This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Mark Fisher, a thinker who influenced not only my academic research but my moral and political thought too.
Additional thanks to my thesis supervisor, Dr Simon Stevenson, and my family and friends.
Additional thanks to my thesis supervisor, Dr Simon Stevenson, and my family and friends.
Introduction
“art is a road which leads towards regions which are
not governed by time and space.”
- Marcel Duchamp
not governed by time and space.”
- Marcel Duchamp
It is easy, yet naïve, to only look retrospectively at past academic and cultural works in order to understand our own cultural paradigm as we live it. While this more traditional method of analyzing textual output is still a relevant and often fascinating method of literary and cultural criticism, it is crucial that efforts are made to also employ still-emerging and pertinent philosophies within the humanities if we are to engage with and enter into a discourse with the enormous spate of rapidly emerging academic literature, blog posts, think-pieces, and articles. Consequently, and because I am conscious that academic writing too-often relies laboriously on memorializing past cultural paradigms and frequently speaks only inwardly to its philosophical or long-dead masters, this thesis will attempt to not only engage with and respond to already-published literature but will also outline and utilize recently established and still-emerging cross-disciplinary theories as a device by which to ‘read’ David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks (1990 – 2017) franchise. While these aesthetic factions span both analog and digital aesthetic theories, Lynch has used the filmic devices to ‘make-weird’ a horror which frequently takes place beyond the frame and this has the effect of disrupting any anticipated terror and leaving behind residual anxiety that is often left ignored. Throughout this paper, I will place immediate prominence in the purposely placed violations, errors, and glitches that permeate the ‘erroneous’ landscape of the three series’ and accompanying film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) while constructing a theoretical framework that relies on multi-disciplinary works.
I intend to map the above proposed narrative devices in a (completely un-Lynchian) linear process which commences with an exploration the first two seasons of Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991) in which I will propose that ‘violation’, in its many forms, plays a key role in subverting viewer expectation and furthering the plot. I will explore problematized spaces as points of violation that Lynch and Frost use to engineer the ‘hauntings’ of the world within the town of Twin Peaks to generate a certain viewer affect. Specifically, this research intention elaborates on my own previous research interests and, as such, I will briefly recall both Freud’s quasi-theory of the uncanny and other established works which theorize on problematized spaces. Characteristically, the real horror, predominantly, occurs off-stage and instead, there appears to be an assemblage of abrupt uncanny sequences and events which besiege the viewer, occurring in a non-linear fashion in order to subvert any rational anticipation. Physical and mental spaces throughout the film are violated, objects appear where they shouldn’t, dream sequences overlap with a perceived ‘real life’ and viewers are exposed to frequent sexual violence and auditory assaults whilst also being omitted from other information or elements of narrative.
In chapter two, I will concentrate on FWWM (1992) and discuss the ways in which Lynch utilizes fragmentary noise and spasmodic electricity ‘glitches’ to disturb the comfort that the spectator may experience within the otherwise mundane depiction of suburban America. However, due to the aesthetic ‘errors’ within the film, Twin Peaks exists somewhere else, it is a hyper-realistic universe that is engineered in a purposely recognizable setting. Throughout the film, scenes are interrupted by seemingly random and violent noises that corroborate with the broken aesthetic of the flashing and flickering lights and don’t quite mimic the noise one would expect to find in suburbia, or anywhere in nature. Interestingly the hideous noises are an antithesis to the harmonious and etherial music that accompanies the film (specifically, Julee Cruise's rendition of Questions in a World of Blue[1] which brings Laura Palmer to tears). Additionally, I will explore the problematic erratic strobe aesthetic within the context of both media and psychoanalytical theory (that I will resist from utilizing as a tool for understanding any contained ‘meaning’) which I hope will provide a rationale for why this particular Lynchian approach to filmic aesthetics disturbs the viewer so intensely and, perhaps, accounts for at least some of its, now, cult status.
In the final chapter of this paper it is my intention to navigate the contemporary glitch aesthetic and understand it’s prominence in the very recently aired Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). I will discuss in-depth the visual digital glitches that frequently occur on-screen that, to varying degrees, interrupt any semblance that the show exists in any interpretation of a linear universe. As spectator, the experience is one of chaos and discordance. While throughout this paper I will negotiate various theoretical works in order to pursue the lineage of aesthetics, in chapter three, my focus will be on those emerging theories that are associated with digital culture, with much importance placed on glitch aesthetics. Whilst glitch thoery subsumes many disciplines, for the purposes of chapter three, it will be discussed as an aesthetic critical device and provide a framework for any other discussion in this chapter. Within this, I will also propose that as an aesthetic format, Lynch not only (intentionally) subverts viewer expectation but, further, subverts the already-established construct of glitch aesthetics in film. Most critically, I will sever The Return from its relative series’ in terms of analysis as an exploration as I aim to explore the show in terms of a television show that has been written, filmed and produced in the midst of a post-digital era and, thus, forms an entirely new aesthetic to the original Twin Peaks.
This dissertation, then, will immediately traverse two fundamental objectives. In the first instance, I will examine the role of ‘erroneous’ aesthetics within western culture and I will seek to put forth that the (ongoing) evolution of this plays out concurrently with our move out of the postmodern era and headfirst into the many guises of so-called post-postmodern that reacts to 24/7 rolling news coverage of tumultuous political upheaval, proposed (but failing) techno-utopias and rapidly emerging social shifts. Secondly, using David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks franchise as point of reference, I will trace the analog to digital evolution of aesthetics in the franchise and suggest that the violations, errors and glitches are visual extensions of the problematic themes that drive the encompassing narrative of Twin Peaks. To conclude, I will hopefully have shown that, as suggested by David Foster Wallace, Lynch operates in “a whole third different kind of territory” (1996, p. 455).
METHODOLOGY >>>
[1] Melanie Galu. 2013. Julee Cruise - Questions In A World Of Blue Subtitulada (Twin Peaks: fire walk with me) [video online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_svmfdSqvM