Orbs, and how everything revolves around them
Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2022 1:37 pm
Following a recent rewatch, I had some thoughts that ended up resembling a grand unified theory centering on the orbs, an aspect that was (and, seemingly by design, still sorta is) extremely nebulous to me.
There's an interesting parallel going on between the nuclear blast and the discomforting notion of Laura's abuse being created as a cosmic counterbalancing act.* That being that the rationale for the bombing of Japan was an affront to humanity in order to stave off greater affronts to humanity. But I can't help but feel that the golden orb scene can't be explained through such high-concept means, even though it's quite clearly the definition of high-concept. And by that I mean, I'm almost certain the scene makes more sense on a personal level. Laura is treated with a cosmic importance that places her in the literal front and center of the show's physical and spiritual universe, but this wasn't always the case--she began as a hook with relatively little regard for her humanity, and was even a potential red herring--I'm always shocked to read quotes from back early in development that refer to her as a narrative excuse, and that the plot would ideally move on from her to other mysteries--not at all how it turned out. Lynch going on his own to direct FWWM because of his pull to Laura was essentially the same kind of christening act as the Fireman's, the film's climax even framed in the religious context of a kind of crucifixion, or baptism by fire, cementing her role as so essential to the narrative that it's hard to even separate the two at this point.
* I'm aware of the alternative theory that, given that so much of the Red Room is achronological, this is actually the creation of Carrie--but let's for the sake of argument take it as the creation of Laura's abuse.
But I don't think the orbs are quite so literal or rational as anything that I said above. In fact, I think it might be that they represent a contrast between irrationality and rationality, or chaos and order. The BOB orb comes into being in the jetstream of eggs Judy regurgitates, and it may well be pure cancer-like malfunction. There's no deliberate crafting, he's just there, idiosyncratic alongside the endless stream of otherwise cut and paste eggs.* On the contrary, the Fireman creates only Laura, and only creates her as a direct response to BOB's random appearance. Reaction, thought and intent, as opposed to just being there. And if there is some kind of conscious force of equilibrium in the TP universe, which has been more or less confirmed since S2 began, and not just purely nihilistic chaos, Laura's existence was already implicitly a significant event in that grand design formula. Part of why FWWM was (and still is) so powerful is the surprising idea that despite everything we heard from others on the outside of Laura's experience, her POV wasn't purely hell but was actually a mechanism for her to find some kind of autonomy and salvation. Is that possible without the contrivance of a supreme deity? Maybe, but Laura herself and any character, really, is a contrivance born from a creator--whatever chances there are for salvation are pre-ordained and granted through bargaining or for the sake of balance (eg, in Christianity, the terms were always set in stone until the introduction of Jesus and the different stipulations that brought.) Even in the secular world, the freedoms granted us are set by the limits of our consciousness and flesh. This is all to say that I find it hard to understand arguments that her face floating to the top of a golden orb somehow diminishes her character, because the seemingly arbitrary or contrived exterior controls and limits two god-beings introduce are more or less already there in any fictive or real person's autonomy. Instead of communicating the new information of her being a created being of mythological import, these scenes are furthering the narrative in that they establish a contrast between impulsive disorder and willful order.
* I'm aware of theories that, dovetailing with the out-of-time nature of the Lodge and surroundings, his emergence here is actually him being reformed from after his shattered parts disappear through the Sheriff's station ceiling--in other words, his loop ends there but begins here, and he himself is a universal constant, unchanging through the duration of his loop, a core in the fabric of the universe.
It's noteworthy to me that S3 retains a distance from FWWM, which still feels whenever you watch it like you're seeing privileged information, or being transported directly into Laura's shoe, as if to dispel assumptions of what it was supposed to look like or mean--Cooper in S3, given his actions, seems unaware of the importance of Laura's death in terms of her finding peace. That being the case, I think the function of the golden orb scene is also to support a reading of the trajectory of Cooper's arc, and weave together disparate themes. If FWWM is Laura's vivid personal experience, the creation of the orb is a similarly privileged narrative space where her abuse is conflated with absolute justification.
