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Doctor Sleep: Snakebite Andi Analysis · Divine Dialogue

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Divine Dialogue Podcast, where we dig deeper into the trove of wisdom and guidance stories have to offer.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever watched a movie and felt moved?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Felt called to make a change or reflect more deeply on your own life?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: If so, this podcast has a lot to offer you.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: So today, divine listeners, I am doing this episode from my rocking chair as experiencing some technical difficulties with my computer and wanted to make sure I get an episode out here on Friday for the start of the Doctor Sleep series.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you are new here, welcome.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Please check out the other series I have on the show.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: My first series was on the Balto movie, followed by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then I did a full series on the Lion King as well as a couple specials as well that are marked in the uh show archives there.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you are new here, please uh like and subscribe and share.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I will go ahead and get into this first episode here of the Doctor Sleep series, which will lead us into the Halloween holiday later this month.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and actually do something a little bit different today with Dr.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sleep to start off.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Normally, if you're new to this uh podcast, I do scenes or like sequencing of scenes in my show, but today what I'm going to do is actually a bit of a character analysis focus on the character Snake Bite Andy from the Dr.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sleep movie.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to give her an entire episode to kind of start off the movie analysis because I really find her character very interesting in the movie because I think I was actually a little bit disappointed when I uh watched this movie because interestingly enough, you know, this movie came out many years ago, and when I first saw it, it didn't register to me as like a super deep movie.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I thought it was entertaining because I do like Stephen King's, you know, stories, and obviously I was a fan of The Shining, so I was excited to see the sequel.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Snake Bite Andy's character in particular, I think is very interesting because we essentially meet her a little bit into the movie.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the main characters are essentially two of the main villains, Rose the Hat and Crow Daddy, are at a movie theater.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Crow Daddy brought Rose the Hat to the movie theater to check out this, you know, young girl who has these powers.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And at first, Rose the Hat is not impressed.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Yeah, you know, I've seen younger women with older men, not very impressive, don't really think there's much to see here.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, No, no, no, you know, just watch, like it gets interesting, I promise.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then she snakebite Andy shows her powers because she's sitting with this older man and she tells him to sleep.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he falls asleep, and then she takes his wallet, puts a spell on him, basically, you know, curses him.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of see that she is, you know, kind of dark, but she's using it to go after predators, and so it kind of makes her a sympathetic character to the audience.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And after she takes his wallet, Rose the Hat and Crow Daddy follow her outside the theater, and she tries to use the same mind control on Rose the Hat.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: She basically tells her to let her go, or you want to let me go.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Rose the Hat says, Oh no, sweetie.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we find out Rose the Hat is, you know, stronger than Snake Bite Andy in terms of her powers.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: But she wants her for the essentially clan they have called the true knot because they want to use her powers.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: She calls her a pusher because she can influence people to do what she wants, and so they want her because it's easy to essentially kidnap and then steal the shine of mostly kids that they go after because they have very pure magic that they like to harvest and feed on.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they recruit her into the true knot.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, at first we're not really sure because she's a brand new, you know, inducted member into the clan, how she's going to react to this.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was first watching it, I really was hoping that there would be like a redemption act for her because I feel like she has like very noble reasons for using her power.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we gather from the rest of the story that she probably suffered pretty bad abuse at the hands of men, which is why she's so, you know, intolerant of them in general.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's why she uses her powers on them.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: She baits them into situations that, you know, if they were decent men, they wouldn't go into.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we know that she's been preying on predators, which makes her likable.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then we see her, you know, use her powers for pretty nefarious purposes.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most disturbing scenes in the whole movie, she helps to basically lure a little boy into their van where they take him and you know, tie him up and then take his shine and kill him in the process.