Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools

Miroslav Řepa

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and the Gothic Tradition

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D. 2016

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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Author’s signature

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D. for his kind help, support and valuable advice.

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 5

1 The Gothic Tradition ...... 12

2 Elements of American Gothic in Film and Television ...... 27

3 The World of David Lynch ...... 40

4 Twin Peaks Exposed ...... 63

5 Lynch’s Use of Sound and Music and Its Specific Deployment in Twin Peaks ...... 94

Conclusion ...... 111

Bibliography ...... 114

Introduction

David Lynch is a renowned author, visual artist and film director whose work encompasses a whole range of genres. His style and form are distinctive and most of his pieces of work, be it from the realm of fine arts, filmmaking or even music, bear common features of surrealism, peculiarity and bizarreness. Lynch, in his work, intentionally deforms and twists conventional approaches to delineate the narrative, its plot, composition and setting with the aim to create new reality presented from a different perspective. Through his ability to produce such new existence Lynch draws the audience into the story to let them move on a blurred territory in which reality and fantasy intermingle into an oneiric experience. This thesis deals with Lynch’s work and its aspects related to film noir and Gothic Fiction with particular attention paid to identification of these conditions, elements and narrative means present in Twin Peaks as a television series introduced in 1990 as a product that is believed my many to have set a new direction in presenting televised shows, especially for its unorthodox narrative technique and format.

This work provides a concise delineation of David Lynch’s career; it examines and identifies the main impetuses that directed him and motivated him to pursue the career of an artist. It pays attention to the influence of Lynch’s family throughout his childhood years related to the locations he was growing up, the way he perceived the environment, as well as the impact of his parent’s upbringing, especially the role of his father in relation to Lynch’s perception of the surrounding world that has left a distinctive imprint and influenced his style and method of work. The thesis also defines the basis of Lynch’s highly analytical approach towards the world around him and his urge to examine various events and places not as things that can be seen on the surface 5

but by going deep under which allows him to observe, study and depict subjects from a completely different perspective, which may be identified as one of the typical features of Lynch’s work – to show the viewer that one and the same thing or event may be interpreted differently with each of such interpretations bringing a diverse, yet true image or feeling. The double view or double approach is one of the typical features of

Gothic Fiction. It represents the principle of duality, a principle that is very much of

Lynch’s interest as it complies with his Hindu views. The double principle is also closely related to the uncanny phenomenon as one of the primary elements that define the gothic discourse.

The principle objective of the thesis is to provide a detailed examination of the

Twin Peaks series supported with general analysis of Lynch’s work the aim of which is to establish these as pieces of work that bear typical elements related to Gothic Fiction,

Dark Romanticism and film noir with respect to both visual and auditive aspects. It also lays emphasis on the importance of use of nonverbal or subliminal means of communication aimed at viewers’ subconscious and its influence on apprehension of the presented statement. The thesis further takes into account and deals with Lynch’s work and with Twin Peaks in particular as postmodern texts which, among other specifics, reflect the issues related to feminine aspects, such as the role and place of women within a society, the use of symbols, their origination and relation to myths.

Chapter One of the work defines the impulses that lead to the dismissal of the

Classicist ideal and the rise of Romanticism in relation to the social and political changes that took place in that period of time and it also defines the origins of the term

Gothic. It delineates the way original realistic depiction of life was gradually replaced by laying emphasis on emotions, mysteries, unusualness and the supernatural phenomena. This chapter also deals with examination of this newly emerging genre 6

concerning its origins and other influences that had impact on it, especially those related to German Schauerroman and French roman noir and presents some of the most influential French and German writers and their prominent works. It defines the basic objectives of Gothic novel, including the setting, archetypes and typical plots. A significant part of the chapter deals with development of Gothic novel from its early works of the second half of the eighteenth century and its influence on the later emerging American Gothic. The work also articulates the basic differences in the themes of the gothic discourse in Europe and oversees, delineating essential aspects of

American gothic fiction which shares a number of elements common with the European narrative but also presents new elements that are typically of American nature as a response to the local environment.

The main aim of Chapter Two is delineation of transformation of the purely literary genre into new, visual means of expression. It describes the events and achievements related to the industrial revolution, introducing new technologies such as the invention of photography, development of camera and later the film camera, followed by introduction of silent, black and white film and the birth of film industry and its main driving force represented by Hollywood. All the mentioned inventions and events are depicted on the background of the ever growing class and social differences which marked the Victorian era in particular in relation to the principles and aspects of the gothic narration. The chapter also provides information on how the silent era of black and white film and the post WWI German Expressionism influenced establishment of film noir that emerged after WWII, introducing the post crisis era of

American economic growth, dominance and consumerism with its typical traits and representations. It further explains the political Cold War background, the Red Scare phenomenon and the anti-Soviet and anti-communist mood that also influenced the film 7

industry through the 1950s to the 1970s and the coming of neo noir, marked by new generation of directors that set the direction towards the 1980s and 1990s films, including the role of television and its programme formats on the background of a gothic story.

Chapter Three examines David Lynch’s career from his early beginnings, through the student years up to the point in which he decided to take arts as his profession, first as a visual artist and later, upon his experimental period with film, as a filmmaker. It depicts the influences that played role in Lynch’s perception of the surrounding world and his interpretations of it including other authors, such as Franz Kafka, who had significant influence on Lynch’s work. One of the principal features of work of David

Lynch is the way he was influenced by his environment at individual stages of his developing career and how are these experiences projected to his films. The chapter also defines Lynch as an auteur and an artist for whom creative freedom represents one of the most important aspects of his art work followed by introduction and analyses of his films that demonstrate typical features of the gothic discourse as well as the typical style and methods used in his production.

The penultimate chapter examines Lynch’s Twin Peaks series on which he cooperated with Mark Frost. It defines the series from the point of its narrative structure and an innovative show format. It aims at individual aspects ascribed to a gothic discourse and performs an analysis of the plotline by identifying individual gothic features on a number of examples taken from the actual scenes and parts of the series. It concentrates on many of the aspects of Gothic Fiction an supplements them with specific examples, dealing with the issues including the motives of wild surroundings, oppressive men, heroines, sexual abuse, rape, doppelgangers, murder, slavery, hidden passages, dark hallways, savage nature, disfigured people, dreamlike states, double 8

lives, unsolved mysteries and unclear family ties but it also introduces examples concerning the grotesque elements present in the show.

The last chapter of the thesis deals with the auditive aspects of films in general, their application and use in Lynch’s films in general. Lynch’s early stages are highly experimental and the use of experimental sound remains a key feature in Lynch’s films.

The chapter also introduces the most significant and fruitful co-operators of David

Lynch in the area of sound and music accompaniment represented by Alan Splet and

Angelo Badalamenti, dealing with individual leitmotifs and their intended effect on the perception of the viewers. It also explains how well incorporated sound improves the quality of the whole and how the sound structure makes an inseparable part of a film.

The final part of the chapter then analyses the Twin Peaks series from the point of the used sound, sound effects, music scores and the intended role of those components within the series.

The two main sources used in Chapter One are re presented by Alexandra M.

Reuber’s Haunted by the Uncanny – Development of a Genre from the Late Eighteenth to the Late Nineteenth Century and Allan Lloyd-Smith’s American Gothic Fiction: An

Introduction. Alexandra M. Reuber in her Haunted by the Uncanny – Development of a

Genre from the Late Eighteenth to the Late Nineteenth Century illustrates the development of the uncanny phenomenon as one of the characteristic features of the

Gothic discourse. The importance of her book for this thesis is the method through she deals with the history of the genre and its relation with the English, German, and French works and their psychological aspects as well as the way Reuber draws her attention to explanation of dreams and the unconscious based on Freud and Jung’s explanations which are in perfect relation to Lynch’s application of dreams in his work. Allan Lloyd-

Smith in his American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction provides a wide ranging 9

delineation of the genre including the basic elements that form it. The thorough chronologically arranged explanations assist in getting a synoptic insight supported by a thorough examination of the main topics.

Chapter Two of the thesis employs the text of Andrew Dickos in his book Street with No Name and it is of special importance for the thesis as it provides an overall and well organized survey concerning the film noir genre and its relation to German

Expressionists, its development between the wars and its further development in 1970s, which is an era directly related to some of the early works of David Lynch to which

Dickos’ book provides useful contexts.

The main sources used in Chapter Three include John Alexander and his book The

Films of David Lynch and Greg Olson and his book David Lynch: Beautiful Dark. John

Alexander’s book The Films of David Lynch introduces Lynch both as a painter and as a filmmaker in the light of various components that had a particular influence on him, from surrealism to film noir, including all the aspects referring to American Gothic and is very helpful as it delineates Lynch’s career supported with a number of specific pieces of information that assist well in apprehending the complex matter of Lynch’s work. Similarly to Alexander, Greg Olson in his book David Lynch: Beautiful Dark also explores Lynch’s unconventional and often surreal style going from the pre-film period of a graphic artist, through the experimental period, up to his feature films and the Twin

Peaks television series supported by additional information which, together with

Alexander’s interpretations allows to obtain a complex picture of the author.

Chapter Four deals with various aspects of Twin Peaks and is highly analytical.

To support the points in that chapter the following books were of importance: Sigmund

Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and Claude-Lévi Strauss’ Myth and Meaning.

The importance of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams lies in the way he 10

addresses the issue and how he , step by step and often with the use of personal experience, leads the reader through which is of a significant importance as dreams represent one of the key and inevitable parts of the Twin Peaks series as well as in most of his other work. Claude-Lévi Strauss’ Myth and Meaning was similarly important because the Twin Peaks series which the cardinal part of the thesis demonstrates an extensive number of various symbols. Symbols are closely related to mythology for which reason this short, but very meaningful book was of important assistance.

Chapter Five of the thesis deals with sound, sound effects, experimental sound and the many roles sound and music play within films. For David Lynch the sound part of a film is of at least the same importance as the visual part. For that reason Michel

Chion’s Audio vision: sound on screen and Tomlison M. Holman’s Sound for film and television were used as important sources. Michel Chion’s Audio vision: sound on screen provides an extensive analysis of the visual and auditive interplay which he describes an audiovisual illusion and represents a valuable, thus important source of information concerning individual constituents of film sound and music, the importance of subliminal messaging and the many ways sound may be efficiently utilized for the purpose of completing the visual part with sound that adds it dynamics and represents an important means for storytelling. Holman’s Sound for film and television offers a more technical insight related to the rules and techniques connected with processing and use of sound in film and television. The valuable aspect of the book lies in its capability to explain aspects as hyper-real sound as an important tool used in films.

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1 The Gothic Tradition

The Gothic genre may be understood as one which encompasses practically the whole spectrum of art, ranging from the literary form, through cinematic and televised interpretations, musical compositions to works of fine art. Despite the fact that the

Gothic novel appeared several years before the origination of the Romantic Movement, it was considered as its marginal or second-rate offshoot. Yet, this literary style gradually gained its readership and its firm place in the world of literary works. The term itself may be perceived as a reflection of an array of particular features of phenomena that aided our present comprehension of that expression.

The era of Romanticism (1770 – 1850), which the Gothic genre stems from, emerged from Pre-Romanticism, sometimes referred to as Sentimentalism for its somewhat exaggerated, religiously inspired empathic expression of feelings used to demonstrate moral strength of the described persons as is the case of Samuel

Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded or Clarissa, or, the History of a Young

Lady. Carol H. Flynn in her book Samuel Richardson: A Man of Letters presents a thorough study of Richardson’s works and offers a well captured definition of the aforementioned women characters of Pamela and Clarissa as follows:

In his novels, however, Richardson leaves the predictable world of moral

aphorism to create characters who fiction independently, following the

dictates of their own consciences other than the rules Publisher in a Vade

Mecum. Pamela, who at first may appeal to just another self improver, the

servant who becomes a lady, is also a compelling character in her own

right, humorous, naive, candid, and, above all, ambiguous. […] In Clarisa,

Richardson creates an even more complicated world. Moral aphorisms can

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hardly apply to the tangled, obscured circumstances facing his heroine. As

Pamela becomes a lady, Clarisa becomes a saint, but at the expense of her

sense of self. (Flynn 2014: 4)

The genre progressively began to attain its position as the Classicist ideal of reason had to deal with its inability to provide satisfactory explanations to many of the issues and inquiries being addressed at that time, resulting in an urge to divert from the original course and search for a more universal ideal, an ideal laying more emphasis on emotional and psychological aspects. The Romantic development was, however, not the only transition that took place within that period. This epoch was marked with turbulent changes in societies, their structures, and their ever larger disjointedness, with new social classes arising on the background of the intense and rapidly proceeding industrialization, including geopolitical disturbances and clashes throughout Europe. It was at that time when a certain divergence developed even within the Romantic

Movement. On the background of the aforesaid social and political transformation, the

English Romantic Movement forms two opposed streams dealing with divergence in their aesthetical and ideological perspectives and perceptions. The conservative movement sympathised with the oppressed people, although with time the ardour of its representatives faded away in opposition to the revolutionary sympathizers who openly criticised the negative social impact of capitalist exploitation and strived for a society free of imposition and oppression.

These and other aspects influenced and modified the needs, perceptions and demands of the society and its readership and, as a direct consequence, left a distinct imprint in the works of art of that time. The realistic description of life gradually gave way to imagination, idealism, emotions, unusualness and strangeness presented in a language that provided the readers with plainer, unforced and more accessible texts 13

introducing a variety of new elements including natural landscapes, historical and mystical motives, as well as supernatural phenomena and mysteries. Rather than expressing wistful desires and dreams of the past, the Gothic discourse made a distinct shift towards the raw and ‘uncanny’ and introduced harsh elements of conflict and violence in various forms, demonstrations of power and domination, loss of identity, or the struggle of the rational, the irrational and the unconscious parts of the human mind.

Alexandra M. Reuber, in her Haunted by the Uncanny – Development of a Genre from the Late Eighteenth to the Late Nineteenth Century, provides a thorough insight into the development of the phenomenon of the uncanny as well as a variety of other features typical for the Gothic discourse from its very origins, taking into account, comparing and analysing parallels in the English, German, and French works. She particularly draws attention to the psychological aspect utilizing the Freudian psychoanalytical explanation of dreams and the uncanny as well as the Jungian interpretation of dreams and the unconscious. One of the key objectives of Reuber’s work regarding the development and the role of the three above mentioned national discourses is to prove that although developing individually, there is a number of unifying elements which contribute and complement to the literary genre. The term gothic in its literary sense has, according to Reuber, undergone through several stages of development.

Until the transitory period after the Enlightenment (eighteenth-century),

the term gothic was still associated with the notion of cruelty and

savageness of the Germanic tribe the Goths and implied the meaning of

“barbarous, rude, uncouth, unpolished, [and] in bad taste“ […]

Nevertheless, the meaning of the term underwent a slight change. “The

word ‘Gothic’ with all that it implies, ceased to be a synonym for

“barbarous” and “violent” and became associated with the poetry and 14

chivalry of the Middle Ages: thus, ‘Gothic’ assumed a second meaning,

‘the medieval’” […] In addition to the medieval implications, later the

term was given a third meaning - a supernatural one. Throughout the

course of time, the connotation of gothic changed so that it finally was

associated with all grotesque, awful, evil and ugly things, wherewith the

former medieval meaning slightly faded away. Nevertheless, the

supernatural significance of the word has always been maintained. (Reuber

2004: 3)

Despite being most often referred to as being of English origin and probably having the most significant influence on the development of the genre, there are a number of works, particularly of the French and German authors which possess many attributes resembling those of the Gothic fiction often even preceding it such as the early 18th century French roman noir or littérature fantastique, or the German

Schauerroman.

The French roman noir typically delineates religious, political, and sexual anxieties and their relation to the violence and the dread of the French revolution.

François-Guillaume Ducray-Duminil, Baculard d ́Arnaud, Denis Diderot, Gaston

Leroux or Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin are commonly considered to be the most distinguished representatives of the French roman noir, the literary motifs of which can also be found in the early works of Honoré de Balzac or Victor Hugo.

The German analogy of the Gothic novel, although even more gloomy than its

English counterpart, is represented by the necromantic Schauerroman which has roots in the stories of knights, outlaws and robbers, for which it is sometimes referred to as the Räuberroman, following the influential drama The Robbers by Friedrich von

Schiller. Perhaps one of the best received authors of the German Schauerroman was 15

Christian Heinrich Spiess, whose stories and characters were often represented by madmen, psychopaths and suicides, incorporating a variety of mental strangeness and uncanniness. Yet, according to Reuber, the links are undisputable.

We can, thus, conclude that English Gothic fiction, the German

Schauerroman, and the French littérature fantastique, consequently, all

belong to the same genre: the ‘Literature of the uncanny.’ No matter what

the genre is called in the respective culture and which thematic point is

stressed the most, the notion and presence of the unknown and, thus, the

evocation of the uncanny is always implied. The main difference among

the three literary fields merely consists in the direct or indirect articulation

of their implied and displayed psychological components, which in all

three fields lead to the expression of strong emotions and fears which are

frequently supported by hallucinations of the supernatural – by the

uncanny, our subject of analysis. (Reuber 2004: 8)

One of the main objectives a Gothic storyteller strives for is the story’s corresponding ambience, so it is essential to create a requisite mysterious and horrifying atmosphere in which the reader’s imagination can be taken to its utmost extreme. To accomplish that objective, the narrator often sets the story in various sinister places, typically represented by castles, ancient structures or locations of unexplained history, deserted houses, monasteries, often with secret rooms, tombs, underground mazes, prison cells or caves. Just as important are the outside settings characterised by astounding and often almost surreal landscapes, vast forested areas, immense deserted mountains or endless seas, stressing the raw savagery while glorifying the sublime impeccability of such environments at the same time.

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These authors frequently use the dynamics of light, darkness and shadows as well as sounds, often of mysterious and unidentifiable origin to produce confusion and to efface the ability to distinguish between reality and hallucination. The characters may often be of uncertain origin and their personal properties may often be in contrast with their looks so it is not unusual to encounter perversity and corruptness in places such as churches, monasteries, castles and manor houses opposed by the beauty and unexplainable attractiveness of the demonic protagonists. Grotesque elements constitute and inseparable feature, too, blending comic and tragic components to create bizarre feelings of both sympathy and pity often supported with the use of architectural constituents and various structural designs to underline the atmosphere. Gothic fiction creates a deliberately complex environment where reality is interlaced with illusion, mirroring and repetitions bringing the characters into a dreamlike states of mind where dreams excite emotions and arouse and haunt them often disclosing and revealing their fears and burdens or, at times, even guiding them to foresee events and occurrences yet to come. Allan Lloyd-Smith in his American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction, in which he provides an extensive definition and a thorough investigation of Gothic fiction, underlines the repetitive elements of the genre.

Any study of a genre is a study of repetitions, the patterns that constitute a

tradition and the way that writers imitate, learn from, and modify the work

of their predecessors: Poe from the German Gothicists and Brown from

Godwin, Hawthorne from Brown and Poe, James from Hawthorne, and so

on. Repetition is a hallmark of the Gothic in another sense too, as Freud

identified repetition as one of the central characteristics of the uncanny. So

Gothic characters are often shown as struggling in a web of repetitions

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caused by their unawareness of their own unconscious drives and motives.

(Lloyd-Smith 2004:1)

Repetition, doubling, and occurrence of dreams - phenomena which Freud thoroughly examined and which, according to his views, represent elemental constituents of psychoanalysis, are represented in a number of films of David Lynch, including the Twin Peaks series which is to be further discussed and analyzed in

Chapter Four of the thesis.

The first solely Gothic story is generally attributed to Horace Walpole and his

1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, although there were authors such as William

Shakespeare to whom Walpole expressed his indebtedness and called him a “higher authority” and “the great master of nature”, whose works carried distinct Gothic features and prefigured the oncoming of the Gothic novel. In The Castle of Otranto,

Walpole combines his enchantment by the supernatural with his admiration of the medieval romance setting the story to medieval Italy. An array of supernatural deeds and odd events keeps snowballing to culminate in the fulfilment of the dark Otranto princedom prophecy. Walpole introduced a plot line that had set a standard regularly utilized by later authors; the most typical feature can be described as a search for a mystery underlined by a love affair in the world of the supernatural. Walpole originally published the book under the pseudonym of William Marshall as a translation of an

Italian original by Onurphia Muralto. It is believed that he probably had two reasons for doing so. One of them can be attributed to certain imperfections of that work which

Walpole was aware of; the other was his concern that his work might not be appreciated at that period.

