Subject: Some "Sirius" criticism (Help me refute it!) [LONG]
From: Roar.Larsen@termo.unit.no (Roar Larsen)
Date: 1991-10-08, 05:25
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

Here in Norway there exists a (generally very good!) magazine dedicated to 
speculative fiction (Science Fiction, Fantasy, etc.) which is called 
"Sirius". In their latest issue, there is an article discussing Twin Peaks 
specifically, and David Lynch in general. The article is somewhat negative 
towards TP, and also contains factual errors. This of course demands an 
answer from us "objective fans":-), and I would like to enlist as many of 
you as possible to help me in this task. I'll probably be writing an 
"answer" with one of my friends (the one who first told you all about "The 
Cowboy and the Frenchman"). In the following, I have translated (to the 
best of my ability, and without permission...) some of the key passages of 
the article. I would appreciate it if you would post/mail any comments 
that you feel are significant, and I'll try to incorporate valid points in 
the article/letter to the editor, with due credit and a description of the 
Net and  our "culture" for the uninitiated. Thanks for any help - I'll try 
to keep you updated.

Exerpts from the article follow, my comments are in [brackets]:

_The fantastic DAVID LYNCH - a postmodernistic charlatan?_
by Jostein Saakvitne.

Enjoying TV with black coffee & blueberry [sic] pie.

[stuff deleted]

... and we naturally ask ourselves if this is just a case of "sucking up" 
to the New-age tendencies of our time, to copy-selling vulgar 
popularization as known from the tabloid press and Margit Sandemo [a very 
popular Norwegian mystic/New-age/romantic trash author]. All of it of 
course mixed with suitable doses of "clean" sex and "almost-perversities" 
of the incest- and S/M kind. Or are we dealing with more genuine and 
honest motives of story-telling, meant to illuminate and examine 
existensial questions asked by mankind since the dawn of time etc.? A kind 
of showdown between western and eastern thinking?

[some good stuff about dreams and Coopers "helpers" deleted]

For those familiar with fantastic movies, the supernatural motifs and the 
use of them, will not be very new. Thematically, it is all about the 
eternal fight between good and evil, and the motif of being posessed by 
evil/the devil etc. This has been presented more elegantly through e.g. 
"The Shining" and countless other movies made through the years.

[stuff deleted]

We neeed to ask whether our demands for "good" use of fantastic elements 
have been met, like:
- having the good old "sense of wonder" present
- it being a filmatically "correct" element, being supported by other 
  dramaturgical effects in a movie
- that the elements fit naturally with descriptions of persons and 
  atmosphere.
With regard to these demands, our good friend Lynch does not get very high 
marks! We register a lot of "empty" use of effects for their own sake, and 
repetitions without any real purpose. It looks like he is more interested 
in breaking the bounds of a genre and finding an outlet for his own 
egotrips in a pattern that no director before him has had the courage (or 
economic/artistic freedom) to do...

We cheer enthusuiastically the first times, but later it is more like 
trying to hide a yawn. [stuff deleted] Neither the Log Lady , Bob himself 
or the motif of the two lodges is developed in a particularly interesting 
manner. We just wait and wait for something to happen...

[stuff deleted]

I have now finally seen the longed-for final episode as well [the two-hour 
"finale" was shown as two separate "ordinary" episodes over here], and it 
was disappointing in all its pretentiousness! Our poor agent Cooper 
running from drape to drape in a sort of near-death-experience room, and 
being submitted to David Lynch's special apocalyptic view of "the final 
showdown". All in a sort of quasi-symbolic picture-language not very 
suited to engage neither those who where already interested nor more 
accidental viewers. We get a strong feeling that Lynch is running a very 
private show, where he in principle could have introduced any elements and 
characters he wanted, and still received happy applause from his 
cult-viewers.

The postmodernistic charlatan
[stuff deleted] .. he grabs onto different styles and artistic expressions 
from other epochs and artists, to make these his own, and mix them 
uncritically in a big pot filled with images and motifs. Lynch knows that 
the time is ripe for just this kind of experimenting in TV series, as 
music videos have been doing for years. [stuff deleted] The fantastic 
elements are therefore just a tool used by Lynch to make himself 
interesting! [stuff deleted]

[end of article]

Roar Larsen,
Trondheim, Norway