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And prior to that, you know, they have a little induction ceremony, and Rose the Hat like promises her that she can stay young as long as she eats well, and you know, she goes through that ceremony and she's like really shaken up by it, and you know, it's very interesting because she asks her, or she says after the ceremony, she asked Rose the Hat, like, you know, you said it didn't hurt, and then Rose the Hat's like, Well, it doesn't now, does it?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And she asks if she's still human, and Rose the Hat says, Do you care?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I find it interesting, and I'm trying to piece together what this means, and I might go into this in later episodes when I'm going through the movie, but so Rose the Hat says that to Snake Bite Andy, and then Dick says the same thing to Danny when Danny asks about what happens to those ghosts that he locked away in boxes in his mind.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Do you care?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know exactly why.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that's purposeful why the writers had those two characters say the same things, even though Dick is like, you know, not part of an evil clan.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's like a spirit guide for Danny, essentially.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's I find it interesting that they say the same things to the people asking the questions.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But so Snakebite Andy is brought into the group, and then you know, we see her participate in the slaughtering of that kid, and so she's you know, pretty sucked into essentially whatever makes them not quite human, but still in form, but like basically energy vampires, she's succumbed to that, and so it's kind of hard to see any kind of redemption for her.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then where we see you know her really have a pretty gruesome effect on the story here is she basically like Billy, who is Danny's friend, and Danny uh kill off a like a pretty large number of the true knot, and Snakebite Andy gets shot, but she doesn't die, at least not right away, and she is about to kill Danny, and she says, you know, and I'm gonna be using expl expletives in the in this series here because it's an R-rated movie, but she says, fucking men, and she, you know, is about to shoot him, and then Billy shoots her twice, and she's you know laying on the ground dying but not quite dead yet.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And since she has the power of persuasion, she tells him to you know kill yourself, and he does, and that's when we see Danny almost go back into unconsciousness because he had spent the whole movie, you know, trying to be sober, and he was successful at it because he had used, you know, alcohol to numb his shine, essentially.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we see him struggle with that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the end of Snakebite Andy.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I I always thought it would have been really interesting if she would have, you know, maybe helped Danny and Abra defeat Rose the Hat at the end, like if that would have changed the outcome of essentially Danny having to sacrifice himself for Abra if she would have been enough of a counterweight to that to change the ending.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think her, like I said, her intentions of being basically a predator who preys on predators is a very interesting one because she's not a character that you can say, oh, like she's you know, pure pure evil.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like Rose the Hat is pure evil.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's drop-dead gorgeous, but she's also pure evil.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: She really doesn't have any redeeming qualities, but Snakebite Andy definitely has like the capacity for her powers to be wielded in something that could be divine.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that she gets so blinded by her hatred of men.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, you know, I'm not sure if that's why they picked a young boy to prey on.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe she hated men so much that she even saw boys as just future men, and so it didn't bother her to go after Billy, the baseball boy, when she does.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to spend an episode covering her character just because I just found her very fascinating, and I could honestly relate to her frustration.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like, especially with everything going on in the world right now, that's relevant to, you know, I feel like women are really waking up to just how much of like prey they've been to been to men, you know, and I can't help but even think about like the Cornell 7 stuff that's going on right now, and how Snake Bite Andy would have handled that situation.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I I can understand her, I I think that her anger is very righteous.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that she's also a cautionary tale for how your very much well-placed and correct anger can still be wielded against you because you know, she does end up cursing a man who is a good man.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like Billy is a good man, Danny's a good man, but she is so blinded by her hatred of just men, period, which I'm sure she had, you know, given we don't know her backstory, but given her, you know, visceral reaction to men, it's pretty much implied that like, you know, she probably suffered a lot of trauma or a lot of, you know, despair and and tragedy at the hands of men, that's probably what sparked her disdain.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I can relate to that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going through the traditional channels of this episode, like how I usually do a scene recap and personal mirror divine dialogue questions, but I do have a personal mirror because I can relate to her character in the sense that if I had that power, given my history with, you know, men and I'm sure a lot of women's history with men, like it would be tempting.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's kind of interesting to me because you see, like I see so many of these, you know, things that are kind of cut down into basic, you know, one or two sentences to explain like a pretty complex issue, but they they touch on some really key points.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's things that say, you know, that women have to hold their keys between their fingers or cover their drinks, or, you know, think twice about walking at night certain places or walking alone certain places.