Walpole’s work was followed, complemented and further developed with new elements by such authors as Clara Reeve, whose The Champion of Virtue (1777) was 18

inspired by Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe who enriched the genre with the elements of womanliness, the topics focused on women’s rights, or her exceptional and distinct descriptions of landscapes, succeeded by Matthew G. Lewis whose eroticism and intense violence introduced in his controversial novel The Monk

(1796), for which he is referred to as the inventor of the Gothic horror, shocked, fascinated, repelled and was even condemned by many for its gross obscenity. There were many more significant and highly influential Gothic writers such as Mary Shelley,

Jane Austen or John Polidori who significantly contributed to the phenomenon of the

Gothic fiction and whose pioneering work and legacy were followed and developed by many authors including Edgar Allan Poe, an exceptional representative of American

Gothic, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, as well as the authors of the second wave represented by Arthur Conan Doyle or Robert Louis Stevenson, who departed from the traditional historical contexts and aimed at the contemporary gloomy aspects of the human subconscious exploiting the wide potential of Gothic fictional discourse.

A typical illustration of such a departure from the traditional contexts is represented by the emergence of American Gothic. Originally a subgenre, American

Gothic originated as a result of the national desire to create its own distinctive and independent literary and cultural consciousness. According to Allan Lloyd-Smith’s

American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction, American Gothic fiction made quite a lengthy and significant development, being originally understood as some kind of a sensational branch departing from the traditional and generally accepted and acceptable genre to finally become an entirely independent stream with its ongoing history and its typical features reflecting the political, cultural, religious, racial, gender, or aesthetic settings. American Gothic is greatly concerned with extremes of any kind including dread, anxiety, greed, sexual disgrace and humiliation, and can go as far as occultism, 19

obscenity, incest, or the ever-present supernatural phenomena. Elements of gothic in

American fiction, in many ways, represent the means of North Americans to come to at least fictional terms with their own history and legacy.

The beginnings of American Gothic fiction, as has already been mentioned, arose from the need to differentiate from its European ancestors and to establish its own,

American literary pattern with its typical features and principles. It is quite a natural and obvious thing that during their striving to do so American writers could not avoid drawing from the European tradition, especially that represented by the British

Romantics or the German scholars and philosophers whose works were accommodated to match the American conditions and socio-historical environment. One of the outcomes of such vigorous endeavour was the Calvinist and Puritanism based

Transcendentalist movement which is commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The movement’s beliefs were based on the power, self-reliance and independency of each individual as well as the human ability of spontaneous and emotion-linked comprehension of the surrounding world and the capacity to engage nature, although for

Emerson ‘nature’ was more of a philosophical term, as a mediator in finding God. The concept of transcendentalism became largely popular and had significant impact throughout the society of that time with a number of followers, such as the American poet and philosopher David Henry Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, an American journalist and critic, or Amos Bronson Alcott, an American teacher, philosopher, and writer.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was Emerson’s friend and a keen transcendentalist, although later on he gradually altered his views and opinions to finally grow apart from Emerson’s

Transcendentalist understanding of the world joining the opposing side the most significant figure of which was that of Edgar Allan Poe. The main disagreement between Transcendentalism and the darker forms of Romanticism inspired by gothic 20

was in their different perception of human intentions where Transcendentalism had confidence in human generosity and its effort to reach excellence while Romanticism pointed out human frailty and tendency to fail to complete the given goals as is demonstrated in many of Poe’s poems and stories in which he explores human psyche as well as the features of the conscious and subconscious mind and its proneness to perverseness and self-destructibility. This particularly irreconcilable division of opinion and source of many polemics turned out to be one of the probable impulses or the moving force to the origination of what is referred to as American gothic.

Although American gothic fiction shared certain features with Romanticism, it represented a significant shift to the darker side of the world and its existence. While the

European Gothic novel brings stories placed in dark, locations of haunted castles, monasteries, and manor houses echoing with unidentified sounds, mystical creatures and secret chambers and underground spaces, the American gothic replaces these with themes which are closely connected to the issues related to the history of the American nation. A very distinctive difference from the European stream was related to the vastness of North American landscapes and the unfamiliarity of the environment. Such landscapes were not only described by many writers and poets but were also highly inspiring for many painters such as was the Canadian Group of Seven, the landscapes of whom presented sceneries of almost a divine nature. American Gothic largely deals with themes such as the atrocities committed in the name of searching of the American

Dream which, somewhat paradoxically, introduced the ideals of Democracy, Rights,

Liberty, Opportunity, and Equality. The American Dream was understood as a place without the noble or the privileged and it represents something that is achievable for everyone through their hard work and persistence. Although it has helped to establish a strong sense of being American, there may be certain doubt as to how realistic such a 21

concept truly is as the American society seems to have built a structure that is often elitist with apparent racial and class disparities, the anxieties of which have prevailed to the present day. These contrasts have repeatedly appeared in American Gothic fiction, describing extremes of any kind including dread, anxiety, greed, sexual disgrace and humiliation, the Puritan legacy, savage nature, political delusions or irony, and can go as far as occultism, obscenity, incest, including the ever-present supernatural phenomena. David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series includes these elements broadly, beginning with the setting of the story within a remote, deeply forested mountainous countryside, where the characters deal with murder, sex, molestation, with the presence of undefined supernatural evil powers or Tibetan spiritualism. Gothic fiction, in many ways, represents the means of North Americans to come to terms with their own history and legacy. Allan Lloyd-Smith in his American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction provides an extensive insight to the genre and its development in time, summing up the major criticisms and works of a number of authors, including William Montgomery

Bird, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe,

Emma Dawson, Henry James, William Faulkner, Anne Rice or William Gibson.

Behind the states of fear and horror, and driving through the tissue of

reasonable and rational explanations, loom the outlines of real horrors. In

early Gothic this was sometimes the reality of the oppression of women, or

children, in patriarchy that denied them rights. In American Gothic, while

this remained a major theme, the trauma and guilt of race and slavery, or

fear of what was then called miscegenation, also emerges, along with the

settlers’ terror of the Indians and the wilderness, and later perhaps some

suppressed recognition of Native American genocide. One of the great

strengths of the Gothic is its ability to articulate the voice of the “other” 22

within its fancy-dress disguise of stylized contestations. A woman

murdered and walled-up in a cellar, her body discovered through the

howling of a buried cat, might be read as a voicing of silenced domestic

atrocity, and also as connected obliquely with slavery motifs, whether or

not that was in fact Poe’s explicit “intention” in his story “The Black Cat.”

(Lloyd-Smith 2004: 8)

Similarly to that, silenced domestic atrocities are the case discussed and presented widely in Twin Peaks. A woman walled-up in the cellar may as well represent a link to a murdered woman wrapped in plastic washed out onto the river bank. That image reveals what later becomes apparent as a phenomenon not unusual within a community and raises questions as to how women are treated and what is their position in the society, both from the position of their sex and with respect to their origins. The series also questions the role of a family, its hierarchy and its values pointing out the

American values.

From its eighteenth century origination, the Gothic fiction has become an ever evolving phenomenon, always reflecting the conditions, the time, the type of readership, its emplacement or innovations in portraying and presentation of the original patterns. It has travelled a long way, straying from the Romantic Movement in its search for the emotional, mystical, unknown and uncanny, through the Victorian decline and revival, as well as the American gothic diversion.

Charles Brockden Brown’s 1798’s Wieland: or, The Transformation: An

American Tale (1798), in which he criticises the menace of religious zealotry, is generally considered to be the primordial American Gothic story which has, up to this time, gradually attracted many followers. The list of the most renowned among the many American Gothic writers would, without doubt, include such luminaries as 23

Washington Irving, an extraordinary writer and biographer, whose The Sketch Book of

Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819 – 1820) brought him international fame and appreciation, followed by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Puritanism centred stories featuring strong moral issues and in-depth psychological investigations. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle

Tom’s Cabin (1852) depicts the atrocities and the immorality of slavery put in the context of Christianity. Christian issues and values are also addressed in The Pit and the

Pendulum (1842), a short story sketching the background of the greed driven Spanish

Inquisition written by Edgar Allan Poe, a writer considered by many to be one of the cardinal and the most prolific authors representing the very core and essence of

American Gothic whose genius and imaginativeness brought the genre to its utmost level, dealing with such issues as human mortality and predestination to death as in The

Masque of the Red Death (1842), or the consequences of alcoholism leading to complete disintegration of personality as he delineated in The Black Cat (1843), a story bearing somewhat autobiographic traits. Charlotte Perkins Gilman points out the issues of feminism and the nineteenth century attitude towards women to which she drew attention in her story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), describing a woman who, being denied any impulses and impetuses of the outside world, irrecoverably falls into psychosis. Henry James includes psychological elements dealing with consciousness and recognition, while William Cuthbert Faulkner in his Absalom, Absalom! (1936) brings forward the questions exposing the moral crisis which resulted in the fall of the

South and demonstrates how contemporary a biblical story can be, pointing out how human behaviour, attitudes, intentions, and prejudices repeat themselves over and over again in time. Ursula Kroeber Le Guin largely deals with religious, gender and environmental issues, while Joyce Carol Oates in her story “The Temple” depicts a woman who, through her obsession, immures herself in a complete seclusion, 24

addressing the relation of the rational and the irrational. Anne Rice, grief stricken by the death of her daughter, in her Interview With The Vampire (1976) presents a thorough psychological analysis dealing with the essence, the aspects and the perception of the good and the evil. Steven Millhauser portrays an amusement park turned into a maze- like environment with decorative mannequins coming to life, similar to the animal- shaped moving hedges created by Stephen Edwin King in The Shining (1977) in which the Overlook Hotel impersonates the sheer evil, a living structure the heart of which is a boiler resembling a large, dozing cat located in the cellar not dissimilar to Poe’s Pluto sitting on the head of the walled-up wife. King’s understanding and link to Poe is quite apparent as he quotes Poe’s The Mask of the Red Death at the preface to The Shining.

American gothic has been gradually attaining new and progressive traits largely being under the influence of the unstoppable technical and scientific developments from the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries up to the present. The invention of the cinema and television emerged as new phenomena and created a new and almost endless space with new capacities presented through visual and auditory experience.

That allowed not only to adapt many of the classic American Gothic literary works and set them into motion giving them new authorial approaches and interpretations, although often delivered by non-American directors, as presented by Tim Burton’s

Sleepy Hollow (1999), Neil Jordan’s Interview With The Vampire (1994), or Stanley

Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), but also to introduce additional contributions to the genre often bringing new, innovative approaches, such as David Lynch’s emphasis on detail and pointed, strong and elaborate musical background as was the case of his film noir

Blue Velvet (1986) or his 1990s TV series Twin Peaks which are considered by many to have become a cult of American Gothic. Film and television has allowed their audiences to be taken through manifold worlds, landscapes and environments from 25

haunted castles, insolvable mazes, and transcendental landscapes to such imaginative places as the cyber space, introducing machine-enhanced humans and humanoids or extraterrestrial spaceships. The ongoing technological development has opened new, multi-dimensional horizons offering new ways of bringing the ever present enigmatic motives of the Gothic story to its readers, listeners and viewers.

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2 Elements of American Gothic in Film and Television

The 1861 arrival of the kinematotoscope is generally considered to be the starting point of development of the cinema. The use of rotating discs creating the illusion of motion has become the principle of filmmaking and has carried over up to modern times until, at least partly, replaced by digital technologies. The final decades of the 19th and the opening decades of the 20th century brought a number of innovations and improvements with such outstanding contributions as those made by George Eastman and his celluloid film, the cameras and projectors devised by Lumière brothers and

Thomas Alva Edison, the many inventions of whom, including those presented by his genius co-operator and rival in one person - Nicola Tesla, or John Logie Baird’s 1925 transmition of the first television picture. There is a clear connection between the new technologies being introduced and their relevance in the context of the gothic discourse not only by their ability that allowed authors to express their views and interpretations of the surrounding world through new types of media but also through their qualities that relate to the particular period as well as the themes they deal with on the background of the social, cultural and economic issues. This chapter shall deal with the development of film from the Victorian era and the emergence of photography, through silent film era, German Expressionist movement, and the American post war film noir to the late 1990s with respect to the gothic elements, as well as the phenomenon and the role of television concerning the gothic discourse within that era.

It would be rather simplified to describe the transfer from the exclusively literary and graphical art forms of the 19th century to our present, highly technological audio- visual style as straightforward or linear. The whole process may be characterised as an array of gradually emerging findings, often interrelated or coexisting with other 27

findings, discoveries and inventions. This kind of mutual influence also reflected in the development of photography and cinematography. Just as the newly emerging

American Gothic stemmed from its European ancestors such as the British Gothic, the

French roman noir or the German Schauerroman, the transformation in the area of visual cinematic narration drew reciprocally from the industrial and technological accomplishments of both European and American contemporaries set in the ambience and reflecting the mood and the atmosphere permeating the dynamic era of industrial revolution, affected by the overall political and social situation. It would almost be possible to draw a parallel between the socio-economic relations in Europe and

America. In both cases there were significant differences between individual social classes, especially when concerning the differences between the high, governing class and the lowest - working class. The social status of the poor in Victorian England might be compared to the status of American slaves in the same period of time, including highly restricted freedoms and ownership and poor or no education. For some that respective era brought enormous wealth, success and fame while for others it represented a mere struggle to survive within the greyish and gloomy world of desperation. That very depiction of the social ambience bears typical gothic traits of social, gender or racial inequalities resulting in the struggle with own conscience and the feeling of seclusiveness. The unsettling and often callous atmosphere of the

Victorian era is elaborately depicted in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980) and provides an expressive insight into the social structures and the position of the disadvantaged. In that respect it may be said that it was the invention of the daguerreotype and photography that changed the way the world was being looked at and understood as they not only made it possible to conserve graphical representations of the differences within the world of the rich and the poor, but it offered new 28

opportunities to experience and explore the abundance of the outland regions worldwide.

The invention of the daguerreotype is linked to the names of Joseph Nicéphore

Niepce and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. After some years of experimenting initiated by Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, a chemist trying to discover a new chemical substance that would allow capturing visual records of any subjects of the outside world, he was joined by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. Upon Niepce’s death Daguerre continued in his work independently to finally arrive to the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839.

This pioneering technology caused quite a stir although there were some unpleasant drawbacks to the original Niepce’s and later Daguerre’s picture taking technique. One of them was the excessively long exposure time amounting to some 14 hours in case of

Niepce which was Daguerre upon further and extensive work able to cut down to about

20 minutes. Another disadvantage was the fact that daguerreotypes were inverted and could not be duplicated. That problem was finally solved by William Talbot, a British inventor, photographer, linguist, and mathematician who invented the positive-negative technology and the use light sensitive paper which enabled him to make multiple copies from a single original. This solution made picture taking even more attractive and by

1850s it became highly popular both in Europe and overseas. The new technology achieved wide appreciation and was generally seen as up-to-date and fashionable, although viewed from today’s perspective, many of the images, often blurred or tinted, may create somewhat uncanny and uneasy feelings which, after all, is one of the key objectives of the gothic discourse. It may appear that many of the pictures present fairly gothic features in respect of certain duality, similarly to the splintered, bicoloured and largely divided society resembling the black-and-white images. It may have been for the same reason of creating the eerie impression why David Lynch utilised the striking 29

black-and-white effect in some of his films such as Eraserhead (1977) or The Elephant

Man (1980), both of which are typical for creating a dense, murky ambience, similar to that present in Twin Peaks, enriched with Angelo Badalamenti’s melancholic overtones.

The oddity and uncanniness becomes even more expressive when the post-mortem photography is taken into account. Post-mortem photography, sometimes referred to as memorial portraiture, was largely used to capture the deceased people, often in a way of a family portrait, to keep memory of the loved ones, and was considered a standard practice, especially thanks to its affordability when compared to portrait painting. The use of post-mortem photography was particularly favoured to make memorial portraits of children as child mortality rate was very high at that era. Paradoxically, with respect to the already mentioned long exposure times, the fact that the dead did not move made them ideal subjects for making daguerreotypes and taking photographs. Yet, with the bodies of the dead being oftentimes arranged into life-like postures and the photographs being even coloured to achieve the closest-to-life possible expression, the images impart to the queer atmosphere of the picture setting. However, the many inventions and developments made in the fields of medicine and pharmacy in the early 20th century and the diminution in child death rates resulted in a decreasing popularity of the post- mortem photography. That period of time was also connected and marked with gradual improvements in film camera technologies coming into notice.

The outbreak of the film industry soon became closely and inseparably related to the phenomenon of Hollywood. As a reaction to Thomas A. Edison’s Motion Picture

Patents Company established in New Jersey in the early 1900s, filmmakers started looking for new suitable locations in order to avoid Edison’s patents and after finally moving to the west, Los Angeles developed to be the capital of the film industry from then on. By introducing and applying a well elaborated system of studios and through 30

their continuous, unflagging and highly analytical approach and a well-established system designated to attract and aim at the widest audiences, Hollywood began to dominate the whole film industry and by 1921 it became the major driving force within the world of the cinema.

The infancy of film production is connected with the era of the silent film, ranging from the 1890s to the beginning of the 1930s, during which it finally grew into the format with all its typical film features as they are known and generally applied today.

Silent film involved itself in practically all film movements and explored and utilized literally all genres and forms of film making, including a whole variety of technical aspects such as the lighting, close-ups, panning or long shots. Silent film acting techniques were also quite characteristic with distinct body and facial language and expressions through which the viewers were addressed to get to understand the moods and the atmosphere of the story as well as the actors’ feelings. The exaggerated facial expressions and body language, similarly to the eerie and often disturbing effects of the

Victorian photography, represent elements that possess distinct gothic qualities that address the viewers’ apprehension implementing an effect of duality meaning that even when watching slapsticks people could absorb some sort of subconscious uncanniness.

Gradually, towards the end of the 1920s, such techniques were replaced by more naturalistic acting approaches and with the introduction of sound films towards the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s the techniques typical for the silent film era dissipated entirely. New genres began to appear and towards the 1940s the genre known as film noir emerged although many of its typical features already appeared in some 1920s films. A typical example of such a film forerunner would be Fritz Lang’s 1927 futuristic silent film Metropolis, based on the novel written by Lang’s wife Thei von Harbou.

Fritz Lang was an Austrian film director who spent a lot of time in the USA and was 31

interested in Hollywood filming and moviemaking techniques which he then further developed and utilized in his film Metropolis, shot in the UFA studios in Germany upon his return from America. The exceptionality of this film deeply influenced by German

Expressionism is particularly based in the elaborateness of its visual detail and the use of special effects, lighting, mise-en-scene and the setting which, beside others, included impressive architectural designs, be it a huge gothic cathedral, futuristic skyscrapers or the stylized Tower of Babel. Fritz Lang is also one of those directors examined by

Andrew Dickos in his book named Street with No Name which investigates the development of the film noir from its German Expressionism origins through the French cinematography, including the development of the American dark film from the 1940s to the late 1970s and its typical traits and moods on the background of the political, cultural and social events.

