Can’t remember exactly which episode it is, but remember where the wife is screaming about Randy wanting to get rid of her new clothesline?  He wants to get rid of it because what if he wanted to come out and take a shit and he cut his foot on it?  It’s the same scene where she gets beaten to a pulp but out pops the head of a beautiful woman with her nails all done perfectly who points to her face and says “Say What?”

My dryer hasn’t been working for years (and has been especially stubborn tonight).  It would be such an easy solution to put the wet clothes on a clothesline in my back yard and would make sense environmentally, too.  But it’s strictly forbidden according to our homeowner’s association regulations.  No clotheslines allowed.    The one time I put our sleeping bags from a camping trip out to hang, we received a letter in the mail so we’ve hung them in the garage after that.

Could that have been partially what Lynch was going after?  I hadn’t connected it before -but why connect the removal of a clotheslines with his wife turning (temporarily) into a beautiful woman?   It’s all about appearance.   Not about what is practical or useful.  Randy wants to be able to take a shit in his backyard without worrying about cutting his foot on the clotheslines.   Your existence - be it in the form of clothes or a car out of place - should not interfere with mine.  I should be able to take a shit in the backyard without having to worry about bumping in to your existence.

After working through David Durnell’s article on Dumbland last night, I went to bed wondering if maybe Lynch did intend Dumbland to be a pessimistic film. It does seem pretty pessimistic. The thing is, mosty of his films are very dark, but somehow, I always come away with a stronger sense of compassion from them than pessimism. Dumbland was more crude than what I’m used to from Lynch and I’m not exactly a fan of that sort of “humor”. But I woke up with a very strong sense that it was compassionate.

I looked up pessimism and there are two definitions: 1. an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome; 2. the doctrine that reality is essentially evil b: the doctrine that evil overbalances happiness in life.

Lynch definitely emphasizes adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities. But I don’t think he personally expects the worst possible outcome and I have no sense whatsoever that he thinks reality is essentially evil or that evil overbalances happiness.

I think the reason Lynch presents so much “evil” in his films is because we, as a culture, are addicted to happiness. Also, we’re still a society based on puritanical values which taught that humanity is evil/fallen and that only the “chosen” are “good”. America thinks of itself as “chosen”. We are good and we intend to spread our goodness to others. Problem is, we tend to deny what is “bad” in order to keep the focus on our “goodness”.

This has layers and layers and layers that I think Lynch plays out beautifully in his films. The abusive patterns that are perpetuated by the denial of the abuse at the family level make their way into the societal level, too. We were raised with an extremely detrimental metaphysical model that told us we are bad and God is good. In order to be good, we have to do as we are told - “accept Jesus as our Lord and savior” (or whatever.) What this model has done is obscured the fact that we are both “good” and “bad” - every single one of us. To deny either in favor of the other is going to cause problems. It seems to me what Lynch is showing in most of his films is that the overbalance of so-called “goodness” is what is causing so much evil. The denial of evil/pain in order to focus on good/happy creates an imbalance that needs to be corrected.

What we deny is what gets perpetuated. Instead of recognizing it for what it is, we glorify “acceptable” or entertaining forms of violence, and become numb to the horrors that are happening around us. If we were to see evil for what it is, we’d do more to bring it to an end. But we don’t want to see it - especially in ourselves. So what Lynch does is shove the evil in our face, hoping we’ll see ourselves reflected in it. He wants us to wake up - not so that we’ll think of ourselves as evil, but so that we’ll quit unconsciously perpetuating it. I don’t think he’s trying to say it’s hopeless. But I do think he wants us to see reality without all the filters.

It isn’t that humanity is bad, it’s confused. We confuse perception with reality. We can’t change reality, but we can change our perceptions about it if we are willing to quit numbing ourselves with our “happy” distractions. Perhaps it isn’t optimism, but it isn’t pessimism, either. If we see pessimism in Lynch’s art, it’s probably because we are pessimistic ourselves. If we see hopelessness in his films, it is likely because we have a strong sense of hopelessness ourselves. If his films make us angry, then perhaps we are a bit like Randy and don’t realize it. His films are meant to evoke a response - not just the typical “feel good” response of the movie industry. He wants to pull up all of those repressed emotions we don’t like dealing with to make us deal with them. Until we are willing to do that, we will unconsciously perpetuate them.

I don’t think that’s pessimism; I think that’s compassion. We’re all in this together, after all and it is we who create our reality. Why not create consciously? We have to be willing to look at all aspects of ourselves in order to do that - not just the ones that make us “feel good” or allow us to pretend our existence doesn’t affect others and that the existence of others shouldn’t affect us. (Sartre said, existence is about “being in the way” - our existence is contingent upon others, not separate from others.)

