So that does it for another Marathon. Maybe even the last one, depending on how this net neutrality thing ends up going. Either way, I'd like to thank everyone out there for reading, whether you were a new visitor or a regular fan it means a lot to know that I'm not just screaming into the void. Leave a comment, spread the word, do whatever you'd like, and I'll try and get more content out more regularly. See ya space cowboys.
As of this writing, third season of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (commonly titled as The Return) has come and gone, possibly closing the book on one of the strangest and most wonderful experiments in television history. When it appeared on television screens in the early 90s there was nothing really like it, serialized storytelling, surrealist filmmaking techniques, a level of sexuality and violence that seemed more suited to HBO than ABC, and it completely rewrote the book on what could be done in the medium. Sure it only lasted two seasons, and the season without Lynch at the helm is spotty at best, but it’s influence on TV cannot be overstated. Without Twin Peaks there would be no X-Files, no Lost or American Horror Story or Legion or Fargo (although give the Coens some credit), or likely any of these weird shows that we all love so much. All because Twin Peaks, a series predicated on the fact that David Lynch really wanted to make fun of soap operas, opened the door.
David Lynch is certainly no stranger to the blog, in fact I believe he’s overtaken David Cronenberg for most films that I’ve covered. The very first Halloween list on this site, before the Marathon even, featured Eraserhead among its ranks, and since then Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Dune has joined it. Twin Peaks S3 dropped so I knew I was going to cover another of his films and I had already seen his Twin Peaks film Fire Walk With Me, so which one would work? The Elephant Man, Lynch’s studio debut? Inland Empire, his final feature film? A proper writeup of Eraserhead? No, after having my mind blown in the aftermath of Twin Peaks, there was only one film that felt right. A movie that would become the thematic template for David Lynch’s filmography from that day forward. It’s time for a little bit of that Blue Velvet.
After his father suffers a medical emergency while watering his idyllic suburban lawn, young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle Maclachlan moves back to his idyllic suburban hometown of Lumberton to take over his father’s hardware store. It’s a rough situation, going back to a town that all your friends have left behind, which suddenly takes a turn for the bizarre when he discovers a severed human ear while walking in an abandoned field. He delivers the ear to the police of course, but when he tries to learn more about the circumstances of the case, he is barred by police protocol (this is kind of their wheelhouse after all). So he decides to team up with Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), daughter of the detective working on the case and potential love interest, and start up an investigation of their own. If they were a few years younger, you’d think this was some kind of Stand By Me spinoff.
Anyway, the clues seem to lead to a woman named Dorothy Vallens, a lounge singer at a local bar called The Slow Club. Jeffrey, riding high on his little detective kick starts taking greater and greater risks to learn more about Dorothy, until eventually he’s resorted to hiding in her closet. Voyeurism has its disadvantages however, as it is in that closet that Jeffrey discovers the terrible truth: The ear belongs to Dorothy’s husband who, along with their son, has been kidnapped by a criminal known as Frank, a violent, drug-addicted psychopath that has been using Dorothy’s family as blackmail to entrap her into horrific sex slavery. Jeff’s a good guy, he wants to help, but as he get involved with Dorothy he finds himself drawn farther away from idyllic Lumberton into a world he doesn’t recognize. A world of corruption and misery, where reason breaks down and the differences between pain and pleasure become indistinguishable. The world of Blue Velvet, and there doesn’t seem to be a way out.
One of the major themes of Eraserhead was the disconnected, dehumanizing atmosphere that modern post industrial urban society can have on people, and two films later Lynch would revisit that idea and transform that disconnect into a full-blown dichtomy. At first glance Lumberton seems too good to be true, a saccharine-sweet depiction of suburbia straight out of Leave It to Beaver, and yet it is clearly an illusion. A dream that we make up in order to distract us from the real world, which quite often ends up becoming a nightmare. Situations seem unreal, people behave oddly and irrationally, and we as the audience are forced to confront things that we might not want to, much like Jeffrey does as he sinks deeper in Frank’s world. Lynch would double down on this in later works, but Blue Velvet is really the film that defined who David Lynch was as a creator and filmmaker.
As I’ve said the film is about contrasts, the one between the Lumberton that we believe in and the one that really exists, and the most visceral is that difference between Jeffrey’s relationship with Sandy and the one with Dorothy. With Sandy, Jeffrey is the cooler older man. Their relationship plays out about as sweetly and naively as an old Archie comic, kisses, dates, the whole nine yards. With Dorothy, Jeffrey is the inexperienced one, both in sexuality and worldview. While their relationship is more intimate, it isn’t one of love. Dorothy has been so abused that it is ingrained in her psyche and Jeffrey, while he wants to help her, is completely out of his depth on how, and ends up becoming drawn into the conflict with Frank. When the two worlds eventually collide, as they do in Lynch films, there is chaos. The two worlds, Frank and Jeffrey, Sandy and Dorothy, cannot coexist. They all just fall apart.
Much like Crash, Blue Velvet is a very sexually-charged film, but unlike Cronenberg Lynch doesn’t really go for eroticism. There is sex in the film, yes, there is nudity, but it always contrasted by this underlying foundation of violence and misery. When Jeffrey and Dorothy are in bed together and she begs him to strike her, it’s not played as some sort of fetish game. This is, in context, real, and rather than possible satisfaction you just feel miserable. This isn’t David Lynch’s only instance of using sex in this manner, one need only look at the history of Laura Palmer, but he really strives to make things as tragic and uncomfortable as they can get in Blue Velvet. If you’re someone who’s been a victim of sexual violence, I’d seriously advise caution before trying this one out.
If you love Twin Peaks, and it’s one of my favorite TV shows of all time so you know I do, then it’s almost a requirement to try out Blue Velvet. It’s got Kyle Maclachlan as a goody two-shoes crime solver, it’s got Laura Dern, it’s got an Angelo Badalamenti score (his first ever collaboration with Lynch, in fact), all it needs is Bob poking out from behind a counch and you’d think it was a prequel. If you don’t love Twin Peaks but love disturbing psycho-sexual crime thrillers, then this might also be the film for you. Either way if you go for Blue Velvet this Halloween is definitely going to be a wild ride, which hopefully won’t leave you beaten up along the side of the highway. Remember to keep an eye out for robins, and -
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
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