The language common in describing the film noir invokes the stylization

of painterly and theatrical expressionism. We casually associate the

chiaroscuro and melodrama of the work of the German émigré filmmakers

of the forties studio noirs with their backgrounds and youthful inspirations

in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. The connection, a handy one, also

misleads and requires clarification, and the differences between influence

and practice are perhaps best delineated by recognizing the affinities

between them. Many films noirs, particularly in America, were made by a

number of German and Viennese filmmakers and stage directors (Lang,

Siodmak, Dieterle, Douglas Sirk, Preminger, Max Ophiils, even Wilder)

who participated at least marginally in the Golden Age of German

filmmaking-from roughly 1919 to 1933. They were inspired by the

innovative staging and lighting techniques of producer and director Max 32

Reinhardt as much as by any imprecise quasi-literary and artistic

movement called expressionism. (Dickos 2002: 9)

The link between German Expressionism and film noir and its influence on the development and growth of the genre is apparent. The same apparent is the inheritance of explicitly gothic features present in the imagery delivered through the German

Expressionist movement. Germans are, after all, the descendants of Goths and partly contributed to the name of the whole literary genre, as has already been mentioned in the first chapter of the thesis. German expressionists often presented their discontent with the existing state of affairs and, through visual arts, manifested their longing for a change by focusing on the emotional, psychological and subliminal aspects of the human psyche. The distinctive influence and role of German Expressionism may be, to a great extent, attributed to Germany’s political and cultural isolation resulting from its

Great War defeat upon which there was a ban placed on foreign films in 1916, leading to an increased demand for domestic film production which finally achieved high popularity and international acknowledgement. Gradually, the expressionist movement expanded from visual arts to literature, theatre and cinema. The first expressionist films include The Student of Prague (1913), a silent horror film inspired by the works of

Edgar Alan Poe and Alfred de Musset, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a horror narrating a story of a maniacal hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to kill people, From

Morn to Midnight (1920), The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), Fritz

Lang’s Destiny (1921), Nosferatu (1922), featuring Max Schreck’s notable impersonation of the vampire Count Orlok, Phantom (1922), Schatten (1923), and The

Last Laugh (1924). The common denominator of the German Expressionist films is the use of darkness, shadows, distorted, surreal or dreamy ambience, special effects, curved, oblique, or otherwise deformed shapes eliciting uneasiness and horror emotions through 33

the human subconscious. These features correspond with Lynch’s films in many respects. Lynch’s paintings as well as films, particularly those related to his late 1960s and 1970s work show many distinct parallels, be it the use of colours, disfigured characters, distorted structures, and the overall murky, grim, and unsettling atmosphere as David Lynch demonstrated in The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970),

Eraserhead (1977), or The Elephant Man (1980). The Twin Peaks series, although shot in colour, is a story that gradually unwinds on a somewhat gloomy background with its surroundings being shown in quite dim and dusky tones.

When taking the American film noir into consideration it may be said that its beginnings are tied to the early 1940s during which Hollywood introduced a new type of a film story the typical features of which were represented by dismal, ambivalent, imaginary or rather oneiric atmosphere customarily interlaced with elements of eroticism and violence. The films noir commonly provided stories in which the boundary between the good and the bad are rather blurry or even confusing, tantalising the viewers’ imagination and curiosity. The murkiness present in the noir films relates to the general pessimism and disenchantment permeated atmosphere of the post-Great

Depression society followed by the collective nuclear war paranoia, McCarthyism and the Red Scare, introducing cynical detectives, anti-heroes, femme fatales, distinctive lighting styles and complex stories as is the case of The Maltese Falcon (1941), This

Gun for Hire (1942), or Laura (1944). With the end of WWII these films appeared in

Europe and acquired considerable popularity, particularly in France where they were marked by critics as film noir.

The film noir in America found its inspiration in the German style through

just this obscurantism of its characters' mental activity, not only their

paranoia but also their amnesia and their disorientation in the perception of 34

the world around them. […] The grandiose and stylized gesturing of

characters that prevailed in the German expressionist cinema seems in

retrospect the product of an often turgid acting style of the silent screen in

general, only compounded by stereotyped shorthand of movement and

gesticulation. In the American noir cinema of twenty years later, the

context is not the ecstatic gyrations of its madmen but rather the thwarted

desires and active fears of its protagonists (Who am I? What am I doing

here?). (Dickos 2002: 16)

The American film noir also reflected the economical status and the political opinions of the people of the post WWII era. Economically speaking, the era from the late 1940s brings a phenomenon of growing American consumerism. The American war industry helped significantly to overcome the economic crisis and turned into an economical boom the consequence of which also brought increase of wages connected with the people’s demand for consumer goods supported and enhanced with numerous federal programs that allowed young American families to get their own houses, cars, televisions and other modern appliances. Hand in hand with consumerism walked the political aspects related to the Cold War, a result of ideological and political clash between capitalism and communism, commonly referred to as the Red Scare which can be generally described as deliberate spreading of fear of communism connected with arms race and the threat of use of weapons of mass destruction resulting in growing conservatism of Americans. Hollywood films of that time often bring plots and themes closely connected with and targeted at the Red Scare, anti-communist or anti-Soviet issues, possibly partly as a result of the intervention of the House Committee on Un-

American Activities and its ‘Black List’ the aim of which was to stress and clarify the menace of communism and the necessity of the filmmaking industry to address that 35

issue on the screen accordingly, and which listed a number of people from the entertainment industry who were denied work in the field for allegedly sympathising with communism. The film noir environment represented an ideal place to depict the seductive, greedy communist rogues, spies, killer-agents, and the Soviet rigidness in

“full light”. Such films include anti-communist propaganda works, science fiction, or

Cold War pictures that may be represented by such films as Ninotchka (1939),

Conspirator (1949), Atomic City (1952), Destination Moon (1960), Invaders from Mars

(1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), or

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). These films offer stories full of spies and defection, espionage tricks, communists employing a lot of effort to infiltrate and get

Americans to betray the U.S., where even the space becomes a political battlefield, while always making it clear to the viewer how important it is to maintain America's spiritual and moral values. Gradually, film noir developed and updated into the so called neo-noir which was more often related to the work of younger directors influenced by the style. The early 1970s noir mood was also reflected in the films of American directors such as Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971); Francis Ford Coppola’s The

Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974) or Robert Altman’s The Long

Goodbye (1973). This genre brought new aspects, themes, visual components and styles, offering often very cynical views of the Cold War and markedly increased use of graphic, as a very typical element of the gothic narration, as well as violence and severity such as in the 1974 film Chinatown by Roman Polanski which deals with fraud, manslaughter, adultery and corruption, or the 1976 film Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese in which he presents an insomniac Vietnam War veteran in New York who, upon experiencing everyday violence, drug abuse, alienation and ever deepening decadence of humanity decides to take justice in his own hands leaving the conventional legal 36

ways aside. Under the influence of the 1970s tributes, the films of the 1980s and 1990s tended to include rather uncommon and unconventional elements to underline the ambience, similar to one presented by Ridley Scott in Blade Runner (1982), the urban setting of which resembles that of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The 1980s and

1990s provide a number of neo-noir titles by such prominent directors as Martin

Scorsese and his 1980 Raging Bull, Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 erotically charged film

Body Heat, Michael Mann’s 1981 Thief, or his TV series Miami Vice (1984 – 1989) and

Crime Story (1986 – 1988). The 1990s bring distinctive work of Quentin Tarantino such as Pulp Fiction (1994) or Jackie Brown (1997), Brian Singer’s The Usual Suspects

(1995), a detective story of a brilliantly planned crime, Coen brother’s true story based cynical thriller Fargo (1996), Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), the story of which aims at the 1950s police corruption, or David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) and

Mulholland Drive (2001).

David Lynch’s work and its development seems to show certain parallels with the development of film, from the individual, German Expressionism resembling pictures or images and black and white films, through Victorian flashbacks up to the noir works, at time with a 1950s tint as is the case of Blue Velvet or the Twin Peaks series. Twin

Peaks shows a number of features typical for noir films with the difference that while films are produced for the large screen, Twin Peaks was created as a television show.

Although there already were noir television series presented on TV, such as the mentioned Miami Vice and Crime Story, or the 1950s – 1960s Alfred Hitchcock’s

Alfred Hitchcock Presents, there is a distinctive difference between the former three and

Twin Peaks, which, unlike the previously mentioned shows, brought a single crime investigation that works as the main linking device for the whole series. Another

37

significant difference is the fact that while Miami Vice and Crime Story are set in the real, although a bit action packed, world, Twin Peaks is to an extent a surreal story which bears numerous gothic elements including a range of bizarre characters throughout the narrative. The series, as will be further described in detail in Chapter

Four of the thesis, deals with and brings forward an array of elements generally ascribed to American Dark Romanticism with distinct traits of the gothic discourse, including the decadence of the natural and the darkness of the supernatural world, horrifying deaths, dreams, terror, anger, or obsessive love. Another aspect that denotes the typical gothic features may be seen in the subject and the role of television. Television as a phenomenon has been developing and gradually changing ever since its invention in the

1920s. At that period it was a newly breaking-through phenomenon and despite the fact that it was not originally considered to be a medium that could seriously compete with film, it became very trendy and by mid 1950s half of the households in the USA owned a TV set. Television has always had a great potential and has offered a wide variety of programmes from modified radio shows, through opries, talk shows, and soap operas to the news, quiz shows, TV series or reality shows. It has become a true and rightful member of each family. It is present in every household and is the most common appliance used on everyday basis and, with the rapidly developing technologies it has also, to an extent, adopted the role of the cinema as a typically gothic place which appeals to the viewers’ desire to get detached from the everyday events of the real world and enjoy the oneiric experience of the world behind the silver screen. However it is not the plain physical presence of the TV set that impersonates the most important aspect of it. Rather than that it is the inner space of it that cannot be seen. From that perspective there are two entities existing within one. The first, visible one represents the heimlich, familiar and visible while the other, unheimlich, unfamiliar or uncanny symbolizes the 38

typically gothic aspect. And, with knowing that and with the ability to fully exploit that medium’s potential, Twin Peaks interlaces all the known gothic elements, including the motives of wild surroundings, oppressive men, heroines, sexual abuse, rape, doppelgangers, murder, slavery, hidden passages, dark hallways, savage nature, disfigured people, dreamlike states, double lives, unsolved mysteries and unclear family ties, into a complex, though logically arranged gothic story.

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3 The World of David Lynch

David Keith Lynch is an American graphic artist and a film director who has been known for his pronounced engagement with distinctive themes, balancing on the brink of pure art and the commercial Hollywood output. His work has often been considered as rather complex or even challenging to apprehend or to be easily interpreted, which also applies to its accurate categorization or classification within the range of genres.

The nature of Lynch’s work and the manner he addresses numerous subjects, including gender, class or social issues, demonstrate an array of features characteristic for Dark

Romanticism and the apparent relation to the tradition of Gothic Fiction. Through the use of specific narrative structures, a number of Lynch’s films may be considered as a typical instance of the American film noir, bearing distinctive elements of postmodernism, and combining various genres, pastiche and temporal fragmenting, as well as blurring the boundaries between the intellectual and the non-cultivated aesthetics. John Alexander, in his book The Films of David Lynch provides an insight into the work of David Lynch both as a painter and as a director and filmmaker. He deals with those elements of Lynch’s life and work that had a particular influence on him, be it the surrealist movement, Lynch’s attitude and reference to American Gothic, film noir, clichés and stereotypes, motifs, plot lines, and contrasts. He also provides a specific definition of Lynch as an author on the instance of comparing Lynch’s style and reception by the audience with that of Alfred Hitchcock’s, pointing out the parallels and the differences of both authors.

Lynch's films balance precariously between the popular and the elitist,

treading the fine line of commercial appeal and art house critical

acceptance. Just as Hitchcock's films appeal to the broad general market

40

(good stories well told) and, following the acclaim of the French nouvelle

vague, the film 'literate' (innovative, experimental in extending the film

medium into untried territory), the same broad generalisation can be made

of Lynch. Like Hitchcock, he has also made the transition to media

personality, in front of the camera as well as behind it. […] Unlike

Hitchcock, Lynch is not associated with a particular genre. A Hitchcock

film is synonymous with the thriller, and his few exceptions Hitchcock

later considered errors of judgement. The Lynch catalogue, brief though it

now may be, covers all genres, and the Lynch name is synonymous more

with a particular style - namely, the bizarre. (John Alexander 1993: 17)

When speaking of Lynch’s style, it necessary to mention that everything Lynch does is utterly intentional and built as a thoroughly plotted structure. As Lynch admits, the way he methodically plans and works is the result of his upbringing. Methodicalness is a must for the way he purposefully constructs new reality through which the viewers are drawn into the narration, gradually losing the sense and the ability to distinguish between the real and the imaginary. Lynch’s narration takes place in multiple story planes simultaneously, often fragmented, defying classical narrative ways by going back and forth from the real to the surreal and creating the feeling of heterogeneity. This heterogeneity or disunity appears not only as disunity of time and space but as disunity of individual characters so the story does not have the regular logical direction of an integrated narrative whole but it is literally shattered to pieces to be repeatedly put together and taken apart again, leaving the viewers experience complete uncertainty of anything they are presented as a result of Lynch’s capacity to dig into their subconscious. It is one of the ways how to make the viewers become part of the process

41

deducing their own interpretations as Lynch himself avoids providing any interpretations or clarifications of his own product at all.

This chapter provides a concise delineation of Lynch’s career of a visual and film artist and the development of his work from the 1960s early stages, represented by Six

Men Getting Sick (1967) and The Alphabet (1968), followed by the 1970s The

Grandmother (1970) and Eraserhead (1977), the 1980s The Elephant Man (1980) and

Blue Velvet (1986), and concluded by the 1990s work, marked by the Twin Peaks (1990

– 1991) series, placing emphasis on the aspects and coherence with the tradition of

Gothic Fiction and the American Romantic Movement.

David Keith Lynch was born on January 20, 1946 in Missoula, Montana. Lynch’s future career was, perhaps, predestined already by the fact that his native city lies at the foot of twin peaks of Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel. One of Missoula’s landmarks is the mill site, once a flourishing and prosperous sawmill complex lying on the Clark

Fork River, around which the city of Missoula grew up. Furthermore, Lynch’s father, who had a master’s degree in forestry and worked as a research worker, introduced

David into the knowledge of forestry and nature, the imprints of which may be found in his work, for instance through the observation and admiration of Douglas firs expressed by agent Dale Cooper in the Twin Peaks series. Greg Olson, in his book David Lynch:

Beautiful Dark, explores the unconventional and often surreal style, examining the author’s life experience and its relation to his work, beginning with his pre-film work and inducements, through the experimental period, up to his feature films and the Twin

Peaks television series. When describing David Lynch’s native place, Olson mentions:

After the war, Donald returned to his roots in Montana, which he calls “the

garden spot of the whole world.” He and Sunny settled in Missoula, where,

as Donald says, they “eagerly got back into regular life and wanted to do 42

the normal human things: build a home and raise children. Living a good,

healthy, happy home life” was important to Donald. (Olson 2011: 2)

As the whole Lynch family, due to David’s father’s job, travelled and moved around the Pacific Northwest, the typical town atmosphere left an indelible impression on David. That imprint of the 1950s and the somewhat childishly naive memory of that period remain present in Lynch’s work be it the white fence lined with red roses and yellow tulips shot from low camera angle as if to underline the view taken from a childish perspective, the fire engine passing by in slow motion to achieve a dream-like feeling of distant memories as presented in Blue Velvet, or the mountains embracing the smoking stacks of the Packard Sawmill with the spark throwing grinding machines working in an endless mechanical toil as presented in Twin Peaks, all bonded with the typical 1950s slow jazzy music including the drum whiskers, the bass, or the echoed electric bass guitar and the electronic organ. The auditive means in Lynch’s narrative is just as important to him as the visual components and will be discussed and examined in more detail in Chapter Five of the thesis. Another element of that era that left a distinct trace in Lynch’s work is the phenomenon of television. Television, as has already been stated in the previous chapter, has, to an extent, adopted the features of the cinema as a place where the viewers become dreamers, with the difference that the TV sets remain within people’s homes as some sort of human subconscious, continuously streaming subliminal messages and influencing their masters’ attitudes and behaviour. But even in the idealized world of the Pacific Southwest there was a place for eerie and much murkier locations that lie beneath the surface and dominate much of Lynch’s work as they create the “sense of a dreamy, yet familiar world; the small-town landscape; the vivid, saturated hues of his cinematography; the droning sounds, usually of electricity and industry, that he melds with his images; the detailed, close-up fascination with 43

textures.. “. (Olson 2011: 3). It is the texture and detail that is often in the spotlight for

Lynch to explore, as documented in the opening scene in Blue Velvet in which Jeffrey

Beaumont’s father, after having collapsed, is lying on the ground with his Russell

Terrier dog snapping the water stream coming out of the hose, when the camera, in slow motion and with the music fading out, turns away and down and transfers the viewer to a parallel world while the camera moves among the grass and to the ground, disclosing a completely different view of the very same garden, this time full of moving insects accompanied with the sounds of decomposition, demonstrating the ever-present duality of everything. It demonstrates the Yin and Yang duality principle where Yin represents darkness and Yang represents light. This rule also expresses the relation of the two opposing forces where these do not exclude each other, they depend on each other, they may be further divided to Yin and Yang, they support each other and they may interchange. Also one part always includes a trace of the other meaning the even within light there is a trace of darkness and vice versa. That principle corresponds with the gothic standards that largely apply in works of Gothic Fiction as well as in Lynch’s films. One of the strongest and most significant youth experiences related to Lynch’s perception of the dark, evil, and unheimlich feeling, may be attributed to his visits to his grandparents in New York.

Travelling with his parents from the “perfect world” of his safe, sylvan

home to his grandparents’ house in Brooklyn “scared the hell” out of him.

“Going into the subway, I felt I was really going down into hell. As I went

down the steps, going deeper into it, I realized it was almost as difficult to

go back up and get out of it than to go through with this ride. It was the

total fear of the unknown. I could feel this wind coming from the train

down the tunnel. First there was the wind and then a smell and then a 44

sound. I had lots of tiny tastes of horror every time I went to New York.”

(Olson 2011: 4)

He would later be able to draw from the horror of that experience and transfer it into his film work in which the wind would help him to address the viewers and deliver them the same sort of a gothic-like haunting subliminal message of something ‘being in the air’ or ‘being about to happen’ as was the case of the Douglas firs swaying in the wind while being observed by agent Cooper both with admiration and concern, sensing that some kind of unknown evil dwells within the surrounding forests. Lynch shows high sensitivity towards the surrounding world and, through his eyes, many, if not all, of the perfectly real things surrounding the rest of the mankind, upon his thorough in-depth exploration, easily become completely surreal.

Even as a boy, Lynch had an extraordinary ability to sense the hum of

malevolent, invisible energies at work in the world, a poetic gift he shared

with two artistic giants he would someday idolize: Czechoslovakian writer

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and English painter Francis Bacon (1909–1992).

(Olson 2011: 3)

David Lynch’s most significant shift towards fine arts took place during his studies at high school in Alexandria, Virginia in the course of which he showed serious interest and talent in visual arts which were to become his lifetime passion. Lynch, after being acquainted by one of his schoolmates to his father and painter Bushnell Keeler, decided to study art and to engage with painting on a professional basis. It was one of the most decisive periods during which he kept himself completely employed with painting, attending arts courses at the Corcoran School of Art, reading and experimenting, most of the time being accompanied by his best friend and fellow artist

Jack Fisk. At that period he already spent part of the time away from his family in order 45

to fully concentrate on his arts studies as well as to escape the family circle and the tension that had arisen as a result of Lynch’s parents’ disagreement with the selected career and David’s consequential neglect of school.

“David didn’t want to be with his family, because they were upset with

him. They felt that art was something you do after you get your work done,

and David’s first order of business should be to do well in school. They

thought he just wasn’t producing at the academic level he ought to be.

David was getting Cs on his report card, and he was having to compete

against his extremely brilliant brother and sister.” (Olson 2011: 13)

The unfavourable conditions and family relations settled within the course of the following years, to a great extent as a result of David’s parents’ comprehension and acceptance of David’s immense and obdurate dedication and enthusiasm concerning his art work. Most of his early pictures show how deeply he was submerged into his dark and surreal world that came out mostly as monochromatic compositions in the shades of blue. The use of colour must, however, not be omitted as it was of large importance and represented one of the ways for Lynch to highlight certain motives or details within a whole. Furthermore, a deliberate and targeted use of colours worked as means for subliminal messaging when addressing the viewers. Lynch favoured deep tones of blue, red, yellow, black or khaki as he demonstrated many times not only through the canvas works but also in a number of his films such as Blue Velvet with the waving drapery in the opening scene or Twin Peak’s Red Room where Dale Cooper, in his dream, meets

Laura Palmer and the Man from Another Place. Heavy hues are often opposed to lighter shades which may be understood as Lynch’s interpretation of the world of bipolarity, duality and opposing forces. In 1965 Lynch applied for Pennsylvania Academy of Fine

Arts and, upon his being accepted, he, together with Jack Fisk, moved into a cheap 46

apartment in the poorish industrial district of Philadelphia which turned out to be a rich source for Lynch’s murky inspiration.

The landmarks of Lynch’s neighbourhood were seedy bars that opened

early in the day, a prison, a morgue. An atmosphere of anxiety and dread,

that had once inspired Edgar Allen Poe, who had lived nearby, gripped

Lynch’s soul. […] Always stimulated by paradox, Lynch started to realize

that Philadelphia’s crucible of menacing tension was where he needed to

be. (Olson 2011: 26)

Lynch observed the morgue employees bringing new bodies in black body bags which they later hosed by water and had them dried out on an outside line for reuse.