So a few thoughts while I’m at it…

In Episode 1, Randy is looking at “that wooden shed over there” and the neighbor makes a point to say “it is my shed” which is obvious because it’s in his backyard which separated from Randy’s by a fence. The neighbor tells Randy he only has one arm and flings his arm on the ground, Randy seems not to know what to say, and a helicopter flies overhead. My immediate thought was Vietnam - especially with the neighbor’s arm lying on the ground. There is some emotion trying to register, but it doesn’t register so Randy gets angry instead. To distract himself from his anger, he turns to the local gossip about his neighbor - “the who is sleeping with who” conversation. To me, the disconnect is painfully sad.

In Episode 3, the doctor keeps asking Randy, “Does this hurt you?” and and Randy keeps replying that it doesn’t. What finally angers him, I think, is the realization that the doctor wants him to feel something. Randy doesn’t want to feel anything - especially pain. Randy reacts when the knife is in his brain which may signify that he doesn’t have any. But I think it also points to emotional pain. It isn’t physical pain that Randy reacts to, it’s emotional pain.

In Episode 4, just before Randy has beaten his wife to a pulp, she momentarily acquires a new and improved beautiful face. I agree with Durnell that this is about plastic surgery. Women, instead of recognizing that they are being objectified, attempt to become a more attractive object. This, of course, simply perpetuates the objectification.

Episode 8 is great. It’s very much like Meursault beginning to recognize his existence through other’s judgments of him. As I mentioned early, Sartre said in Nausea that existing is “getting in the way” of others. Randy doesn’t want anything in his way. He’s always saying things like - what if I wanted to take a shit in my backyard? He should be able to do whatever it is he wants on his little plot of land without others getting in his way. He doesn’t realize that he is as much in the way of others as they are of him. You can only fully understand your existence through others and, as Camus said, this is typically realized through their judgments of you.

But it’s a mixed thing. If you are a child and have adults telling you that you are a “shit head”, a “dumb turd” and an “ass hole”, then you are likely to do one of two things - believe it and let yourself be abused, or deny it and become abusive. I think the ants could be both his repressed thoughts about himself and the fact that he does indeed exist so “is in the way” of others.

I think Randy definitely represents American society in general - not just suburbia (although I think suburbia just does America “bigger” because we’re in more denial). We don’t like being told what we can and cannot do, even when it’s for the sake of all of humanity. Our response to having limits imposed upon us is always anger: “If I want to drive an SUV then I want to drive an SUV. Fuck you! You are full of shit anyway. Everything is OK because I say it is and I’m a part of a special “chosen” society so I know and you don’t. I want to do what I want to do and you have no right “to get in my way.” In other words - you do not exist. But when you deny the existence of others, you are, in effect, denying your own existence as well because our existence is contingent upon the existence of others.

That’s why I think Lynch is being compassionate rather than pessimistic. He’s presenting our reality to us in a way that hopefully we can accept. And hopefully, we do find that reality disturbing! (If we don’t, then we’re probably psychopathic.)

I’ve watched almost all things David Lynch. Tonight I watched Dumbland, which was, well…. dumb. David Lynch describes it as “a crude, stupid, violent, absurd series. If it is funny, it’s because we see the absurdity of it all.”

Yesterday, I was doing a Google search on Camus and Solomon and came across on article entitled Sisyphus and Suburbia by David Durnell. Guess what it’s about? David Lynch’s Dumbland which just happened to be next up on my Netflix queue and arrived today. Nice timing!

It’s extremely crude so of course my 15 year old son loves it. It seems like it’s sort of meaningless, but there is always meaning in the seemingly weird and meaningless when it comes to Lynch. Lynch’s art is both absurd and surreal and follows in the tradition of the Absurd Theater inspired by Camus’s Absurdism. Durnell says Dumbland is “a skewering of the rotted and dysfunctional nature of the American nuclear family– a family immersed in banality, and drowning in absurdity –left only to violently self-destruct.”

It’s way out of proportion, but I can definitely see the reflection of my neighborhood in Dumbland. Face it, the truth is, most families DO self-destruct in one form or other these days. Very few of my kid’s friends live with both of their parents. And of those that do, the mother very often plays the submissive, supportive role. The wife in Dumbland who seems forever in fear of what it is her husband is going to do, is not an uncommon scene. Lots of women take a back seat to their husband’s authority. I had a friend tell me that she knows it doesn’t work for everyone, but her marriage got so much better when she quit disagreeing with her husband. She lets him make all the rules and decisions and keeps her mouth shut and all is well. Another friend told me how she can barely believe that she used to read books by feminists! It’s a woman’s role to be submissive to her husband according to the Bible, after all. (The husband and the child have names in Dumbland. But not the mother. She doesn’t have an identity.) And it’s getting harder to ignore - especially with all of the suburban high school shootings. American suburbia is violent. My neighbor has actually sold guns out of his garage during neighborhood garage sale days! I don’t know where he gets them. Maybe on Ebay? Being very vocal about disciplining your children by hitting them is not at all uncommon. In fact, you are somewhat suspect if you don’t believe in corporal punishment. We were one day shocked to see a little girl from down the street on television. She was telling the interviewer how she used to be evil but she wasn’t anymore - this was thanks to being spanked in front of the entire church congregation while they prayed for her. This wasn’t presented on the news as abusive, it was presented as loving and healing.

