Gender in Twin Peaks: The Return

[sylvia_north]

Yes this thread is about gender. But this specific argument goes beyond gendered violence. Like I've said over and over, an artist does not have any responsibility to you or your ideas. Interesting how you won't outright say, "Yes Lynch has a responsibility as an artist" but rather you speak about art's potential or an artist's history that are irrelevant.

Not irrelevant. He has a history of caring for women, and doesn't squander that potentia,l call it intentional or not- the intent is irrelevant unless there's a sinister MO. Your obsession with this argument beyond gendered violence in which you don't want your mind to be changed and won't change anyone else's is derailing. If you're sincerely that perplexed, read a paper about it.

Yes, depicting violence against women with no payoff "might be reckless" but it's early in the show to make that judgment call. Come back after the end when it's pertinent.

By calling Twin Peaks reckless you are saying Lynch as an artist has a responsibility. Recklessness doesn't exist without responsibility. And once again, an artist doesn't have a responsibility to you or anyone's ideas, values, etc.

No one called Twin Peaks reckless, brotato. Someone said it "might be reckless if there's no payoff." Nobody seems to think there won't be, based on empirical evidence. You're going around in pointless circles.

Recklessness doesn't have to be intentional ---> it's not owed

[4815162342]

I think there is a bit of an entanglement between the aesthetic (portraying characters as one-dimensional punching bags is not great art) and the moral (the way it reflects or reinforces entrenched views in society). I would argue that, yes, artists have a moral responsibility in their work, just as any human being has a moral responsibility in any thing they do. One can disagree, and if you are of the opinion that, say, there is no morality, or, morality is unimportant, I think we can stop right there. On the aesthetic level, I would say an artist has no responsibilities, but of course said artist will be subject to criticism based on said aesthetic choices, leading to words like disappointment.

[ScarFace32]

Yes this thread is about gender. But this specific argument goes beyond gendered violence. Like I've said over and over, an artist does not have any responsibility to you or your ideas. Interesting how you won't outright say, "Yes Lynch has a responsibility as an artist" but rather you speak about art's potential or an artist's history that are irrelevant.

Not irrelevant. He has a history of caring for women, and doesn't squander that potentia,l call it intentional or not- the intent is irrelevant unless there's a sinister MO. Your obsession with this argument beyond gendered violence in which you don't want your mind to be changed and won't change anyone else's is derailing. If you're sincerely that perplexed, read a paper about it.

Yes, depicting violence against women with no payoff "might be reckless" but it's early in the show to make that judgment call. Come back after the end when it's pertinent.

By calling Twin Peaks reckless you are saying Lynch as an artist has a responsibility. Recklessness doesn't exist without responsibility. And once again, an artist doesn't have a responsibility to you or anyone's ideas, values, etc.

No one called Twin Peaks reckless, brotato. Someone said it "might be reckless if there's no payoff." Nobody seems to think there won't be, based on empirical evidence. You're going around in pointless circles.

Recklessness doesn't have to be intentional ---> it's not owed

Let's hear you say it. Go ahead. Say: "David Lynch has a responsibility as an artist"

[sylvia_north]

Let's hear you say it. Go ahead. Say: "David Lynch has a responsibility as an artist"

David Lynch is a responsible artist

[Trudy Chelgren]

sylvia_north wrote:

I think you dropped something... oh here. You could say that about all artists, yeah. And then a whole discipline devoted to textual analysis would disappear. Authorial intent is a minor aspect of criticism.

If you think so. But authorial intent is still an aspect of criticism nonetheless, and one I wanted to write about. I don't understand the need to put down one aspect, or perspective as less important than another so abruptly. I don't feel that invalidates what I said, so I don't know what point you're trying to make.. Maybe throughout the work's longevity does it's context change, and without the artist's input, but Lynch is not interested in that narrative, and that's what I was talking about.

Not to mention, artists are often disingenuous and often not even all that self aware. When we say David Lynch does 'x', we're never saying 'on purpose,' btw...

Read my post, I covered all this.

[sylvia_north]

sylvia_north wrote:
I think you dropped something... oh here. You could say that about all artists, yeah. And then a whole discipline devoted to textual analysis would disappear. Authorial intent is a minor aspect of criticism.

