The dark picture is referred to as the masterpiece and perfect work of writer, prophet and visionary science fiction Philip K. Dick. This book has also been deservedly made into a film. At the outset, however, it is necessary to remember that the film is just a sweet reward for the reader of this Dick book, and as I now know, it is actually necessary, especially in this case, to read the book The Dark Picture and watch the film The Dark Picture after reading. What does not fit into the film is fine-tuned to absolute understanding in the book, what you imagine when reading the book is shown in detail in the visually impressive treatment of the film. It is therefore a work that is expressed in two ways. So let’s dive into Dick’s paranoid, visionary mind.
So, in the beginning there were bedbugs and drugs, but rather those drugs and Charles Frek. Well, at the beginning, at the frighteningly strange beginning, he was rather a weird guy who really had bugs everywhere, or his distorted mind perceived evil bedbugs or just small disgusting biting animals. He washed and washed, he washed his dog too, and slowly rubbed him and himself until he exhausted all his strength. Then he sprayed himself with insect spray, then took a shower, but the bugs were still everywhere. How to get rid of them? How to escape them? Could friend Berris help?
„They’re aphids, they’re everywhere, I have them in my hair, on my skin, in my lungs, and it hurts Berrisi, really unbelievable, they’re everywhere, yes, and Millie [Frek’s dog] is full of them too.“ Berris on the other end of the phone responds like a real friend, „yes, yes, sure, wait, listen to me, you have to get out of there, see you at the Three Fiddlers, everything will be fixed. You can throw a few in a bottle, I’ll examine them there. They’re probably really aphids, but just in case, do it, calm down.“ Berris, a true friend of his junkie friend, indifferently throws away the phone, disgusted that he has to be a „friend“ to a disgustingly nasty junkie paranoid individual decomposing alive – Charles Fre.
That’s exactly how Philip K. Dick’s film story about the dark backdrop of the world of the relentless drug S called THE DARK PICTURE begins. Drug S destroys golden America, it does not matter the time, the naming of the drug, the games with the names or names of cities or people, or the exact location and time when the story takes place. It’s all just another background to reality, Dick’s reality. The dark picture in film form begins and we, as participants in the film story, become direct witnesses, immediately, without warning, wake up from the first moment to the paranoid world of drug addiction. Do not expect from the film, but no healing talk, no deep reflection, shock treatment is said to be the most effective. After all, I myself am now, in the environment where I live, in the middle of our reality, witnessing similar stories, still listening to them, so far perhaps in the safety of a panel apartment, high above the clouds and high above the real figures of an ordinary housing estate, where I am protected from them. This story in The Dark Picture can take place next to me in a neighboring apartment or even near you, here and now. And you can even meet individual characters in a few minutes in the corridors of anonymous blocks of flats. This is what the strange reality worlds of Phillip Kindred Dick’s books and films are all about, which can be quite openly projected into my and your reality.
Our film story necessarily moves us further, we then visit the world of the powerful, who goes to lecture to the Brown Bear lodge secret drug policeman deployed to fight substance S in the district of Orange. At the beginning, we learn in the introductory words of the lecturer, who introduces the policeman, „that we live, as we all know, in a culture of addiction.“ I couldn’t get rid of that sentence after watching the film, it circulated in my head, settled down and, in modern terms, „implemented“ into my thinking and led me into the dark depths of thinking. So I found in my mind that in a simple view of the culture of addiction, many who share a simple worldview imagine in their black-and-white stupid, imperfect minds only a world of junkie zeroes, decaying and decaying alive – they see druggers, alcoholics, doomless, gamblers, incorrigible sniffers and vein prickers. Like me, they may have a picture of the Sherwood junkie park behind some city station, where one can perhaps even today see a disgusting junkie who, under the cover of night and day, publicly and unashamedly thrusts his needle into his vein, containing a gradual putrefactive death, without any social inhibitions before the eyes of a respectable, hardworking citizen. Away from them, away from the world of visibly decaying wreckage, avoiding them. Simply thinking individuals, however, succumb to the illusion that the problem of addiction does not concern them, this perfectly artificial illusion, but it does not stand up to the abandonment of black-and-white thinking. Many of these individuals may also be our loved ones or friends. A close, probing look opens up a world of many addictions that are not visible, let’s step away from the visible popularly approved and tolerated ones (Uncle Berňák has eyes everywhere), people do not want to give up alcohol, cigarettes and light drugs, and yet laws often tolerate them in quantities greater than small or less than large? After all, these addictions are a permanent part of modern human life and are, as they say, socially acceptable and mainly carry money to the state coffers and the state as a disgusting voracious beetle must exist at all costs.
