Subject: Re: Some "Sirius" criticism (Help me refute it!) [LONG]
From: larryy@Apple.COM (Larry Yaeger)
Date: 1991-10-11, 19:04
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

I'd kind of like to make a point by point rebuttal of your critic's
article, but just don't have the time right now.  In the meantime,
I'll just make the following observations:

I always found viewing TP more like reading a really good book than like
watching even the best of other television programming.  I noted this a
long time ago, but had little explanation for why.  Only recently did it
occur to me that much of the reason for this particularly pleasant aspect
of the TP experience might be the very same style of visual and narrative
composition that your critic was calling irrelevent at best, or a hoax
at worst.

In particular, one can observe that in writing and reading an
especially good book, one of the key elements for drawing the reader into
the book's reality is an attention to detail.  This attention to detail
can take the form of historically accurate observations about place,
people, technology, or whatever.  A novelist friend of mine is so
thorough at this particular literary device that if characters in one of
his books order a particular dish in a particular restaurant, you can
generally be assured that not only does the restaurant exist at the
location he indicates, but that the dishes those characters ordered are
actually on the menu.  He is also fond of including accurate scientific
tidbits from whatever field is apppropriate to the storyline.  When
reading a fictional book so embellished with fact, especially when one
recognizes a particularly obscure, but accurate detail, or a particularly
pithy truism, one cannot help but be caught up in the storyline, because it
becomes possible to "trust" the author, to more fully suspend disbelief.

Television and movies, being primarily images with dialog, do not normally
provide as many cues in support of their alternate version of reality (as
opposed to books which can incorporate extensive scene-setting imagery, and
internal dialog).  But Lynch's particular style of directing is to suffuse
both his images and his storylines with a myriad of details, some
insignificant, some rich with meaning and import.  What the critic seems to
have latched onto is the fact that, in general, those details do not
necessarily form a single coherent whole, and thus he judges them to be
shallow.  But I claim that life is generally much too rich and deep to form
a single coherent whole, and that, in fact, stories and images that can tie
their entire substance up into a "high concept", single coherent whole are
the shallow, sterile fare we've come to know and loathe on television.
Quite by contrast, Lynch speaks the language of visual composition, indeed,
has extended the language of visual composition, so eloquently that it
communicates to the viewer in a fashion that is almost "literary".

Embracing Lynch's diversity and occasional chaos is not to say that internal
consistency is unimportant; on the contrary, the quickest way to lose the
viewer's "trust" is to introduce inconsistencies into the story.  But those
internals can be consistent and still be rich and highly textured, or they can
be consistent and utterly flat.  Lynch always chooses to texture his visions
profusely, and we, the audience, are profoundly better off for it.  With the
32 hours of the TP series, it has been possible for Lynch to incorporate more
details and textures than ever before - ever before for him, and perhaps for
*any* of the predominantly visual offerings in the history of film and
television.

And that's why I'd like to "read" more Twin Peaks - as soon and as often
as possible!

Uhh... your soapbox, sir or madam...
-- -larryy@apple.com "Shi Nou Kou Sho Inu Neko Programmer" - Takada Naoki