If you think so. But authorial intent is still an aspect of criticism nonetheless, and one I wanted to write about. I don't understand the need to put down one aspect, or perspective as less important than another so abruptly. I don't feel that invalidates what I said, so I don't know what point you're trying to make.. Maybe throughout the work's longevity does it's context change, and without the artist's input, but Lynch is not interested in that narrative, and that's what I was talking about.

Not to mention, artists are often disingenuous and often not even all that self aware. When we say David Lynch does 'x', we're never saying 'on purpose,' btw...

Read my post, I covered all this.

The point I was making was that academia thinks authorial intent is minor, too, and should be largely ignored unless you're doing a biographical criticism. The most simplistic acceptance of the artist/author based on his strategic lack of disclosure and wish to be perceived as simplistic despite the contradiction in the complexity of his texts deflates under analysis, and is a conversation ender. To your mic drop I say 'Nope!' and so would any literature or film professor.

Of course the subject isn't interested in the criticism- considering how you'll be perceived is self-consciousness and the killer of creativity. Why would he? And why would we care if he does or not?

And I don't respond to posts without reading them, apologies if you thought I didn't. Yes, all creators are influenced by everything that everyone else in the world is. "No art exists in a vacuum" There is no pure individual character in fiction, or individual in the world, that emerges from the brain without social, psychological and historical context. That's why we write about it- anything less would be embracing ignorance. It's kinda interesting but it's dead-end thinking.

[ScarFace32]

Let's hear you say it. Go ahead. Say: "David Lynch has a responsibility as an artist"

David Lynch is a responsible artist

And that's where the glaring hole in your argument lies. Values are relative. To a Woman of God it might not be "responsible" to show any sex of out wedlock. & many people would say it's not "responsible" to show any smoking at all, for any reason. It is delusional.

[LateReg]

This is really excellently put, and I just want to highlight it again. Lynch has done great work with his portrayal of female characters and gendered existence, including the violence and predation facing women, in the past. Fire Walk With Me is one of the few Lynch movies to offer an ending that is both comforting and cathartic (usually you only get one or the other). It's hardly "happy," as Laura is still dead, but there's a sense of triumph in her narrative of accepting herself and her situation, perfectly befitting Twin Peaks' central themes. It does what I hope The Return ultimately does, which is to offer something a bit more humanizing, and feelings a bit more complex and affecting, than simple revulsion and horror (as The Return has brilliantly offered in other ways, but not yet through its focus on gendered violence).

And revulsion and horror can be powerful on their own, but become a bit reductive as a pattern when we aren't offered anything else. Abuse is horrible, but it's not the only thing impacting women's internal lives. It's difficult to be both honest and not, to be so expansive in some ways, but altogether too narrow in others.

I'm just hoping The Return comes to more honestly and complexly offer payoff to one of its own fascinations, as other Lynch works have. I wonder if there's a divide between those simply watching for weekly entertainment, and those who want it to feel really confident as a lasting work of art. Why shouldn't we want it to feel successful, to feel honest, in an area it's clearly yearning to delve into?

This wasn't in the post quoted above, but I do wonder why critiques relating to gender portrayal are so often attacked as "censorship," when no one is proposing Lynch do anything less than what he's interested in. We're just offering our hopes for the work, the same way any number of people clamoring for the return of Agent Cooper or do every week (and it would be insane to say, "Lynch is interested in the Dougie storyline, so stop trying to censor his vision" every time such a desire is brought up).

And once again, Lynch has earned my trust and patience as an artist. In its interests outside of gender, I think The Return is powerfully executed. It's just that I can only respond to what I sense as an (unintentional, I'm sure) difference between this work and his films after the first ten of eighteen hours.

Hi Cipher. I didn't reply to you in PM during the transition of this thread, so I thought I would just say what I was going to say here in response to this post.

In your message you distinctly laid out what the issue is for you in regards to The Return's fascination with gendered violence, which is:

"Is it trying to present an unflinching reality, perhaps in the way Inland Empire does through its personal lens, that women exist in a predatory and abusive world? Certainly that's powerful, but then it's somewhat remiss for not also being honest about the fact that there are internal and external female lives not marked by it, and we haven't seen them.

Or is it (and I think this is less likely, but it would be more troubling) simply looking to imply a darkness settling over its world at this point, and violence against women is the easiest and most visceral way to portray it?

If the goal is the latter, that's a reductive and lazy way to use characters. If the goal is the former, as I suspect it is, there's an honesty disconnect; a rare and distracting miss for Lynch's work. It's attempting to be honest about gender while, through its narrow fixation, also not really managing to be honest about gender.

