I started watching the Twin Peaks television show - can't believe I never watched this when I was in High School. I've seen almost all of Lynch's work accept for this. Lynch is great at subtly interjecting the strange, surreal, and even the supernatural into the narrative while, at the same time, balancing the realm of everyday life.
Like the mysterious ear Jeffrey Beaumont finds in Blue Velvet, the death of Laura Palmer has disrupted the safe and peaceful rural world of Twin Peaks. What we find in Twin Peaks is bizarre entities occupying the corporeal world. But this is not like the Star Trek episode "Return to Tomorrow" where Spock and Kirk find a planet of intellectual minds stored in sphere balls and are looking for bodies to temporally occupy in order to construct artificial bodies they will soon house.
In Twin Peaks, the spirit of Bob, (the Frank Booth of the series) is to move from body to body in order to continue his serial killer like wrath. I guess that's all I can say...because I have not finish watching the series. Twin Peaks, in many ways, reminds me of how great of a TV show Mulholland Drive could have been.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteVery cool! I always wanted to watch this show all the way through--I recall, as a child, walking in during a scene where a man was dead and wrapped in barbed wire and being shocked (let me know if it actually exists on the show or if I dreamed it up).
I just re-watched "The Elephant Man," and was stunned both how well Lynch could play it straight and how effective he could elicit emotive responses to his work. Still prefer "Eraserhead," but that's beside the point.
Great post!
Tom, if you haven't seen the film "True Stories" check it out when you have time. David Byrne of "Talking Heads" directed and starred in the film, that is noted for breaking the 'forth wall'.
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