It is increasingly absurd. Why is everyone surprised to discover that students were planning a Columbine style attack at our neighborhood high school? The high school made national news for this last year and we parents didn’t know a thing about it until it made national news. They also tried to tell us nobody had ever been killed on the campus but that wasn’t true. Just the year before a student was knifed in the parking lot and he died. This year the school made national news for pulling an article out of a student news letter about the rampant drug abuse among teens. The article ended up published in major newspapers along with the story of how the principle pulled the article from the student newsletter. (That still cracks me up.) We’ve also made national news for canceling the homecoming dance because the students refused to quit dirty dancing (gasp)!

It may look pretty from the outside because people show you what they want you to see. But look a little closer, and what you see are a bunch of people whose lives are spiraling out of control trying to pretend that they have it all together. It gets harder to cover up all the time, too.

Durnell says you cannot understand Lynch without at least a little background on the development of Dadism, of Absurdism, and a little Freud. Absurdist author Eugene Ionesco said that “People drowning in meaningless can only be grotesque.” Lynch is reflecting the crude, stupid and violent in his films - not creating it.

Summary from History given by Durnell:

Dadaists believed humans were “inherently good” and could only be corrupted through morally bankrupt society. Such a society should be radically altered for humanity to survive. The Dadaists created what they called anti-art to save humanity from the meaningless. Michel Janco writes, “We had lost confidence in our culture. Everything had to be demolished… [and] we began by shocking common sense, public opinion, educations, institutions, museums, good taste, in short, the whole prevailing order.” It was an attack on convention meant to shock people out of their complacency. Most of the artists eventually broke off from Dadaism and became Surrealists.

Then, along came Sartre and Camus with the Absurd and the Absurdist Theater was founded on this idea, led primarily by Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus. The Absurdist Theater was more focused and had a better developed message than that of the Dadaists. Like Dadaism, it presented meaninglessness and alienation. But unlike Dadaism which was meant to “bewilder and shock” to save human nature, The Absurdist Theater was meant to shock people out of their false realities by providing an outline of human nature. Human nature was presented through meaningless plots, repetitive and inconsequential dialog, and dramatic non-sequiturs to create nightmarish and surreal worlds.

Today, attempts at Surrealism and Absurdism in film are quite rare even though it is still common in art and literature. It’s difficult to make work in film, but David Lynch continually returns to the surreal and Absurd in his films. What he gets criticized for - meaninglessness, weirdness, etc. is exactly what he means to do. But it isn’t weirdness for weirdness sake. There is a point to it but you can’t get to it by deconstructing his films.

According to Durnell, In Dumbland, Randy is cut off from the rest of the world on his little suburban plot of land. He never leaves that little plot of land. Never does anything meaningful, and is stuck in repetition (including the repetition of drinking, watching television (especially violent sports - football and boxing), farting and acting violently). He both acts and causes the absurdity for no reason other than the lack of reason itself. In the first Episode, when the helicopter flies overhead, all he can do is pathetically cuss at it. The doctor in the third Episode continually asks “Does that hurt you?” and Randy implies “no”. The doctor puts a knife in the side of Randy’s head and Randy says it doesn’t hurt, but then seems to realize that there is an outsider in his home and so hits the doctor. The doctor then determines that he is absolutely normal, indicating that Randy’s (eternal) numbness is normal. The episode ends with the wife screaming - it’s not just Randy who is affected by this “normality”, it’s his family and all of society.

Randy is apparently contemplating suicide when contemplating the broken lamp in Episode 3. Durnell compares this to Myth of Sisyphus. Like Sisyphus, Randy endures endless repetition. Camus considers Sisyphus the absurd hero. But Lynch sees nothing heroic about the absurdist repetition. Not committing suicide is itself absurd because as the doctor so casually states, the endless repetition and absurdism is “completely normal”.

