Subject: Re: RS: Some guesses (including COOPER BOOK SPOILERS) From: joe@zitt (Joe Zitt) Date: 1991-05-04, 14:27 Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks wilson@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu (Peter D. Wilson) writes: > > In article <1991May2.111506.12569@pbs.org>, mpax@pbs.org (Cool Bean) writes: >> > > Hate it. To think we spent a year theorizing and analyzing nothing more >> > > than a vision, would be a HUGE let down...... >> > > It would take all of the fun out of it and the mystery, which I >> > > find central to my addiction. > > > > If the story is coherent and ties into the bigger picture (like > > the visions in the show were), how can making it a vision destroy > > its enchantment? I could see this working but (off da toppa my head) what would it take to make it satisfying? Important questions would include Whose vision is it? Does this person exist in (a TV representation of) our world? Why is the person having the dream? What do the symbols in the dream mean to this person? Why did the person "choose" the images in it? How has the person been affected by having had the dream? This has actually been done well in the past in (if we take the simple explanation as real in the movie of The Wizard of Oz. (I don't have to include WIZARD OF OZ SPOILERS here, do I?) In that, the world of OZ is a dream had by Dorothy Gale. She does exist in a mundane Kansas, and wishes to escape. When she has the dream, she envisions a fantasy world, yet finds similar demons (Miss Gulch <==> The Witch) to the ones in her real life. Most of the characters are spun off from real people she knows, and few of the images are outside the realm of something that may have been constructed by the subconscious of a young girl on a Kansas farm in those days. She is affected by the dream in that she awakens from it more comfortable with the life she really leads. (Whether this is a good thing is another question...) This has been done badly in other situations that invalidate the whole rest of the story. Examples include the dreamyear of Dallas (from what I undesrstand, never having watched the show much...), St. Elsewhere, and a lot of fourth grade fiction. In a literary sense, having the piece turn out to be a dream does >not< free it from coherence, and does not allow a good artist to include simply random elements in it. Rather, everything would carefully be viewed from the angle: Would this character generate these images? Even if they don't seem to link in anywhere or make any sense, they would fall within this world view. If Twin Peaks is, indeed, a dream, whose dream is it? The simplest guess would be that it is Laura Palmer's. There is little in there that she might not have envisioned, especially assuming that the Secret Diary ends at the point she began the dream. The uses of poetry are a bit of stretch, as are the reference to Tibet, but Laura, being intelligent and inquisitive, might well have picked these up along the way. Other possibilities include Josie Packard (whose life takes a steady tragic trajectory of decay throughout the series, with her currently being trapped inside a knob), Dale Cooper, Ben Horne, and even Audrey Horne (who is perhaps the only character who has had a steady passage of learning and growth through the series). The dream theory would explain a >lot< of what's going on, and I think little in the show would not fit into a well formed dream -- even such things as the bouncing balls in 2007(?) and the unison policemen in Diane Keaton's episode would fit as the kinda weird things that happen in dreams. In short, I would not be infuriated by this turning out to be a dream, >if< the dreamer, cause, and resolution fit this kind of dreamlogic. I would rather that it all be "real" (i.e. a first-order dream of Lynch, Frost, et all) rather than a dream-within-a-show... but it could be pulled off well -- and wouldn't it be a coup for TP to be one of the few shows to do it >right