Nudity and Blood in The Dead Girl

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When the nudity occurred in the first story, The Stranger, I thought at first that it was simply gratuitous, and not intrinsic to anything having to do with the story proper. But when the film was over, and I’d thought about it some, I realized that nudity is used as a powerful symbol in this film; it represents the passage of a soul; either into, out of, or on to another part of, Life.

Consider: we come into the world naked. It’s one thing that every human being shares with every other. And while we may not always literally leave it naked, at the end, all we have left to us is our body, and when that goes, we’ve moved on.

The film opens with Krista’s passage out of life, naked on the desert floor. Nudity will serve to link all the other woman who are propelled forward into a new life as a result of Krista’s death. It’s as if Krista, by dying, has sent out ripples that can irreversibly change the lives of those who get caught up in them.

Arden’s break with her mother isn’t an event, it’s a process that begins with the discovery of the body. But if there is a “crossing over”, so to speak, it’s when she and Rudy have sex – I won’t say “make love”, because love isn’t what it’s about. It’s about liberation.

So why does Arden have Rudy bind her hands? On the one level, she’s offering herself to a new master, since the old one has completely fallen from grace. But Rudy isn’t interested in owning her, so instead, it becomes a sort of magical ritual of her passage to liberation.

First, Arden symbolically acts out her life as it was: abject, helpless, in bondage. But Rudy, in fact, is rather disgusted with her passivity, despite his overly aggressive pursuit of her. He forces her to participate in her own liberation, to be an active part of what’s going on between them.

And so, Arden completes the passage by lying on her back fully naked, exposed to the world, and her nudity marks that moment. Later, when she hangs up the phone after telling the police to check on her mother, she literally gasps at the enormity of what she has done. But the true moment of passage took place the night before.

Sex and nudity mark the moment of passage for Leah also, when she goes to Derek’s party to celebrate the end of all the uncertainty, the beginning of the life she imagines when her therapist asks her the “Miracle Question” (What would it look like...?), and winds up in bed with him. There too, she is exposing herself naked to the world (and she just so happens to be on top so that she can), a child reborn into a new life. She’s flying so high that Derek has to reach up and bring her back down to earth, remind her that she’s there with another person. That she isn’t alone.

Even though her hopes seemingly get dashed when it’s revealed that the Jane Doe is not Leah’s sister, and she retreats once again into the darkness of isolation and depression, it turns out that yes; she really has passed over into her new life, and though it gets repressed for a few days it then erupts, first quietly, when she tells her parents she wants a memorial service for her sister, and then violently, when she tears down the symbols of the old life – the articles and charts and letters – and burns them, then calls Derek and reaches out for help. Like Arden’s gasp at what she’s done, the burning and asking for help is only the understanding of what has already taken place in Leah’s life - the old has passed away, and the new is already here.

In Ruth’s story, nudity once again marks the line that divides All That Went Before from All That Follows. At first she is going to turn her husband in for the murders of the girls. Something stops her at the last moment, and she returns home. Some impulse leads her in another direction, and instead of turning him in, she puts all the clothes and other “souvenirs” into a huge barrel and burns them. Then she takes off all of her clothes and burns them, also.

This nudity is once again the marker of someone’s passage out of an old life and into something new. Ruth is the most troublesome character in the film, partly because her impotent bitterness makes her so pathetic, and then because she chooses to allow a serial killer to remain free.

So what is she thinking? Perhaps, selfishly, that if she had gone and turned him in, she still would have been tied to him for the rest of her life in one way or another. The police, the publicity, the trial, it would go on and on and on. And perhaps she rationalizes that if she not only leaves him, but leaves him with a warning that she knows everything, she will be able to free herself and at the same time keep him from killing again out of fear for being exposed by her. (A knowledge of serial killer psychology would prove this unlikely, but Ruth might not know that.)

At any rate, what is pretty clear is that she is choosing to free herself rather than stay tied to him any longer. She has been covering for him in one way or another for their entire lives together. With this, she is saying, in effect, This is the last time I will ever cover for you. With this act I wash my hands of you forever. When she strips off her clothes and burns them, too, she is destroying the last vestiges, the last link, to her old life, and when she walks, naked, away from the fire and into the night, she is marking the passage into her new life.

At first I thought that the nudity motif was taking a hiatus in the story of the mother, because I couldn’t remember any scene where Melora had her clothes off, but then I realized it wasn’t her, but the little girl whose nudity symbolizes Melora’s passage into a new life.

The scene is where Melora is bathing her, and Ashley is sitting naked in the tub. Melora is singing to Ashley, a song that we might presume she used to sing to Krista when she was the same age. It’s interesting to note that the song – "You Are My Sunshine” – has a line that goes: You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you, please don’t take my sunshine away.

Krista never knew how much her mother loved her, because she believed in her mother’s complicity in her ongoing rape by her stepfather. But, through her death, Krista (whose last wish in life was to give her daughter a birthday gift) gives not only Ashley a gift – that of a life that Krista could never give her – but also gives her mother a gift – an almost indescribable gift, because it’s one that so many wayward parents would give their souls for – a second chance. Ashley is the image of Krista, and in her Melora is given the opportunity to raise this child of her own blood without the naive ignorance that caused things to go so wrong with Krista.

That moment in the bathtub – marked, as all the others, by nakedness – is Melora’s moment of passage out of her old life, and into her new one. Just as she is at once singing a farewell to her daughter, Krista, and a welcome to her new daughter, Ashley. Not to mention that the bath is a baptism. Ashley too, is entering a new life. Ashes to ashes. A new child comes naked into this world.

(compare that, btw, with Arden's bathing her mother in the first story. That's not a baptism; that's the ritual washing of the dead.)

Another motif I noticed (incidentally) that seems to be a marker for that passage of the soul from here to there, is blood. I can’t recall instances in every story, but Arden wounds herself with broken glass, (mimicking the wound on the palm of the dead girl) when her reserve and intimidation finally break down and she attacks her mother, and she is bloody when she goes out with Rudy.

Ruth gets blood on her forehead when wrestling with the freshly bloodied clothes of Krista that her husband had brought home and stashed in the storage unit.

Krista herself is bloodied before her encounter with her killer; when she vandalizes the guy’s pickup truck her punches her in the mouth and bloodies her lip. (Right before she royally kicks his ass)

This re-occurrence of blood is a reflection of Krista/Christ’s blood sacrifice. The wounds on Krista’s hands are stigmata, and her death is a sacrifice, by which other souls are set free. That’s Krista’s legacy to the world, because the ripples that began with her death will continue on through those that her death – her blood sacrifice – has changed in some way.

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