The highest degree of drug, addictive intoxication in the postmodern era is the intoxication of religious, political or conspiracy ideology or a world of mysterious absolutist ideas, where many people dependent on their only true way of thinking are able to evaluate anyone who does not share their only true vision of the world first as socially unacceptable who does not deserve to continue to exist. In the next phase, as an enemy of ideology, deity, guru or state, and anyone who does not deserve to exist in the golden age of human existence, we will gradually twist his fine neck in a socially acceptable way in the name of the (truest) ideology, that gentlemen ideologues, Internet fighters for truth, debaters, conspirators? So if you, as an individualist, encounter ideologues and fighters for the only religious, political or conspiratorial and, of course, the only unquestionable vision of the world, you will find that you would rather sit in a car with similar madmen like the main character of the story Dark Picture. Here many would think that he is better a friendly junkie than a sleek guy in a tie and jacket, which we do not believe even greeting, because he lies as soon as he opens his mouth and sometimes lies before he even opens his mouth and says a single word. Dependence on ideologies and the true only interpretation of the world is a real disaster, the fear of these individuals to encounter individual, different perceptions of reality is unacceptable, it is a shock to them. Drug addiction is therefore visible in the gradual physical and mental decomposition of man, ideological addiction is usually not visible at first glance, it manifests itself monstrously under a polished external manifestation followed by a violent attack on the freedom of individual perception of the reality of an individual who has not yet joined the right herd as a dull sheep. So much for the culture of our time, the culture of dependence.
The story then moves us to the speaker’s next speech: „Almost twenty percent of the population can now be described as drug addicts and we all know here that this situation is monitored and improved by a single company, this sponsor is Nová Cesta. You notice that this man, this policeman, you barely see him, he’s wearing a so-called jamming suit, that’s what he wears and has to wear at certain times, in fact he wears it most of the time when he’s making sure the law is followed.“ After a slightly humorous introduction, Fred, the man in the disturbing suit, finally takes the floor: „If you met me on the street without this suit, you would probably say that it’s some kind of junkie, I’ll be disgusting to you and avoid me, I don’t look like you, I can’t, my life depends on it. I do not want to tell you at first what I do as an undercover policeman involved in finding dealers and the sources of their illegal drugs on the streets of our cities and in the corridors of our schools here in Orange County. Now I will tell you what I fear. Day and night I fear that our children, your children and my children, have two young children, very small, but not so small as to escape addiction, a deliberately induced addiction to substance S, which is spread for profit by drug terrorists.“ The speech goes on for a while, Fred talks about the active fight against drugs and the fight against the countries from which the substance S is allegedly imported. „Every day this disease takes its toll, every day the drug S brings in profits, and where do those profits go? It’s not about the profits, it’s about something else, about what’s happening today.“ After a pause, Fred continues, „If you were diabetic and didn’t have money for insulin, would you steal or die?“
However, Fred’s speech is disrupted, he speaks differently than the system requests, and so he is instructed by a hidden walkie-talkie to return to another, system-prepared and pre-approved speech. „I forgot it, this somehow doesn’t get into my head“ but the system does not give up and returns Fred to his role of „repeat after me, but let it look improvised“, a short pause and Fred continues to talk this time to the man behind the secret radio: “ Do you know why this doesn’t get into my head? Because that’s what drives people to drugs, it’s all so disgusting that they want to escape and start taking.“ But the voice of the system does not give up, it reminds all the more urgently that Fred go back to his role, to his masquerade, simply without talking, to say his from the system and have peace. „So the substance S, S means weakness and fear and also loneliness, friends will run away from you and you will run away from friends, everyone will eventually run away from everyone. Separation and loneliness, hatred and mutual suspicion, S is ultimately death, slow death, it starts in the head, so that’s how it is.“
If you carefully watch the speech of Fred, the undercover policeman, and listen to the voices in the background from the system, you will find that Fred knows exactly that everything he says in the voice of the system is a lie. He himself is able to assess that the fictitious (real in Newspeak) American (not only American) society is stagnating, lost and incapable of any development, that the problem is absolute stagnation, the inability to really evaluate what should or should not be changed for people in order to really exist in postmodern society. It’s like sitting in a bandwagon, knowing without any doubt that no one is driving it, but at the same time confidently consoling everyone that the engine driver (by some administrative mistake) does not sit on the train, but there is a regulation and a law for everything, so maybe someone in the locomotive really (must) sit there as announced by the (familiar Brussels) regulation. It is pure paranoia in which we ourselves live and with us about seven billion people, each gradually finding himself in his own private paranoid, completely personal image, thank you friends, so welcome to the postmodern world of the desert of our reality. This world of our common reality is based on lies, on pretense, on a collective and systematic concealment of true reality and the true state of affairs, it is a world where we are observed and observe others on endless reality television.
