Subject: Re: Fischer (sic) King
From: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Barb Miller)
Date: 1991-07-02, 17:17
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks
Reply-to: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu

In article <1991Jun30.185118.6087@ns.uoregon.edu> rhaller@phloem.uoregon.edu writes:

> >I'm still not sure what we are to make of Coop's wound. I guess
> >that it isn't the Fisher King's wound if that is supposedly in the
> >thigh. The location suggests Christ's spear wound on the cross. Is
> >there a knight in the Grail literature who suffers a similar wound
> >that we could fit in here? Is anyone out there (Barb?) familiar enough
> >with Spenser's 'Fairey Queene' to confirm or deny parallels? It seems
> >another likely candidate.

Yikes! The only thing I know about the Fairey Queene is that it is
supposedly the longest poem in the English language.  It had exited
the reading lists by the time I got to college.

If you really want to tie the Fisher King in with Cooper, I would do
it through the symbolism of the wound, rather than its actual location
on the mythical king and on Cooper.  If you think about it, as the
Fisher King is impotent physically and his lands laid waste, Cooper's
love life has been something of a waste land since Carolyn's death.
In Twin Peaks he has found Annie, who could revitalize him if she is
not destroyed. Cooper's trip to the Black Lodge (or wherever) is an
attempt to keep that relationship viable, symbolically (or actually,
depending upon your interpretation of the Black Lodge) to save Annie.
But this puts Cooper both in the role of Fisher King and Questing
Knight.  One thing that is interesting is that some versions
of the Grail legend show a deep suspicion of women as potential
obstacles to achievement of the Grail, not unlike the warnings that
were flying around the net before the last episode, saying that Annie
was distracting Cooper from his purpose, if not downright evil.

I believe this thread grew out of two things: the mention of King
Arthur in the script when Glastonbury Grove came up, and the fish in
the pickup truck that Windom Earle said would allow him to enter the
Black Lodge (or something like that).  I think the Arthurian parallel
could be taken in a number of directions by the writers, were the show
to continue, but at this point there aren't any parallels that are
clear enough to say "this is why they talked about King Arthur here".
The love triangle (followed by Lancelot's madness, as I believe
someone pointed out) seems the closest.  Comparing Cooper to a knight,
jumping back and forth between the red curtained rooms as a knight on
a chessboard, could also reinforce this, with Annie being explicitly
identified as a Queen.  The Grail connection is much fuzzier, although
I do have to admit, if the Red Curtained room is the Grail Castle,
then the Grail itself has to be that cup of coffee, which seems
entirely in keeping with the spirit of Twin Peaks.  Cooper's wound
would seem to be more a tie-in with the gunshot wound from Josie or
the wound he received from Windom Earle when Carolyn died than a
direct reference to a particular wound in myth.

Barb Miller