Stephen's Girls: Carrie White and Wendy Torrance

This painting by Eric White really spoke to me in a deep, archetypal way, based off the 1977 Robert Altman film "3 Women":

It features two actresses who play starring roles in movies based off of Stephen King novels: Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall. I came across this painting at a point in my life where I was just "reactivating" my novel that "wrote itself" -- a book about two wildly different female protagonists who can never meet each other, or the world will end. The "hero" of the novel is assigned the task of keeping the paths of these two women from diverging -- but he himself is "unstuck" in both time and "self," finding himself suddenly assuming the lives and "roles" of other people.

Spacek and Duvall in "3 Women" play similarly opposite characters as the ones in my book -- both named Mildred -- who meet and start a bizarre chain of events ending in them literally "shifting" personalities. We have the idea here that the Self is not static, but a dynamic, perhaps even unstable and permeable entity.

Spacek of course plays Carrie White in "Carrie" (1976) and Duvall is Wendy Torrance in "The Shining" (1980) -- two meek and passive women unaware of the great personal power within them:

Both Carrie and Wendy suffer their own personal apocalypses in their respective movies, one ending in fire:

...and one in  ice:

The characters of Carrie and Wendy also bring to mind that of fairy-tale heroines.

Carrie White resonates Snow White who resonates the fairy-tale of "Snow White and Rose Red", also about two girls with polar-opposite personalities:

"Rose Red" will also be the name of a 2002 Stephen King miniseries featuring an Oregon mansion very much like the Overlook from "The Shining":

"Wendy" brings to mind the heroine from "Peter Pan" -- Wendy Torrance having the unenviable task of dealing with her husband that "won't grow up" (in other words, stop his dreams of writing and get a real job), Jack. Fans of the animated movie "Rise of the Guardians" have pointed out the similarities between Disney's Peter Pan and "ROTG's" Jack Frost:

Of course, Jack Torrance at the end of "Shining" literally becomes a sort of "Jack Frost":

Robin Williams plays another Peter Pan-like boy-man who can't grow up in the 1996 movie "Jack":

Williams co-starred opposite Duvall in the 1980 Altman movie "Popeye":

During the production of the film, Duvall showed Williams her collection of antique fairy-tale books; she felt he would be perfect to play "The Frog Prince," and soon after started a cable TV series for children called "Faerie Tale Theatre":

Meanwhile, Sissy Spacek will go on to play the crazy mother of Carrie-like fright-child Samara in "The Ring 2":

Samara plays an "unstuck" soul who has gone beyond concepts of space, time, and even Self -- she has also transcended the movie/video to reach out at the viewer in a personal manner reflecting that of the synchromysticist and various syncs from pop-culture:

The "soul" of the Carrie/Wendy Spacek/Duvall archetypes will  flash-forwards and -backwards to 1977, to be "synthesized" in Altman's "3 Women" -- with the help of the pregnant "third woman," Willie, portrayed by Janice Rule:

Willie is a silent artist of primal, savage murals that look like the Dreamtime of the Aborigines -- a medium of the subconscious by which the two Mildreds can synthesize themselves and loosen their definitions of Self:

In a neat Altman/Stanley Kubrick sync, note the similarities between Willie's mural and this scene from "2001" (apes congregating around the stargate symbol):

In the end, the two Mildreds and the one Willie of "3 Women" syncretize into a functional Whole -- in effect, forming the Triple Goddess (which I elaborate on here). In order for this to happen, the Mildreds have to pass through the stargate/reality point and go where Self is permeable and subjective:

Altman himself based "3 Women" on a dream he had, one that he admitted he didn't fully understand.