Cooper's POV, however, runs in direct contrast to this idea--he tries to undo prevailing notions of pain, even pain that was needed as crossroads to something else. He's more or less trying to undo the fabric of reality, and is seemingly incapable of letting the natural process and progress of time take on a greater significance than his desire. It feels significant to me that at the point where Cooper's control completely flatlines, it's almost like the narrative asserts itself over him and his autonomy, the fade to black not just a mere segue to the legally obligated credits, but a corrective act of consequence. The scroll of names is forceful, freeze-framing him in uncertainty--his status as 'good' having been questioned and destabilized as being only ostensible, now stuck as a symbol without volition, the good Detective who finds himself arrested by what the symbol of Victim might be whispering in request or revelation, and it's impossible (now and forever) to uncover anything to put voice to her words. She's both empty and infinite again. Even though the TP narrative tried to shake Laura off and move along, splitting off into wild divergences as it always has, the last beat of the series is a return to the feeling of her pain, and re-centralizes it as something that can't be repressed or undone. Instead, it treats it as something not to be tampered with, to the extant that it can end the narrative as if it's a finger to the TV stream's light-switch.
The only way to have continued the narrative was to find some kind of deus ex machina to reverse the pain, ala what Cooper wanted to do and was about to do before Laura was pulled back through the windblown Douglas Firs--either that, or abandon Laura completely and remain in a series of divergences where the name Laura is never spoken of again, a kind of moving on and return to normal life he could only relegate to a carefree tulpa of himself.
In other words, I subscribe to the notion that S3 is about itself, but that's been true of TP for me since the Pilot. These characters have always been responding to a contrivance, defined by a screenwriting trope, animated by their own self-aware scripted nature. And Laura as an omnipresence was always something more present by being absent (ie, more organic by being manufactured), always both an excuse and what tied the entirety of the show's fabric together. The golden orb's placement at the center of the centermost Part, not to mention its literal resemblance to the Eye of the Duck, speaks for itself.
There's an interesting parallel going on between the nuclear blast and the discomforting notion of Laura's abuse being created as a cosmic counterbalancing act.* That being that the rationale for the bombing of Japan was an affront to humanity in order to stave off greater affronts to humanity. But I can't help but feel that the golden orb scene can't be explained through such high-concept means, even though it's quite clearly the definition of high-concept. And by that I mean, I'm almost certain the scene makes more sense on a personal level. Laura is treated with a cosmic importance that places her in the literal front and center of the show's physical and spiritual universe, but this wasn't always the case--she began as a hook with relatively little regard for her humanity, and was even a potential red herring--I'm always shocked to read quotes from back early in development that refer to her as a narrative excuse, and that the plot would ideally move on from her to other mysteries--not at all how it turned out. Lynch going on his own to direct FWWM because of his pull to Laura was essentially the same kind of christening act as the Fireman's, the film's climax even framed in the religious context of a kind of crucifixion, or baptism by fire, cementing her role as so essential to the narrative that it's hard to even separate the two at this point.
* I'm aware of the alternative theory that, given that so much of the Red Room is achronological, this is actually the creation of Carrie--but let's for the sake of argument take it as the creation of Laura's abuse.
