Subject: Re: Question about Lynch and politics
From: golchowy@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Gerald Olchowy)
Date: 1990-11-19, 11:20
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <6100@mace.cc.purdue.edu> salmons@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Joe Salmons) writes:
> >I haven't been reading a.t.t-p very long, so sorry if this has come up before
> >(hell, what hasn't come up here).  Somebody told me that Lynch has at least
> >acted in interviews like a serious Reagan-styled rightwinger, a real old
> >fashioned macho-type guy.  I laughed pretty hard about it then, but that was
> >before the questions about sexism in TP.  What's the deal?  
> >
> >Another point, more directly about the show:  the TP community does not strike
> >me as role model material on ANY count, sex roles or anything else.  Lynch is
> >painting a pretty dismal world here, for whatever reason, not exactly the 
> >socialist realist approach to TV. In the middle of all the greed, corruption,
> >violence, deceit, etc., a progressive set of gender roles would not fit the
> >pattern.  One of Cooper's early mistakes was seeing TP as an idyllic place,
> >wasn't it?  

It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.
It was the best of places.  It was the worst of places.

Since when does art have to impart its message through politically
correct or the currently fashionable images?
 
Sexism exists in the our society...should not art report that?  I
would argue that in Twin Peaks, that even with the archetypal
characters they use, that the female characters are more
three dimensional and sympathetically drawn than in most other
TV shows and movies.  So the show reports that women are often
the victims of men...it does not report that women enjoy
being the victims of men as does a movie like Pretty Woman for
example, it reports on women struggling and attempting to 
cope with life, and part of that is coping with the sexism
in society.  Which image is the more authentic image...Shelley
struggling with her life as a victim of Leo and Bobby, or
Julia Roberts' character, achieving happiness and fulfillment
in life through whoredom.  
 
The same can be said of the violence...rather than the shoot-em-up
cartoon violence of most TV shows and movies which trivializes
the effects of violence...the violence in Twin Peaks is fleshed out.
We are shown the violence, and more importantly, the effects of the
violence...the body count in Total Recall was pretty high, but I
didn't feel much of anything...the same cannot be said of the
body count in Twin Peaks.

Gerald