Gender in Twin Peaks: The Return

[ThumbsUp]

diatribe to the gangsters about being sensitive to others' pain and suffering (just now realising - garmonbozia reference?).

Garmonbozia is pain and sorrow. You're thinking of the off brand.

I had a coupon for it.

[Novalis]

diatribe to the gangsters about being sensitive to others' pain and suffering (just now realising - garmonbozia reference?).

Garmonbozia is pain and sorrow. You're thinking of the off brand.

Hard times? Is your doppelganger on a tight budget? Try Morgan Abizo's Creamed Corn!*

*improved recipe

[Cipher]

diatribe to the gangsters about being sensitive to others' pain and suffering (just now realising - garmonbozia reference?).

Garmonbozia is pain and sorrow. You're thinking of the off brand.

Hard times? Is your doppelganger on a tight budget? Try Morgan Abizo's Creamed Corn!*

*improved recipe

Thanks, but I only get my creamed corn at the original Judy's Diner.

It's organic.

[KnewItsPa]

I found Janey-E was very superficial, materialistic, (ab)using men for her own gain. She didn't really seem to care about Dougie, or Sonny-Jim, just wanted a new car and something to sex with.

Well, to be fair, she was worried about the car because her prostitute-loving husband got it blown up

Nah she was driving around complaining about the shitty car. She was signalling spoiled housewife / golddigger tropes all over the place.

Her goodbye to Coop at the end didn't seem too superficial to me.

She was saying goodbye to her magic money tree. That's why she was genuinely sad.

her anger over him missing SJ's birthday

Entirely consistent with spoled houswife trope. Why didn't HE look after the kid, so SHE didn't have to.

her speechless gratitude toward the Mitchums when they got him a jungle gym

It's all about the money, money, money. Janey-E gratitude towards recieving material goods and social status symboles. Same as the Car.

sticking by Dougie's side through thick and thin at the police station, driving him to work, etc.,

Not realising that Dougie was so handicapped he couldn't even drive himself - but could go to work to earn money to buy her things.

a diatribe to the gangsters about being sensitive to others' pain and suffering

Her own pain and suffering at having to hand over the money, yes.

[KnewItsPa]

Norma is positive. She takes control of her business and asserts her contract rights. She loved Ed but isn't defined by him.

Yeah. I'd go with that. She is also highly conservative in choosing 'family' over 'business'.

She didn't *really* choose family over business. Her rejection of the franchise parallels Lynch's view of art. I.E. he insists on final cut and doesn't want anyone else to direct Twin Peaks anymore. So she's Lynch's version of an ideal businessperson as well as a family person.

I also see Nadine as fairly positive- much more positive than in the original show. You could say it's a bit late for her to turn herself around- but she ended up on a positive note. And she did accomplish her dream of running a drape running business.

Nadine is shown as a crackpot, suckered in by Jacobies shit shovelling youtube videos. Sure, she does the right thing by Ed, but that's entirely secondary to being sat in the dark and off to la-la land of silent drape runners and golden shovels for 99.9% of her screentime.

Normas speech rejecting the business world was all about these people are my family. It might well reflect your idea of Lynches business practice, but the fact is that putting family before business comes from a womans mouth, contextualising Norma within a conservative feminine role. Hardly Catherine Martel material.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Normas speech rejecting the business world was all about these people are my family. It might well reflect your idea of Lynches business practice, but the fact is that putting family before business comes from a womans mouth, contextualising Norma within a conservative feminine role. Hardly Catherine Martel material.

Maybe, though she's still keeping her local Double R and presumably still going to manage the business side of it. I don't think it's necessary for a female character to reject all the more "conservative" or "feminine" norms to be seen as empowered - she just shouldn't be defined solely by those norms or portrayed as unfulfilled without them. Norma has been on her own for a long time and doesn't *need* Ed to be happy or successful. I definitely prefer her to Janey-E, who started out promising but then seemed to turn on a dime once Dougie had a few stereotypically "alpha male" moments.

And I do think we ought to give Tammy *some* credit for her role as a competent female character. While she's partly there as a recipient of exposition from Gordon and Albert, she does a decent job at interrogating Hastings and manages to figure out tulpas and the significance of the phrase "blue rose" pretty quickly. Obviously, a lot has been said about Bell's odd performance and the infamous walking-away scene with Albert's lewd comment. But it seemed to me that we were meant to laugh *at* Gordon and Albert for their occasional chauvinism rather than with them. As for Bell's odd performance, why can't Tammy just be kind of an odd person? Obviously the FBI of the Twin Peaks universe doesn't require all its agents to be buttoned-down "just the facts ma'am" types or else Cooper, Cole, Denise Bryson, and Sam Stanley probably wouldn't have been in their employ either.

I'm not saying that I'm satisfied overall with the portrayal of the female characters in TPTR - there was a little too much victimization, and even the better points of Norma's and Tammy's portrayals didn't compensate for a general trend towards lack of meaningful agency for the women. (Though most of the men didn't have too much agency either, since a lot of the key plot developments were driven by some sort of supernatural intervention.)

[sylvia_north]

Heather Graham is getting a film made about sexism in the movie industry

http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/news/ ... od-sexism/

Annie, sorry you fell through the cracks.

[KnewItsPa]

male supernatural intervention or female?

Supernatural males.

• Mike seems wholly transformed into an unambiguous good-guy, able to create tulpas.
• TEOTA also appears to be Dougies guardian spirit
• Lodge Leland is passive,
• The Giant/Fireman (whatever) positive, helpful, wise.
• Philip Jeffries, helpful, surly and withdrawn.
• BOB, evil, passive.

Supernatural females.

