Gender in Twin Peaks: The Return

[4815162342]

You don't need to go too deep to see why it might be relevant, it's an activity done by humans, involving other humans and addressing other humans. I can only assume he doesn't believe in responsibility at all?

[ScarFace32]

You don't need to go too deep to see why it might be relevant, it's an activity done by humans, involving other humans and addressing other humans. I can only assume he doesn't believe in responsibility at all?

That's not what I've been saying at all. For instance sylvia said "David Lynch is a responsible artist". How can you authenticate this statement? Look at all the people who want to rid the world of smoking. The FDA's goal is literally a tobacco free future. To them just showing smoking on film at all is irresponsible. So what makes an artist "responsible"? Only when their expression lines up with your personal agenda or beliefs?

[alreadygoneplaces]

That's not what I've been saying at all. For instance sylvia said "David Lynch is a responsible artist". How can you authenticate this statement? Look at all the people who want to rid the world of smoking. The FDA's goal is literally a tobacco free future. To them just showing smoking on film at all is irresponsible. So what makes an artist "responsible"? Only when their expression lines up with your personal agenda or beliefs?

What makes an artist "responsible"? Clearly that's subjective, and here to be discussed. There's also plenty of room to debate to what extent the artist should factor these issues into their process- your position on this is clear, although you haven't really substantiated or articulated it. Trying to completely negate the whole concept of responsibility in art entirely, however, just seems puerile. Ironically, no-one's taken what I'd consider to be a genuinely strong position on the matter regarding TP:TR specifically anyway.

[Manwith]

You don't need to go too deep to see why it might be relevant, it's an activity done by humans, involving other humans and addressing other humans. I can only assume he doesn't believe in responsibility at all?

That's not what I've been saying at all. For instance sylvia said "David Lynch is a responsible artist". How can you authenticate this statement? Look at all the people who want to rid the world of smoking. The FDA's goal is literally a tobacco free future. To them just showing smoking on film at all is irresponsible. So what makes an artist "responsible"? Only when their expression lines up with your personal agenda or beliefs?

Instead of making these low effort posts demanding answers to questions, why not make some effort and answer some questions yourself?

Explain to us whether it was wrong or not for Bob to kill Laura. Isn't Cooper just forwarding his political beliefs and persona agenda on Bob by trying to stop him? How can one authentication a concept like "Bob is evil?' Or "murder is bad". Since different people have different takes on when killing is okay, can any murder truly be said to be bad? Minimum 200 word essay.

Then I'll respond with a dismissive "That didn't prove anything. Go explains for reals." We'll switch postings styles around.

[ScarFace32]

Instead of making these low effort posts demanding answers to questions, why not make some effort and answer some questions yourself?

Explain to us whether it was wrong or not for Bob to kill Laura. Isn't Cooper just forwarding his political beliefs and persona agenda on Bob by trying to stop him? How can one authentication a concept like "Bob is evil?' Or "murder is bad". Since different people have different takes on when killing is okay, can any murder truly be said to be bad? Minimum 200 word essay.

Then I'll respond with a dismissive "That didn't prove anything. Go explains for reals." We'll switch postings styles around.

What's the difference between demanding answers and asking questions? Alright we'll switch posting styles. I'll do you:

Candie and Dougie are too similar. Why are both reminding me of Leo? Ideally only 1 person should be reminding me of Leo.

[Mr. Reindeer]

I don't see how anyone could watch the Lost Highway scenes with Mr. Eddy beating down a tailgater and not see the tremendous similarity between what Lynch is doing and what Tarantino does. Mr. Eddy is basically a twist on a Hollywood stock character with Tarantino esque violence and comedy, also the Dougie plotline with the gangsters in episode 11 is again a stock Hollywood movie thing (and references The Godfather).