In Episode 4, Randy has a beer with a Cowboy and they talk about how they like to kill things. Durnell says that the violence in sports and hunting are not separate joys isolated from everyday life, but actions that reveal the true nature of man. They long for a time when they could gore freely, but they are confined to a fenced in suburban back yard. They are aware of their own boredom. Freud would say it is the repression of animal lusts in an enveloping society and this creates a double conflict: the banal meaninglessness of a mundane society and the inner urges of a man wanting to kill. (Durnell suggests that while Sisyphus was pushing the rock up the hill, he took some time to fart and dismember some poor creatures for libido expression. )

In Episode 5 a stick shows up in a man’s mouth and Sparky repeatedly tells Randy to “get the stick”. Randy gives no thought to how to get the stick and simply tries to pull it out of the man’s mouth, breaking his neck and beating him to a pulp before finally getting the stick. (And the fucker didn’t even say thank you!) This allegory could work for politics war, etc. Durnell says that one could imagine a violent Bush administration tearing up Iraq and bombing it to a pulp leaving the country war-torn and demolished and being angered that “the fucker never even said thank you!”

In Episode 6, everyone is doing their own thing, the son’s teeth start to bleed, the wife starts to gurgle blood, but Randy notices nothing but what it is he is doing until a fly buzzes. Durnell says this is self-consumed ignorance and the ability to filter out reality. They are completely oblivious to all of chaos and disorder going on around them.

In Episode 7, we meet Randy’s mother who is, of course, controlling and domineering. He has to take care of Uncle Bob who is sick and probably dying. Bob goes through a series of repetitive patterns, which includes repetitively hitting Randy. After a few hits, Randy hits Bob back is caught by his mother, and hides outside away from his mother. His mother ends up having to take Bob to the hospital because he’s bitten off his foot. As Durnell says, the doctor will probably pronounce this self-mutilation as perfectly normal. (Maybe like the repetitive bad eating habits we suburbanites are so fond of that create diabetes and the loss of limbs?)

In Episode 8, Randy is faced with ants he intends to kill with a can called labled “KILL”. But he accidentally sprays himself instead and encounters dancing ants who let him know they think he is an ass hole, a shit face and a dumb turd. It’s as though he has started to reflect on his behavior in his hallucinatory state, but instead of coming to any self-discovery, he gets angry and continues to try and kill the ants. He breaks his neck and wakes up in the hospital in a body cast to ants crawling inside his cast. He can do nothing but scream in rage.

Durnell asks, is this really all we are? “An illogical, inescapable body-cast plagued by never-ending torrents of ants?” He says that Lynch is picking up where the Absurdists left off by modifying Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus.

For instead of a hero pushing up the boulder (that is life) up the hill (that is absurdity), we have Randy. And this time, the setting for this theory is not a post-war France, but a place that makes banality and mundane repetition, as well as hidden fetishized underbellies beneath moral façade, much more apparent: suburban America. But instead of merely pushing a rock up a hill for all of time, Sisyphus has got other concerns to aggravate him –such as dancing ants who, while singing, repeatedly refer to the ever diligent and ever absurd Sisyphus as a “shit face,” an “asshole,” and a “dumb turd.” Thus, in context, Lynch has, deliberately or otherwise, functionalized a new, modified Absurdism, far more pessimistic and far more hopeless than any of his predecessors, though rather appropriate and unsurprising, in light of Lynch’s cynically dark and comically hopeless oeuvre.

I’m not sure I agree that it is more pessimistic and hopeless than his predecessors. As I’ve written before, I think Lynch does see a way which I don’t think Camus saw. The only hope Camus gave us was to resign ourselves to our fate and scorn the Gods.) I don’t think Lynch is pushing resignation because he’s far too involved in TM to do that. He’s got his own version of hope going on. I find his films to be far more compassionate than pessimistic. Perhaps, as Durnell suggested at the beginning of the essay, Lynch is merely reflecting our own pessimism back to us. I think there is good reason to do this. If we happen to catch our reflection and realize the absurdity of our situation, then perhaps we can pull ourselves out of it. Durnell said himself that Absurd has become normal. We’ve become complacent about it. Perhaps Lynch is following more along the lines of Dadaism than Absurdism? Or maybe not.

Here is the film - see what you think…

Hubby and I watched Eraserhead. Very bizarre film. I’m not even going to try and interpret it. Lynch says it is a very personal film for him and calls it his Philadelphia story. (What the Hell happened to him in Philadelphia?) He says that none of the reviews or interpretations he has seen are how he would interpret it. So what I will do is tell you how it affected me.

First, I have to admit I’m still upset about the cat attached to a wire of Henry’s foot during the deleted scene that is used for the DVD set-up. Lynch said he asked a vet for a cat because he wanted to study it’s internal parts (and I suppose make use of them) for the film. The Vet at first thought he was a nut case (which maybe he is? ) but for some reason took his number. Immediately the vet called back saying he had a cat, but Lynch had to promise that he wouldn’t use the cat in the film, or if he did, that the cat wouldn’t be recognizable. I’m sure Lynch got the cat free. He was on such slim funds that he helped patch up the roof of the local BBQ place just to be able to get free take out for the crew.