But our story does not stop, we set out with Charles Frek on a frantic ride to the pub U Tří Šumařů and watch his absolutely distorted picture of reality. In a drug binge, he empathizes with strange ideas of police control, when he experiences one reality only in his head and also reacts to a reality in which the police check does not take place. During a high-profile police check, when even the intervening policeman is not clean, he gets a seemingly simple question: „What’s your name?“ It seems like a simple question, but a junkie who gradually dies one brain cell after another is often unable to answer because there is no transfer of information in the brain and his neurotransmitters have either died or somehow did not wake up. So do you know for sure what your real name is?
The story goes on, we delve deeper and deeper into it, we listen to high-speed dialogues, intelligent previews alternating from high-dialogue of drug intoxication, it’s like riding a motorcycle against a stormy wind that tries to slow you down, but your bike fights with the wind for a race and goes forward without stopping. Subsequently, we get to the complete post-drug (personally controlled) deformation of Charles Freko, who decides to solve the endless spiral of drug highs instead of treatment and a new start in all areas of life rather than ending his life, unable to face it anymore. Right now, as I write these lines, similar situations are taking place right outside my windows, people often choose them themselves and voluntarily, they often need to artificially solve something to know that they are still alive, that they can still feel something, that something can touch them, while in real trials they cannot reconcile with real life failures and their consequences, who can often divide them into atoms, find no way for further questions and no longer want to follow the amazing Mystery of Life. What a real failure, to despise the Mystery of Life! So our non-hero Charles Frek finally decided to end his life, in the film Dark Picture Charles Frek buys a sufficient amount of sedatives, quality alcohol, as a classic would say, for the last trip I will not save on myself, because in the (drug) circles in which he moves, the sudden end is not considered problematic, so everything runs according to a simple, pre-clear, of a classifiable plan. Of course, his plans also dealt with what objects were to be found in his possession by future archaeologists, he took several days to decide, these considerations took more time than the decision to kill himself. He will be found lying on his back in his bed, with a copy of Andy Rand’s The Source, and an unfinished letter to Exon protesting the cancellation of his gas card. In this way, he wants to impeach the system and achieve something by his death, something greater than he will achieve in his whole life. At the last moment, however, Charles changes his mind on a crucial issue and decides to wash down the pills with expensive quality wine rather than cheap boxed patok. So Charles Frek made his last trip to a local liquor store selling expensive wines and bought a bottle of Merlot for nearly $70. He returned home, opened the expensive bottle of wine, let the wine breathe, and drank a few glasses and tried to think of something meaningful. And then, with a glass of Merlot in his hand, he swallowed all the pills at once. However, he was deceived, and instead of calming down, Charles Frek began to hallucinate. Suddenly, he saw a creature standing by his bed from the boundary between dimensions, looking at him disapprovingly. Charles asked the creature a simple question: „Will you read my sins to me?“ To this question, the creature nodded, and Charles Frek understood the new reality, quite realistically assessed the situation and said that „reading his sins will take a hundred thousand hours.“ The creature nodded to him, telling him in a calm voice, „that sins will be read to him indefinitely, in shifts, for all eternity, and there is no end to the list.“ Subsequently, Charles Frek listened to the account of his sins from birth, when at one point he began to wish that he could return the last half hour of his life. But this did not happen, and the sins were read further. A thousand years later they reached the sixth grade in reading, when Charles Frek discovered masturbation in that year, after another reading, Charles Frek thought that at least the wine was good.
I invite you on a journey through The Dark Picture and perhaps a longer journey with the books and films of author, writer, prophet and visionary science fiction author Philip K. Dick. Happy Dick’s Paranoid Journey!
Gnosticismus/Gnosticism 