Subject: Re: Lynch - CRITICISM!!!
From: curtis@cs.arizona.edu (Curtis E. Dyreson)
Date: 1990-12-03, 21:52
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

From article <28197@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>, by gln@cs.arizona.edu (Gary Newell):

>
> About a month ago, I read an article in the Sunday paper which dealt
> with a book that had been recently written. The book contained criticism of
> modern directors...

It really was quite a good article. Essentially, the article argued that
Lynch uses a literary device called "the plotless narrative". Now a plot
would be something like "the King died then the Queen died because of grief".
The reader/viewer is given sound reasons for developments in the storyline.
In plotless narrative we may see the following images "King dying, Queen
grieving, funeral for Queen", but not necessarily in that order. If it's
done right then we can piece it all together and get some type of story
out of it that makes sense. The images are used to tell the story in
a disconnected fashion. Robert Altman is a director who's very good at
this type of narrative as are numerous European directors and of course
David Lynch. I think everyone agrees that Lynch is a master of vivid
images. But the danger of using vivid images is that in order
to make them vivid, one may have to skew them slightly. For example,
a mundane scene involving Donna at the jail will call upon Donna to
act oddly to make that image work, to keep the viewer interested, though
her acting odd may have nothing to do with the eventual plot. The plot
does not entertain in the short term, the images do. This spells
trouble for viewers trying to piece together some type of plot or
hoping in vain that everything will eventually fit together cleanly.
The sheer volume and number of wacko plot theories here in alt.tv.twin-peaks
clearly illustrates the above point.

Twin Peaks lies on the spectrum between MTV (all images, no plot) and
PBS's Mystery (usually great plots, tight murder mysterys, but very dull
images). Anyways, it seems quite clear that many of the images, many of the
odd touches to scenes in Twin Peaks are merely there to keep the viewer
entertained and do not have anything to do with developing a "plot".
This is what gln said. Of course many people watch Twin Peaks just
for the images, which is what a lot of other people said.
So it manages to keep everyone happy and disgruntled all at once.

Curtis E. Dyreson

Disclaimer: The above opinions aren`t even mine let alone any company or
university which unwittingly employees me.