I have to ask myself, why am I fully willing to donate my entire body to science in case of an accident, but get the willies about a cat being donated to Lynch for the sake of art? Is there really a difference? On the surface, perhaps. But dig a little deeper and it becomes a little murky. Lynch wasn’t being disrespectful toward the cat’s body - just inquisitive. If I die, I’m not at all concerned about what happens to my body. So why does it bother me that Lynch used the dead body of a cat for artistic purposes? I sense a double standard here!! (Although I have to say the thought that my tar bloated body might be attached to a string at the end of someone’s foot and used for effect in a film absolutely horrifies me!)

So OK SPOILER WARNING - I guess…

The film is set in a slummy area that is apparently in the middle of an industrial area based on all of the sounds. (Lynch said he imagined that there were places like that in Philadelphia - little hovels people lived in inside of the factories that could not be gotten to by ordinary means). The affect that had on me is that there is no comfort anyway. The inside is ugly and dismal with the muted sounds machinery which lets you know the outside is equally dismal - if not worse.

The dual world theme is present like in most of his films. “Everything in heaven is alright” or something like that, is sung by a chip-munked face looking woman dressed in white living in Henry’s radiator (the other world). But there is nothing even remotely heaven-ish about the film at all. Life, if you can call it that, is totally distorted. There are twigs planted in the dirt by the bed (just a pile of dirt on the table - no pot to contain it). The baby, (but they aren’t even sure it is a baby) is some mutated lump of crying mess wrapped in swaddling clothes that they leave lying on the dresser counter. (It looks more like a reptile than a human being.) There are bizarre looking, I don’t know - fetus like sperm? that the lady in the radiator happily steps on and squishes while singing in a sort of radiant way (do people who live in radiators look radiant?) and that Henry pulls out of someone - I’m not sure who - someone who just shows up in his bed in maybe a zippered bag (a death bag?) which doesn’t surprise Henry in the least. He throws the things against the wall in disgust. But what are they? I haven’t a clue. Distorted ugly births born of a distorted, ugly world?

There are sexual overtones associated with food - which seems to be a Lynch thing. This one was especially bizarre - man-made chickens! You should see how tiny they are!! Henry is asked to carve the little teeny tiny man-made chicken with a large carving knife and fork. It’s hilariously absurd. And then the chicken starts making bizarre movements and has blood come out of it’s inner cavity which makes the mother go into some sort of epileptic fit which leads to the news that Henry is the father of what we aren’t sure is a baby. (What Lynch made that baby out of I haven’t a clue. He supposedly has never told and I am pretty sure I don’t want to know.)

Henry’s head falls off and is found by a boy who runs it to a factory. A sample of Henry’s brain is taken and it is discovered to be suitable material for erasers. The boy gets paid for bringing in Henry’s head.

So here is my feeling about it - no matter how absurd a situation, human beings will figure out how to live in it, even if it makes their brains more suitable for erasers than for being human. Lynch seems to forever be screaming at us - WAKE UP!!! Henry’s not a bad guy. But nothing makes sense in a world where people don’t act, they only react to the bizarre situations they find themselves in.

Because I’ve been into Camus lately - I just have to go here:

Camus inspired the Theater of the Absurd based on Absurdism. The Theater of the Absurd subverted logic in an attempt to mimic “real life” which was seen as absurd. Because it’s absurd, nothing makes sense at the logical level - trying to figure it out logically will only give you a headache. The purpose of Absurd Art is to shock you out of your faulty sense of reality. I think this is what Lynch is doing and why his films “don’t make sense”. But unlike Camus, Lynch doesn’t think there is anything heroic about absurd repetition. Lynch flips Camus’s understanding on it’s head. What is absurd is that Sisyphus does NOT commit suicide because repetition is not absurd, it’s absolutely normal.

We think we think, but we don’t think. We react. The more absurd the situation becomes, the more absurd our reaction becomes. And the more absurd our reaction becomes, the more absurd our perceived reality becomes. Until what? We destroy ourselves and most of the planet?

How do we quit reacting and gain the awareness necessary for conscious action?

David Lynch, of course, says the answer is Transcendental Meditation. Don’t think I could swing the $25,000 or whatever it is for TM training, but I do think Meditation, in whatever form, is extremely important. Lynch says he started TM while working on Eraserhead (wonder how he afforded it when he could barely afford to finish Eraserhead?). I found this video really interesting. Lynch explains why TM works, why he makes dark films, and his ideas on the subconscious:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzuTXnY8ShY&hl=en&fs=1]

This has been making the rounds as an iPhone Commercial or something. I originally saw it on the Special Features of my copy of Inland Empire minus the iPhone logo, of course. I can only imagine how frustrating it is to be an artistic film director with this whole new wave of people who watch movies on their cell phones. (Beware, Lynch says the F-word).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0&hl=en&fs=1]

Fire Walk With Me was a movie made after Twin Peaks which was meant to serve as a prologue and epilogue to the series. It got horrible reviews - was even booed at the Cannes Film Festival. Many of the more popular Twin Peaks actors chose not to appear in it because they had felt abandoned by Mark Frost and David Lynch who worked on other projects during the second season of the television series and were not there to guide the show. This also made them resentful toward Lynch that he intended to make a movie based upon it after it was dropped from the networks . I think that is completely understandable. I also think it is understandable that Lynch would want to continue to explore the Twin Peaks world and it’s certainly easier to see what he was trying to do with Twin Peaks through the movie than it was in much of the series. Apparently his relationship with Mark Frost had also been strained during the second season of Twin Peaks so Lynch wrote Fire Walk With Me without him.