But I don't think the orbs are quite so literal or rational as anything that I said above. In fact, I think it might be that they represent a contrast between irrationality and rationality, or chaos and order. The BOB orb comes into being in the jetstream of eggs Judy regurgitates, and it may well be pure cancer-like malfunction. There's no deliberate crafting, he's just there, idiosyncratic alongside the endless stream of otherwise cut and paste eggs.* On the contrary, the Fireman creates only Laura, and only creates her as a direct response to BOB's random appearance. Reaction, thought and intent, as opposed to just being there. And if there is some kind of conscious force of equilibrium in the TP universe, which has been more or less confirmed since S2 began, and not just purely nihilistic chaos, Laura's existence was already implicitly a significant event in that grand design formula. Part of why FWWM was (and still is) so powerful is the surprising idea that despite everything we heard from others on the outside of Laura's experience, her POV wasn't purely hell but was actually a mechanism for her to find some kind of autonomy and salvation. Is that possible without the contrivance of a supreme deity? Maybe, but Laura herself and any character, really, is a contrivance born from a creator--whatever chances there are for salvation are pre-ordained and granted through bargaining or for the sake of balance (eg, in Christianity, the terms were always set in stone until the introduction of Jesus and the different stipulations that brought.) Even in the secular world, the freedoms granted us are set by the limits of our consciousness and flesh. This is all to say that I find it hard to understand arguments that her face floating to the top of a golden orb somehow diminishes her character, because the seemingly arbitrary or contrived exterior controls and limits two god-beings introduce are more or less already there in any fictive or real person's autonomy. Instead of communicating the new information of her being a created being of mythological import, these scenes are furthering the narrative in that they establish a contrast between impulsive disorder and willful order.
* I'm aware of theories that, dovetailing with the out-of-time nature of the Lodge and surroundings, his emergence here is actually him being reformed from after his shattered parts disappear through the Sheriff's station ceiling--in other words, his loop ends there but begins here, and he himself is a universal constant, unchanging through the duration of his loop, a core in the fabric of the universe.
It's noteworthy to me that S3 retains a distance from FWWM, which still feels whenever you watch it like you're seeing privileged information, or being transported directly into Laura's shoe, as if to dispel assumptions of what it was supposed to look like or mean--Cooper in S3, given his actions, seems unaware of the importance of Laura's death in terms of her finding peace. That being the case, I think the function of the golden orb scene is also to support a reading of the trajectory of Cooper's arc, and weave together disparate themes. If FWWM is Laura's vivid personal experience, the creation of the orb is a similarly privileged narrative space where her abuse is conflated with absolute justification.
Cooper's POV, however, runs in direct contrast to this idea--he tries to undo prevailing notions of pain, even pain that was needed as crossroads to something else. He's more or less trying to undo the fabric of reality, and is seemingly incapable of letting the natural process and progress of time take on a greater significance than his desire. It feels significant to me that at the point where Cooper's control completely flatlines, it's almost like the narrative asserts itself over him and his autonomy, the fade to black not just a mere segue to the legally obligated credits, but a corrective act of consequence. The scroll of names is forceful, freeze-framing him in uncertainty--his status as 'good' having been questioned and destabilized as being only ostensible, now stuck as a symbol without volition, the good Detective who finds himself arrested by what the symbol of Victim might be whispering in request or revelation, and it's impossible (now and forever) to uncover anything to put voice to her words. She's both empty and infinite again. Even though the TP narrative tried to shake Laura off and move along, splitting off into wild divergences as it always has, the last beat of the series is a return to the feeling of her pain, and re-centralizes it as something that can't be repressed or undone. Instead, it treats it as something not to be tampered with, to the extant that it can end the narrative as if it's a finger to the TV stream's light-switch.
The only way to have continued the narrative was to find some kind of deus ex machina to reverse the pain, ala what Cooper wanted to do and was about to do before Laura was pulled back through the windblown Douglas Firs--either that, or abandon Laura completely and remain in a series of divergences where the name Laura is never spoken of again, a kind of moving on and return to normal life he could only relegate to a carefree tulpa of himself.
In other words, I subscribe to the notion that S3 is about itself, but that's been true of TP for me since the Pilot. These characters have always been responding to a contrivance, defined by a screenwriting trope, animated by their own self-aware scripted nature. And Laura as an omnipresence was always something more present by being absent (ie, more organic by being manufactured), always both an excuse and what tied the entirety of the show's fabric together. The golden orb's placement at the center of the centermost Part, not to mention its literal resemblance to the Eye of the Duck, speaks for itself.