Two decades later he used that image in the pilot part of Twin Peaks where Laura

Palmer’s body was found ashore wrapped in plastic. It was an experience too distant from the serenity of the white fences and a source of new, oftentimes macabre findings and inspirations. Lynch uses his own experiences connected with places, memories and people to acquaint the viewers with the ways he remembers or reproduces them.

Lynch’s planning and implementation of individual elements into a story is always done precisely and in high detail. Any used aspect of the narration, however improper or superfluous it may seem proves itself to have been deliberately placed in to be revealed and reasoned in just the moment the director had intended to as part of a complexly plotted logic. The Philadelphian stage of Lynch’s development as a visual artist is marked by large, gloomy paintings, which show certain link and resemblance to

German Expressionist movement and his inspiration stemming from abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Jack Tworkow or Franz Kline as well as Edward

Hopper and Francis Bacon, defined by rich and often dark colours and shades, often blurred, presenting surreal, twisted and distorted shapes and contours. In her book 47

According to... David Lynch, Helen Donlon presents a specific view of David Lynch’s life and development through a number of quotes delivered by Lynch himself as well as by other people, showing David Lynch from a different perspective and bringing forward the motives and attitudes concerning Lynch’s comprehension of the world of art. On the account of surrealism Lynch said “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.” (Donlon 2007: 37)

Consequently, Lynch came to the point when he decided to explore new possibilities in order to add the graphic expression a new dimension. During his 2015 interview held in

Queensland Art Gallery Of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia, Lynch was asked by the moderator David Stratton what made him start experimenting with film, to which he replied:

“While I was studying at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts I mostly

painted where I lived, but I also had a small cubicle in a big, large studio in

the school. I was in this cubicle one night painting a garden at night,

mostly black with some leaves’ green coming out. And I was sitting and

looking at this painting and from the painting I heard a wind and then I

saw the green start to move and I saw a moving painting...”. (QAGOMA

2015)

1960s represented an era in which many young authors and artist looked for new ways of expressing themselves and one of such ways was experimenting with the moving pictures. Lynch was no different and in 1966 he began, with the help of his friend Jack Fisk, working on his first motion picture project, a collage Six Men Getting

Sick (Six Times) which was then presented in 1967 and was awarded the Dr. William S.

Biddle Cadwalader Memorial Prize as part of the school’s contest of experimental painting and sculpture. The scene consisted of a large screen which Lynch made and 48

fitted with three casted plaster heads with gaping mouths onto which he projected an 8 mm, 10 second loop film in which the figures’ visible stomachs fill up with liquid, become sick, vomit and, finally, catch fire. The film is accompanied by the sound of a wailing siren. The act of vomiting may be interpreted as a metaphor for the act of purification, a deed that might be related to Lynch’s Hindu beliefs which he got interested in and has been involved with since he was about twenty years old. The repetitive regress to the original state of unwellness of the figures may be connected to his understanding of the cyclic repetition of life and death. Part of the scene includes two figures releasing some substance from their mouths which then merges into a new figure. The effect of the work is of double nature. One is the aggravating image including a penetrative sound accompanying the film and the other is the visual duality that he creates, a trademark for many of his future works – the principle of ‘two being one’ and Lynch’s desire to go deep under the surface, examining and exposing the substance of human mind and its subconscious perceptions.

The next Lynch’s short film The Alphabet (1968), similarly to Six Men Getting

Sick, provides a combination of film and animation. Viewed from today’s perspective, it may be seen as an early transitional period of Lynch’s moving from the still picture to a moving one, although it is necessary to emphasize the fact that even in his later films he never really went astray from the path of a graphic artist and a painter. Lynch’s painter’s attitude to filmmaking is a feature that is evident in most his work.

“The Alphabet shows Lynch approaching film as he does a painting,

following his moment to-moment sense of what feels right and balanced,

using images and sounds like brushstrokes, building moods and emotions

into a composition that exists as a metamorphosing sequence of time,

rather than as a canvas hanging on a wall”. (Olson 2011: 36) 49

The Alphabet deals with humiliation, fear and abjection, the topics that are not only of very gothic nature but also themes very often depicted and addressed in Lynch’s work through insistent examination and exploration of the subsurface structures. In The

Alphabet Lynch was inspired by his wife’s niece’s nightmare which he called “a little nightmare about the fear connected with learning.” (Olson 2011: 35) The film is largely aimed at one of Lynch’s greatest fascinations – interpretation of dreams. In this short film a girl is lying on a bed surrounded by darkness, asleep, with echoing children’s voices chanting the alphabet letters in her dream. During their chanting, a laudatory song is sung in male’s voice “The alphabet you can bet is fun. All the letters in a row, in the sun. And you’ll know that you’re the one. The alphabet is surely fun.” The action then continues by a symbolic growth of the capital letter ‘A’ which gives birth to two small ‘a’ letters accompanied by loud hissing and crying sounds and with an audible background subdued sound reminding a comforting voice of a mother. The following animation shows various stages of metamorphosis with images resembling a bust with a phallic head which turns into a one eyed head which then opens and a load of letters rushes inside of it from a plant-like structure, upon which the head collapses and bleeds out, followed by an image of a mouth saying “Please remember you are dealing with a human form”. The children’s voices start chanting again. As the film is coming to an end, a woman’s voice sings the Alphabet song with individual letters appearing around the dark surrounded frightened girl’s bed. The scene ends by the girl’s awakening and feeling sick which culminates by her vomiting blood-resembling slimy liquid all over her bed. The girl’s horror of being haunted by the letters resembles one of the scenes of

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) where a group of schoolchildren is trying to run to safety and hide out from the attacking birds. One of the possible interpretations of the film is Lynch’s vision and understanding of the way children sometimes struggle 50

against the world of the adults and the violent forcing others do things they did not choose to and often reject as depicted here by the girl’s vomiting which may again, just as was the case of Six Men Getting Sick, be seen as an act of purification.

The phallic symbol used in The Alphabet and symbols that relate to conception, impregnation and sexuality, and which appear repeatedly in Lynch’s work are essential to him as they works deal, either directly or contextually with sexuality, especially when depicting women as objects of sexual fantasies, repressed feelings, abuse and sexual violence. Annette Davison and Erica Sheen in their book The Cinema of David Lynch:

American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, a collection of critical essays addressing Lynch’s films from the aesthetic point of view, raise questions concerning their intellectual unity, the generic range of Lynch’s work as well as the issues connected with sexuality, feminity and violence.

Like classical directors who brought European aesthetic traditions to

studio-system working practices, he has a quality more pertinent to our

understanding of his work than either narrative or genre: an intensely

creative approach to the activity of production. […] Within the violent

economy of a Lynchian femm(e)rotics feminity is not female as

masculinity is to male. Its feminine force erodes the heteronormative

aligning of sex/gender/desire, creating transgendered and transsexual

spaces – nomadic ‘desire machines’ for the corporeal circulation of desire.

(Davidson, Sheen 2004: 94, 111)

The success of The Alphabet played a decisive role for further Lynch’s film work.

Upon being awarded a grant from the American Film Institute, he was able to move onto a more extensive project the result of which was the film The Grandmother (1970).

The Grandmother is a thirty-four minute long film and a new challenge for Lynch who 51

had to take control over all the parts related to filmmaking, from directing actors, constructing sets; nine weeks filming work and a load of time spent on music and sound effects. The main theme of the film was to describe and depict home as “a place where things can go wrong”. (Olson 2011: 40)

The Grandmother continues Lynch's development from a young painter of

'dark, sombre pictures' to 'film painting' to animation, pixilation and to

'straightforward' film drama. The film follows on from The Alphabet’s

themes of creativity, abjection and childhood estrangement. (Alexander

1993: 38)

The Grandmother is a story of a boy, neglected and often harassed by his parents.

Every morning he wakes up with his bed wetted for which he gets scolded. It is not quite clear whether the boy’s wetting problem is the reason or the result of his parents’ wrath. The film depicts the boy’s lack of parental love, care and understanding and demonstrates the remoteness within a family. While the boy is always dressed in a suit and a tie to show the childish purity, the parents are depicted as if falling towards barbarism and primitivism through the way they dress, look and behave towards their son, exhibited here through their animal grunting, squeaking and even moving on all four and yelping as dogs. The boy finds a bag of seeds and plants one of them into a heap of soil and waters it. The soil heap morphs and grows into a cactus-like, monstrous structure which finally splits open at the bottom and gives birth to an elderly woman, the Grandmother who provides the boy with the desired love and comfort. The

Grandmother, despite the boy’s effort to get his parents’ attention and help, finally dies and the film ends with a close-up view of the boy lying again alone in his bed. The means of expression, the use of colour and the way the story is narrated resemble the narrative structure of German Expressionist films of the 1920s here supported by the 52

arrangement of individual images put in contrast and underlined by elaborately incorporated sound and music score, operating on the subliminal level in order to address the viewers’ mental states and perceptions. When attending Advanced Film

Studies, David Lynch enjoyed practical subjects during which he could take the camera and go out to the open air but he also enjoyed some of the theoretical studies, especially those aimed at film analyses where he also learned of the functions and effects of subliminal sound and imagery. His high interest in the topic of metamorphosis has always been apparent and it is a phenomenon he has dealt with in his work repeatedly.

When it comes to the subject of metamorphosis, Lynch was largely influenced by Franz

Kafka. “Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis fascinated the young man with its surrealistic, quantum-leap transformation of a man into an insect, its lurking dread, black humour, and its expression of psychological states in physical forms.” (Olson 2011: 54)

Metamorphosis is also one of the plot elements present in the 1977 Eraserhead. It is Lynch’s first feature-length film, the most distinctive feature of which is the way

Lynch approached the making of the film. While in The Alphabet or The Grandmother the footage represents sequences of individual images reflecting the painter’s imaginative world, Eraserhead brings a plainer structure. Yet, Eraserhead has a lot to do with Lynch’s personal experience and the setting and atmosphere reflects the gloomy ambience of moral and material dirt and his emotional states that accompanied him in the late 1960s when he and his pregnant wife moved to a dismal neighbourhood of

Philadelphia which may, perhaps, be one reason why Eraserhead was filmed in black and white. It employs a number of bizarre and often eerie details skilfully hidden under the veil of mystery. Eraserhead bears a number of apparent gothic elements be it dark corridors, murky hallways, depressed women, distorted bodies, mystical beings, sex and decay. 53

At the very beginning of the film, the camera moves slowly down towards what seems to be a hole in a structure that resembles a roof of a house which may refer to the legend of Faust which is supported by the next image which shows a mysterious Man in the Planet who controls a set of levers in front of him as if being in control of human fate. Shortly after that Henry Spencer, the main character of the film, is introduced.

Henry Spencer is a typical representative of a Lynchian hero, a social outsider struggling with challenges of life and trying, mostly unsuccessfully – a reflection of

Poe’s opposition to Transcendentalism, to get things under control, isolated, at times mentally or physically malformed, emblazoned with myth, or wandering within the land of sex and violence, estranged to the common world in his effort to fight the fate. Henry lives in a gloomy place of an industrial neighbourhood which, surrounded by the ever- present industrial sound of miscellaneous machinery, provides a typical feature of a number of Lynch’s films. Henry has to face a problem with having a baby with his neurotic and mentally unstable girlfriend, Mary X. The baby is thoroughly disfigured and with a deformed head. Henry marries Mary but she is neither able to stand the constant cries of the food-refusing baby nor to maintain their relationship and she leaves. Henry stays alone and looks after the baby. Not long after that he starts experiencing some kind of hallucinations and dreamlike visions of the Man in the

Planet, who might be the representation of hell, opposed to the Lady in the Radiator, white, smiling and of almost angelic looks who sings “In heaven everything is fine, you’ve got your good things, I’ve got mine” while dancing on a stage surrounded by heavy drapery that looks very similar to that from the Red Room in Twin Peaks which may be taken as another proof of Lynch’s for reusing certain motives repeatedly in his work. Large parts of the film represent or resemble a dream so the difference between reality and dream is often hazy and so is, as it seems, Henry’s perception of the events 54

happening. There is an unsettling uncertainty present throughout the film which is underlined by the industrial sounds and continuous hums coming from all directions. At the end of the story Henry takes a pair of scissors and decides to look what lies beneath the swathe of the newborn. By cutting it open he discovers that the swathe worked as skin so now all the internal organs are completely exposed to the surrounding environment, the baby starts to breathe heavily and bleeds from its mouth. Henry, as if in trance, pierces one of the organs upon which the infant starts bleeding uncontrollably, morphs into a monster and attacks Henry. The Man in the Planet pulls one of the levers as if to change the track of Henry’s obscure and confused destiny and lets him walk into the light and reach paradise in an embrace of the smiling Lady in the Radiator. The overall gloomy atmosphere, uncommonly narrated plot and rich symbolism make the film a surrealistic piece of gothic work. Due to the fact that Lynch incorporated his personal experience in the film, it may be believed that it also bears certain autobiographical traits and through the character of Henry Lynch may, actually, be relieving some of his personal qualities, be it his relation to sex or the unpreparedness for fatherhood under the conditions of material and economic hardships.

Similarly to Eraserhead, The Elephant Man (1980) was filmed in black and white. The main difference is the theme and the subject matter as it brings a much more logically straightforward film based on a true character Joseph Carey Merrick, born in

1862 in Leicester who suffered from a disease that lead to a complete malformation of

Merrick’s body, resembling certain elephant-like physical features. The story takes place in Victorian London and is based on an adaptation of Frederick Treve’s The

Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923) and Ashley Montagu’s The Elephant

Man: A Study in Human Dignity. When comparing The Elephant Man with previous

Lynch’s films, there is a distinct shift towards the mainstream production, mostly due to 55

the size and scope of the project. Unlike in the previous cases, here, for the first time he had to face certain limitations arising from the contract provisions, the script and a large stage crew. Yet, according to Lynch, he never felt his freedoms as an artist and film director would ever be suppressed in any way, with the exception of Dune (1994), which received negative critics and was a box-office failure which Lynch ascribes to his being largely restricted both financially and from the side of the producers who denied him to have full artistic control over the film, including the final cut right. The Elephant

Man delivers a story of John Merrick, who, as a result of his physical condition is shown as an attraction in a freak show where he is discovered by Frederick Treves, a

London Hospital surgeon. Treves makes an effort to help Merrick and succeeds, but only for a limited period of time as he has to face aversion and deeply rooted reluctance to help from on all levels of society of that era.

In any language, John Merrick was a walking nightmare. Or, rather, a bent

and hobbling one, for, in addition to his appearance and unwashed stench

that caused people to shun and torment him, John had a painful hip disease

that made his cane-assisted locomotion slow and tortuous. With no one to

call family or friend, outcast and penniless, John Merrick, shrouded in a

hood and cloak, was shunted back and forth between brief hospital stays

and poorhouse lodgings. (Olson 2011: 103)

The repulsion, unwillingness and inability of the majority of society to accept

Merrick as a human, as well as his being aware and, in a way terrified, of his physical appearance, as Shuy R. Weishaar states in his dissertation Where Light in Darkness

Lies: The Grotesque in Theory and Contemporary American Film when describing one of the scene “in which the night porter exploits and abuses Merrick, ultimately forcing him to look at his own reflection in a mirror, he regards his own deformed physicality 56

with the horror of uncanny recognition: he screams just like everyone else does when they first encounter him, further verification that within he is "like everyone else" and that it is the burden of his own excessive flesh that keeps his fantasy from being complete”. (Weishaar 2011: 204). The questions raised by Lynch in the film include the inquiries of morality, Mr. Bytes, Merrick’s owner, based on Merrick’s appearance, considers him being retarded and, therefore, not human. However, as Treves gradually finds out, Merrick is not only human but a very gentle, knowing and sensitive person.

Lynch emphasizes the fact that it is not the external appearance that makes the difference between people and addresses human prejudice similarly the way Harriet

Beecher Stowe deals with racial issues in her anti-slave novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Lynch utilizes some elements typical for gothic discourse, such as dualities seen as the difference between the physical and the psychic, the discrepancy of perception of self opposed to the impression received by the environment, corporeal deformity, decay and decadence both in high and low class societies, or the presence of dreams.

Merrick’s dream proceeds to a row of men grasping levers and pumping

their arms. The levers are attached to a steel shaft up in the steam that

hangs above the workers, and the image raises the oppressive question,

Are the men running the machine or is the machine working its slave

labourers? (Olson 2011: 129)

Lynch aims at the attitudes towards minorities; Victorian England, similarly to

North American slavery, is a typical example of human abuse and exploitation where people are often handled as slaves or animals. Through Lynch’s narration that may be understood as a call to the society that reminds it of its debt and certain liabilities towards such individuals or social groups that have always existed within the whole as that issue has been as contemporary as ever. Lynch demonstrates such a call in a scene 57

in which John Merrick, upon his arrival at the train station, attracts attention of a boy who starts to follow and pester him being joined by more young men. Merrick, trying to escape, unintentionally runs into a small girl who falls down, which gives an impulse for more and more people gathering around him. They take off the cover of his head after which Merrick tries to run for cover but is chased down it the public toilets from where there is no escape route for him. Merrick, terrified and in despair, cries out “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I...am...a man!”

Blue Velvet (1986) is another story bearing a number of typically gothic features.

A young man, Jeffrey Beaumont is trying to uncover and solve a mystery that he encounters. He accidentally discovers a human ear in quite a high state of decomposition. Upon taking the ear to the police and with the help of his friend and later girlfriend Sandy he finds out that the police were investigating a case which also involved a beautiful, seductive singer Dorothy. The discovery launches an array of events, including an encounter with a psychopathic sexual pervert, sexual abuse, torture, murder and horror on the background of a bizarre Oedipal family model with Jeffrey being the child and where the maniacal, procrustean Frank Booth and the humiliated and sexually abused Dorothy Vallens represent his parents. Jeffrey is frightened and scared of Frank on one side, on the other side he is strongly attracted by Dorothy and wants to have her for himself. This family triangle may be interpreted as one which points at domestic violence as a phenomenon existing within real families and also offers certain parallel to Poe’s work, for instance the alcohol abuse connected horrors and violence depicted in The Black Cat short story. Similarly to Lynch’s The Alphabet,

Blue Velvet, through Jeffrey’s character, who, urged to solve a mystery, decides to undertake a journey at the end of which, as if passing through the rite of initiation, he leaves the world of boyhood and enters the world of manhood, a parallel to the 58

schoolgirl’s nightmare, connected with the fear of learning and a symbolic loss of childish innocence.

In Blue Velvet Lynch, again, demonstrates his fondness for dualities by taking second views from different angles, bringing a completely different picture of the same thing. Lynch also uses the distinct use of light and darkness, dark passages, hideout places, as well as use of colours which attain the traits of a textual message instigating the subliminal and emotional states. The way the story deals with the elements of surface and depth or system and confusion refers to the Freudian delineation of the subconscious. Blue Velvet to a great extent reflects Lynch’s childhood memories as may be manifested by the ear theme which might be interpreted as Lynch’s way to pay tribute to the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and it refers to Lynch’s painting period and a self-portrait for which, under the influence of the Dutch painter, he used the same colour pallet as Vincent van Gogh used in one of his own self-portraits. The depiction of Lumberton shows a striking resemblance to Twin Peaks and is sometimes referred to as the Twin Peaks pre-sequel. In both cases Lynch provides an idealized picture of a typical Pacific Northwest city including the atmosphere as Lynch remembered it since his childhood. In both cases the surficial pictures of the places do not correspond with what is hidden underneath. In both cases the main protagonist, Kyle MacLachlan as

Jeffrey Beaumont or agent Dale Cooper, depicts a young man searching for the truth and in both cases, judging by the main protagonist’s physique, contemplation, indefatigability, orderliness, and methodicalness, it may be assumed that he is Lynch’s alter ego.

Who better to portray Jeffrey Beaumont, an adventurous youth on the

verge of manhood, than Paul Atreides himself: Kyle MacLachlan. Dune

remained an emblem of negativity in Lynch’s mind but the director greatly 59

admired his lead actor’s abilities. He felt MacLachlan possessed abundant

mental and physical prowess, and projected both spiritual depth and

innocence. He also knew that Blue Velvet, unlike Dune’s ponderous,

magisterial narrative, had passages in which MacLachlan’s boyish zeal and

quirky playfulness could shine through. (Olson 2011: 206)

There are a number of examples of similarities between Blue Velvet and Twin

Peaks that draw from Lynch’s boyhood memories, be it the examination of the human ear at the coroner’s office and Laura Palmer’s body examination, Lumberton High

School and Twin Peaks High School setting, the diner at the corner of the crossroads with the traffic light swaying in the air and the truck with a load of timber passing by.

