Character Analysis: Foil Me Once, Shame On You

Character Analysis
Jeffery Goines is nuttier than a fruitcake. He has bats in the belfry. He has more than
one screw loose. In other words—the guy is insane.
And…that's basically the entirety of his character.
Just listen to the way this guy introduces James Cole, his mental hospital roomie, to the
television:
GOINES: There's the television. It's all right there. All right there. Look, listen, kneel,
prey! The commercials! We're not productive anymore. Don't make things anymore. It's
all automated. What are we for then? We're consumers, Jim. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of
stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, what are you then? I ask
you! What? You're mentally ill. Fact, Jim, Fact!
What are we supposed to do with that? The guy sounds like a freshman spit-balling a
philosophy paper after downing four and a half Redbulls.
If you can manage to straighten out his winding manner of speech, you'll find that
Goines serves two real purposes: he provides a foil for our protagonist, Cole, and he
cooks up a mean red herring.
Foil Me Once, Shame on You

Like Cole, Goines has some real oddball ideas. He believes, for example, that the
psychiatrists in the mental hospital copied his brain into a computer.
You see, the reason for this is…you know what? We'll just let him explain it:
GOINES: When I was institutionalized, my brain was studied inexhaustibly in the guise
of mental health. I was interrogated, I was x-rayed, I was examined thoroughly. Then
they took everything about me and put it into a computer where they created a model of
my mind. Yes! Using that model, they managed to generate every thought I could
possibly have in the next, say, ten years, which they then filtered through a probability
matrix of some kind to determine everything I was gonna do in that period.
In truth, that's probably as crazy as saying you are from the future to save humanity
from a deadly virus, but it's all in the delivery.
Unlike Cole, Goines' delusions have led him to blame the system, and this is where the
idea of a "foil" comes in. A foil is a character who provides contrast to another. As such,
the nature of Goines' insanity contrasts with Cole's.
Cole wants to save the world and prevent humans from living undergrounds. Goines, on
the other hand, doesn't really like the way the world has ended up. His list of complaints
is endless but includes television, capitalism, animal rights, and that one guy who keeps
sitting in his chair. Cole's motivation is selfless, while Goines just wants to—and we
quote—"f**k the bozos."
Also in contrast to Cole's selfless motives, Goines seems to want to strike out against
his father, a man he refers to as God at one point. It's unclear what type of relationship
the two have, but Goines' grand plan is to set loose animals from the zoo and cage his
father in the gorilla enclosure.
Clearly, Goines wants to knock his father down a notch or two.
Smoked with Insanity to Seal the Flavor

A red herring isn't a fish. (Okay, it is a fish, and one that is crazy tasty when smoked in
Jamaican-style cuisine.) In this context, though, a red herring is something meant to
distract you from the actual problem. And Goines serves as a red herring in 12
Monkeys.
While at the asylum, Cole and he watch a program about scientists inhumanely
experimenting on animals. Cole offhandedly mentions that maybe the human race
should be wiped out. Goines hears this, saying,
GOINES: First, we have to focus on more immediate goals. I didn't say a word about
you-know-what.
We also learn that his father is a famous virologist, and the one whose lab produced the
virus that eradicated humanity. Cole even has a dream featuring Goines running
through the airport as someone chases him. Plus, Goines is super crazy—he must have
been the one who did it.
Except he isn't. As we mentioned, his grand plan is to release some animals from the
zoo and cage his father in the gorilla enclosure. The culprit is really Dr. Peters, Dr.
Goines' lab assistant and a total apocalypse fanboy.
The bait and switch with Goines plays into the film's obsession with perception. Like the
Scientists and Cole, the audience goes along with the idea that Goines is responsible
because we perceive that he is. But this is just the film toying with our concept of reality
within the context of the film. Makes you wonder what other aspects of the film only
seem true because we don't know to look at them in a different way.
Maybe, just maybe, Goines is the truly sane one. But probably not.
Right, right, right. Okay, okay. It’s all in good fun, all in good fun. Here’s some
games here, and there’s, Get out! Get out! He was in my chair. Games, Games.
Here’s some games. Games that want to get out, ha. See? More games. Games,
they vegetize you. See? Bah! If you play the games you’re voluntarily taking a
tranquilizer. I guess they gave you some chemical restraints, huh? Drugs!
What’d they give you? Thorazine? Haldol? How much, how much?? Learn your
drugs, know your dosages, it’s elementary. … Telephone call? That’s
communication with the outside world. Doctors discretion. Uh-uh. Nah. Hey, if
all these nuts could make just make phone calls, it would spread insanity oozing
through telephone cables. Oozing to the ears of all these poor, sane people.
Infecting them. Wackos everywhere, a plague of madness. In fact, very few
Jim, Jim, very few of us here are actually mentally ill. I’m not saying you’re not
mentally ill, for all I know you’re crazy as a loon. But that’s not why you’re here.
That’s not why you’re here, that’s not why you’re here!! You’re here because of
the system. There’s the television. It’s all right there. All right there. Look,
listen, kneel, pray. Commercials. We’re not productive anymore. We don’t make
things anymore. It’s all automated. What are we for then? We’re consumers.
Yeah. Okay, okay, buy a lot of stuff, you’re a good citizen. But if you don’t buy a
lot of stuff, if you don’t, what are you then I ask you? What? Mentally ill! Fact,
Jim, fact. If you don’t buy things: toilet paper, new cars, computerized
blenders, electric operated sexual devices, stereo systems with brain implanted
headphones, screwdrivers with miniature built in radar devices, voice activated
computers! … Right. That’s right. You’re a very attractive woman. Ha! So, uh,
you want to watch a television show, you go to the charge nurse, you tell her
the day, the time, the show you want to see. But you have to tell her before the
show comes on. There was this guy, and he was always requesting shows that
had already played. Yes! No! You have to tell her before. He couldn’t quite grasp
the idea that the charge nurse couldn’t make it be yesterday, you can’t turn
back time, thank you Einstein. Now he, he was nuts! He was a fruit cake Jim!

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Character Analysis

Foil Me Once, Shame on You

Smoked with Insanity to Seal the Flavor

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