The Code...
What the hell is the code all about? 33-19-17...anybody?
Mandy
[deleted]
MovieChat Forums > Smooth Talk (1985) Discussion > The Code...
add them up, and you get 69.
shareIt's a line from the Bible. Section 33, Chapter 19, Verse 17. Look it up I can't really remember the quote off hand, but the lasst part of it says: "Where are you going? And whence did you come?" But that's not all of it.
Silly goose...crack is for kids!
[deleted]
Yeah from Judges and Genesis...the rest of it, however, is sort of open for interpretation. One interpretation says that it's about a man from the tribe of Levi searching for his concubine, then from Genesis it's supposed to be the Angels escaping from Sodom. There's an article or essay called "Cracking The Secret Code in Oates's "Where are you going, Where have you been?". It kinda debunks the whole code nonsense but it's worth a read.
shareWe watched this Movie in my Class today and my Teacher said that those Numbers are the Ages of girls that he slept with. They Keep going down and Connie is next at 15.
shareActually, it is a Bible reference. If you count the books of the new testament backwards to 33, you'll be in Judges. Then you go to chapter 19 verse 17 and the whole story is about a traveler who comes to a strange town. A kind man offers to let him stay in his home, and askes him "Where are you going, from whence have you come?" And then procedes to warn the man not to go out into the square because the people of the village want to have their way with him. The people of the town find out that he's there and they all go to the man's door and demand to have the traveler. The man offers them his concubine, instead, and his daughter, but the townspeople take the concubine, rape her, and then leave her at the mans door.
You can read the story here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2019:16-30;&version=31;
We watched this Movie in my Class today and my Teacher said that those Numbers are the Ages of girls that he slept with. They Keep going down and Connie is next at 15.
Did you watch this at CSUN? Linda Overman showed parts of this movie in class in California. Great teacher.
"We have guided missiles and misguided men." share
I was thinking that too, except Arnold would seem to have slept with more than three women. Then I came here and see all this bible stuff, so I don't think it's his scorecard.
shareAdd them up and you get 69. Highway 69 was where Robert Johnson, blues legend, was said to have sold his soul to the devil. Bob Dylan later uses Highway 69 as an album title. Finally, Oates dedicates "where are you going, where have you been?" to Bob Dylan, who the book is said to be about.
shareActually, it was Highway 61 in the Robert Johnson legend and Bob Dylan album and song titles.
shareThe short story, not book, is dedicated to Bob Dylan but it's actually about a murderer who operated in Tuscon Arizona in 1965. Oates originally read the story about the murderer in Life Magazine. He was a man in his thirties who posed as a high school student and murdered 3 young women. He was called the Pied Piper of Tuscon.
Oates, Joyce Carol. "Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film." The Story and Its
Writer. Seventh Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007.
it has to do with the short story titled "where are you going, where have you been?" that this film is based on. If you count backwards (i believe it is) books in the bible you end up at Judges and if you go to chapter 19 verse 17 it reads:
"When he looked and saw the traveler in the city square, the old man asked, "Where are you going? Where did you come from?"
This is CLEARLY where Joyce Carol Oates got the title for her short story.
I agree with the other posters that mentioned the significance of the Bible verse as well as that the numbers add to 69. However, we just studied this story in American Lit and there are two things we discovered that are quite interesting.
First, if you use the ideas of Numerology and add the numbers as such 3+3+1+9+1+7 it equals 24, which you then add together as 2+4 which equals 6. There are three numbers of the code which could be a representation of 666.
Second, there was an interview that some of my classmates had found in which Oates herself said the numbers had no significance, they were just numerals she threw into the story. The connections to all of the said significances of the numbers is completely coincidental.
For whatever its worth
33 + 19 +17=69
If you average numbers 33 + 19 +17=69/3=23
3/2= .666!
My student figured this out.
Dictated, but not read.
Wow. Lots of people playing dumb number games. "If you count backwards the books of the Bible that gives you the Book of Judges" is the most ridiculous. Yet one of you wrote what I assumed was the correct explanation: that these were the ages of the girls Arnold Friend had murdered. The short story was based on a serial killer who had murdered three women. Unfortunately, this reading is sort of rendered nonsense by the fact Joyce Chopra couldn't bear to have Connie murdered at the end which is why we get a more upbeat ending with Connie reuniting with her family. The decision not to kill off Connie (the ending of Oates' original) was made as production went along, and so the cryptic numbers stand out as a weird puzzle that has a lot of people reaching for absurd explanations based on adding up numbers backwards and forwards and looking to the Bible to give it meaning.
share