There is a clear resemblance between Dorothy Vallen’s room the Twin Peak’s Red

Room, just as there is a clear reuse of the double femme fatale theme, seen through

Laura and Maddy mirrored in Blue Velvet by Dorothy and Sandy. At the end of Blue

Velvet there is a robin sitting on the window frame, representing a symbol of light and the upcoming piece which refers to Sandy’s dream she had earlier in the film in which she saw thousands of robins bringing light to the dark world. The same bird is sitting on a pine branch at the beginning of the Twin Peaks opening music score perhaps symbolizing that this place, too, would find its way to the light, just as did Henry

Spencer from Eraserhead accompanied by the Lady from the Radiator.

As has already been stated above, Blue Velvet shows a number of parallels with

Twin Peaks when it comes to the plot or the themes depicted. But it is completely different when its television series format is taken into account and which David Lynch launched in close cooperation with Mark Frost, an American novelist, screenwriter, director and film producer. Although Lynch did not direct all the sequels of Twin Peaks, individual parts bear his distinctive handwriting. Perhaps the most distinguishing 60

element of Twin Peaks is the overall atmosphere of it and Lynch’s ability to produce a piece of work presenting a balanced narrative which supplies its viewers with the right proportions of the grotesque and the macabre as the typical elements of gothic discourse. Twin Peaks is a small town located in the Pacific Northwest not far from the

Canadian border in a mountainous countryside with the hills forested with Douglas firs which leads its regular, easy going community life. There is a hotel, a diner, a gas station, a police station, modern high school and a large and prosperous saw mill around which the town grew up. However, the lives of Twin Peaks residents change dramatically when a dead body of Laura Palmer, wrapped in plastic, is found ashore of the local river. Sue Lafky, a former professor at the School of Journalism and Mass

Communication at the University of Iowa, who specialized in feminist and critical media, gender and popular culture, in her article “Gender, Power, and Culture in the

Televisual World of Twin Peaks: a Feminist Critique” provides the following definition of the Twin Peaks series:

Twin Peaks, even as a television show, fits into the category of film noir -

a genre that Christine Gledhill describes as featuring an investigative

structure of the narrative; plot devices such as voice-over or flashback, or

frequently both; multiple points of view; frequent unstable characterization

of the heroine; and an "expressionist" visual style and photography that

emphasizes the sexuality of women. (Lafky 1999-2000: 6)

One of the central topics of the series is, indeed, related to the gender issues, approach to women, sexual abuse, and the role of women in the society placed on the background of the 1980s American society. Yet, as the story unwinds, David Lynch and his collaborators open a complex, multilayered world of myths, symbols, doubles, reflections, haunted spaces, hidden corridors, dwarfs and giants, killers, supernatural 61

powers, gates to different dimensions and dreams. Twin Peaks introduces a number of characters; often quite bizarre as to the way they think, act or look. All the above mentioned gothic features of the series are described and analysed in the following chapter.

David Lynch as an author has been significantly influenced by his youth, his upbringing and his family. Lynch’s father stands behind his ability to work effectively and methodically. His imagery is not based on mere coincidence but mostly reflects his personal experience as seen and interpreted through his eyes and apprehension of the surrounding environment. His work is largely based on images and his style of storytelling bears a number of indicators that substantiate that statement. Lynch’s work, apart from the conscientiously plotlines, is interwoven with deliberately planned use of colours, textures, and symbols through which he aims at the subconscious. Lynch often recycles or reuses particular topics such as those connected to any kind of dualism, metamorphosis, natural motives, and the use of specific logics, mythology or interpretation of dreams. Similarly to the way a painter feels urged to alleviate his inner self by creating a picture without the necessity to explain or interpret it, David Lynch creates his work. The final product is there for the viewers to make their own interpretations of it. After all, David Lynch is a painter.

62

4 Twin Peaks Exposed

David Lynch as a director and Mark Frost as a screenwriter introduced the pilot part of Twin Peaks presented by ABS networks on April 8, 1990. The initial eight sequels in season one were later extended to make a total of thirty sequels divided into two seasons. The authors offered for that time quite an uncommon story of a small town in the American Pacific Northwest. The most unique element of the programme consisted in a completely different narrative structure which was in direct contrast with the conventional television programming commonly provided at that period. Most television shows of that era were rather formulaic with the intention not to disturb the approved principles; the usual show formats could be defined as somewhat revolving around the same themes, characters and soap operatic schemes, presenting regular characters operating in unvarying environments, providing comfortably noncommittal range of domestic entertainment. Twin Peaks, unlike the aforementioned television show forms, offers unorthodox narrative means. The methods and principles on which

Lynch built the story refer more to making a film, rather than a series. Also, individual sequels do not provide the standard ‘one sequel – one detective case’ pattern. In her contribution for the American, British and Canadian Studies Journal named “That

Show You Like Might Be Coming Back in Style”: How Twin Peaks Changed the Face of Contemporary Television, Raluca Moldovan provides a brief glance back at David

Lynch’s work, placing arguments through which she defines Lynch’s work and his influence on the contemporary cinema. When commenting Lynch’s style she offers the following definition:

His work is unusual in that it seemingly violates all the conventions of the

classic Hollywood style: his story lines are disconnected, not driven by the 63

logic of cause and effect, his characters are ambiguous and inconsistent,

his cinematography is bizarre, filled with unusual camera angles and

disconcerting visual effects. The Lynchian world often resembles a giant

and confusing labyrinth where the spectator can easily become lost and

alienated. (Moldovan 2015: 46)

Yet, before going deep into the series’ gothic structure it might be interesting to compare the story with other prominent products of Dark Romanticism. It could be said that to an extent Twin Peaks is the Overlook Hotel. Both these sites show a considerable number of similarities. And both of them show parallels with a short story of one of the most renowned authors of American Dark Romanticism, Edgar Allan Poe and his short story The Black Cat. The common denominator for all three pieces of work is decadence in its various forms. All three pieces of work introduce some higher dark power controlling the events and the lives of all those who fall under its influence.

Things that start as completely innocent acts gradually develop and graduate while gaining increasingly more power, aggression and brutality with their characters failing to stay in contact with the outside world and losing the sense of reality.

Poe’s stone walled house, especially after it had burned down, resembles a ruin of a castle. The narrator, once a happy man, married to a beautiful and devoted wife and an animal lover undergoes a terrible transition as he falls under the influence of alcohol impersonated by big black cat symbolically named Pluto as the ruler of the underworld.

Although trying to get rid of the ‘cat’, he does not hold enough mental power and will to successfully accomplish that mission. Although realising subconsciously the horror of reality, he fails to face it and rather blames Pluto for all the wrongdoings. The gradual disintegration of his personality draws him to turn his aggression against the

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loved ones resulting in a horrifying death of his wife which, finally, costs him his own life.

Stephen King’s The Shining shows a number of similarities with Poe’s story.

Stephen King has shown a lot of fondness towards Edgar Allan Poe who has been a great inspiration for him which he also demonstrates by quoting a passage from Poe’s

The Masque of the Red Death in the foreword of his book. Like Poe, King had to struggle with alcoholism, unlike Poe, King succeeded in defeating the demon. The

Overlook Hotel is a place with a very unsettled history and is depicted as a living structure. Just like the dungeon-like stone walled cellar in The Black Cat, the darkest and murkiest part of the hotel is the boiler room which is dominated by a large boiler which the author describes as ‘a fat dozing cat’. It is the heart of the large, evil soaked place which lives on the energy extracted out of people. The more sincere and innocent a person is, the more attractive it gets as sustenance for that sinister place. Jack Torrance comes to spend time in the Overlook Hotel not knowing it was not him who chose the place but rather the hotel itself that chose Jack to come and bring his son Danny with him. Taking advantage of Jack’s weakness and inclination to alcohol and violence the hotel brings Jack on a brink of murdering his own son. It is Danny’s exceptional mental capacity and ability to hold nonverbal communication with Mr. Halloran that helps to avert a disaster. Similarly to The Black Cat narrator, Jack Torrance undergoes a struggle between the evil-driven aggression and the remains of his affection for his son.

The thing that was after him screamed and howled and cursed. Dream and

reality had joined together without a seam. […] In a way, what Danny felt

was relief. It was not his father. The mask of face and body had been

ripped and shredded and made into a bad joke. […] "Now, by God," it

breathed. It wiped its lips with a shaking hand. "Now you'll find out who is 65

the boss around here. You'll see. It's not you they want. It's me. Me. Me!"

[…] "Let's see you pull any of your fancy tricks now," it muttered. "I

wasn't born yesterday, you know. Didn't just fall off the hay truck, by God.

I'm going to do my fatherly duty by you, boy." […] "Go on and hit me.

But you'll never get what you want from me." The face in front of him

changed. It was hard to say how; there was no melting or merging of the

features. […] "Doc," Jack Torrance said. "Run away. Quick. And

remember how much I love you." (King 1977: 292 – 295)

If Twin Peaks is the Overlook Hotel, than Dale Cooper is Danny. In that respect it may be stated that Twin Peaks is Lynch’s interpretation of an effort in the search for restoration of balance. The conclusion that may be made, based on the ending of the closing part of the second season, is rather unclear. With Dale Cooper smashing his forehead against the bathroom mirror the in the reflection of which the viewers see Bob, the denouement of the series remains a mystery. And mystery is what Gothic Fiction is largely built on. Twin Peaks has become a place dominated by evil forces, although on the surface it looks perfectly tranquil. If Dale Cooper is Danny for the pristine purity of his soul then the detective line of the series becomes, in fact, of secondary nature.

Cooper arrives to Twin Peaks and it might be interpreted that it was Bob’s intention to attract him to this place using Laura as a mere bate. The R letter underneath Laura’s fingernail was there to assure Cooper he was following the right trail and the individual clues and hints, including Cooper’s dreams represent the means how to make Cooper eager and thrilled to disclose the mystery surrounding Bob by having him come ‘down’ to the Red Room. ‘Down’ here means to the other dimension which in the context of the story may be compared to Poe’s cellar or King’s boiler room as a place holding the key to the mystery. The Red room is inhabited by the souls of the dead who were, 66

apparently, murdered and it offers a striking resemblance with Danny’s mirrored writing on the bedroom door REDRUM (Red Room) - MURDER.

Twin Peaks is, for most of its part, dealing with events and actions arising on the background of a death mystery, the investigation of which discloses a complex tangled- web of additional stories and affairs requiring thoroughgoing examination in order to collect all the fragmented parts of the mysterious lives and relations hidden underneath, delivered to the viewers in thirty mutually related parts. The number of characters is greatly extensive as is the number of possible interpretations for which reason this chapter shall, apart from a concise delineation of the plot, concentrate on aspects that relate to Twin Peaks as a typically gothic story which deals with a number of elements characteristic for the gothic discourse. John Alexander, in his book The Films of David

Lynch, provides perhaps one of the densest definitions of the series.

A seventeen year old schoolgirl, Laura Palmer, is found murdered on the

river bank of a small community in NW USA. FBI special agent, Dale

Cooper, links the girl's death to previous killings elsewhere and his

investigations uncover realms of narcotics, prostitution and perversity

otherwise incongruous with the town's tranquil appearance. Through a

series of revelations and visions Laura Palmer's murderer is revealed to be

a deranged psychopath, 'Bob', an evil spirit who has consumed Laura's

father, Leland. Leland murders Laura's cousin, Madeleine, but when he

dies 'Bob's' spirit lives on. Cooper enters another-world dimension in order

to confront this evil, only to be consumed by it himself. (Alexander 1993:

132)

The visual part is supported by Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting musical scores and leitmotifs which are not used as mere fillers to abridge the time between individual 67

scenes or sketches, but work as full-bodied ingredients necessary not only to accompany the plotline and the individual story events and actions, but to complete the overall atmosphere of the final product and, above all, to work as a mediator through which

Lynch may appeal to the viewers’ subconscious. The subject of exploitation of music and sound as an inevitable means of expression is addressed in more detail in the following chapter of the thesis. The visual concepts, in cooperation with the musical and sound accompaniment, make a well working synergy resulting in creating a typically uncanny environment. The term uncanny is ascribed to Sigmund Freud, a neurologist and the originator of psychoanalysis. Within the process of establishing psychoanalytic grounds he also improved a number of specific remedial methods such as free association as a central function in the analytic procedure. Freud is also considered to be the discoverer of transference, which can be described as redisposition of emotional relations among persons, meaning that feelings that a person experienced towards a certain person are turned and transferred onto another person, phenomena frequently utilized within the gothic narrative as is the case of Laura’s perception of Dr. Jacoby who seems to have taken the position of Laura’s mother as someone to share her secrets with, which is repeatedly documented through Dr. Jacoby’s listening to the tapes that

Laura regularly supplied him with as part of their clinical relationship. Freud also questioned and revised some views concerning the issues of sexuality, especially those related to childhood, the findings of which reflected in his definition of the Oedipus complex, which has been referred to in the previous chapter to support the explanation of the Jeffrey, Frank and Dorothy triangle in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Another

Freud’s psychoanalytical approach concerned the study and explanation of dreams based on which he built the conception of human mental structure. All the above mentioned elements are typical and fit well within the definition of uncanny as one of 68

the characteristic signs related to the gothic genre including the topics particularly associated with American Gothic as a subgenre of Gothic fiction represented by such themes as the Puritan legacy, guilt, natural landscapes, sexual transgression, gender identity, doppelgangers, or themes related to supernatural phenomena. Before Freud began to examine the phenomenon, a German psychiatrist Earnest Jentsch addressed that topic in his essay On the Psychology of the Uncanny (1908) and became highly influential for Freud as he also mentions Jentsch in The Uncanny and which also becomes apparent as they both explain the basic principles of the phenomenon with the use of the story The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman, a Prussian author of the Romantic period dealing with horror and fantasy. Freud makes his point on the following example:

A student named Nathaniel, whose childhood memories this fantastic tale

opens, is unable, for all his present happiness, to banish certain memories

connected with the mysterious and terrifying death of his much-loved

father. On certain evenings his mother would send the children to early

with the warning ‘The Sand-Man is coming.’ And sure enough, on each

such occasion the boy would hear the heavy tread of a visitor, with whom

his father would then spend the whole evening. It is true that, when asked

about the Sand-Man, the boy’s mother would deny that any such person

existed, except as a figure of speech, but a nursemaid was able to give

more tangible information: ‘He is a bad man who comes to children when

they won’t go to bed and throws a handful of sand in their eyes, so that

their eyes jump up out of their heads, all bleeding. He then throws their

eyes in his bag and takes them off to the half-moon as food for his

children....’ (Freud 2003: 136) 69

Freud understands uncanny as some kind of fear that exists within something already known, he finally defined the canny and uncanny principle as a principle of two opposing matters which hold each other’s meaning within themselves. According to

Freud, any emotional consequence may result in anxiety which takes place through repression as one of the defence mechanisms. Such distress may be seen as uncanny and feels as something that came to light although it was supposed to remain hidden.

Freud’s examples of places that stimulate numerous uncanny feelings are the homes.

Twin Peaks offers a variety of such places with clear uncanny environments, be it the

Palmers’ house with the fan revolving above the staircase as if to move the heavy air or

Horn’s hotel with its double walls and peek holes. The uncanny atmosphere permeates most of the story. There is another important aspect of Twin Peaks that makes it a typical gothic story implementing both dark and horrifying acts seasoned with the grotesque elements, amalgamating a number of typically televisual components ranging from melodrama, murder mystery, and school romance to soap opera or situation comedy for which it is sometimes referred to as ‘soap noir’. As John Alexander adds in exaggeration:

It is 'the murder mystery', with Holmes and Watson (Cooper and Truman)

in pursuit of an archfiend, Moriarty (Windom Earle). There are elements

of 'black comedy'; Bobby and Shelly conducting their clandestine love-

affair before the salivating and incapacitated Leo Johnson. (Alexander

1993: 134)

The fact that Twin Peaks covers such an extended range of genres may be one of the reasons why that work may appear somewhat superficial or perfunctory. However,

Lynch’s work is largely about rejection of definitive paradigms and proves that what may be seen as real is not a mere rigid reflection of the surrounding world but depends 70

greatly on a point of view, meaning that individual experience is always relative.

Angela McRobbie, in her book Postmodernism and Popular Culture, deals with the issues concerning contemporary views and analysis aimed at postmodernist approaches, laying emphasis on the necessity of social transition based on the intricacy of mental and social bonds and relations and calls for restoration of approaches employed in scholarly work. She also addresses the issues of the role of feminist conception and space within the postmodern society. Lynch, according to McRobbie, indeed fits within the postmodern definition.

First there was postmodernism in the field of the arts and in visual culture.

From architecture to fine art, from remakes of B movies to the cinema of

David Lynch, from Talking Heads to Laurie Anderson, what was

becoming increasingly apparent was indeed a concern with surface; with

meaning being paraded as an intentionally superficial phenomenon (what

Jameson labelled ‘waning in effect’ or depthlessness). Not only was

meaning in art or in culture all there, for all to see, stripped of its old

hidden elitist difficulty, but it also, again as Jameson pointed out, seemed

already familiar, like the faint memory of an old pop song, a refrain, a

chorus, a tune, a ‘cover version’ of an original which never was.

(McRobbie 1994: 3)

The term postmodern relates to the way things are being interpreted, meaning that it solely depends on each individual to deduce their own interpretation by applying abstract rules or standards on a particular experience, making such experience an entirely relative encounter which is completely in compliance with Twin Peaks and

Lynch’s approach. As has already been stated in the previous chapters, Lynch’s language is specific in the way that he presents his work as if it was a piece of fine art. 71

His primary goal is not to deliver a clear message trying to make the observers to comprehend what exactly he had in mind but rather to stimulate their subconscious and, through the use of subliminal communication he encourages them to come to their own understanding, implications and interpretations of the presented subject.

Twin Peaks, as some kind of continuum, shares quite a large number of similarities with Blue Velvet, be it the story setting with both Lumberton and Twin

Peaks being located in the Pacific Northwest, which relates to Lynch’s growing up in a similar environment, or the similarities in plotlines, the general conception of which is occupied with the dividedness of the places when looking at them with a fleeting glance as opposed to the almost diabolical reality disclosed when digging deeper under the surface of the seemingly calm and undisturbed community.

Twin Peaks begins where Blue Velvet ends; a robin on the branch of a

tree. We see a waterfall, a timber yard, the forest and a river. An Asian

woman paints her face before a mirror - her gaze is solemn, her

countenance ethereal. A middle aged man in a logging jacket picks up his

fishing tackle and mutters to himself: 'Gone fishing.' He walks down to the

river and at the edge of the flowing stream he notices some plastic

wrapping. Closer examination reveals the body of a girl shrouded in

plastic. (Alexander 1993: 136)

The ‘robin’ analogue, however, may but does not have to represent or deliver the same message. While in Blue Velvet it symbolizes Sandy’s ‘thousands of robins bringing light into darkness’ dream come true and the story coming to a happy ending, in case of Twin Peaks the symbolism might be completely the opposite which would also comply with the principle of bipolarity, a principle favoured and often employed in

Lynch’s work. Unlike Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks does not conclude in a happy end or the 72

mystery completely solved. Dale Cooper is killed in Black Lodge by Windom Earl and is brought back to life by Bob and sent back to the surface – possessed by Bob. In such a case and with such powers Bob holds, the robin as the symbol of light might refer to the light bearer or Lucifer from Latin lux, meaning light and ferre, which means to bear.

Bob is the irreconcilable enemy and the main villain. Bob possesses demonic qualities and represents the dark side; he is the essence of evil and moves among multiple realities. His presence is sometimes not tangible but exists on the subconscious level – a perfect example of the uncanny.

Another translation of the originally Latin word Lucifer is Venus, a planet representing a feminine symbol of beauty which would well comply with the main plot as a significant part of the narration induces a number of parallels concerning issues of feminity, sex and violence. Just as the two mentioned possible interpretations of the robin as the light bearer, the Lynchian environment is based on the same principle of duality.