And that's it. I want works to track. I want them to feel consistent and successful in their goals. The Return is a fantastic series in a number of ways (I think it elevates Peaks greatly even if this never clears up), but unless this changes before the end of its run, it stands out as a small blemish. Not because it isn't meeting a quota for empowered women, but because it isn't quite being honest with a subject it seems to very badly want to be honest about itself."


That's what you said, and it seems to succinctly sum up your viewpoint regarding the potential problems of The Return. I don't think there's a point for us to go back and forth on this, because I actually do fully expect The Return to end up humanizing its female subjects. That said, your posts do point out where we differ. Which is to say that at the end of the day, if The Return doesn't go the route we expect (the route that Lynch usually takes us) and "improve" in its approach towards women, I would be perfectly fine with it whereas you probably won't be. I would, in Dougie's words, "make sense of it." Because it makes sense to me now.

Because in opposition to your perception of this element of The Return, I absolutely believe that what Lynch is doing here is INTENTIONAL. I also don't think Lynch is being lazy about character or dishonest by not showing us the external and internal lives of the women beyond the abuse. Rather than falling back on what he's already done in previous films, I think that he is doing something new here, so far, and challenging the viewer by leaving out those elements, forcing us to confront what is there on screen and what is missing. Three seasons and a movie into this series, and certain elements don't need to be there for us to understand certain themes, and their omission is startling. I don't think it's taking the easy way out, or that the work is necessarily better or worse for it. It simply takes a daringly different approach located within a uniquely structured narrative. Not only uniquely structured, but highly meticulous. I think Lynch is fully aware of what he's presenting here and how he's presenting it. I don't think he's "missing" the mark, per se, but rather playing different game.

The Return is a more intellectual enterprise than the original, with the emotional moments so far tied directly to the intellectual, such as in regards to the focus on aging and the return of a creator to his work and the actors to their roles and other meta moments; the 18-hour film putting itself back together from a purposely fragmented start, slowly letting the music drift back in to Twin Peaks. Each scene seems to stand for so much more than those in the original series. The shared scene between Norma and Shelly speaks volumes to me of this approach, as they stand, as helpless as the viewer, watching Becky and Steven as it all happens again. These moments speak volumes to me, and for me in the midst of a maddeningly tangled web of narrative and themes, they're enough.

And while I know that mostly women have been killed so far, I still don't see the darkness settling over the world as being centered on that. I think the major moment of darkness was the child getting killed and onlookers looking passively on. I think the darkness is represented by Doppelcoop and Richard, who have holes in their souls, and not because they're abusing women specifically. The darkness is represented by the political undercurrents, and in a more general way I can just feel that something isn't right with this world of Twin Peaks, "a fucking nightmare." If anything I think Lynch's approach so far is to show us the violence against women not as a new or expanding type of darkness, but as something that is now old hat, something we're almost disconnected from. New darkness creeps in while the old one remains the same. That's how I see all this and that's why it works for me and why I don't need it to be any different than it is, even as I suspect it soon will be.

[KnewItsPa]

Sarah's scene of isolation, drinking and absorbed by a violent scene in a nature documentary. Like Nadine, she is also in the darkness, lit by the TV, captive by the TV. Both diminished.

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

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.

Beverly and Tammy both serve Ben and Gordon as their underlings and objects of desire.

This is true. It is also true of Darya and Candie. Since Mullholland Drive, at least, there has been a concious, on-screen, working of male employer and female employee.

it might not be "responsible" to show any sex of out wedlock.

If I recall correctly the only sex performed out of wedlock that we have seen in The Return, has directly resulted in the gory and brutal deaths of the participants by supernatural agents. One could prematurely conclude that the story is saying that sex outside of marriage will be punished. I think it would be wrong to suggest this is necessarily an expression of the morality of the shows creators, but It is, I believe, an accurate expression of the morality of the story so far, and perfectly conforms to certain genre conventions. It remains to be seen if these conventions are later subverted or if the theme is continued or developed.

[Novalis]

This is by far one of the most interesting threads on this forum. It's a shame that it's been marginalised. I haven't jumped in so far because so many have been arguing my own position for me, but I feel it's come to the stage where I have to add my voice to the choir.

