Subject: Re: Blue Velvet question SPOILER
From: dan@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Dan Parmenter)
Date: 1991-06-08, 07:21
Newsgroups: alt.cult-movies,alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <11947@hub.ucsb.edu> 6600powr@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Zelig) writes:

> >   No!  No!  "Just one of those things we must marvel
> >   at" is not satisfactory!  I have wondered the same
> >   thing myself, and I don't think Lynch is that
> >   arbitrary in his methods, is he?  Of course, I don't
> >   subscribe to the theory that every little thing in
> >   his films is wrought with meaning, but a dead guy
> >   standing erect?  How much nerve does this guy have,
> >   expecting us just to swallow that in the name of
> >   "weirdness" or "marvels"?  What I'm saying is that I
> >   wouldn't really accept any of Lynch's films if they
> >   were weird purely for the sake of weird, and I don't
> >   think many other people would, either. 

Lynch has been totally arbitrary on many occasions, just for effect.
We've all heard about how hewrote in The Giant on the basis of having
seen the actor in passing.  The famous shot of the deer's head on the
Police Station table was another case of "it just happened to be
there", and of course, the introduction of Bob, purely on the basis of
the fact that Lynch noticed that Frank Silva looked kind of sinister
lurking at the foot of Laura's bed.

The scene in BV of Frank blustering in, in a "yellow man disguise",
ranting and raving, while Jeffrey hid in the closet and the real
yellow man stood in a state of rigor mortis is one of the most
chilling things I've ever seen in a movie.

This is one of the reasons that I'm not terribly upset by the demise
of Twin Peaks.  To me, TP was simply the latest and most grandiose of
David Lynch's examinations of his own surreal worldview.  The elements
that BV shares with TP and "Wild at Heart", and "Eraserhead" and other
Lynch projects all seem to blur together after a while.  The recurring
images of fire in "Wild at Heart" seem to blend seamlessly with the
similar fire imagery in TP.  The symbolic dreams, the weird sexuality,
the sinister people who dominate people in obscure ways (Frank and Bob
don't seem terribly dissimilar) and the underlying sense that this is
all some sort of bizarre Hardy Boys adventure pervade Lynch's work.

The next project, whether it's a new TP movie, "Ronnie Rocket" or "On
The Air" will undoubtedly fulfill my need for new Lynch stuff, because
it will undoubtedly be an extension of the ideas he formulated with
each earlier work.

I look forward to it.

- Dan

--
 _______________________________________________________________________
|Dan Parmenter    |"And it would have worked too, if it hadn't been|
|dan@gnu.ai.mit.edu | for those meddling kids!"|
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