Subject: Re: RS: Ben Horne
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Date: 1991-05-01, 09:20
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

 Ann Hodgins writes:
  Jeff Davis writes:
  my position was that since Ben Horne was in the process of making a 
  moral choice and that the others were simply enjoyable cartoons, Horne
  was the central -- if not only -- character, as "character" is understood
  within the framework of drama. 
 
  There is something very attractive and interesting about your theory that
 Ben is the only real character in Twin Peaks. I'd like to hear more.
 Is a character one who grows and changes, makes moral choices?

Up until now, Cooper has been making intellectual guesses. "The killer
smokes Kools and lives next to the man in the red house." That sort
of thing. Cooper is Dudley DoRight. Ben had been the moustache twirling
villain. Now Windom Earl has that role. All Windom does is cackle or 
cringe. Ben, to the camera and for our benefit, has remarked that
it is very hard to do right. Not the most illuminating moral statement,
but it indicates that the issue perplexes him. Now, even with the
murder of Laura Palmer, we were not faced with characters struggling
with good & evil. All the good guys did good; all the bad guys did
bad. We were involved in Beat The Clock melodrama. Now, Ben Horne
has been deflated to comic status. He is a hairball. But, by
trying to do the right thing, he SHOULD engage our sympathies. He
didn't make the comment about Good's difficulty to anyone but us.
The Drama isn't great, but it's a break from the auto-pilot
status of everyone else.
-- davis@keats.ca.uky.edu