Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

Post by AXX°N N. »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:Another thing I just thought of: Why does Mr. C even think the real Briggs/Ruth coordinates lead to Judy? Per Hastings, Garland wanted these coordinates to get to a safe place to hide, presumably FROM Judy! It seems like that would be the last place to find her.
Are you sure Mr. C stated that as his intent anywhere? He's rather taciturn, I thought them leading to Judy was something Jeffries claimed? It was my impression Mr. C all along was investigating what few leads he had, and was trying to make sense of them for himself.
Last edited by AXX°N N. on Wed Jun 03, 2020 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Recipe not my own. In a coffee cup. 3 TBS flour, 2 TBS sugar, 1.5 TBS cocoa powder, .25 TSP baking powder, pinch of salt. 3 TBS milk, 1.5 TBS vegetable oil, 1 TBS peanut butter. Add and mix each set. Microwave 1 minute 10 seconds. The cup will be hot.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:The use of the “Laura Palmer Theme” over that sequence is so beautifully timed out with the beats of the scene. It hits the crescendo just as Laura says, “I’ve seen you in a dream,” but becomes ominous again as Laura takes Cooper’s hand...then starts getting hopeful again as the “wrapped in plastic” Laura is erased from the shore, and again reaches climax when Cooper says they’re going home. That whole sequence is also such a wonderful marriage of FWWM, TR, and Pilot footage. So many different styles that somehow add up to a beautiful whole, the TP experiment in a nutshell.
I think this is my absolute favorite scene. It just kills me. Both characters are crashing into each other and fulfilling their symbolic purpose for the other. What you said earlier about Cooper being the logical conclusion of the detective trope is wonderful and I've always felt that on watching, and Laura here becomes the logical conclusion of the damsel in distress, born from a trope, a dream the knight makes up, the knight a dream she needs to function properly. Or perhaps actually she's a subversion of that trope, because she's destined to go without saving. The way she says "In a dream" is so exact and so profound, and for the first time viewer, there's so much apprehensive hope, and for the second time viewer, you know what's coming.
Mr. Reindeer wrote:Cooper also serves as a stand-in for Lynch, unable to let go of Laura, constantly circling back and revisiting the events that immediately precede the series proper.
I was reading the other day about the trope of the elevated woman, this chivalrous tendency in certain medium-bending artists to deify an almost platonic concept of woman as a sort of sun in their work of which everything else orbits. The classic example of this is Dante and Beatrice though there are others, and while reading, I couldn't help but think of Lynch and Laura. It's obvious to me that Lynch loves Laura dearly as a character and as a concept, or perhaps something that transcends those two categories, and in Part 8, he deifies her as literally as Dante did Beatrice. Yet the most interesting thing about this tendency of the abstract deified woman is that the meaning changes with the times, that the backdrop takes on the character of history and that the woman shoulders it as well. It got me thinking, how perfect Laura is as today's version of this trope, carrying the symbolic burden of times that are savage, for people who feel sullied, betrayed and fatherless. She seems the logical extension of the decay and rot of the suburban edifice that Lynch has been getting at all his career, deified yet only against the backdrop of faceless demons, conspiracy and nuclear explosion.
Recipe not my own. In a coffee cup. 3 TBS flour, 2 TBS sugar, 1.5 TBS cocoa powder, .25 TSP baking powder, pinch of salt. 3 TBS milk, 1.5 TBS vegetable oil, 1 TBS peanut butter. Add and mix each set. Microwave 1 minute 10 seconds. The cup will be hot.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote: Just for the hell of it, here are all the ways Al Strobel has been credited:
One-Armed Man (Pilot, E1, E2, E4)
Phillip Michael Gerard (E8, E10, E15)
No character name listed (promoted to Guest Star: E13, E14, E16)
Philip Gerard (The One Armed Man) (FWWM)
Phillip Gerard (P2, P3, P4, P6, P11, P16, P17, P18)

So which one's the official version??