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And like when men talk about what women do to them, it's usually just harm to their ego.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's oh, they rejected me, or or maybe you know, they got some money out of me, like they'll complain about them being gold diggers or whatever.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I just find it interesting because women, I feel like the stakes are so high for them.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for men, it might feel high because I personally think that their egos are very fragile, so it feels very high, but it's really not.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you if men could spend a month or two as a woman, I mean, first of all, from what I've seen of the the period cramp simulators, y'all can't handle that, but I feel like it would be such a wake-up call to walk in the shoes of a woman to realize that like it's just your ego that is hurt.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it also put like I think that the the tale of Snakebite Andy is a really good warning in the sense that the you know the things that terrible men do also put good men at risk because if you're traumatized enough and you also see a really substantial substantial population, like I mean, again, talking about the Cornell 7, I think there were 50 men in the group chat as well that were privy to the information and to the what was going on, like the rape that was going on, they didn't do anything either.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like you had 57 men, not one of them did anything.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: You had seven uh violators, seven criminals, and s and fifty uh enablers of that.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like people are saying, well, not all men.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, but a lot of men though, and you know, not all men, but it seems to me like, I mean, if you're gonna take that sample size anyway, most men didn't do anything to stop it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like I can see that spawning a great deal of hatred and a great deal of animosity and a great deal of you know vengeance.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's really fertile soil for that kind of you know seed to take root in a character like Snake Bite Andy, and then we see what the true knot does.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that they're called the true knot because I feel like they take pain that is very straightforward, very understandable, and they knot it, like because they are a knotted, they're a twisted cult, right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: But Snakebite Andy's pain, we again we don't know everything, and I I'm not sure what the book says.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't read the book, I'm just going based on the movie.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know her backstory, but we can gather from how she reacts to things that she was probably, you know, traumatized, violated, harmed greatly by probably multiple men, and you know, a lot of women can relate to that, and most women don't have the reaction that Snake Bite Andy does, but it's just a cautionary tale for, like I said, also the good men, because Billy, you know, is a good man for all we know in the movie.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like he helps Dandy recover and heal and and evolve and get better, but he ends up being, you know, the one who loses his life, even though he's not one of those terrible men that Snake Bite Andy became who she was in response to.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I just wanted to cover that because I thought it was also very timely for what we're seeing, you know, happening around us in society.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the very understandable rage and anger and you know, frustration, frustration's not even a good enough word, but like deep pain and disdain that women are having in response to men.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot, you know, I understand why it's there.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that men who are immediately offended by it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think you guys have some soul searching to do and some reflecting to do.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think it shows up just like in any other group, it can show up.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I feel like I've been talking to my therapist about this actually, because I see a black woman is who gives me therapy.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I usually see her once or twice a week.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It depends sometimes every day if it's that bad for me.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Luckily, it's not that bad very often, but I do talk to her pretty frequently.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I know it's her job to be a therapist, but outside of therapy, like I've told her, I was like, because I kind of have a snake bite Andy, you know, reaction to men in general, based on my own experiences.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I I told her this because it's it's very striking to me, and I don't remember where I heard it from, but it's always stuck with me that like I'm a misandrist, I would say.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I really don't like men generally.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I prefer to be friends with women to be around women.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm gay, so women to me are appealing across the board more than men, but you know, I like them to keep their space for me in general, like and the things that I like enjoy doing with men are very surface.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I'm I'm interested in a lot of typically things that men are interested in.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like I like sports, I like video games, you know, I have a lot of male-based interests.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can go watch a game with a guy or play video games with a guy, and like it can be friend, you know, friendly and fun, whatever, but it doesn't, there's no depth to it, it's very like surface, and that's just kind of how I am.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I enjoy the company of women, whether it's friends or if there's romantic potential, like whatever, I just prefer women anyway.