I think it's clear there are political differences between commentators; those who wish aesthetics could be considered in isolation of sociopolitical context (that is, completely abstracted from human history) are generally speaking using a more conservative framework which tends towards self-effacement. Those with a more contextualised understanding (holy cow they must all be communists! they've got shelves full of what the right-wing calls 'cultural marxism' tomes) risk being accused of politicising everything. In truth, the difference can be traced to critical philosophy (as introduced by Kant), which does not merely analyse the given but also the transcendental conditions of appearances: in short, it asks what needs to be the case such that phenomenon x can appear as phenomenon x. Critical philosphy opened the door to historicism, to the awareness that god damn it things change. What is considered socially normative within one period or cultural group may be taboo in other, etc. The whole critical legacy follows on from enlightenment thinking. If you want to undo the critical tradition by throwing mud at it, good luck with that.

If you want to think that the gendered analysis of the films and art of David Lynch has no exploratory value or raises no debate, I suggest you consult the existing literature. Log on to any university campus library and search relevant peer-reviewed journals. There is no dearth of material there. If you want to sit back cynically and kid yourself that all that work is still nothing more than the prattling of 'tumblr SJWs' and 'beta leftists' then I suggest you'd probably find the level of discussion more to your taste on infowars or Breitbart.

It is correct to point out, as others have done upstream, that critical theory is a many-splendoured thing, characterised neither by consensus nor univocity. Materialist, postcolonial and feminist interpretations of art are far from homogenous, and feminist methodology in particular draws from a huge pool of critical resources spanning centuries of philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, psychology, material culture, anthropology, history, even neuroscience and positivist approaches to art -- so much so that to call it a specific 'lens' is to completely misunderstand its objective. These are not narrow apertures but spaces for debate that are within themselves open to ongoing, live contestation. You can't pinpoint what a feminist interpretation or a 'gender studies' interpretation is going to be. Sure, you can patronisingly and cynically stereotype it, but that is the approach of someone who isn't concerned with having something relevant to say. If whatever objections are flippantly thrown at 'SJW gender studies' is to hold any academic credibility, then, the existing debates over depiction of gender in film would need to be addressed. Otherwise its just people standing outside, excluding themselves on purpose and mocking something they don't participate in simply because they want to perpetuate and reproduce anti-intellectual attitudes to art. Far better I've always felt to engage in informed discussion.

[dustoff]

...

Word.

[sylvia_north]

Word to my comrades

[Trudy Chelgren]

Exploration can be good and healthy, but if the focus shifts to a sardonic study of the commentators' political orientation, (and I get that the two are intertwined to an extent) I'm not interested, and if it's used to smartly put each others' ideas down about a TV show, not OK with that. Twin Peaks is such an endless rabbit hole and, as with debates of pretty much any kind, there is no unifying thing to bring all commentators together outside of care for the story and characters and feeling. The political and social connotations and context of Twin Peaks can be interesting, and sometimes crucial to our understanding of it, but I like to keep that in my periphery. It's so endless in debate, and to me, in a totally daunting and tiring way. I'm more interested in Dougie's feelings, or Shelly's frustration at the things in her life, or complexity in simple feeling for example. Now, I could be taken apart for narrowing my critical thinking field of vision, but politics wears me out, and that's my view, that's my contribution.

[ScarFace32]

If I recall correctly the only sex performed out of wedlock that we have seen in The Return, has directly resulted in the gory and brutal deaths of the participants by supernatural agents. One could prematurely conclude that the story is saying that sex outside of marriage will be punished. I think it would be wrong to suggest this is necessarily an expression of the morality of the shows creators, but It is, I believe, an accurate expression of the morality of the story so far, and perfectly conforms to certain genre conventions. It remains to be seen if these conventions are later subverted or if the theme is continued or developed.

That's not the point.

[whoisalhedges]

Much of this thread has focused on violence, and understandably so. I don't recall any mention of whom I think of as the most stereotypical, misogynist female character - which I think is precisely her purpose, and why I think this is going to work: Doris Truman.

What a shrew, amirite!? Well, that's just the thoughts of Twin Peaks' resident douchecanoe, Chad Broxford. It's an opening into Doris & Frank's backstory, gives us an in to learn about their son's suicide. We get to learn that fact, along with further evidence that Chad is the Worst Person in the World (Richard is out of control, Chad *chooses* to act like that) without needing to be sat down and told it, all because Doris is Mrs. Bickerson. There's a narrative function to her "henpecking wife" behavior; as there most likely (IMO) will be for the fact that roughly 9/10 corpses on this show so far have been women.