I don't disagree that DKL engages with, subverts and plays with film tropes, but that's true of many writers/directors. Heck, it's almost inevitable -- there are only so many ideas out there. Do you think Breaking Bad was primarily concerned with "making pop culture out of pop culture" because it engaged with stock film archetypes like the corrupt flamboyant defense attorney and man-of-few-words gangland "fixer"? And I'm not denying that DKL engages with overt references to other works, with the Wizard of Oz stuff in W@H as the most blatant example. I just think it's a less important aspect in his work (both in terms of his authorial intent and my perception/processing of the work) than you seem to. Most directors acknowledge/celebrate their place in the continuum by paying tribute to their predecessors/heroes. But I think DKL is much more interested in exploring universal themes of identity, suffering, victimization, redemption, mystery, confusion, dreams, nightmares, etc.; the reference/pastiche stuff is fun window-dressing, not the main point. Contrast this with Tarantino, where the entire point IS the pop culture overload. I adore Tarantino's movies, his action and humor are incomparable, but they rarely say anything deeper about the human condition. They don't tell you anything about Tarantino or about yourself. DKL, on the other hand, I think is very much interested in exploring personal themes. YMMV as to how successful he is, of course, but I just can't agree that the pastiche stuff is his main draw or goal. MD and IE are certainly very clever movies about moviemaking and storytelling, and are meta on some level, but that's only one level that the films function on. There's so much more going on in terms of fractured identity, loss of self, and the pain of unrequited/lost love.

I would agree with you that W@H (one of his weaker works IMO) comes pretty close to being the type of film you're talking about, but that one's an anomaly in my experience with his work. Perhaps not coincidentally, I also find W@H to be by far his most Tarantino-esque film, presaging the "love in a fucked-up violent world" themes of True Romance and Natural Born Killers.

don't know if Dougie Jones was influenced by film- but commentators have said the character is very similar to the protagonist of a movie called Being There (which I have not seen). Could be a coincidence of course.

I think that storyline/characterization, as others have noted, is likely influenced much more by Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot character -- Tati is a favorite of DKL, and DKL threw a piece of red piping into W@H in tribute to Tati's Mon Oncle. (However, Kyle did explicitly mention Peter Sellers's performance in Being There as a touchstone for his PERFORMANCE in the role.) Here, again, though: while Tati and/or Sellers may have inspired DKL to explore a certain theme, I don't believe he's doing it for the purpose of a winking reference or giving film scholars something to smile about. He enjoyed the human, personal themes about displacement, innocence and societal disconnect in those earlier works and wanted to engage with them through his own lens.

[alreadygoneplaces]

Re: Tarantino / Lynch similarities (or not): I think both share quite a radical postmodernist spirit, but their approaches are very different. "Making pop culture out of pop culture" was what was said- I think this is Tarantino's most fluent language, but Lynch just occasionally does this as a device, using it to play with/subvert/profit from our existing associations with movie tropes and archetypes. And also, he does seem to like dropping in the odd reference/homage for very pure reasons. Mr Reindeer mentioned Mon Oncle and the red pipes in Wild at Heart, this set always also made me think of that film...



edit: can't get image to work. it's the school in Twin Peaks. You know what it looks like...

[KnewItsPa]

Characterizaion is such in Twin Peaks (especially in the original that revolves more around the characters than The Return, which is more story centered) that it would be, as you point it out, over-simplyfing to call The Log Lady a "mean". She obviously has a narrative function, acting as a harbinger, but she's also an "end", a very deep character in itself. Pointing than women in Twin Peaks are a "means" for men to fullfill greater tasks seems far fetched to me : they have an essential and active part to the story.

I'm only focusing on The Return here not, Twin Peaks, or the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (it's been a while since I read that), and not The Secret History (which I've never read) - although it is gratifying to know that Lantermans an ark from maiden->lover->crone is expanded on there, thanks sylvia_north. Lanterman role is much that of a psychic medium, conveying of information from beyond, to the here and now. I'm sure we can bring depth through these secondary texts - Lantermans warning to Laura in FWWM (the crone warns the maiden - acting as guide within the female community) - but I'm trying to just focus what we see on screen now, to this portrayal of the character. I don't think I'm lessening the character, think about how important mediums are - telephones, electricity cables, messages written on corpses, letters, pies in boxes, dreams, the medium of film or TV itself, the absolutely critical function that Mrs. Briggs played.

If we think of traditional feminist formulations to the archetype of the Crone, is especially is typically seen located as a patriachal site of fear, of cannibalism and of evil, which is deserving of reclaiming as a symbol of power. Lanterman does not conform to this view, but is instead the helpful crone, a wise-woman, and not a symbol of fear or ridicule, strongly embodying the positive aspects of the archetype not normally associated with a male-dominated worldview. Her nature intermediatary between men is not diminishing to her, rather it includes her within their community - that in itself is a potent thing, even if the narrative does not resolve itself with her at its centre.

