Free If All Else Fails by Craig Strete Page B

terrifies the young boy. The
old man tells Peter that his voice is not changing. No, it is still the same voice.
    "It is your ears
which are changing," said the old man. "Your ears are bad and one day they will turn into
loud­speakers."
    Peter ran from the
old man in terror. Somehow the old man had instilled in him another set of dreams that had not as
yet suggested themselves to him. Rejection. The fear of rejection. He imagined that Norma Jean
had agreed to go to the movies with him but, once there, insisted that she be al­lowed to sit in
the row behind him. Further, he imagined that his ears would trumpet out the message, "You don't
even want to touch me!" just as she is giving into the temp­tation to go to the
restroom.
    Throughout this
flashback, our consciousness is split be­tween these two characters. On the one hand, we have the
fear of loudspeakers and, on the other, the temptation to go to the restroom. By means of this duality, a tension mounts that is in
itself the essence of the tensions in all human rela­tionships. The film approaches the climax.
Peter Renoir is afraid to turn around and look at her for fear of missing the end of the movie.
Peter is afraid to turn around because Norma Jean might have yielded to temptation behind his
back. Norma Jean is afraid to yield to temptation because she too fears that she will miss the
end of the movie.
    Suddenly, there is
a power failure in Minneapolis and the movie theater is plunged into darkness. Peter Renoir is
stunned. Norma Jean is stunned.
    The lights are out
in the restrooms too.
    The flashback ends
and we are left with Peter Renoir futilely trying to cope with Norma Jean's darkness. In
des­peration, Peter begins to insist that he sees her, despite the total darkness, that he loves
her which forcefully brings home the idea that the Minneapolis Power and Light Com­pany have only
very clumsily attempted to destroy a dream. Unknown to the suffering boy, Norma Jean has crawled
out of the theater on her hands and knees. When she reaches the street, she explains the
experience to herself.
    "Naked was I born
into the world, and naked I go on the screen again. My only regret is that I had to resort to
crawl­ing on my hands and knees to escape the shock of compre­hension. If I have materialized my
dreams into factories, it was not done in malice; and just because I am THE WOMAN, there is no
need to read any religious significance into it."
    After this
heartfelt confession, we experience the unpleas­ant sensation of watching a human personality
disintegrate before our eyes and she makes one additional statement. "I hope the restrooms in the
Greyhound bus depot are clean."
    As she leaves, we
hear a voice explaining in textbook fashion, "NOW YOU DO THIS . . . NOW YOU DO THAT . .
."
    Poor little Peter
Renoir, unaware that Norma Jean has left the theater with cinematic style, gazes with fascination
into the darkness that surrounds him. He continues to insist that he sees her. That she is behind
him, is real and tangible. That she is his, and only his, Norma Jean.
    It is at this point
that we discover that Peter Renoir is a sick man who once was a sick boy. We begin to sense the
irony of his life. As he talks to her empty seat in the dark­ened theater, we begin to understand
that he is in love not with a woman but with an IDEA. He has little awareness of the possibility
that he is rejecting life for an unattainable and false IDEA.
    He offers to buy
popcorn for the idealized vision of her, having substituted her for the darkness of reality. Her
si­lence puzzles him, but he rationalizes it and dreams of tak­ing her erotically on the carpet
between the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth rows of seats. An usher brushes across his face with a
flashlight beam.
    The usher is about
to urge Peter Renoir to be calm, to be cool, and to get the hell out of there since he is the
only one left in the movie theater.
    The flashback
begins