Regarding that:

1) I like the whole official vs unofficial motif, it really works for me in some nebulous way. One thing it sometimes makes me think of is Lynch making distinctions between a script & its filmed version; the script is one thing, but it's not fully realised until filming, editing, etc are complete, at which point they're two different beasts (prominently seen in the disparity between ep 29's script & the finished product).
Adding onto that, as we know Lynch was largely dissatisfied with Peaks S2, so it could be a case of his version of Twin Peaks being unofficial in that it differs from the Peaks canon available to us, the viewers (which is official in the sense that when you watch Twin Peaks, you also see all the stuff that Lynch isn't a fan of). So does Gordon know the unofficial version in the sense that he 'knows' the heart & soul of Twin Peaks vs the whole version? I can only imagine (& he's said as much in interviews) that his head-canon is quite different to the complete Z to A...
Anyway, that's not necessarily my take on the whole official vs unofficial thing, just something that floats in my mind from time to time.

2) Going back to the obscure motives of the lodge entities (which -- coincidently or not -- are echoed in Al Strobel's naming ambiguities), I've always taken them as modern gods of a sort, & in much the same way as many traditions feature deities with seemingly incomprehensible motives/actions, so it is in Twin Peaks. Which has always worked well for me, since I imagine any non-human entities would likely have non-human logic behind their actions, perhaps in a way that is ultimately unable to be rationally digested by humans. I really like not knowing if any of them are 'good' or 'bad'. I mean, Bob seems pretty despicable, but maybe he just feeds on what he feeds on? As humans we generally consume life when we eat (even if we're talking vegetables), which could arguably be seen as bad by some outside being that somehow didn't have to subsist on life.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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AXX°N N. wrote: I was reading the other day about the trope of the elevated woman, this chivalrous tendency in certain medium-bending artists to deify an almost platonic concept of woman as a sort of sun in their work of which everything else orbits. The classic example of this is Dante and Beatrice though there are others, and while reading, I couldn't help but think of Lynch and Laura. It's obvious to me that Lynch loves Laura dearly as a character and as a concept, or perhaps something that transcends those two categories
This is beautiful, & something I've always felt as well. We know Lynch was fascinated or touched in some way by the tragic lives/deaths of Marilyn Monroe & Elizabeth Short / The Black Dahlia (amongst others), & I've always felt that Laura was his version of something expressed in those cases, albeit explored in a humanised, deep/profound way. There's the mystery element, for sure, but also Lynch makes Laura a 'real' person in a way that my earlier examples are often deprived of when they're written about.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

Post by AXX°N N. »

Saturn's child wrote:
AXX°N N. wrote: I was reading the other day about the trope of the elevated woman, this chivalrous tendency in certain medium-bending artists to deify an almost platonic concept of woman as a sort of sun in their work of which everything else orbits. The classic example of this is Dante and Beatrice though there are others, and while reading, I couldn't help but think of Lynch and Laura. It's obvious to me that Lynch loves Laura dearly as a character and as a concept, or perhaps something that transcends those two categories
This is beautiful, & something I've always felt as well. We know Lynch was fascinated or touched in some way by the tragic lives/deaths of Marilyn Monroe & Elizabeth Short / The Black Dahlia (amongst others), & I've always felt that Laura was his version of something expressed in those cases, albeit explored in a humanised, deep/profound way. There's the mystery element, for sure, but also Lynch makes Laura a 'real' person in a way that my earlier examples are often deprived of when they're written about.
TP having its origins in a Monroe project was mindblowing for me because I had already drawn a connection to her. When I read this beautiful letter by Pynchon about her, I instantly thought of Laura. Monroe was also sort of deified, as I've seen several authors affected by her death in a profound way; I was reading some Ballard recently and he too makes Monroe out to be a kind of loaded, central symbol for the times.

You're right that these woman have been, in many cases, robbed of their humanity in the very fact of their becoming myth. It's the nature of making a legend out of someone. I often feel the way that certain tragic figures are lionized removes much of the meaning from them, skirting or skating around certain points of discussion that seem to get buried in the fact of their being so remembered, be it certain hallmarks of MLK's policies which a teacher might be hesitant to bring up, or the actual reality of Kurt Cobain's depression and his misgivings with the very industry that still uses him as symbol and product. The last and lasting tragedy of tragic figures is that they never get to be remembered on their own terms.