• The Experiment/Mother/Judy cosmically monstrous,
• Sarah Palmer transformed into a monsterous demonic mad woman, entirely inhabiting the hag/witch archetype.
• Lodge Laura seemed reasonably neutral, but transformed into a glowing orb from space, alien, inhuman.
• Senorita Dido in Episode 8 neutral.
• Naido, is a youthful female victim.

Even just a cursory glance, there seems to be a serious gender divide, with the females being portrayed as negative influences and males taking a positive role. There are only two real exceptions:

1. Lauras positivity - although complete lack of action or self-determination, also the golden globe imag of her is her youth, the older version of Laura is confined to telling tales to Dale in the lodge, else as Carrie is a murderer.
2. BOBs negativity - although in TP:TR he is entirely subsumed into Mr.C's evilness, and turned into a comedy super villain.

[Manwith]

male supernatural intervention or female?

Supernatural males.

• Mike seems wholly transformed into an unambiguous good-guy, able to create tulpas.
• TEOTA also appears to be Dougies guardian spirit
• Lodge Leland is passive,
• The Giant/Fireman (whatever) positive, helpful, wise.
• Philip Jeffries, helpful, surly and withdrawn.
• BOB, evil, passive.

Supernatural females.

• The Experiment/Mother/Judy cosmically monstrous,
• Sarah Palmer transformed into a monsterous demonic mad woman, entirely inhabiting the hag/witch archetype.
• Lodge Laura seemed reasonably neutral, but transformed into a glowing orb from space, alien, inhuman.
• Senorita Dido in Episode 8 neutral.
• Naido, is a youthful female victim.

Even just a cursory glance, there seems to be a serious gender divide, with the females being portrayed as negative influences and males taking a positive role. There are only two real exceptions:

1. Lauras positivity - although complete lack of action or self-determination, also the golden globe imag of her is her youth, the older version of Laura is confined to telling tales to Dale in the lodge, else as Carrie is a murderer.
2. BOBs negativity - although in TP:TR he is entirely subsumed into Mr.C's evilness, and turned into a comedy super villain.

I think Sarah and the experiment are the same character, no need to count them twice though I realize it's up to interpretation.. You forgot American Girl on the good supernatural side. She saves Cooper from the experiment.

[ScarFace32]

Manwith wrote:
her anger over him missing SJ's birthday

Entirely consistent with spoled houswife trope. Why didn't HE look after the kid, so SHE didn't have to.

Lol what?

[asmahan]

male supernatural intervention or female?

Supernatural males.

• Mike seems wholly transformed into an unambiguous good-guy, able to create tulpas.
• TEOTA also appears to be Dougies guardian spirit
• Lodge Leland is passive,
• The Giant/Fireman (whatever) positive, helpful, wise.
• Philip Jeffries, helpful, surly and withdrawn.
• BOB, evil, passive.

Supernatural females.

• The Experiment/Mother/Judy cosmically monstrous,
• Sarah Palmer transformed into a monsterous demonic mad woman, entirely inhabiting the hag/witch archetype.
• Lodge Laura seemed reasonably neutral, but transformed into a glowing orb from space, alien, inhuman.
• Senorita Dido in Episode 8 neutral.
• Naido, is a youthful female victim.

Even just a cursory glance, there seems to be a serious gender divide, with the females being portrayed as negative influences and males taking a positive role. There are only two real exceptions:

1. Lauras positivity - although complete lack of action or self-determination, also the golden globe imag of her is her youth, the older version of Laura is confined to telling tales to Dale in the lodge, else as Carrie is a murderer.
2. BOBs negativity - although in TP:TR he is entirely subsumed into Mr.C's evilness, and turned into a comedy super villain.

What about the spooky jumping man or head-crushing, doppelcoop-reviving woodsmen? Definitely some negativity there.

[Cipher]

Heather Graham is getting a film made about sexism in the movie industry

http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/news/ ... od-sexism/

Annie, sorry you fell through the cracks.

Ah, well. That's good.

Also, is your avatar from Belladonna of Sadness? How appropriate for this thread. (Though I actually wound up with some weird misgivings on how that treated a few elements that I think might have come down to a male creative team in 1970s Japan; its heart is in the right place.) Unless I've misidentified the image.

[sylvia_north]

Heather Graham is getting a film made about sexism in the movie industry

http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/news/ ... od-sexism/

Annie, sorry you fell through the cracks.

Ah, well. That's good.

Also, is your avatar from Belladonna of Sadness? How appropriate for this thread. (Though I actually wound up with some weird misgivings on how that treated a few elements that I think might have come down to a male creative team in 1970s Japan; its heart is in the right place.) Unless I've misidentified the image.

Nope you've got it!

[sylvia_north]

Stolen from the internet, thought it/the commentary would find a good home here. ps Patton Oswalt's Eraserhead intro, he's clued in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_68o4wkhlYo :

”The woman’s got to show up, [like], “We all done, sweetie? Okay. Out you go, I gotta make a story out of this mess.”

#me @ quentin tarantino fans Mad Max: Fury Road and practically every film JJ Abrams has ever made including The Force Awakens. All Martin Scorsese films

I’m pretty sure every Woody Allen film (he honestly can’t direct his films are saved by the grace of his editors so add that to the pile of reasons to hate him)
Joss Whedon’s editor is Lisa Lassek. Dede Allen did Bonnie and Clyde, The Breakfast Club, Dog Day Afternoon, The Adams Family…

Women rule post production. Which means we have final say on the movie Literally the reason why the first Star Wars trilogy was largely phenomenal, but the prequels a hot mess. George Lucas divorced his editor.

The number of high profile directors who work with the same unsung female editor on all their projects is actually kind of astounding.

[Deep Thought]

Andrei Rublev
Edited by:
Tatyana Egorycheva
Lyudmila Feiginova
Olga Shevkunenko

Trifecta!