But also we see Preston in Buckhorn, mediates between Hastings, relating his words to Albert and Cole.
What happens when a female medium - Lucy - is supposed to relay messages that are interrupted by a man - Deputy Chad.
We've also got Maggie at the dispatch, 'what's your location?' somebody is on their way.

We were also introduced to Norma as watcher, observing the relationship between Shelly, Bobby and their daughter, and emotionally being carried along by their drama. Not in the dark, watching tv, but with that sense of mirroring viewer-empathy.

[sylvia_north]

Candie: "How could you love me after what I did?" This is a woman forced to perform submissive femininity for the approval of the paternalist gangsters. Her shtick is messing up and inviting their anger and not having anywhere else to go.

Candie is afraid, but we're not given any reason to believe she should be, there's no suggestion the Mitchum Brothers were angry, quite the opposite. But we have that other thing, her submission of identity into the uniform, the matching cocktail-waitress outfit, the matching hair-do, she's just one of three, not her own person, a fetishised commodity. This sense of using costume, clothing, to erase the individual, the over-the-top performative sexuality at One Eyed Jacks, Daryas lingerie. The female as consumer spectacle.

Literal consumer spectacle.

Part 11 really got me thinking about Candie, Mandie and Sandie. In the first surveillance room scenes, I took the girls at face value. Cigarette girls, maybe casino-employed hookers, or like Hef's bunnies, accessories modeled after Marilyn Monroe. In the second surveillance room scene, they're doing the same thing (same footage used intentionally) but then Candie gets sent on a mission. Nothing out of the ordinary. It demonstrates a high level of trust in the trio as witnesses. Candie is sent on a mission, and reveals herself to seem drugged or hypnotized and incompetent.

In the domestic scenes, we see Candie working early in the morning, and during the day, in full costume and makeup. On the one instance, Mandie and Sandie are also present, also costumed.

Hef has never gone so far as to change his live-in girlfriends' names to matching cutesy stage names, or force them into matching uniforms worn round the clock, though. Holly Madison's book talks about how most of them really did have no where else to go, or no where else they could get so much from doing so little. It doesn't seem to be this way with the Andies at all. We have no indication of compensation, or their status at all as "voluntary" (considering matters of economic coercion ) or involuntary servants.

The Mitchums are fond of Candie and tolerant and she has nowhere else to go because she and the others are AI bots- androids. This theory also explains why they aren't risks as witnesses. The same costumes because there is no need to change them unless they get soiled- they won't become soiled by natural means.

Consider Cherry 2000 starring Pamela Gidley. Cherry the android's custom programming and learned behaviors and responses make her irreplaceable. An AI bot, like a dog, adapts specifically to its owner. Refurbishing would require shutting her down, and she's likely be sent to a warehouse for used products, a dated undesirable model, where she might not ever be reprogrammed and resold. Furthermore, they don't drink alcohol with the Mitchums, or eat food. Her speech about traffic on the strip seems especially programmed. There is probably a series of conversational cues she can deliver banal answers to, not always appropriate to the situation, hence explaining air conditioning when she's supposed to just bringing someone to her employers (owners?) You can't get truly angry at a malfunctioning robot any more than a glitch in a video game. If you look at how sex robots are being programmed today based on male expectations of femininity, being tender-feeling'd or jealous can be built-in to taste.

Cyborgs- the ultimate technology that makes the female body a spectacle ; the exotic sci-fi "other" that serves the purpose of hypersexualization. It also makes for an extra weird scene Lynchian scene with the brothers. Mr Eddy in LH surrounds himself with prostitutes, here are two brothers that seem to live together with a harem of... fembots? Is this more ethical than possessing human sex slaves, rherotically speaking, or the Hornes with their compensated harem? Which would cost more in upkeep and acquisition- the biological female, or the feminine machine? In terms of gender, a machine only qualifies as a gendered representation, not a female, that is not to say any representation of a female does not affect the treatment of actual females.

The fly-swatting scene privileges the body, in pure male subjectivity. It's about watching and not at all about Candie. (Lucy has a similar scene, but it's not an extended upskirt shot.)
Does Candie have interority? Does AI? Reactions TO Candie are more telling than anything about Candie thus far.