I have mixed feelings about it. I think over all I liked it although I can understand those who felt that it didn’t offer a conclusion. It’s extremely dark which is uncomfortable. I certainly will not allow my daughter to watch it, especially since I think the sort of “hope” at the end of the film would be impossible for her to understand at her age - although I’m always amazed at what it is my kids “get”. I’m really glad I watched it first to make sure it would be appropriate for her because it most definitely is not. It seems to me to be darker than anything else I’ve seen by Lynch which also makes it sort of difficult to want to watch over and over again like I’ve done with Mulholland Dr. to try and understand it.

Lynch says he was never able to distinguish between where reality begins and imagination ends - and that understanding makes sense to me. I’ve always been far more comfortable in the areas of gray than black and white. (A Jewish saying: What is truer than truth? Answer: The Story.) What I appreciate in Lynch’s films are the juxtapositions he makes between what things look like on the outside and how they are on the inside. There appears to be a difference, but is there? I also appreciate his compassion for women who have been sexually abused and are subsequently “messed up”. I know so many women who were abused by family members or were raped in their teens. Even those who are able to get through it without turning to mind numbing drugs or hurtful sexual promiscuity and go on to live “normal, happy” lives never fully recover from it and probably they never will. They learn how to live with it. It’s the self-hatred of the abused that is the most detrimental.

SPOILER WARNING!

I didn’t completely catch on in the TV show that Laura had been sexually abused by her father. Duh!! It’s so obvious now. But I stupidly didn’t catch on to that at first even though I knew she had slept with Ben Horne who worked closely with Leland Palmer. Of course as happens with abuse, the abused becomes self-abusive and then typically abuses others. Maybe this is the significance of Fire Walk With Me? Philip (or is it Mike? in the TV series I thought it was Mike but in the movie it seems to be Philip? anyway….) the one armed man in the TV series has to chop off his arm to get rid of the Fire Walk With Me tattoo. That makes more sense to me now, too.

What is that saying in the Bible - “If your right eye offends you, cut it off and throw it from you. If your right hand offends you, cut it off and throw it from you.” Something like that. Of course it’s Mike’s left arm that is gone - but how many one-armed actors are there? The point is, he gets rid of his arm to try and rid himself of the evil.

But then it turns out that the Little Man from Another Place is his left arm? I’m not sure I got the significance of that. But of course I’ve established my own interpretation which may be completely wrong. But here goes….

The “Little Man” says he is the missing arm. To me this speaks to the fact that you can’t get rid of the evil, the evil is a part of you even when you think you’ve cast it “out there”. Once you realize that, evil doesn’t hold the same sway it once held. At the very end of the movie, the Little Man from Another Place and Philip/Mike speak as one person (the Little Man standing on the side of Mike’s missing arm). As one, they ask Bob (the egoic projection of evil “out there”?) to give them back their garmonbozia (”pain and sorrow”).

Can’t help it - all of this existentialist reading I’ve done of late makes me think what this means is that the only way to be whole is to accept it all. Accept the good, the evil, the joy and the pain and sorrow. What is it that drives somebody to drugs or other debilitating distracting habits than a desire to cast off the pain and sorrow they don’t want to have to deal with or face? Society’s inability to deal with this makes it worse. That’s the other aspect of Lynch I appreciate - his compassion. You could judge Laura Palmer as a wild and promiscuous teen. Or you can take the time to look into what might be driving her reckless behavior. Even her mother looks the other way which is a typical tale - no one wants to believe such horrors exist in their own home. It’s the literal interpretation of cutting off the hand that offends you - deny it exists. But, the only way to get to the White Lodge is through the Dark Lodge. You can’t get to the light by denying the dark. (Which I think might be why Lynch is so “in your face” with the violence.)

Why did Jesus die on the cross? Because he was willing to embrace the dark side of humanity rather than run from it. He died “for our sins” - he accepted the sins of humanity. He didn’t deny the dark side. (From the Apostles creed - he ascended into Hell and on the third day he arose again from the dead.)