In general the suffering of a Monroe is elided, in biopics for instance, which hardly ever get across what turmoil she must have felt. It makes me think of the subjective nature of memory and a lot of what Frost was getting at in his books about signals getting changed over time. TP is full of this of course, where after Laura's death the loss is filled in by everyone's memory, whoever is speaking or remembering at the moment in control of what we think Laura was. It's not until FWWM that we get to see the reality of the person, but then in S3 it's Cooper who gets to define Laura even to the point of shaping reality around his interpretation. There's even some of this when Leland dies; the wake is so quaint for what was an incestuous rapist, almost as if everyone just wants to make what they will of it; I was at a funeral recently and this effect of confabulating the deceased in a way convenient to you is not limited to fiction. I find it oddly fitting that the characters then descend into whacky subplots, as if in their minds everything about the whole affair has been put to bed as much as ABC wanted it to be; and of course FWWM has always read to me as Lynch, having seen Laura put to bed in such a way, being extremely defiant about it.

Just for some recommended reading, Monroe wrote letters while she was institutionalized and they're an amazing read; she was an intelligent yet troubled woman.
Last edited by AXX°N N. on Wed Jun 03, 2020 3:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Recipe not my own. In a coffee cup. 3 TBS flour, 2 TBS sugar, 1.5 TBS cocoa powder, .25 TSP baking powder, pinch of salt. 3 TBS milk, 1.5 TBS vegetable oil, 1 TBS peanut butter. Add and mix each set. Microwave 1 minute 10 seconds. The cup will be hot.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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Saturn's child wrote:I mean, Bob seems pretty despicable, but maybe he just feeds on what he feeds on? As humans we generally consume life when we eat (even if we're talking vegetables), which could arguably be seen as bad by some outside being that somehow didn't have to subsist on life.
I like this line of thought a lot, and in fact I feel like the series plays around with it. The fact that Garmonbozia takes the form of an industrialized good most of us are familiar with, but also just the fact that the series contrasts these entities harvesting food and that Cooper (as demonstrated in Reindeer's diet tracking) eats a damn lot of food, and that food is such a central part of the series, one of its hallmarks. There's also quite a lot of industry in general, from electricity to wood to oil, which our human characters use on the basis of lighting up their restaurants and riding their many many on-screen gas guzzlers.
Recipe not my own. In a coffee cup. 3 TBS flour, 2 TBS sugar, 1.5 TBS cocoa powder, .25 TSP baking powder, pinch of salt. 3 TBS milk, 1.5 TBS vegetable oil, 1 TBS peanut butter. Add and mix each set. Microwave 1 minute 10 seconds. The cup will be hot.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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AXX°N N. wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:Another thing I just thought of: Why does Mr. C even think the real Briggs/Ruth coordinates lead to Judy? Per Hastings, Garland wanted these coordinates to get to a safe place to hide, presumably FROM Judy! It seems like that would be the last place to find her.
Are you sure Mr. C stated that as his intent anywhere? He's rather taciturn, I thought them leading to Judy was something Jeffries claimed? It was my impression Mr. C all along was investigating what few leads he had, and was trying to make sense of them for himself.
I guess I’m mostly basing that off the Part 2 scene where he shows Darya the playing card with what I think most people assume is Judy’s symbol and says, “This is what I want.” But he also spent a ton of money building the glass box seemingly to capture Judy.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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AXX°N N. wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:The use of the “Laura Palmer Theme” over that sequence is so beautifully timed out with the beats of the scene. It hits the crescendo just as Laura says, “I’ve seen you in a dream,” but becomes ominous again as Laura takes Cooper’s hand...then starts getting hopeful again as the “wrapped in plastic” Laura is erased from the shore, and again reaches climax when Cooper says they’re going home. That whole sequence is also such a wonderful marriage of FWWM, TR, and Pilot footage. So many different styles that somehow add up to a beautiful whole, the TP experiment in a nutshell.
I think this is my absolute favorite scene. It just kills me. Both characters are crashing into each other and fulfilling their symbolic purpose for the other. What you said earlier about Cooper being the logical conclusion of the detective trope is wonderful and I've always felt that on watching, and Laura here becomes the logical conclusion of the damsel in distress, born from a trope, a dream the knight makes up, the knight a dream she needs to function properly. Or perhaps actually she's a subversion of that trope, because she's destined to go without saving. The way she says "In a dream" is so exact and so profound, and for the first time viewer, there's so much apprehensive hope, and for the second time viewer, you know what's coming.
Mr. Reindeer wrote:Cooper also serves as a stand-in for Lynch, unable to let go of Laura, constantly circling back and revisiting the events that immediately precede the series proper.
I was reading the other day about the trope of the elevated woman, this chivalrous tendency in certain medium-bending artists to deify an almost platonic concept of woman as a sort of sun in their work of which everything else orbits. The classic example of this is Dante and Beatrice though there are others, and while reading, I couldn't help but think of Lynch and Laura. It's obvious to me that Lynch loves Laura dearly as a character and as a concept, or perhaps something that transcends those two categories, and in Part 8, he deifies her as literally as Dante did Beatrice. Yet the most interesting thing about this tendency of the abstract deified woman is that the meaning changes with the times, that the backdrop takes on the character of history and that the woman shoulders it as well. It got me thinking, how perfect Laura is as today's version of this trope, carrying the symbolic burden of times that are savage, for people who feel sullied, betrayed and fatherless. She seems the logical extension of the decay and rot of the suburban edifice that Lynch has been getting at all his career, deified yet only against the backdrop of faceless demons, conspiracy and nuclear explosion.


