setting
The Magic of the Setting: St. John’s, OregonThe setting for “The Fix" is central to both its theme and its magical realism. St. Johns is a small borough on the outer edge of Portland, Oregon. With its 60’s throwback architecture, it is a place in need of fixing – behind the times, an island lost in a fast-paced 21st Century media-saturated sea.
But the town’s centerpiece is the magnificent St. John’s suspension bridge. With cathedral-like arches and a Gothic aura, the bridge perfectly symbolizes the juxtaposition between reality and magic, the physical and the spiritual, life and death. And beyond the symbolic, the bridge actually connects these opposites physically. It spans both an industrial wasteland and the Willamette River, connecting the town to a dark and mysterious forest on the ‘other side’ of the river.
It is from this ‘other side’ that Sherman enters the town and begins a journey that will change its inhabitants. It is in crossing this bridge back to the forest that Douglas attempts to help Sherman escape the mob clamoring for Sherman’s miracles. And it is on this bridge that Sherman delivers his final message – standing on the edge of the void at the bridge’s apex halfway between magic and reality, he leaves us perhaps a bit unsure whether to believe in a magical or realistic interpretation of the story we just experienced.