 'raping back' the cultists, and specifically the heart of the cult, that is Christabella. An act of pure revenge, eye for an eye, after Christabella and her cult did what they did to Alessa, basically raped her. And I really like the idea of the three body regions from which the wires output. The region of the ribs symbolizing the hands that hold the victim still and the third genital source that does the job.

All in all, very interesting stuff.
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Patman
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Re: Barbed wire symbolism in climax sequence

Post by Patman »

Gans thought the censors were going to be harsh with the sequence as it is now anyway, so I doubt that' s the reason. I mean once you' ve shown barbwire entering genitalia adding barbwire exiting genitalia can' t make it worse than it already is, can it ?

I assume it just comes from the CG team, who were clearly given leeway to test what does or doesn' t work visually. Collisions are a tough thing to deal with when it comes to CG, so having all that wire spawn from tiny areas would be harder to animate. And I assume Alessa looks more threatening when the wires come from fucking everywhere, it leaves no dead angle.
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