[Manwith]

Here's a funny comment about David Lynch I encountered on a blog, I think there's some truth to it:

"...David Lynch’s merits as a filmmaker or “artist” or whatever really distract people from recognizing how horny David Lynch is and how he’s one of America’s horniest directors.

...People talk about him like he’s this weirdo who meditates all the time, and doesn’t think like some normal dude. Meanwhile, he just 100% casts stone-cold foxes in his stuff, which obviously isn’t just some magical accident, 1,000 foxes into his career. “I just got done meditating for 20 hours and I realized we should hire a super-hot girl to tie a cherry stem with her tongue. Thanks, meditation.” Audiences and critics: “Very deep. Here is the Award for Best Art.” All you ever hear is like “surrealism blah blah blah themes blah blah blah” but maybe it just weirds people out too much to imagine Lynch just yelling “Hire Naomi Watts – her head shot gave me an ERECTION” at the top of his fucking lungs.

http://twiststreet.tumblr.com/post/163422682800

[Framed_Angel]

Here's a funny comment about David Lynch I encountered on a blog, I think there's some truth to it:

"...David Lynch’s merits as a filmmaker or “artist” or whatever really distract people from recognizing how horny David Lynch is and how he’s one of America’s horniest directors...People talk about him like he’s this weirdo who meditates all the time, and doesn’t think like some normal dude. Meanwhile, he just 100% casts stone-cold foxes in his stuff, which obviously isn’t just some magical accident, 1,000 foxes into his career. “I just got done meditating for 20 hours and I realized we should hire a super-hot girl to tie a cherry stem with her tongue. Thanks, meditation.” Audiences and critics: “Very deep. Here is the Award for Best Art.” All you ever hear is like “surrealism blah blah blah themes blah blah blah” but maybe it just weirds people out too much to imagine Lynch just yelling “Hire Naomi Watts – her head shot gave me an ERECTION” at the top of his fucking lungs.

http://twiststreet.tumblr.com/post/163422682800

I think he's got Twin Peaks circa 1989-90 confused with Baywatch. It came out around the same time.
I penned a longer response that I'll post FWIW but the short version is: Eye candy is rampant and could call any number of film- or music video- or product commercial creators to task for it, why single out one such director because his "merits" as they're called earned him prestige? Relatedly: it only seems fair to take into account the targeted artist's full crop of offerings not just a couple of flicks with pretty faces.

[Framed_Angel]

Here's a funny comment about David Lynch I encountered on a blog, I think there's some truth to it:

"...David Lynch’s merits as a filmmaker or “artist” or whatever really distract people from recognizing how horny David Lynch is and how he’s one of America’s horniest directors...People talk about him like he’s this weirdo who meditates all the time, and doesn’t think like some normal dude. Meanwhile, he just 100% casts stone-cold foxes in his stuff, which obviously isn’t just some magical accident, 1,000 foxes into his career. “I just got done meditating for 20 hours and I realized we should hire a super-hot girl to tie a cherry stem with her tongue. Thanks, meditation.” Audiences and critics: “Very deep. Here is the Award for Best Art.” All you ever hear is like “surrealism blah blah blah themes blah blah blah” but maybe it just weirds people out too much to imagine Lynch just yelling “Hire Naomi Watts – her head shot gave me an ERECTION” at the top of his fucking lungs.

http://twiststreet.tumblr.com/post/163422682800

Now that I've read the blogger's full post, I get the impression he's being tongue-in-cheek. For the sake of taking him seriously if he happens to want to be, I'll share my reaction.

My takeaway from that is the perception of "Look how drop-dead gorgeous this, that, and the other girl is in this show. Ergo, the Director must be a horn-dog!" It's projecting. Anyone who distills the prime value of a work of Lynch's into a reduction of How Many Of Those Babes Would I Like to Bang, hasn't been paying full attention to the visual, the sound effects, the pop cultural vestiges like jukeboxes and old cars and "Northwest passage" flavor. i.e. the things that got DKL noticed when TP brought him into some more mainstream venue. The blog's author has conveniently overlooked Eraserhead and Elephant Man which featured a woman with scabrous cheeks in the former, and not really any exploitation of women in the latter.