In the television show, the movie said that Laura wanted to die because she didn’t want “Bob” in her. It seems a similar theme - die rather than carry on the abuse - cut off your arm rather than let it offend another. I think she realizes that she is dangerous when she allows Donna to come with her to sleazy bar she frequents to be with the men who want to “fuck the homecoming queen”. (Could you even imagine the horror in the dichotomy of being the pure, innocent homecoming queen and feeling the need to use your body in that way? It’s so sad!!) Laura drops her sweater, Donna picks it up and puts it on and immediately allows herself to be seduced by a sleazy stranger. Laura notices, immediately covers her, and tells Donna never to wear her stuff - don’t take on the abuse. She doesn’t want Donna to be like her because being like her means turning your life into a nightmare that is spiraling out of control. There may be an appeal to it (indifference), but ultimately, it isn’t appealing.

I have Stephen Mitchell’s pocket Tao te Ching sitting in my bathroom so sometimes read it when I have no where to go. The passage I read tonight fit beautifully (#41).

When a superior man hears of the Tao,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Tao,
he half believes it, half doubt it.
When a foolish man hears of the Tao,
he laughs out loud.
If he didn’t laugh,
it wouldn’t be the Tao.

Thus it is said:
The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.
Yet it nourishes and completes all things.

My daughter and I finished all of the Twin Peaks episodes. It was really slow going there for a while and we had to force ourselves to get through several of the episodes because they were so silly.

I was totally into it the first 8 episodes or so, but got completely bored with it somewhere after the 15th. In fact, I could barely stand to watch it which is a good reminder of why I don’t watch television! The original concept is always far more interesting than the demand for subsequent seasons.

Possible SPOILER WARNING!! (But probably not).

ABC had required that David Lynch and Mark Frost create a closed ending and neither of them had intended to do that. Lynch said it saddened him greatly because the open ending was a sort of golden goose - but the television network got too nervous with it being left open. That must have been frustrating. Both Frost and Lynch got involved in other projects and left the series to other people. They tried to pull it back together at the end of the season and did a pretty good job, I thought. But it didn’t air again. The idea of people confronting their shadow sides was just a little to out there in the 1990s I suppose. Christian Nation though we are, I think most people still prefer the idea of evil being destroyed by good rather than accepted and embraced by it (and vice versa, of course).

It definitely had a strange ending, but it worked for me because I tend to lean toward a non-duality philosophy - what you see “out there” exists within as well or you wouldn’t be able to see it “out there”. It’s a matter of balance rather than one side winning out over the other.

I had to get Lost Highway from Mexico because for whatever reason, it hasn’t yet been released in the U.S. Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs down. Siskel said he found it petty. Petty?? I LOVED it!! Not as much as Mulholland Dr., but close.

I didn’t think it was petty at all. Maybe Siskel didn’t “get it”? Of course if you actually “get” a David Lynch film, you probably haven’t gotten it at all.

I read that Lynch realized in 2002 that the film had been subconsciously inspired by the O.J. Simpson trials. That makes a lot of sense to me.

So this is my take upon an initial viewing….

SPOILER WARNING!!

I don’t think Fred Madison was framed. I think he killed his wife and then had to come up with ways to deny the reality of this murder to himself. Like in Mulholland Dr., all is illusion and everything goes blurry when reality makes an entrance. In Lost Highway, however, reality never quite gets to enter. It immediately gets suppressed.

Richard Blake plays the mystery man and claims he didn’t understand his role although he thought he was the devil. I don’t think he’s the devil, just Madison’s unacknowledged shadow side which could be experienced as the devil, I suppose, since our shadow sides tend to become the devil when we deny them and try to pretend they don’t exist.

There is a sort of duality thing going on. Fred Madison is not just Fred Madison, he’s also Pete (whatever his last name is.) Renee isn’t just Renee, she’s also Alice. Mr. Eddie is also Dick Laurent, although according to the policemen who recognize Mr. Eddy as Dick Laurent - he’s not viewed as two separate entities as is Fred and Pete. The duality is created by the perceptions of Fred and Pete. For Pete, he’s Mr. Eddy, for Fred, he’s Dick Laurent. Perhaps the same is true for Renee and Alice? For Pete, she’s Alice. And for Fred, she’s Renee?

The shadow side (The Mystery Man) - says she is Renee. He tells Pete that if she has been telling him she is Alice, she’s been lying to him. But who is it that has actually been doing the lying? Fred! He’s conjured up a split personality to deal with his impending execution and that alter personality has it’s own perceptions and creates it’s own identities for people.

I think what Lynch does by portraying the criminal extremes is to take what we all do on an individual basis and carry it out to an extreme so we can see it carried out to it’s logical consequence. One seemingly innocent denial of reality demands another denial of reality which demands another until reality gets warped beyond all recognition. We become unrecognizable, even to ourselves, until something (probably very uncomfortable) demands we confront reality rather than continue to avoid it.

I’ll have to watch it again. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts later!