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I was telling my therapists, like I would understand, you know, outside of therapy, uh, given the history of like how racism has played out, how the how the system has treated people of different races in comparison to white people, like if she was distrusting, because I mean the history of white women violence against black women is heartbreaking and terrible.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would understand if she was hesitant, I wouldn't be like, oh my god, like I can't believe you're painting me like with such a broad brush, like not all not all white people, you know, like not all men.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I think that what Snakebite Andy can teach us is that if you are if you are someone who has experienced, let's say, more than the average amount of trauma, because I really feel like there's not a woman in the world, I really do think, or pretty much, that hasn't experienced some kind of you know, trauma in relation to a man.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: It might not be an outright assault or complete violation, but it could be, you know, something as what they might say is benign, but like a cat call or like a man not taking a hint, not leaving you alone, or infringing on your space when they're not welcome, like whatever it is where she feels like her wishes of you know, distance and space is not being respected.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure all women have experienced it.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess like what I would take from Snake by Andy is I feel like being able to put yourself in the position of the person who has experienced that or is likely to have experienced it, whether it's on racial grounds or gender grounds or whatever, you know, minority group you can put in there, I think would go a long way to preventing because sometimes the blowback comes out on those who are really, you know, great people, like in in the case of Billy is the one who essentially uh reaps all of the vengeance that's in Snake Bite Andy's heart, even as she's dying on the ground.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like she manages to give out one good curse to him, and that could have all been prevented if she, you know, if there would have been probably been in her life that would have said to her, I see you, I understand, and like really meant it though, like really put themselves in her position, had compassion, had empathy, put themselves in her shoes and said, I understand your pain.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: You have every right to feel the pain that you feel, and I'm so sorry for everything that happened that you know made you feel this way.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like so many times we gaslight or we minimize, we dismiss, we're like, you know, we we say, like, not all men, not all men.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like a defensiveness, but it's like you know, I was reading something, and I don't know like if like this statistic is 100% accurate, but it was something like one in three women have experienced violence at the hands of men, and then we say not all men, but it's like look at all these women who are victims of it.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So who's doing it to them?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not other women doing it to them.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like I just feel like we have a lot of work to do in acknowledging the pain and acknowledging the trauma and not going into defensiveness because I feel like it's such a knee-jerk reaction.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if we could learn to not personalize it and just meet people in their pain, I think that has a really special way of like dissolving and dissipating it versus it becoming more and more entrenched, stronger, more likely to lash out in a chaotic way and harm potentially, you know, people who are really good.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because those that kind of energy, when it's not controlled and not dealt with, can come out on people that you know we wish it wouldn't come out on.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a great deal of benefit, protection, advancement, and just a return more to divine balance that can come from meeting someone in their pain versus being quick to take offense to whatever they're expressing.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I wanted to spend this first episode just going over Snake Bite Andy's character and still wishing that they would have had some kind of redemption arc for her.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it would have made the story more interesting.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: But there will be three more episodes of Doctor Sleep.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I will be going from here chronologically into the next scenes that I have.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Which is the first one is gonna be when Abra essentially flips Rose the Hat's attempt to go into her mind because Rose the Hat keeps trying to basically get in contact with Abra's shine, and Abra learns how to push her back.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next episode after that is gonna be when basically Danny has to remain conscious when he's tempted to slip back into unconsciousness through alcohol, and then I'll do a whole episode essentially on the ending from when they go back to the hotel and how that all plays out.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's gonna be kind of the blueprint for the Doctor's Sleep series, and then towards the end of that series, so right before Halloween, I will be announcing the special I'm gonna have.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a two-parter on one particular movie for Halloween to be released on the 30th and 31st.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but once again, if you are new here, thank you so much for listening.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And please uh like, share, subscribe.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I do have my show email in the show notes.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have any suggestions for scenes or you want to chat about any kind of episode or what you thought, please don't uh feel shy about reaching out.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love having conversations about movies.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always learning something new every time I watch them.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So please uh don't hesitate to reach out.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I will see you on the next one.