Subject: Re: Truman, Truman, Truman
From: wwd@cellar.uucp (Bill Donahue)
Date: 1990-10-12, 11:40
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks,rec.arts.tv
Reply-to: wwd@cellar.UUCP (Bill Donahue)

At the tail end of a long exchange, Thane E. Plambeck
<plambeck@Neon.Stanford explains what TP is really about:

}if twin peaks is about anything it is about messages, messages sent but
}not received, messages by phone, messages as clues, messages as dreams,
}messages as massages (one-eyed jacks).  we have messages from logs,
}messages from birds, messages going on to recording tape for diane,
}messages to iceland, messages from outerspace, messages from a giant
}in the middle of the night with UFO bright light metaphor, strange accent
}and token of proof (missing ring).  The best scene in the last Twin peaks
}was between the military man and the log lady---the log's message was
}``deliver the message,'' the log ladies question was ``do you understand
}that,'' and his answer was ``yes, I believe I do.''  It was a gratifying
}scene for the viewer precisely because this moment distilled the act of
}reception from our own understanding of the information conveyed---we know
}none of the message, the sender, the receiver or the mechanism by
}which it is conveyed, but that it is confirmed as received is gratifying
}to us.  modern man desires community and a sense of belonging and even
}this highly reduced communal feeling or understanding strikes a deep chord.

I repeated this message which has come to me out of the unknown ether of
netnews because some readers might have given up before getting to it and
because it clearly presents what far too many critics have missed about
Twin Peaks: TP is NEITHER a soap opera NOR a mystery about who killed
a teenaged homecoming queen. It is a work of art by a masterful artist.
Whether Thane's interpretation is correct or not can be debated (I'm not
sure we can put in a nutshell what TP is saying!) but I think it gives
us a way to make a quantum leap beyond the silly Who killed LP?

Perhaps repeating this message is my attempt to grope for that communal
feeling or understanding that Major Briggs must have striven for!