The polarising of opposites prevails throughout the series, and the

development of key characters provides examples of Lynchian

'conversions' (enantiodromia). Nearly thirty plot-bearing characters are

presented in the first episode, most of whom undergo the conversion from

one extreme to another. These make up stories within the story, which

reflect the essence of the main narrative, and a theme which recurs

throughout Lynch's films. As we go beneath the image of the pristine

Laura Palmer, we uncover someone else; the person who is Laura Palmer's

shadow - promiscuous, predatory, drug addicted: defiled. (Alexander

1993: 137)

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The term ‘enantiodromia’ which is ascribed to Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychotherapist, psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, refers to a state which corresponds with the violation of natural balance that may be defined as ‘too much of everything is bad’ meaning that when states, events or affairs exceed certain level they change their polarity and become their antithesis, or their very opposite.

Taken from the Jungian point of view, something that is based on material grounds undergoes metamorphosis and transforms into its powerful and menacing antagonistic reflection, a principle that corresponds with the Yin – Yang substance. The principle of opposing forces as well as the theme of mental metamorphosis is what makes one of the main issues of the whole Twin Peaks plotline. Anybody who gets obsessed by Bob undergoes a significant change. That element applies well to Leland Palmer as well as to agent Cooper at the very end of the second season. Such change does not appear on the first sight but rather as a reaction to some triggering impulse. Leland Palmer’s behaviour, however it may seem perfectly normal, shows signs of internal tension and instability and Bob’s effort to keep the place out of balance.

Although Twin Peaks is a television series it is still, to a great extent, a product of

David Lynch which means that there may be a number of possible interpretations of it as a whole or at least of some of its segments or parts. One of the possible interpretations of Twin Peaks might be introduced by a simple question “What is Twin

Peaks about?” The common answer comes with an explanation that it is, above all, a detective - gothic story revolving around the mysterious death of Laura Palmer. The story begins on a February morning when Pete Martell while going fishing, which, apart from playing chess, is his great hobby, spots a suspicious package wrapped in plastic washed ashore of the river. Upon closer look he realizes it is a dead, naked body. He runs to the nearest phone to notify Harry S. Truman, the local sheriff. Sheriff Truman, 74

assisted by Doctor Will Hayward and his Deputy Andy Brennan, discovers that the naked body belongs to Laura Palmer, a local beauty, who, in the eyes of the Twin Peaks residents, had the image of moral purity and innocence. Laura’s death shakes the whole community but shortly after the discovery of Laura’s dead body another girl, Ronette

Pulaski, in a very bad physical condition, half naked and almost insane is found wandering around a rail track over the state border. As a result, an FBI special agent

Dale Cooper is assigned to investigate the circumstances of the crime. Cooper examines

Laura’s body and discovers a small piece of paper with the letter R stuck under Laura’s fingernail which leads him to the conclusion that the murder shows identical marks of a murder committed one year earlier and states that the established factors indicate that the murderer probably resides in Twin Peaks. Agent Cooper’s investigation reveals that

Laura, just as practically all the other characters, led a double life. Not only she cheated on her boyfriend and local football team captain, Bobby Briggs, with James Hurley, but she also, upon her acquaintance with the truck driver Leo Johnson and a drug dealer and a pimp named Jacques Renault, worked as a prostitute and became addicted on cocaine which she got from Bobby who dealt drugs for Jacques Renault.

During Cooper’s investigation new facts come to light showing that Laura’s life was very much different and more turbulent that the locals would be able to believe. On the background of sexually motivated perverse acts the story introduces another typically gothic element – the feminine element present in literally every gothic narration. It is often represented within the context of themes demonstrating various forms of sexual transgression and abuse. In Twin Peaks, it may seem that women are completely subjected to their male counterparts, being housewives, waitresses or secret lovers but rarely strong enough to face the male force efficiently. According to Sue

Lafky, Twin Peaks is simply a place of female oppression. 75

Twin Peaks is a place where women constantly live with the threat of

violence at the hands of men. This gendered difference in treatment, as

well as the male gaze that is central to the show, links "a privileging of

vision with a sexual privilege" (Owens 70). Specifically, this sexual

privilege rests in the power of the phallus and its relationship to the male

gaze and patriarchal power. Sexual differentiation according to the

distribution of the phallus (Owens 60) is central to Twin Peaks and is

epitomized through differences in power and vulnerability, reducing

representations of women in Twin Peaks as basically essentialist. Women,

who by nature do not have the phallus, are depicted as having little real

power, although they may be perceived by men to be a threat. (Lafky

2015: 11)

Lynch’s conception of female characters, as may be one of the interpretations, are of sexual nature, be it demonstrated directly or in context. They are portrayed as incapable of independent reasoning or decision making and are depicted as ones seeking protection from men. Shelly Johnson is abused by her tyrannical husband Leo and seeks protection with her secret lover Bobby Briggs. Norma Jennings is in love with Ed

Hurley and hopes for his protection as she is scarred of her husband Hank who returns from prison. Hank Jennings is Josie Packard’s conspirator over the boat accident and death of Josie’s husband and mill owner Andrew Packard. However, for Laura Palmer it does not have to exactly the case. Although she was subjected to her devil possessed tyrannical father, Laura was, in a way, rather dominant. As is revealed from Dr.

Jacoby’s interview with Bobby Briggs, Laura felt being kept in darkness. According to

Jacoby, she would very much want ‘to get back to light, change things’ because ‘she was harbouring an awful secret that was bad enough that she would want to die because 76

of it, bad enough that it drove her to people’s weaknesses, prey on them, tempt them and break them down, make them do terrible degrading things. Laura wanted to corrupt people because that’s how she felt about herself.’ Upon that Bobby breaks down in tears and replies: ‘She made me sell drugs so she could have them.’ Apart from the already mentioned typically gothic issues related to the role and place of women within the series, Lynch also offers another similar topic - a transgender allusion - through the character of DEA agent Denise Bryson a male agent dressed as a woman, who would dress as a man as a disguise. In the scene when DEA agent Denis Bryson is sent to

Sheriff Truman’s office, agent Bryson, dressed as a woman greets agent Cooper with a warm smile and saying “It’s a long story but, actually, I prefer Denise if you don’t mind..” During Audrey’s visit in Cooper’s hotel room agent Bryson walks in. Audrey is visibly confused and asks “You have women agents?” to which agent Bryson replies

“More or less.” clearly showing the uncertainty of Bryson’s real sexual orientation.

Another reference to transgender appears in episode five when agent Cooper and Sheriff

Truman check a return mail addressed to Ronette Pulaski that they found in an erotic magazine and which included a photograph of a man with a beard, wearing a night dress. The way Lynch addresses the feminine aspect may be of a completely deliberate nature and may be interpreted as Lynch’s way to point out the many gender discrepancies there are. Camille Paglia in her book Sexual Personae: Art and

Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson deals with the ways mental and anatomical conditions of the opposing genders relate to the way they encounter their environment. She provides a thorough survey across a number of disciplines interfused with her literary and cultural criticism.

In America, English Romanticism fuses with a debilitated Puritanism.

American Romanticism is really Decadent Late Romanticism, a style of 77

sexual perversity, closure, and fragmentation or decay. […] The sexual

laws of Poe’s world are so strict that a normal, feminine woman cannot

survive in it. The narrator’s second wife, blonde Lady Rowena, must be

exterminated to restore the proper hierarchy of female over male. Raven-

haired Ligeia, overcoming death by brute willpower, returns from the

grave to invade the body of her successor. (Paglia 1991: 366)

Decadence is a term that may as well correspond with Lynch’s serial statement.

Just as he dealt with that similar theme in Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, too, discloses the undersurface world demonstrating, as Paglia states ‘sexual perversity, closure, fragmentation or decay’ only with the added attribute concerning the supernatural. In spite of that, Lynch presents a gothic story to which sexual issues, perversity and decay belong, similarly to many other gothic, dark and uncanny aspects.

The single murder case discloses a knotty environment from which new and mostly quite unexpected facts arise to make the whole complex story explode in all directions with numerous links that at times tie together to create often bizarre plot loops or lead to new, unexpected revelations which add to the perplexity of the plotline on the background of numerous features, elements and phenomena of apparently gothic nature, including efforts to solve mysteries, presence of dreams and their role in the gothic narrative, existence of supernatural phenomena, landscapes, presence of symbols and myths, haunting houses, doppelgangers, sexual abuse and violation, gender identity, or racial issues. Agent Dale Cooper’s digging into the mystery murder case discloses ever larger number of connections and links among individual partakers. The gradually extending complexity of the plot includes practically everyone, beginning with the members of the Sheriff’s Department, individual members of the Briggs, Hayward,

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Horne, Hurley, Johnson, Packard and Renault families, as well as other local residents depicted in the series upon the gothic structure, placed in a gothic environment.

The very first encounter with such gothic environment comes with the opening credits of the series. Accompanied by typical Badalamenti’s slow guitar riff, the viewers see the robin sitting on a pine tree followed by a view of Packard’s mill surrounded by a mountain range, symbolizing the remoteness of the place. There is also one of the omnipresent Douglas firs standing on the left side of the take. The following take from the mill shows a pair of automatically operating grinders that sharpen the teeth of the saw blades. The use of technologies belongs among the gothic elements as will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. Another scene in the opening credits shows the ‘Welcome to Twin Peaks’ sign on the side of the road which descends and disappears in a large valley with two mountain peaks dominating the countryside and the slowly flowing river. The themes of immensely large natural spaces are typical and one of the most described phenomena characteristically related to American gothic that was originally related to the savage wilderness that challenged the first settlers coming to America. The location of Twin Peaks may be understood as an example of such a gothic landscape, as its environment, perhaps stressed by the fact that the murder investigation takes place in February and the leafless trees, overcast skies and at times foggy weather add to the murky atmosphere, may produce the feeling of a haunting fourth dimension. In Twin Peaks the effect of the uncanny is obvious. While the greyish setting of the Twin Peaks induces somewhat uneasy and confined feeling of dark expectations, agent Cooper’s evaluation of the countryside upon his arrival to Twin

Peaks is markedly positive, another example of typically gothic bipolarity.

The importance of the natural environment is made clear from the pilot

episode, when we see Agent Cooper arriving in Twin Peaks and 79

expressing his genuine amazement at the size and number of trees

(Douglas firs) he sees along the road; later on, there are many instances in

which Cooper, with child-like admiration, observes nature and marvels at

its beauty. (Moldovan 2015: 53)

The vastness and mightiness of the countryside becomes even more evident in one of the scenes in the first part of Season One, in which heartbroken James Hurley sits on a viewpoint above the valley, holding a necklace with one half of a heart in his hands and overlooking the endless scenery of the forested valleys surrounded by snow capped mountain ranges in the distance, underlining the uncanny feeling of a remote and completely isolated place with no signs of human presence or activity – a feeling that might resemble the impressions experienced by people in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing in the Bush and the sense of disorientation and lornness in an overwhelmingly large, divine environment evoking almost God-fearing feelings along with their exhausting struggle of survival. Similarly to that a peculiar feeling is produced in a scene in which a search party are looking for the place of Laura’s murder preceded by a still, long take overlooking the tops of steaming firs accompanied by a distant howl, a gothic feature of identified sounds, one of the subliminal tools that well help to create the feeling of expectation of something horrific to be disclosed just shortly after that. The river that flows through Twin Peaks may be considered as another gothic symbol connected with the natural phenomenon. Water, among others, is a symbol of circulation and purification, a theme that has already been discussed in the previous chapter and documented by Lynch’s original film act Six Men Getting Sick in which the repeated action was assigned to the life – death circle and the vomiting to the act of purification, things that may reflect Lynch’s concern for Hinduism and transcendental meditation. In case of Twin Peaks, the symbol of circulation may be seen as a violated one, due to the 80

waterfall that is presented at the beginning of each part of the series. This breaking of continuity of circulation may be interpreted as breaking of the balance or

‘enantiodromia’ as has been specified earlier in this paragraph. This imbalance may symbolize the presence of evil powers that dominate and control the environment while the dead body washed out by the river may be seen as symbol of purification and the long desired escape from Bob.

When special agent Dale Cooper arrives in Twin Peaks to investigate Laura’s mysterious death he uses various techniques to learn about the subject and to set the direction for the next steps. In his work he employs standard methods of investigation such as providing fingerprints, examination of the body or interrogation of suspects and witnesses. Apart from the common procedures he also applies certain practices that cannot be found in any detective textbook. Cooper is fond of mystical phenomena, including Tibetan and Native American mythology. Cooper’s ‘logical’ reasoning differs greatly from what is commonly ascribed to that term. Cooper’s techniques include the use of deduction based on Tibetan teaching. In part three of the series, Dale Cooper, standing in front of the map of Tibet informs his colleagues about the moved history of

Tibet and its deep spiritual and intellectual roots. For Dale Cooper Tibet is not only a source of alternative investigation techniques and methods but also his lifestyle inspiration represented my yoga or meditation. As part of the brief lecture on Tibet

Cooper tells his colleagues about a dream he had three years ago during which his subconscious acquired knowledge of intuition based deductive ability with the use of which he is able to control his mental and bodily activities. Dreams and the subconscious are typical gothic elements as they refer to the states of mind that are often difficult or impossible to differentiate and when used in Gothic Fiction they represent situations in which it is unclear whether they rather refer to the real or the surreal. 81

Cooper later demonstrates his Tibetan deduction technique; knowing the last entry in

Laura’s diary ‘Nervous about meeting J tonight.’ he presents a list of suspects with their first or last names beginning with letter J. Upon hearing a name read to him by Sheriff

Truman, Cooper throws a stone at a glass bottle placed on a log which he actually hits after hearing the name of Leo Johnson, taking it as clear evidence of Johnson’s involvement in the case and the letter J in Laura’s diary. Cooper’s deductive methods include his intuition which he uses when watching a drawing with a portrait of a suspicious man marked by Laura’s mother Sarah to which he react by saying that he saw that man in his dream and his intuition told him that his and Sarah’s vision are in relation. For Cooper dreams are a natural source when searching for the truth.

The themes including dreams or visions are an inevitable part of a gothic discourse as a source of knowledge, as is the case of Dale Cooper, and as a way to travel in different worlds and dimensions. In one of his dreams Laura Palmer tells cooper who killed her. Cooper shares his dream experience with Sheriff Truman and tells him that the dream is some kind of a code to be decrypted. Cooper’s dreaming also plays an important role in another case. When going through an erotic magazine he recognizes Laura Palmer in a picture without the head. When Truman asks him how he would possibly know it is Laura, Cooper makes a note about red drapery he saw in his dream.

The phenomenon of dreams and explanation of dreams was surveyed, studied and thoroughly examined by Sigmund Freud. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams he provides a deep insight into the issue. This work takes a critical approach towards the principal works concerned with dreams in a wide range, including philosophical, scientific or even pop-culture conceptions. He introduces his theory of origination of dreams and their possible interpretation. Freud provides a thorough analysis of his 82

dream which he calls ‘Dream of Irma’s Injection’ (Freud 1913: 89 – 100) the main outcome of which is Freud’s statement that the content of his dream was compelled by his subconscious wish for the dream’s fulfilment. Freud also addresses the issues concerning distortion of dreams the result of which is also anxiety dreams stressing out that even such dreams are wish-fulfilments with their real meaning being concealed.

Freud further examines and defines the substance of the Oedipus’ complex as well as the psychical source of dreams. Throughout his work, Freud supports his arguments with a number of examples, often based on his personal experience.

That night I had the following dream: I am very incompletely dressed, and

I go from a flat on the ground- floor up a flight of stairs to an upper story.

In doing this I jump up three stairs at a time, and I am glad to find that I

can mount the stairs so quickly. Suddenly I notice that a servant-maid is

coming down the stairs- that is, towards me. I am ashamed, and try to

hurry away, and now comes this feeling of being inhibited; I am glued to

the stairs, and cannot move from the spot. Analysis: The situation of the

dream is taken from an every-day reality. […] On the evening before the

dream I had actually gone this short distance with my garments in

disarray- that is, I had taken off my collar, tie and cuffs; but in the dream

this had changed into a more advanced, but, as usual, indefinite degree of

undress. It is a habit of mine to run […] The shame of not being fully

dressed is undoubtedly of a sexual character; the servant of whom I dream

is older than I, surly, and by no means attractive. […] When I pay my

morning visit at this house I am usually seized with a desire to clear my

throat; the sputum falls on the stairs. […] The housekeeper, another

elderly, curmudgeonly person, but, as I willingly admit, a woman of 83

cleanly instincts, takes a different view of the matter. […] She lies in wait

for me, to see whether I shall take the liberty referred to, and, if she sees

that I do, I can distinctly hear her growl. (Freud 1913: 200 – 201)

The manner in which Sigmund Freud interprets his dream shows an interesting similarity to the manner agent Cooper interprets his own dreams. Freud’s legacy is also present at Dr. Jacoby’s office. When Dr. Jacoby speaks with Bobby Briggs about his love affair and sex issues with Laura, Bobby, agitated at first, takes a position on the sofa and calms down to explain Laura’s view of the world and the reason why she actually wanted to die, saying that, according to Laura, people are trying to be good, but they are sick and rotten. The theme of decay and decomposition is one of typical elements used in the gothic discourse. The theme of dreams is not limited to agent

Cooper only. At the end of episode one Laura’s mother wakes up terrified after having a vision of a hand in a glove picking up a necklace from a hiding place. In episode four

Donna and James return to the forest together to pick up the half of the broken-heart necklace to find out that it has been taken by somebody else. Donna mentions, to James’ surprise, the fact that Mrs. Palmer spoke about her vision and the necklace and explains that Laura used to speak about her mother as being spooky and mentions that both

Laura and her mother used to have special dreams. Their conversation gets interrupted by a hoot of an owl sitting on a tree above them. The owl is a symbol, there are many owls in the forests surrounding Twin Peaks and they can be seen as Bob’s eyes. Visions and dreams in these circumstances can be understood as a demonstration of how anxieties arise and they effectively create the uncanny effect. The use of dreams here reflects the bipolarity as they may be interpreted as they oscillate between order and confusion, weird and usual, recollection of the past and the expectations of the impending. Therefore, the uncanny does not necessarily refer to the unknown, but it is 84

responsible for the sensation of uneasiness and agitation often related to the perfectly known environment or events. The phenomenon of dreams as and their irreplaceable role within the gothic narrative is also in narrow connection with the appearance, use and role of symbols and myths.

Mythology and symbols have influenced the lives of humans across all cultures and societies as it reflects in a variety of moral attitudes, customs or rituals. The vast diversity and similarities at the same time may be used efficiently as a method of study when trying to comprehend individual cultures. Twin Peaks offers an extensive range of symbols and clues many of which, based on the common knowledge, often act as subliminal, be it the use of certain colours or themes to induce the required feeling, expectations or unexplainable anxieties in viewers. One of the basic aspects linked to symbolism in Twin Peaks is the repetitive appearance of subjects that include numbers especially the numbers two and three as they possess a number of special features related to mythology. Number two represents division, or splitting in two, sometimes designated as dichotomy. Although that numerical symbol appears in various alterations throughout cultures and philosophies, it may be well demonstrated by the already mentioned yin – yang principle – one whole consisting of two divided opposing forces, but each containing a trace of the other. Number three is of a great importance for many religions and philosophies, be it the Holy Trinity, Three Jewels of Buddhism, Three

Pure Ones in Taoism, Three Wise Men, Crucifixion, Christ being prophet, priest and king, who rose from the dead on the third day following his death. The Twin Peaks series provide a range of twos and threes, beginning with the title itself, The Black and

The White Lodges, Laura’s two diaries, the double R Diner, including the doppelganger phenomenon represented by murdered Laura palmer and her cousin Maddy, Audrey and

Donna as antagonistic half sisters, Bob and Mike and a number of other instants of the 85

opposing forces as well as the many double lives of most of the characters. There are also manifold representations of number three within the Twin Peaks plotline, beginning with the number of letters present in the name of the main evil spirit and the originator and mover of the events and actions – Bob, followed by three triangle on major Briggs’ neck, a number of love triangles, three letters RBT that were gradually discovered and were related to Laura’s murder. Number three also comes into play when the scenes with crushing mirrors by Leland Palmer or agent Cooper are taken into consideration. These events may be interpreted as being related to the third eye principle which is commonly viewed as mystical and spiritual element referring to the ability to perceive or see certain events that are not based on physical grounds. The reference to the third eye may also be ascribed to the pineal gland, a part of human brain, which produces dimethyltryptamine, a hallucinogenic substance responsible for light sensitivity that is probably produced in large volumes during birth and death and is responsible for dreamlike experience. Myths and symbols are topics that were thoroughly examined by Claude-Lévi Strauss, a French anthropologist, ethnologist and developer of structural anthropology theory who claimed the unpredictability of myths due to the fluctuating nature of condition under which they form. In his work he pointed out certain antagonistic aspects related to myths, such as the inability to foresee the course of events due to the fact that in myth everything is possible and anything can happen. Yet, there are certain traits that demonstrate similarities and through which a number of archetypes, represented by particular behavioural patterns, subconscious concepts or repeated use or occurrence of themes and symbols. In his book Myth and

Meaning, based on Strauss’ interviews for a Canadian radio; he delineates the basic difference between the scientific approach and understanding the surrounding world and that based on myths and mysteries. He describes how our scientific views resulted in 86

digression of modern society from mythology the result of which is different experience of life where on one side is the modern, scientifically influenced perception of the surrounding world as against those societies whose interpretations of their environment, lives, and events are closely connected to use of myths. Strauss further stresses the fact that scientifically based knowledge may surpass the ‘primitive’ societies in description of the world in terms of accuracy but it significantly lacks knowledge in terms of individual abilities. He offers examples to support his argument that role of mythology is similar to that of history which he demonstrates on the meaning of myths concerning hare lipped, people, head first born babies or twins. In that respect he raises a question why it never felt peculiar to many scientists that the same myths appear throughout the whole world, different cultures and different societies. He starts by an observation made by a Spanish missionary in Peru according to him in ‘times of bitter and cold’ (Strauss

1979: 25) the priests would call in all people who were born feet firs, had a hare lip or were twins and accused them of being responsible for such adversity.