I've been excited for Mr. Reindeer to get to this episode. Its been great reading and following along.

I think the "Laura Palmer Theme" is my favorite scene of The Return as well. It might even make episode 17 my favorite over episode 18 for me (maybe). Tho, I view The Return as a long movie rather than episodes. I also agree with the old footage being amazing. As far as what I wanted from The Return that scene provided. Its got a whole different feel to it. Lynch does that so well switching scenes and the seriousness of them. Watching it when it aired I was on the edge of my seat and so pleased. After the last two episodes ended, I came on this site and posted with everyone blown away by it lol
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:
AXX°N N. wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:Another thing I just thought of: Why does Mr. C even think the real Briggs/Ruth coordinates lead to Judy? Per Hastings, Garland wanted these coordinates to get to a safe place to hide, presumably FROM Judy! It seems like that would be the last place to find her.
Are you sure Mr. C stated that as his intent anywhere? He's rather taciturn, I thought them leading to Judy was something Jeffries claimed? It was my impression Mr. C all along was investigating what few leads he had, and was trying to make sense of them for himself.
I guess I’m mostly basing that off the Part 2 scene where he shows Darya the playing card with what I think most people assume is Judy’s symbol and says, “This is what I want.” But he also spent a ton of money building the glass box seemingly to capture Judy.
It could be that he's actually looking for the white lodge, or some other unatainable realm. That there he may be able to trace Judy or anything else he wants simply by dreaming it or thinking about it. He didn't seem surprised to see the gold pool and single sycamore, so perhaps that is exactly where he intended to go, after which he would be sent to Judy. At any rate, it feels right that he was both looking for Judy as well as the white lodge. It's always felt that way to me in Part 17. Which isn't to say that portal is the entrance to the lodge itself or that we ever see the lodge.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

TwinsPeak wrote:
AXX°N N. wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:
I think the "Laura Palmer Theme" is my favorite scene of The Return as well. It might even make episode 17 my favorite over episode 18 for me (maybe). Tho, I view The Return as a long movie rather than episodes. I also agree with the old footage being amazing. As far as what I wanted from The Return that scene provided. Its got a whole different feel to it. Lynch does that so well switching scenes and the seriousness of them. Watching it when it aired I was on the edge of my seat and so pleased. After the last two episodes ended, I came on this site and posted with everyone blown away by it lol
Beautiful thoughts on this, everyone.

