methodology
In 1990, David Lynch and Mark Frost collaborated to create Twin Peaks, a soap opera / murder mystery set in the titular town. The show, framed around the murder of a local teenage girl, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) was, initially, a phenomenon and the question of “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” took hold of the American tv-watching nation. However, when Lynch and Frost concluded season one without answering the pertinent question, audiences were turned off and the network urged the writers to reveal the killer in the midst of season 2 which was subsequently cancelled due to massively decreasing views. However, following this, Lynch publically stated that he was not ready to leave behind the character of Laura Palmer, revealing to Jeremy Kay in The Guardian that he had “always loved Laura Palmer,” and “in the series she’s dead, so I loved the idea of seeing the last week of her life.” (2014). Subsequently, Lynch went on to create the Twin Peaks prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) which chronicled the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life. Contemporaneously the film was met with criticism and disparaging reviews. Until 2017, this concluded Lynch's stake in the Twin Peaks story.
Whilst seemingly two unconnected products of technological advancement, the rapid emergence of digital culture and the slow-burning development of Lynch’s Twin Peaks, both have revealed themselves to be a source of both pleasure and anxiety. The postmodern condition was concerned with increasingly-popular technological advancement whilst simultaneously enveloping that which was a product of it. Similarly, Twin Peaks is an explicit site of anxiety for its spectators but it also induces pleasure – the show has garnered cult-status in the years between the original series, FWWM and its 2017 revival series. Analysing the way we ‘live digitally’ invites questions that confront cultural pasts, distance of memory and temporal liberation. It is my intention to show that these same anxieties are demonstrated as errant anomalies in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks franchise, and, further, communicate that which occurs without rationale, in a quasi-unknown alternate universe where familiar and unfamiliar discordant mediums are temporarily coalesced. Like digital culture, Lynch’s universe (and this is not exclusive to only his Twin Peaks works) unfolds and acclimatises to the erratic and ever-evolving circumstances of existence. Lynch utilises the aesthetic of error to visualise these ever-changing cultural paradigms and, as I will hopefully illustrate in this paper, not only challenges our lived reality but purposely corrupts our logical notion of time, place and position in the world. While this paper is intended to be a much more specific exploration of errant devices, my underlying rationale for this is that I believe that David Lynch, in using such specific post-production techniques, mirrors the uncertainty of existence especially at the time of technological anxiety and later, in the 2017 revival of the cult-show, responds to post-digital ‘present shock’ (Rushkoff, 2013). In Present Shock, Rushkoff commences his text by arguing that society’s ability to assimilate what we might refer to as a ‘traditional’ narrative is gone. Later, Rushkoff introduces his concept of ‘digiphrenia’ – “digi for ‘digital,’ and phrenia for ‘disordered condition of mental activity.’” (2013, p. 90). Within a similar theme as Rushkoff, I will base some of my analyses’ (though not specifically) in this concept of chaos in relation to Lynch’s franchise. My rationale for exploring these errant cinematic devices is grounded in how Lynch produces what can be described as ‘disordered condition of mental activity.’ Tracing this, Rushkoff’s work is a direct and contemporary update to Alvin Toffler’s 1970 text, Future Shock. While Toffler’s piece is still a relevant piece of criticism, what it does not (and, of course, cannot) do is incorporate how rapidly our society would change according to the presentism of the digital rather than just the evolution of technology. However, in a 2010 interview with NPR, Toffler posited that as a futurist, his ‘predictions’ about the future “make you think. It opens up the questions of what's possible. Not necessarily what will be, but what's possible." (NPR, 2010). This is precisely what I believe I will show throughout this paper that Lynch is positing in his works. Though some scenes in his works are absurd, the ability to portray the ‘impossible’ in cinema is possible, the narrative can be explored in any means, only constrained by the technology available to the director/producer – that is art. Precisely, art exists within our world as a physical or digital artefact but, conversely, it also exists as ‘other’, which is to say that that is only a representation after all. Accordingly, in an article titled, ‘David Lynch Keeps His Head’ (1996), David Foster Wallace put forth that David Lynch’s work neither complies with the tradition of ‘commercial’ or ‘art’ films but instead occupies “…a whole third kind of territory.” (Wallace, 1996, p. 261). I will propose that Lynch’s work stands outside of many binaries and though Foster Wallace refers to Lynch’s general body of works, this thesis will propose, specifically that it is Lynch’s Twin Peaks franchise that traverses cultural paradigms and, despite its association with the postmodernism or the horror genre, Twin Peaks, when analysed more thoroughly, not only rejects such restrictive categorisation but actively incorporates devices that make-unique his work. Additionally, to view the Twin Peaks franchise, the spectator is participant to whatever Lynch incorporates in his works, and it is with his rather Lynchian cinematic devices that he chooses how the spectator will be affected and how he will represent his ‘vision’ of worldliness or, more appropriately, other-worldliness. It is my intention to show that Twin Peaks can be ‘read’ as a vehicle which hosts the error as a narrative device.