Now, that twins are correlated with atmospheric disorder is something

very commonly accepted throughout the world, including Canada. It is

well known that on the coast of British Columbia, among the Indians,

twins were endowed with special powers to bring good weather, to dispel

storms, and the like. This is not, however, the part of the problem which I

wish to consider here. What strikes me is that all the mythographers - for

instance, Sir James Frazer who quotes Arriaga in several instances - never

asked the question why people with harelips and twins are considered to be

similar in some respect. It seems to me that the crux of the problem is to

find out: why harelips? why twins? and why are harelips and twins put

together? (Strauss 1979: 25-26) 87

As he further notes, in order to solve the mystery it will be necessary to move from South America to North America and examine the myth there and look for evidence that would lead to the explanation and the relation between the two despite being opposed by a number of people who would express their conviction that a myth is a phenomenon that is always applicable with a given culture. Strauss refuses that standpoint saying there are several aspects that support his point. He states that, based on the research done, the population of the Americas was much larger in the pre-

Columbian era meaning that individual societies or cultures were, most likely, communicating with each other which would allow some kind of diffusion mingling among those populations. Strauss further argues that in fact these myths in various alterations exist throughout the whole continent or, better said throughout the whole world and they often represent a way communication of the supernatural nature is intermediated to the mankind.

According to Strauss, the twin or the hare-lip myth is related to religion. For some

Canadian native people hare was the highest of godhood. He provides several reasons why it was perhaps so. A hare’s physical abilities were among those favoured by these people and they possess other qualities which Strauss describes in the following way:

But if my previous interpretations were right, it seems much more

convincing to say: 1, among the rodent family the hare is the larger, the

more conspicuous, the more important, so it can be taken as a

representative of the rodent family; 2, all rodents exhibit an anatomical

peculiarity which makes out of them incipient twins, because they are

partly split up. (Strauss 1979: 31)

To explain that point, Strauss describes that in case of twins; before they are born they compete for the privilege to come out first which may result in one of the twins 88

that is more cunning splitting the mother’s body to make his way out. According to

Strauss this may be the explanation why ‘being born feet first is assimilated to twinhood’

(Strauss 1979: 32) and he adds that such birth may be seen as both a perilous act and as an act of heroic delivery due to the child’s own effort to be born first, although at the expense of his mother’s life, which, Strauss argues, may be the reason why in some tribes children who born feet first as well as twins were killed at their birth. The phenomenon of twins and hare lipped people also corresponds with the gothic element of duality, bipolarity and doppelgangers and as such has been widely employed in the

Twin Peaks series. David Lynch’s work presents a wide variety of doubles with the theme of feminine element being of the most favoured. Just as the twins in a mother’s womb have opposite qualities, according to Strauss, the same principle applies for

Lynch’s women’s doubles, beginning with The Grandmother where the boy’s careless mother is opposed to the clay-grown affectionate grandmother, followed by Eraserhead and Henry Spencer’s short run psychopathic wife Mary X put in contrast with the desirable Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, Jeffrey Beaumont’s girlfriend Sandy against the mysterious and seductive Dorothy in Blue Velvet mystery, or the post Twin Peaks films such as Lost Highway (1997), introducing the beautiful Renée and her alter ego

Alice, not omitting Mulholland Drive (2001), a psychological thriller introducing two beautiful women Betty and Rita moving on a Möbius strip. In Twin Peaks such polarizing double is represented by murdered Laura palmer and her cousin Maddy.

Sigmund Freud offers one of possible interpretations of origination of the double phenomenon on an example taken from the study of an Austrian psychoanalyst Otto

Rank. According to him there is a link with mirror images, shadows, guardian spirits, the doctrine of soul and the fear of death. As he further adds:

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It also throws a good deal of light on the surprising evolution of the motif

itself. The double was originally an insurance against extinction of the self

or, as Rank puts it, ‘an energetic denial of the power of death’, and it

seems likely that the ‘immortal’ soul was the first double of the body. The

invention of such doubling as a defence against annihilation has a

counterpart in the language of dreams, which is fond of expressing the idea

of castration by duplicating or multiplying the genital symbol. (Freud

2003: 142)

Freud’s notion of the mirror images and doubling corresponds, at least on the visual level, with a number of reflections depicted in twin peaks. As mirrors are in the gothic context understood as doors to other worlds and dimensions. In Twin Peaks various types of mirror images or reflections often disclose certain aspects or revelations of the characters looking into the mirrors or being seen as reflections.

During the opening credits there is an image of Josie Packard sitting in front of the mirror. Even not yet knowing about her dark secret, the sad reflection in the mirror creates a feeling of unhappiness, perhaps mixed with shame or disgrace. Similarly to the reflections of Bob when Leland Palmer or agent Cooper look in the mirror just before smashing it with their foreheads, Josie may also have a feeling of seeing someone else.

Another example of reflection is in the scene when agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman watch a videotape on which there are Laura and Donna dancing. The detectives do not know the identity of the person at the camera but the close-up look into Laura’s eyes reveals e reflection of James Hurley’s motorcycle.

Mirroring and doubling are typical examples of gothic elements and they represent only a small part of all the symbols used in the Twin Peaks. Apart from those symbols themes already mentioned in this thesis, such as the uncanny effect, dreams 90

and visions, the struggle of two opposing worlds or forces or the principle of universal equilibrium, there are many more, including the symbolic role of animals and birds specifically, the myths and symbols related to left handiness, missing body parts, reference to native Americans, the use of various technological devices or the use of grotesque elements within the story.

One of the most common symbols in Twin Peaks is the circle. The symbol of a circle may be interpreted in many different ways. It may be the symbol of God, because he is omnipresent. It may be seen as a symbol of eternity, or as a masculine symbol of the Sun and it is supposed to be a protective sign. In Twin Peaks, apart from the already mentioned fan, the circles are represented, for instance as a record player in Laura’s home, as a spinning roulette at One Eyed Jack’s, various rings – the green ring with the owl cave symbol, Cooper’s golden circle, the circle of white candles in episode three,

Glastonbury Grove trees circle, and many others.

Different kinds of birds also appear throughout the series. The most common and mysterious is the owl. Owls, in mythology are seen as symbols of magic, death or wisdom. Owls in Twin Peaks seem to be accompanying Bob and serve as his watch guards. James and Donna are watched by an owl when looking for a necklace. Bob appears as an owl when leaving Leland Palmer’s body. Another striking gothic element represented in Twin Peaks is left sidedness. A myna named Waldo even helps to find out Leo Johnson’s involvement in Laura Palmer’s case. In mythology, left handed people possessed evil powers and were often persecuted for that. The English word sinister, the synonym of which is evil, threatening or ominous, originally comes from the Latin sinistra meaning left. Nadine Hurley misses her left eye. Apart from that she represents a peculiar character obsessed with her curtains and possesses superhuman physical power. Mike tore his left arm off to escape Bob. His arm changed into a dwarf 91

who dwells in the Black Lodge. Severed body parts are typically uncanny elements.

According to Freud these symbols may be connected with the nearness of the castration complex. The Native American element is in Twin Peaks represented in several ways.

At Big Ed’s they serve Indian Head gasoline, Johnny Horne is wearing an Indian headdress, there is a totem outside the police station, deputy Hawk is a Native American and a trapper who uses his skills to find way to Jacque Renault. The Log Lady possesses psychic abilities and speaks to her log which possesses her deceased husband’s spirit.

There are a number of technical and technological devices present in the series. The most common home appliance is the television set, which, as has been already discussed, is an uncanny element. Dale Cooper always uses his tape recorder to record all his suggestions and findings, reporting those to Diane a never seen or heard secretary. The purpose here is not to provide a complete list of all characters or items that relate to the gothic but to demonstrate that Twin Peaks is, indeed a gothic story.

To complement the main aspects of a gothic discourse, it is of importance to mention the grotesque elements that permeate the whole plotline. In fact many of the characters mentioned above as the Log Lady, Nadine and her completely irrational acts, the one-armed man, dwarfs and giants, Lucy Moran’s reporting on a soap opera, Major

Brigg’s peculiar way of talk, Denise Bryson’s appearance, Leland Palmer’s ride on a coffin, agent Cooper’s comments on cherry pie and coffee or Ben Horne’s way of eating sandwich, be it due to their bizarre looks or behaviour, they create a number of grotesque situations. The term grotesque here does not mean funny. Generally said, grotesque stands somewhere between the funny and the menacing, meaning, plainly said that one and the same thing may be funny to one person and completely terrifying for another. The grotesque element also represents a blend of a variety of elements from the animal, through the vegetal to the mechanical aspects the result of which can be 92

combination of a human and an animal, plant, or a machine – similarly to Franz Kafka’s metamorphosis into a human-seized insect.

Twin Peaks, with respect to the mentioned facts and employed elements represents a typical gothic narration introducing typically large and often dark and picturesque sceneries, mysteries, anxieties, romances, supernatural elements and bizarre characters set in a confined and remote place with flickering neon lights, dark passages, secret doors and hiding places. Twin Peaks is a place so serene on the surface but so dark, decomposing, brutal and abusive underneath.

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5 Lynch’s Use of Sound and Music and Its Specific Deployment

in Twin Peaks

Music has always played a unique role within the whole range of art. As perhaps the most abstract of arts and the one strictly subjected to accurate timing it represents an integration of rhythm and harmony. For centuries it was possible to create the unity of picture and sound only as a result of a live performance, until the invention of the recording media which allowed both the percepts to be preserved and transferred in time. With sound and music entering the film industry, the visual elements became harmoniously balanced with music being an inevitable part of the overall product.

Unification of picture and sound created a new dimension of film and enhanced significantly the development of the art of filmmaking. The following chapter shall provide a concise delineation and analysis of elementary auditive means and procedures used to support the visual aspects occurring in those films of David Lynch that may be considered as films noir and/or films with apparent traits of the gothic discourse from the late 1960s which may be considered the early period of Lynch’s film works to the early 1990s and the Twin Peaks series.

Film music serves a number of purposes but its most likely and crucial feature is to create affective atmosphere of a film in order to support its narrative. It constitutes a compact element which co-creates the final artistic value of a film. Sound and music also play an important role in localization within a film story environment meaning that the specific use of sound helps the viewer get integrated into the particular social or cultural surroundings. Musical accompaniment also has the capacity to improve and define the formal arrangement of a film such as identification of the characters, the environment setting or the atmosphere and the mood, making it emotionally more

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comprehensible as it aids to a film’s integrity. Furthermore, it has the capacity to bridge over various scenes or to conclude a scene in order to introduce a new one including its atmosphere. This way sound and music support the narrative of a film while maintaining enough space for possible dialogue and visual action.

Christian Metz performed a detailed analysis of film utilizing Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of psychoanalysis and the structuralist approaches, especially those of

Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jacobson. Metz came to the conclusion that the semiotic analysis which he originally aimed at could not work without taking psychoanalytic aspects into consideration. He interpreted film imagery with the use of a

Freudian approach to dreams and accepted Lacan’s mirror theory concept of the imaginary over against the symbolic and defined film imagery as a means of communication of an image with the human subconscious. Based on Christian Metz’s work five informational planes may be defined in films which include the visual picture or image, graphics, speech, music and sound effects. Sound may often be perceived as omnipresent and omnidirectional and is therefore often left out of consideration as it is sensed differently than graphical images which are, to an extent, read knowingly through human observation. One of the most significant qualities of sound is its pervasiveness and its ability to materialize time and space. Even a motionless image obtains a dynamic trait when aided with sound through which a viewer comes to the feeling of passage of time. Any kind of sound, whether produced through speech, music or by means of sound effects have their specific significance and their mutual interlacing creates the actual sound environment. Lynch’s auditive narrative, in compliance with Metz’s conclusions, may be characterised as one which takes place on several basic levels which include the dialogue, the film silence, musical scores and the

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background hum or other subliminal sounds or noises the purpose of which concurs with that of the hum.

Although operating simultaneously, though independently on each other, the purpose of individual sound aspects is to bind the visual and the auditive parts of a film together where individual auditive components of the narrative and their purposeful linking result in a symbiosis through which the viewer is directly encountered and invited to experience the complex abstract message. Individual sound classes applied in the films of David Lynch produce rich musical atmospheres, complementing each other in order to sustain the context and the integrity towards the key moments of a film. The sound contributes to the film setting being its inevitable part with the ability to guide the viewer through the plot line whenever the visual percept might not suffice. Michel

Chion, a French theoretician provides an extensive insight into the theory of mutual interaction between the visual and the auditory elements in film. In his book Audio vision: sound on screen he examines the interplay of the audiovisual media describing the marriage of image and sound as the phenomena of audiovisual illusion. He further states that, according to his belief, the most important outcome of such marriage is, as

Chion calls it, its added value.

By added value I mean the expressive and informative value with which a

sound enriches a given image so as to create the definite impression, in the

immediate or remembered experience one has of it, that this information or

expression "naturally" comes from what is seen, and is already contained

in the image itself. Added value is what gives the (eminently incorrect)

impression that sound is unnecessary, that sound merely duplicates a

meaning which in reality it brings about, either all on its own or by

discrepancies between it and the image. (Chion 1994: 5) 96

Chion underlines his opinion by stating that the correct effect of such added value may be best reached through proper synchronization of sound and image for which the term of synchresis is used and represents a process the result of which is production of the desired connection of the visual and the auditive. Chion also puts emphasis on the importance of use of text or language on image claiming the cinema is a phenomenon largely dominated by text and words.

When taking the textual element into consideration, one of the main film constituents is the dialogue. It is often the only sound element which the viewer is able to fully concentrate on. A dialogue has the ability to take hold of the storyline based on which the viewer may perceive the plot features as to why individual actions take place in certain settings as well as what individual characters do or what their personal features are, including their inner, psychological states, motives and intentions.

Dialogues communicate the causality and disclose the subsequent developments of the plot and support and enhance the presented mood and the ambient frame of mind.

Psychologically speaking, sounds, including dialogues, may often be of higher importance to the viewer when identifying the nature and the inducements of the characters than their physical appearance or the visual presentations. A particular type of dialogue is monologue which may be used effectively to let the characters express their inner thoughts, plans and aims, providing the viewer with a more detailed insight and possibly revealing further clues concerning the actions and events to come. Such a use of monologue may be demonstrated through a continuous use of voice recorder by agent Cooper in Twin Peaks series, by means of which Cooper, through his assistant

Diane, not only provides the viewers with his observations, assumptions, comments and intentions but also enables them to sustain the temporal perception of the whole story – through Cooper’s stating dates and times the viewers get an idea of the story timeline. A 97

character’s or narrator’s monologue may even bring a revelation through which important facts, details or personal, emotionally tinged truths may be disclosed and it is often used as a means to allow the characters express their inmost beliefs and provide the viewer with a comprehensive outline of their attitude towards a given subject.

A very important aspect of Lynch’s auditive story telling is the use of inner voices through which Lynch is able to give the spoken word an abstract impression thus creating another sound dimension recognized by the viewer as a new sensory layer in which such an inner voice comes to the foreground to deliver an intentional piece of information to suddenly ebb and disappear, leaving the viewer uncertain whether such a part of the dialogue represented something to be taken into consideration with regard to the main plot. In Twin Peaks such an inner voice may be, for instance, represented by agent Cooper’s ability to read dreams and clues. Lynch shows an extensive array of ways of how the voices of individual characters may be used, altered or even distorted in order to express their personal features and mental states and to draw the viewers into the narrative and play with their emotions as is the case of one of the scenes in the Twin

Peaks series in which agent Cooper, in his dream, meets the murdered Laura Palmer and the Man from Another Place in the Red Room. Here agent Cooper is the only person speaking in his own voice while all the remaining voices and sounds are altered or, better said, distorted, the Man from Another Place and Laura Palmer even speaking awkwardly, as if backwards, creating somewhat mind-expending atmosphere. Through the use of irrational sounds the viewers may feel as if the narrative turned into a strange, unfamiliar environment of a parallel story, making them uncertain and confused and feeling some kind of uneasiness and uncanniness.

Another aspect of Lynch’s utilization of the sound environment is the implementation of film silence which he uses repeatedly in those parts of his films in 98

which he points out individual images and stresses out the way they are being presented in the context of the narrative. Through the use of silence Lynch supports the visual element of a story and enhances the atmosphere. Such silence may stem from the real circumstances where it is deliberately used to be in contrast with the picture or it may reflect some sort of attitudinal or preposterous percepts while taking into account the fact that by being permanently surrounded by various sounds and noises of any kind, the human ear is practically incapable of perception of pure silence. Studies have shown that even when a person is placed into a perfectly quiet, sound proof place with no possibility of hearing any external sounds; such a person quickly starts experiencing highly unpleasant feelings of remoteness, solitude and disorientation that are regularly accompanied by hearing hallucinations. Such use of film silence may be seen in a scene from the film Blue Velvet in which Dorothy finds Jeffrey hiding in the closet where the tenseness of the atmosphere in the complete quiet is produced just thorough the sound of the two characters breathing.

Lynch’s work is known for a wide use of experimental and abstract sounds and musical scores as well as for a wide use of subliminal sounds, benefiting from the fact that subliminal messages and perceptions are closely related to their ability to influence or even, to a certain extent, to get control over human mind. The idea of subliminal messages is not new. Ancient Greeks developed the science of rhetoric through which they intended to address and influence people’s beliefs, attitudes or decision making processes. Subliminal messages or stimuli may be delivered by both visual and auditory means. David Lynch’s use of hums and noises in his films is aimed at deliberately affecting the viewer’s apprehension of a given situation, a scene, or a character’s attitudes and feelings. That aim may also be enhanced through the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Diegetic sound is one that has a visible or identifiable source, such 99

as the dialogue or sounds produced by people and objects in the surroundings. Non- diegetic sound is one the source of which is neither present nor implied and may be represented by music score, a character’s commentary or by sound effects. The use of one or the other or the repetitive implementation of both may support the viewers’ apprehension significantly. Yet, regardless of the variability of means used, the overall result of combining image and sound indubitably depends on complex and cohesive sound management. An American film theorist, film technologies inventor and sound expert Tomlison M. Holman, in his book Sound for film and television, provides a detailed introduction of the principles concerning the processing and use of sound in film and television. Although predominantly aimed at technical aspects, dealing with the physical properties of sound, hyperreality or exaggerated reality of sound, understanding sound from both the technical and the aesthetic points of view, capturing and processing sound, sound mixing, and more, the author also brings forward some of the artistic aspects of employment of sound. In chapter ten of his book Holman deals with the sound design. The general meaning of the term may be explained as transfer of responsibilities for the final sound product onto a single person – the sound designer.

Originally a term assigned to the theatrical environment was adopted and introduced to the film in 1972 by Francis Ford Coppola and is closely related to Walter Scott Murch, an American film editor and sound designer whom Coppola acknowledged for his contribution to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979).