I didn’t consume as many movies, shows or documentaries in November as I normally consume, but I did manage to take in a few (besides Laura (1944)) worth mentioning.

I received Sunset Blvd. (1950) from Netflix November 6 and haven’t returned it yet, because I keep watching it. I’ve watched it three times now! It is supposedly one of David Lynch’s favorite films. It is my understanding he borrowed from it for Mulholland Dr. (one of my favorite films). It’s definitely one of those movies I could watch over and over again and never tire of it. (Same with Mulholland Dr.!) It stars Gloria Swanson who was best known for her roles in silent films. She received an Academy Award for best actress in Sunset Blvd. playing a has been silent movie actress (Norma Desmond) trying to make a comeback return. Much of the movie mirrors Gloria Swanson’s actual experience of being forgotten after the talkies came into being although she made the transition much more smoothly than did the character she plays. William Holden (who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Leading Actor for Sunset Blvd.) plays an unsuccessful film writer. He recognizes Norma Desmond and says something like, “Hey, I recognize you, you used to be big!” Desmond replies, “I am big, it’s the movies that got small.” Great line!! She’s definitely bigger than life! This is a movie I’d like to have in my collection!

Speaking of movie collections, I now own 5 of David Lynch’s films: Mulholland Dr., Inland Empire, Blue Velvet, Elephant Man, and The Straight Story. I just ordered Lost Highway (imported from Latin America because that’s the only decent available version in Region 1), and I also have Season 1 & Season 2 of Twin Peaks which I have yet to watch. Of the films I have seen by Lynch, I think I’ve written something on each except The Straight Story (1999) which I watched for the second time a few days ago. I didn’t realize I had seen it until I heard the music. Every time the dual violins and guitar traveling theme would play, I’d cry, even though I couldn’t explain why. Funny how music affects you that way and Lynch makes such great use of it! Lynch says he wants us to experience his films and clearly I had experienced the film more than I had intellectualized it. The film is based on the true story of an old man who travels hundreds of miles on a riding lawnmower to mend a relationship with his brother who has recently had a stroke. I remembered the movie at a deeper level than information retrieval because I had no idea what was going to happen in the film. But I clearly remembered the feelings it had evoked in me when I watched the 8 years ago (or something like that). The Straight Story is a Disney film and has that sort of sappy Disney feel to it, but as is true of all Lynch films I’ve seen so far, let yourself sink into the film and you’ll realize it’s about all of humanity, not just a human interest story. Lynch’s compassion for the human condition is palpable in all of his films, this one obviously so. Richard Farnsworth earned an Academy Award for Best Actor for portraying the old man, Alvin Straight.

My daughter and I saw Beowulf (2007) in the movie theater. It was co-written for screen by Neil Gaiman who also co-wrote Mirror Mask, another one of my favorite films. I’ve read several translations of Beowful, but that was long ago in my high school and college days. What is significant about Beowulf (and why everyone has to read it in English lit.) is that it is the oldest surviving English Manuscript we have. It dates back to 1010 and probably has it’s basis on the much older oral tradition. I’m not sure how true to the story Gaiman stays, but I think he does a wonderful job of maintaining the depth of Beowulf’s character. My daughter and I enjoyed it.

Two other items worth noting although I am far less enthusiastic about them…

My daughter and I finished watching Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 of The Ray Bradbury Theater (26 episodes). It was fun, but the actual stories are much better, of course (I think Bradbury used his lesser known stories for the show). My daughter and I also watched The Invisible (2007) which was a fun teen flick. Not great, but definitely good.

As I mentioned, I’ve been totally engrossed by David Lynch after having seen Mulholland Dr. I was at the book store buying 1984 (George Orwell) for my son and stumbled upon The Elephant Man which was less than $8.00 so of course bought it!! (Chances are, if it’s by David Lynch, I’m going to watch it umpteen times so might as well purchase it rather than rent it.)

I thought I had seen it before but I don’t think I had. I knew the basic story line from somewhere. It’s fascinating.

The film says the Elephant Man was John Merrick but that is based on a mistake in Frederick Treves book on him. His actual name was Joseph Cary Merrick. He didn’t live very long - only 27 years (1862-1890). He didn’t suffer from Elephantitis as is commonly thought. Or at least, Elephantitis was not his main problem. He had Proteus Syndrome which wasn’t identified until 1979. It is extremely rare and is estimated that only 120 people world wide currently have it. In the late 1800s, the only way to survive with this sort of deformity was to be a sideshow attraction (freak).

John Hurt’s make-up is phenomenal and is part of the reason the Academy Awards introduced an award for make-up. The Elephant Man was nominated for 8 Academy Awards without the award for make-up.

The film definitely takes some liberties but does a wonderful job of presenting what it must have been like to be Joseph Merrick when even the people who claim to be caring for you have a sort of morbid motivation to do so. It’s an incredibly moving film.