However, it is interesting to think back to the night it aired, because there were just as many people who hated this moment as those who loved it. Some were angry that Lynch had essentially erased Twin Peaks from existence; others viewed it as the cheapest plot move imaginable, rewriting the central character's fate, without even considering that Part 18 proved that it was the complete opposite, and in fact barbed and lethal as well as beautiful and emotional and also bittersweet. Obviously I could never understand that negative attitude in regards to the scene. It's as wonderful and perfect as you all are saying, and creates so much mystery.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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AXX°N N. wrote:
Saturn's child wrote:I mean, Bob seems pretty despicable, but maybe he just feeds on what he feeds on? As humans we generally consume life when we eat (even if we're talking vegetables), which could arguably be seen as bad by some outside being that somehow didn't have to subsist on life.
I like this line of thought a lot, and in fact I feel like the series plays around with it. The fact that Garmonbozia takes the form of an industrialized good most of us are familiar with, but also just the fact that the series contrasts these entities harvesting food and that Cooper (as demonstrated in Reindeer's diet tracking) eats a damn lot of food, and that food is such a central part of the series, one of its hallmarks. There's also quite a lot of industry in general, from electricity to wood to oil, which our human characters use on the basis of lighting up their restaurants and riding their many many on-screen gas guzzlers.
Let us not forget the gospel of Dr. Amp, admonishing us for all the hormone-enhanced chemically-processed shit we put in our bodies (Fuck that açai berry shit from the Amazon!)
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:
I’m still on the fence about what Laura’s disappearance means and who is responsible. I get the sense from interviews that Mark’s intention was that Cooper’s “white knight” complex goes too far in trying to change the past, and he single-handedly dooms Laura to the Odessaverse, and whatever happens at the end of Part 18. I really don’t know that this Sarah scene was part of the initial L/F plan. It feels like something added by Lynch during shooting/editing, and it seemingly inserts the idea of Laura as prisoner of Judy, undermining Cooper’s culpability to some extent. The push and pull between Lynch and Frost on the original series is one of the most fascinating behind-the-scenes dynamics in show business history, IMO, and I really hope we get some insight into how TR changed from the original script someday.
I’d forgotten this (or perhaps was remembering it subconsciously): In the behind the scenes documentary, while talking to Grace before shooting, Lynch tells her he has another idea for a scene they can shoot which she might think is rather strange. Unfortunately, Jason S. edits that bit in such a way that it’s not clear which of the three scenes Lynch is talking about. It’s presumably not the nature-film scene since Grace references that as Lynch first approaches her. I strongly suspect the “stabbing the photo” scene was something that came to him that night in the Palmer house.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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In Lynch’s interview with Cahiers he specifically mentioned the scene was improvised - someone has provided a translation here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comm ... ame=iossmf
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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enumbs wrote:In Lynch’s interview with Cahiers he specifically mentioned the scene was improvised - someone has provided a translation here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comm ... ame=iossmf
Thanks! I need to reread that whole interview. Again, I must have subconsciously remembered this. Lynch’s working process is so fascinating, particularly on a project of this expansive scale.
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Re: Part 17 - The past dictates the future (SPOILERS)

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Roadhouse in S3 has Chromatics playing "Shadow" as the opening act. And here we have Julee Cruise as the closing act with Chromatics playing in the shadows, an interesting parallel. As Lynch himself said it, who cares how long a scene takes, ergo we should have had 6 minutes of Julee there.

Second half of part 17 was mesmerising, and it does raise some interesting possibilities for Season 4 should it ever materialise. And I am not going to talk about it so I don't jinx it. ;-)

Diane's face appearing in the lodge: half lit, half dark, alluding to her lunar nature. The software running on those FBI monitors, not much, largely just some random source code, however, those white squares look weird, there is some resemblance to those symbolic messages Todd was getting in Vegas (red dot, black square, etc.). I don't trust Gordon Cole one bit, and that "Jow-Day" conversation is a red herring.

I will need to rewatch this part for at least one thing in particular: there is a one brief shot of some machinery in a room at Fireman's place/palace. That looks interesting.
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