"The whole conceit of the heroine drifting in water refers to far more than just the explicit, immediate context of The Ninth Wave. In fact, the implicit references are so deliberate that they may arguably be more important than the explicit subject-matter...
"The allusion to Ophelia's insane self-immersion is plain to see in the photo for The Ninth Wave: the flowers. These were explained away almost flippantly by John Carder Bush [JCB] as being intended to show the chaos and damage on board the ship during its sinking (or whatever ultimately forced the heroine into the ocean). The idea was supposed to be that commercially cultivated flowers, perhaps in the hands of the heroine at the time of the disaster, perhaps thrown by happenstance into the water from a dining table flower arrangement during the commotion and sinking, have happened to end up floating in the very same waves in which the heroine finds herself engulfed. This explanation has always struck IED as suspiciously superficial -- not to mention implausible...
"The image of a beautiful young Englishwoman floating on her back in a cold, deathly state, dressed in a white lace nightie and set adrift amid exotic and colourful flowers has, since the seventeenth-century premiere of Hamlet, been inextricably connected with the fate of Ophelia... This image, in fact, was reproduced precisely by Kate herself in what was virtually her debut on video, the so-called Eftelink films, specifically the last of the six, a setting of "The Kick Inside"...
"During that conversation [at East Wickham Farm in 1985] IED and JCB discussed the connection of the "Lakeside" images (photographs taken by Jay of his sister sitting and stretching by the banks of the river or lake which appears in the Eftelink videos) with Pre-Raphaelite imagery...
"IED has been purposelessly musing on all of this, mulling over also Kate's own comments about the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on her own artistic vocabulary as well as the large painting, called "The Hogsmill Ophelia", which hangs in her studio.* And the more familiar he becomes with the images and the references, the more sense it all makes. What do you think?"
At one end of the studio is a huge painting of a drowned, cracked doll floating face up past a sewer. For some reason this painting, which might be described as macabre-kitsch, seems to say a lot about its owner. Kate returns and sees me examining it.
[KB:] "That's called 'The Hogsmill Ophelia'. A lot of people find it disturbing but I don't. I lived with it for ages. Looked at it every day. That picture cost me all the money I had once. Paintings are a great inspiration. One of my favourites is by Millais, 'The Huguenot'. It's of a man going off to the wars being hugged to the breast of his lover. She's holding him to her by a scarf around his arm. It's very beautiful."
POSTSCRIPT.
from Gaffa, The Ninth Wave, General Thoughts
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 88 Subject: Ophelia
"The whole conceit of the heroine drifting in water refers to far more than just the explicit, immediate context of The Ninth Wave. In fact, the implicit references are so deliberate that they may arguably be more important than the explicit subject-matter...
"The allusion to Ophelia's insane self-immersion is plain to see in the photo for The Ninth Wave: the flowers. These were explained away almost flippantly by John Carder Bush [JCB] as being intended to show the chaos and damage on board the ship during its sinking (or whatever ultimately forced the heroine into the ocean). The idea was supposed to be that commercially cultivated flowers, perhaps in the hands of the heroine at the time of the disaster, perhaps thrown by happenstance into the water from a dining table flower arrangement during the commotion and sinking, have happened to end up floating in the very same waves in which the heroine finds herself engulfed. This explanation has always struck IED as suspiciously superficial -- not to mention implausible...
"The image of a beautiful young Englishwoman floating on her back in a cold, deathly state, dressed in a white lace nightie and set adrift amid exotic and colourful flowers has, since the seventeenth-century premiere of Hamlet, been inextricably connected with the fate of Ophelia... This image, in fact, was reproduced precisely by Kate herself in what was virtually her debut on video, the so-called Eftelink films, specifically the last of the six, a setting of "The Kick Inside"...
"During that conversation [at East Wickham Farm in 1985] IED and JCB discussed the connection of the "Lakeside" images (photographs taken by Jay of his sister sitting and stretching by the banks of the river or lake which appears in the Eftelink videos) with Pre-Raphaelite imagery...
"IED has been purposelessly musing on all of this, mulling over also Kate's own comments about the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on her own artistic vocabulary as well as the large painting, called "The Hogsmill Ophelia", which hangs in her studio.* And the more familiar he becomes with the images and the references, the more sense it all makes. What do you think?"
At one end of the studio is a huge painting of a drowned, cracked doll floating face up past a sewer. For some reason this painting, which might be described as macabre-kitsch, seems to say a lot about its owner. Kate returns and sees me examining it. [KB:] "That's called 'The Hogsmill Ophelia'. A lot of people find it disturbing but I don't. I lived with it for ages. Looked at it every day. That picture cost me all the money I had once. Paintings are a great inspiration. One of my favourites is by Millais, 'The Huguenot'. It's of a man going off to the wars being hugged to the breast of his lover. She's holding him to her by a scarf around his arm. It's very beautiful."
from http://gaffa.org/dreaming/tnw_gen.html