Form follows function; so for Josie's role he cast Joan Chen for her sensuality because the role called for it. Piper Laurie was a recognized actor and her character exuded cunning and wit but she had a bedroom scene with Ben as well; sex appeal's expression found equal opportunity and furthermore I recognize soap-opera qualities in TP1/2 that were purposely mimicked including attractive actors both male and female. The difference with TP's characters played by those actors is that none I can think of was one-dimensional, the way many daytime soaps' can be.

The better looking stable of faces is balanced out enough by average-looks among the cast such that, IMO, that the person opining that we've missed something significant in overlooking a director's "horniness" has himself missed the point, and is short-changing not just himself but insults the intelligence of those who dared to find qualities in Lynch's work that tap into some of our most resonant fears, aesthetics, sympathies and speculations. If anything he should thank Lynch for awakening the voyeur in him, since voyeurism runs unbridled through Blue Velvet and for most voyeurs I'd suppose eye candy is icing on the cake if it figures in whatever else is being watched. This blog person's remark says more about him overall than it does about Lynch.

[Manwith]

Lynch seems like a director who brings a lot of the "male gaze" to his directing, you don't think he was really into the lesbian stuff in Mulholland Drive? I think the blogger is exaggerating and framing his argument in a certain way for comedic effect but also making a point. Lynch, like Gordon Cole, seems kind of horny. You're taking his jokey comment a little too literally.

Did Gordon kiss Shelly because Lynch was horny so set it up that way? I never bothered to keep track of gossip of who was dating who behind the scenes so forget if there's any relevant behind the scene stuff.

Lynch even acknowledges via his meta Gordon character that Gordon is seen as a horny old man by Denise, apparently based on his history. Lynch is also married to someone 30 years younger than him, just saying...

[ScarFace32]

Here's a funny comment about David Lynch I encountered on a blog, I think there's some truth to it:

"...David Lynch’s merits as a filmmaker or “artist” or whatever really distract people from recognizing how horny David Lynch is and how he’s one of America’s horniest directors.

...People talk about him like he’s this weirdo who meditates all the time, and doesn’t think like some normal dude. Meanwhile, he just 100% casts stone-cold foxes in his stuff, which obviously isn’t just some magical accident, 1,000 foxes into his career. “I just got done meditating for 20 hours and I realized we should hire a super-hot girl to tie a cherry stem with her tongue. Thanks, meditation.” Audiences and critics: “Very deep. Here is the Award for Best Art.” All you ever hear is like “surrealism blah blah blah themes blah blah blah” but maybe it just weirds people out too much to imagine Lynch just yelling “Hire Naomi Watts – her head shot gave me an ERECTION” at the top of his fucking lungs.

http://twiststreet.tumblr.com/post/163422682800

Maybe he just has good taste

[sylvia_north]

Piper Laurie was a recognized actor and her character exuded cunning and wit but she had a bedroom scene with Ben as well; sex appeal's expression found equal opportunity and furthermore I recognize soap-opera qualities in TP1/2 that were purposely mimicked including attractive actors both male and female. The difference with TP's characters played by those actors is that none I can think of was one-dimensional, the way many daytime soaps' can be.

Did you know that Piper had serious reservations about that scene, and it was intended to be more overtly sexual I( imagine the couple in a soap rolling strategically covered in the sheets,) and the foot-kissing thing was a last-minute concession to Piper's firm stance against an unnecessarily prurient scene? I'm almost positive Richard said he actually found a elvis doll prop for the little elvis line for that scene, as a side note. Which reminds me, the "Don't take any oink oink off that pretty pig" line Bobby says in the Pilot was originally something vulgar you weren't allowed to say on TV. Pig, still- ouch.

LIttlePineCone posted some images of the new Cinemascope mag. Hard to read, but there was a clear paragraph, led into by calling Chrysta Bell "a weak actor:"

More troubling however is how Bell's character tends to tip the balance of the director's always precarious sexual politics. Lynch's fetishization of beautiful women has in the past been accompanied and some would argue justified by an overt thematizing [illegible] transforms women into unrealistic consumable images; the depiction of Laura Palmer in the original Twin Peaks as an image subject to everyone's interpretation but her own, is the supreme example. In The Return conveniently there is little indication that Lynch and Frost regard Bell as anything other than eye candy devoid of subjectivity- which is never more evident than when Lynch reframes a shot to capture Bell's bottom half as she walks away followed by a lecherous remark from the admiring Albert "Well I feel better now."