It is important to acknowledge that a shift has occurred – at least within an important swathe of contemporary visual culture – towards an aesthetic that foregrounds the dimension of appearance, form and sensation. And we must take this shift seriously at the aesthetic level… A rush into interpretation before the aesthetic has been more clearly apprehended may follow an all too easy dismissal of such a spectacle aesthetic on grounds that it is facile, already transparent or really about something else. (Darley, 2000, p. 6)
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If, then, we are to prioritise the aesthetic elements of a cinematic text, then the spectator affect must also be given some prominence. For the most part, existing scholarship dedicated to David Lynch’s work focuses heavily on this term, Lynchian, that sometimes dismisses the need for any further exploration of the affect or post-productions aesthetics, all too easily it is assumed that any uncanny or errant event in his works are merely 'Lynchian'. Whilst the initiated may be at ease with being able to interpret a so-called Lynchian visual or sound, for others (and I include myself in this), it is imperative to understand the workings beyond a media-made moniker and, additionally, we must go further than merely using the too-oft dispensed term 'uncanny' to describe his art as this is, from a critical point of view, as unsatisfactory as the term Lynchian. This has stimulated my urge to further break down some of these misnomers to clarify an understanding that surpasses too-easily applied so-called ‘theories’ that are without sufficient context or criticism. This will be a focus of the analysis, specifically in chapter one and two. However, unlike many other illuminating and thoughtful thesis’ on Twin Peaks, this paper is not an attempt to solve any of the mysteries that are contained within Twin Peaks or an attempt to apply meaning to each of David Lynch’s carefully considered ‘Easter eggs’ and, as such, my research is founded in the wider context of aesthetic theory. David Lynch is renowned, on a wider scale, for producing surrealist works that seek to subvert the idealized depiction of the American Dream whilst making it recognizable enough to garner commercial success and secure prime broadcast spots on major networks.
While ‘weird’, ‘uncanny’ or even ‘Lychian’ aesthetics are not reserved for just the works of David Lynch, it is my belief that his works, especially the Twin Peaks franchise, are unique in their relation to present culture. Whilst there have been a flood of excellent and original television shows in the last five years that react to and challenge our ‘digital lives’ (Mr. Robot [2015], Westworld [2016] etc.) or tumultuous socio-political climate (The Night Of [2016], House of Cards [2013]), I will seek to establish Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) as unique in its representation to both of these themes. In what may have been the most anticipated returning TV show in our immediate cultural past, Lynch presented 18 hour-long episodes that contained social commentary, fragmented aesthetics, humour and an abundance of self-referential (but still post-postmodern) events. It was received well in both media and academic commentaries but, so far, little has been made of its engagement with emerging digital aesthetics. I will aim to provide a starting point for the inevitable onslaught of academic work that is still to emerge in our immediate future.