Sound design according to one definition is the art of creating a coherent

soundtrack that advances the story and the picture, and it demands an

overarching conception of a movie’s sound as well as a capacity to solve

aesthetic and technical problems at the level of 1/10 of a second. “Design”

is used to emphasize the creative larger conception of a movie and the 100

capacity of sound personnel to create imaginative sounds that advance the

story. Thus sound design is the art of getting the right sound in the right

place at the right time. The right sound means that the correct aesthetic

choice has been made for that moment in time. The right place relates to

the high degree of organization that is necessary over the process,

combining sound where possible within a premix for simplification of the

final mix, but also keeping the various sound elements separate enough so

that necessary changes can be made late in the process. […] The right

time refers to the correct position in editorial sync. So sound design can be

seen to embrace both aesthetic issues and “manufacturing” details, from

the inception of temp sound for temp mixes through the preparation of

print masters for release on a wide variety of media. (Holman 2010: 145)

Lynch’s approach to the mutual engagement of sound and image corresponds with

Holman’s interpretation of sound design. David Lynch, as a sound designer, has literally supervised all of his films. Musical scores and sound used in Lynch’s films represent thoroughly planned and implemented constituents of his works. For Lynch the musical accompaniment and choice of sound and sound effects are inseparable components of the whole, being of the same importance to the overall outcome of the film as is the visual part of it. Although Lynch has shown serious capacity in composing and performing music, he has made a wide use of working with various composers and musicians among whom the names of Alan R. Splet and Angelo Badalamenti would represent the most considerable collaborators.

The idea of making a motion picture, as Lynch stated during his interview at

Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane in 2015 and which has already been mentioned in

Chapter Three of the thesis, arose as a result of Lynch watching a painting he made, on 101

which he depicted a garden at night, during which he began to hear sounds of wind blowing and had the feeling of the picture moving. Lynch’s primordial work in which he integrated auditory means of expression with the visual part was his short film Six

Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1966). In this experimental short film Lynch presents a one minute animated loop projected onto a screen to which Lynch incorporated three cast heads. The loop auditive accompaniment was represented by an ongoing sound of a wailing siren, a sound that most people subconsciously connect with tense and disturbing feelings of distress and emergency which are typical for gothic discourse.

The second short experimental film The Alphabet (1968) already features some of the typical Lynchian sound marks such as repetitive sounds and tunes, here represented by children’s voices singing the alphabet song, a man’s voice lilting a musical scale and a variety of background sounds, hums and cracking noises which, supplemented with the animated parts of the film, help to create a surreal dreamlike ambience delivering an eerie experience of a child’s nightmare. Lynch’s film work throughout the 1970s and

1080s is closely linked to cooperation with Alan R. Splet, an Oscar winning sound designer and sound editor. Lynch and Splet established a highly productive relationship and worked together on a number of films addressing distinctively gothic narrative elements and motives, notably in such films as The Grandmother (1970), Eraserhead

(1977), The Elephant Man (1980), and Blue Velvet (1986).

The Grandmother is a short film during the making of which Lynch and Splet met for the first time. Just like in Lynch’s previous short films, The Grandmother combines live action with animated scenes. And again, the film presents a wide range of use of sound and sound effects as well as poetic tunes, giving it the tinge of duality. A very interesting sound effect created in The Grandmother is the deliberate use of out of sync

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scenes which help to generate uneasy feelings contributing to the tense and disturbing atmosphere of the film.

In the Eraserhead soundtrack, Splet, who had an extraordinary sense of hearing and the ability to fully exploit the emotionally absorbing capacity of sound, managed, in cooperation with Lynch, to create a richly textured environment, presenting a surreal, dreadful and black humour permeated atmosphere thoroughly reflecting the grotesque and the macabre principles of a gothic discourse. The uncanny atmosphere in which

Lynch induces a feeling of facing an unidentified menace is directly linked to Splet’s use of experimental music and provoking industrial sounds, roars and howls on the background of Lynch’s absurd dialogues. Apart from its queer atmosphere, Lynch presents a symbolic ceremony of duality of life and death where life is being represented by Peter Ivers and David Lynch’s song In Heaven sung by the Lady in the

Radiator, which, in the narration, represents the only place providing warmth and comfort as opposed to the symbol of death and evanescence which is musically portrayed through jazzy excerpts of Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller’s church organ composition coming unidentifiably from some outside source, permeating individual scenes repeatedly throughout the film. As a consequence the viewer gets confused not only in what is a fact or illusion but how the film should be located time-wise. Similarly to Twin Peaks which, although set to the 1980s, acquires the 1950s feeling, Eraserhead, by not giving much of visual temporal clues, leaves the audience perplexed.

The next feature film with distinct Splet’s musical and sound influence is The

Elephant Man, although the musical score was composed and conducted by John

Leonard Morris, noted mostly for his cooperation with the American actor, composer, and filmmaker Melvin James Brooks. The black and white film presents a number of typically gothic elements related to the Victorian period of the industrial revolution 103

dealing with the issues of moral ethics and human dignity which is also reflected in the use of music and sound. Lynch seems to be absorbed by the industrialization aesthetics, an element he utilizes in other of his works, as is the case of the opening theme song of the Twin Peaks series and the images of the sawmill, clockwork-like running machinery. The Elephant Man is, too, interlaced with a wide range of industrial sounds.

Most of the hospital scenes, for instance, are accompanied with a penetrating hissing sound of gas lanterns the source of which the viewer is not aware of although that very sound constitutes a dominant element through which Lynch is able to attract curiosity to finally reveal the source of the sound by presenting through the visual counterpart simultaneously – a principle not new for Lynch as he used it already in Eraserhead where a distinctive hissing sound belonged to the steam coming out of the radiator, the dwelling of the Lady from the radiator. This confrontation is metaphorical pointing to the main character of John Merrick, a mysterious being whose identity is for most of the film hidden to the eye of the viewer.

Both the visual and the auditive components of Lynch’s work have been undergoing through constant development. From the utterly experimental grounds he has gradually moved to more comprehensible narrative techniques while still maintaining most of the typical gothic traits of disturbing imagery and sound interlacing romance, melancholy, grotesque, sex, violence, unsolved dark legacy or horror. David

Lynch’s transition or diverging from the original direction may have been connected with his endeavour to meet new challenges as well as with his natural propensity to appeal more to the mainstream audiences, part of which may possibly be attributed to

Angelo Badalamenti whose music scores have given Lynch’s films unmistakeable trait, quality and capacity to address, influence and intermediate apprehension of Lynch’s imagery. Lynch’s cooperation with Angelo Badalamenti began in 1986 and it brought a 104

significant shift towards a more instrumental sound employing distinctive vocal interpretations, especially those delivered by Julee Cruise, an American singer, musician and songwriter who largely contributed to the overall musical expression of some of the largest Lynch’s film and television projects represented by Blue Velvet

(1986), Twin Peaks (1990-91), and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992).

Blue Velvet was the first film Lynch and Badalamenti worked together on, with

Alan Splet being a member of the sound team. The film depicts what may be interpreted as an idealized image of the town of Lumberton under the surface of which there is a very thin boundary dividing it from the dark world of evil and decadence. The dark and unsettling abstractly bipolar world of irony and mystery is delivered to the viewer through a complex and precise interconnection of the visual and the auditory. By elaborately compounding the sounds and the way the visual elements of space and time are arranged into reciprocal action, the auditive part of the film acquires an equivalent value in the narrative plane by coupling the individual parts of the story to make them palpable for the recipient. Lynch used the opening Blue Velvet song by Stanley Robert

Vinton to produce the required film atmosphere and, later in the film; he used the same tune again and, by employing it within a scene under completely different plot circumstances, he managed to induce a very different feeling. That enabled Lynch to stress the fact that the same experiences, when perceived at different times and under different conditions, may have almost a dialectical effect. At the beginning, the song represents power of almost divine character but as the dialogue moves on and further develops, the musical piece becomes multivalent. The auditory elements function as identifiers by the means of which the applied musical pieces, songs, and tunes add to the description of individual characters related to them and provide the viewers with an

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insight into the characters’ inner selves, utilizing the abstract capacity of the narrative to help the viewers comprehend the non-linear course of the narration.

The television series Twin Peaks, with respect to the nature and the scope of the programme, employed, from the acoustic and musical point of view, the whole range of auditive means as mentioned in the preceding paragraphs of this chapter. The substantial difference between the previous as well as future Lynch’s film projects is the fact that Twin Peaks is a television show which even Lynch referred to as an experimental soap opera. Generally, in TV shows and soap operas, the purpose of use of music is of secondary value and a means to decorate the stories told. However, that standard does not apply to Twin Peaks. One of the reasons may be the fact that David

Lynch approached the making of the series as if he was making a film and the result does bear clear signs of one. Another reason may be the unconventional way Angelo

Badalamenti grasped the musical and sound aspects of the series. By carefully blending the images with the auditive elements, such as the individual themes and motives, the choice of musical instruments, the jazzy tunes and Julee Cruise’s interpretations, the final product offers an odd feeling of the 1980s events on the 1950s background. Kory

Grow, an author and contributor to Rolling Stone Magazine, in his article Dream Team:

The Semi-Mysterious Story Behind the Music of 'Twin Peaks’ provides some reflections of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, based on his interview with composer Angelo

Badalamenti and singer Julee Cruise. In their interview they discuss various aspects concerning the origins of the music scores, the background of their cooperation with

David Lynch, as well as some typical features, feelings and atmosphere of the musical scores and their background.

Another notable part of the soundtrack is its walking bass lines, finger-

snap rhythms and vibraphones, benchmarks of the jazz Badalamenti grew 106

up listening to during his childhood in Brooklyn. The composer's older

brother plays trumpet, and Badalamenti recalls his mother cooking dinner

for his brother's friends – like jazz flautist Herbie Mann – who would go

into the basement and jam. He had begun piano lessons at 8, and by age 12

he would go downstairs and listen, occasionally joining in. He also delved

deep into his brother's record collection. When Rolling Stone asks him to

name a few of the jazz artists that would later influence his work on the

Twin Peaks soundtrack, he goes through a who's who of the genre: Oscar

Peterson and Bud Powell for piano, Ray Brown and Charles Mingus for

bass, Roy Haynes and Max Roach for drums. He loved vibraphone players

Milt Jackson and Terry Gibbs, and he also name-checks Miles Davis,

Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone and Charlie Parker.

(Rolling Stone 2014: 46-47)

Auditive components are represented in a wide range and with the aim to depict and sketch in the many moods, ambiences, attitudes and feelings of individual characters’ archetypes, as well as a wide range of use of symbols and paranormal or even extraterrestrial phenomena. In order to do so and for the sake of the viewers’ comprehension of the complex interpersonal relationships, Badalamenti delivered a music score complementing to the final blend of the tragicomically eerie provincial town environment and the peculiar lives of its dwellers. In Twin Peaks Badalamenti employs discernible musical incentives making use of typical sounds produced by individual musical instruments which have the ability to induce certain moods and feelings, be it the percussion, notably the use of whisk and finger clicking, the electronic organ or piano, the piano, the jazzy and often reverberated saxophone, the use of vocals, a string orchestra and a variety of sounds and sound effects. The use of jazz music and 107

jazzy sounds is a reoccurring phenomenon in Lynch’s films and due to its origin as black music it may be seen as one of the distinctive markers of the gothic narrative.

Lynch and Badalamenti use the mentioned elements to produce and reuse or recycle particular plot threads which break up the conventional features affecting the viewers’ suppositions, leaving them puzzled and intrigued. Most commonly they appear to draw their attention to an oncoming turn of events or moods without their being able to anticipate whether they are about to witness a scene extremely morbid, hysteric, or with erotic vertones where individual musical motives abandon the narrative path and operate as independent media. Most of the Twin Peaks musical accompaniment is of instrumental nature with the exception of four songs performed by Julee Cruise, namely

Falling, The Nightingale, The World Spins, and Rockin' Back Inside My Heart. The themes and scores may be seen as the basic leitmotifs which permeate the whole series and, generally, serve two main purposes. One of the purposes is to draw the viewers’ attention to an event or a scene that is of significant importance as to the characters or the plot consequence. The other purpose is the recurring of such leitmotifs in different variations, delivering subliminal messages, as their employment, even without direct visual reference, results in the viewers’ perceiving the oncoming actions as being emotionally affective. Apart from the main musical scores there are other themes which have direct influence on how the events or relations may be interpreted, as is demonstrated by the scene in which James, playing the guitar, is singing a love song along with Donna and Madeleine. On one hand the viewers can see that the three young people have just made a strong mutual alliance to which James’ echoed voice aids the moment with the feeling of spaciousness and remoteness. The overall impression is then enhanced through furtively implemented non-diegetic sounds of bass guitar and percussion which, backed by the visual components, potentiate the mood, giving it 108

another dimension and the capacity to assure the viewers of the importance of the message delivered.

Another example of the many repetitive musical motives throughout the Twin

Peaks series is Audrey's Dance theme, a jazzy, relaxed and moody beat with a saxophone line used in various temporal modifications characterising certain character splits through which the viewers acquire the feeling that there is some unidentified link created between the characters in question. The very same motive then becomes central, characterising the developing romance among Donna, James and Madeleine.

Probably one of the leading themes and one that characterises the overall mood of the Twin Peaks series is Laura Palmer’s Theme which is introduced to the viewer at the discovery of Laura’s dead body wrapped in plastic. This slow, low laid melancholic tune gradually builds up to a broad climax with distinctive plaintive piano upon the disclosure of Laura’s identity, followed by the theme gradually decreasing in volume and fading out as a resigned feeling of desperation. The same theme is reused throughout the series whenever the reminiscence of Laura or the circumstances of investigation of Laura’s death come forth.

The Dance Of The Dream Man theme has already been mentioned for its unusual sound effect used to distort the voices of Laura and The Dream Man. Similarly to the mentioned indicative Laura Palmer’s Theme, the Dance Of The Dream Man marks the doings related to agent Cooper. A relaxed jazzy tune with a reverberated saxophone, finger clicking and relaxed, optimistic atmosphere creates the principal tune which reflects Dale Cooper’s character, his serenity, ardour and even certain mysteriousness that surround him. Generally speaking, each of the major themes used in the Twin Peaks series possesses certain trait that precedes certain actions or plot twists. Be it The

Bookhouse Boys multileveled chill out theme with its frigid, sinister background of a 109

rainy night and its dark events-to-come evoking beats, the dreamy, lounge pop Rockin’

Back Inside My Heart, the red room resembling contemplative song addressing manifold questions of the characters involved or the melancholic The World Spins capturing the emptiness and remoteness of the emotionally suffering characters. The

Twin Peaks musical motives and themes provide, in purposefully performed modifications, the ground for the many plot, mood, and atmosphere variations having the capability to absorb the viewers’ awareness and to manipulate the way they perceive the messages communicated. They lead the viewers through the narrative and work with their unconscious, using the subliminal effects of sound to arouse their curiosity.

Twin Peaks, although bearing typical Lynchian trademarks, differs from Lynch’s early films noir by its better comprehensibility to the mainstream audience. The original extensive use of raw, unexpected and startling experimental sound that accompanied

Lynch’s primary film work, so impalpable for many, gave way to more moderate expressional means. Yet, the series offer typical Lynchian multi-layered environment that may not often be easily interpreted and that is left for the viewers to furnish it with their own constructions and explanations. Badalamenti’s music scores, in cooperation with carefully applied sound environment, form a helix through which, with the increasing number of often mutually opposing elements disclosed, takes the viewers deeper into the core, co-creating the final complex auditory experience. The repetitious scores and sounds interlaced with the visual elements forge the Twin Peaks world which may be at first apprehended as a complex multilayered maze but which, through appropriately implemented musical and sound patterns, cements individual scenes, environments, and characters into a compact whole.

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Conclusion

The main objective of the thesis was to provide an analysis of David Lynch’s film work with particular attention paid to Twin Peaks series and the employed gothic aspects. The goal of the initial chapter was to establish the term Gothic, based on its reference to the savageness of Germanic tribes, the medieval – architecture conditioned feeling as well as the occurrence of the supernatural phenomena.

Based on a concise analysis of the French roman noir and the German

Schauerroman, both of which include various elements of the gothic discourse, an assumption has been made that the genre did not emerge as an isolated phenomenon but rather as a result of a number of miscellaneous narrative lines being in mutual effect.

The origination of the Gothic Novel was explained and specified in the context of impetuses based on which the newly emerging genre originated on the background of the historical, political and social events. One of the main phenomena defined to express the effects of the gothic discourse is represented by the uncanny principle the definition of which was supported by Freud’s analyses of the phenomenon. Apart from the uncanny element which represents a substantial part of any gothic narrative, the aspects of myth and symbols were examined with special attention paid to the Twin Peaks series where they represent an inevitable part of the narrative as typical representations related to the legacy of Gothic Fiction.

The following chapter of the thesis addressed the issues concerning the influence of technological and technical development of the visual media to the concept of the uncanny, such as the mourning portrait in photography or the markedly exaggerated facial expressions used in the silent film, stating that such elements indeed had their place concerning the perception of uneasiness or anxiety as parts of the gothic narrative. 111

The thesis also examined David Lynch’s career from his early works up to the introduction of the Twin Peaks series and provided analyses of all his substantial works aimed at typical elements of the gothic discourse. It has also come to the conclusion that majority of David Lynch’s works include a wide range of elements, symbols, as well as depicted events and locations, the motives and inducements of which were closely related to and reflected his personal experience. The thesis further addressed the typical traits of Lynch’s work by laying emphasis on his language and the means of artistic expression which bear notable signs of visual art.

The penultimate chapter dealt with the Twin Peaks series phenomenon. It provided an explanation and reasoning of the differences of the television show compared with the standard television show formats of the early 1990s. The thesis further provided an analysis of the Twin Peaks series to support the evidence that this show may be considered as a typical example a gothic narrative through identifying and establishing an array of gothic elements within the series. It paid attention and delineated these elements including the issues related to the uncanny, the supernatural or the manifold use and appearances of symbols and myths used within the series. It also dealt with the issues concerning sexual elements, including rape, abuse, murder and the general role of women within a society or the role of a family. It also addressed and supported by numerous examples the way Lynch approached to the use of the grotesque as a means to create the uncanny feeling within a gothic story.

The thesis also addressed the use of sound and music within Lynch’s work, demonstrating the gradual shift from an utterly experimental approach towards a more mainstream while maintaining the typical traits of Lynch’s use of the auditive means.

Based on the analysis of music and sound employed in the Twin Peaks series the thesis

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proves the point that, for David Lynch, the auditive part of his work is not only inevitable but it is being of the same importance as the visual part of the final product.

Taking the established facts into account and upon a series of analysis of various texts the most significant achievement of this thesis perhaps lies in its providing a comprehensive view and assessment of some of the major gothic related works of David

Lynch and the Twin Peaks series in particular as almost a textbook example of a well amalgamated gothic story comprising all the visual and sound elements and providing it with the ever-present tint of the uncanny. Through the aforementioned television show as well as through other titles that were subjected to examination and analyses the thesis presents an overall insight into the world and style of work of David Lynch, establishing his highly analytical approach combined with precise and methodical working techniques for which he is considered as one of the most considerable and distinct authors within that genre.

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English Summary

The objective of the thesis is to analyse film and television work of the American film director David Lynch, primarily the Twin Peaks television series. It deals with

Lynch’s engagement with the cinema from his 1960s beginnings and his transition from fine arts author into a filmmaker and lines out development of his work from the purely experimental acts towards a more mainstream production up to his television work and the Twin Peaks series. The thesis delineates the development of Gothic Fiction in terms of its European origination, evolution and influence on formation of American Dark

Romanticism viewed in the historical context and on the background of political and cultural aspects of the society in that period and their impact on the development and transformation of the literary discourse into new visual and audiovisual means of expression. It further examines the influence of the German Expressionist Movement on the rise and development of American film noir from its early 1940s forms to the early

1990s in relation to Lynch and his work within the genre. Upon examination the work provides evidence that a great part of Lynch’s film and television work bears and demonstrates typical elements of the gothic discourse. The thesis provides concise analyses of Lynch’s early work represented by short films Six Men Getting Sick, The

Alphabet and The Grandmother, followed by his first feature film Eraserhead, and the

1980s The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet. The principal part of the thesis deals with the analysis of the 1990 – 1991 television production represented by the Twin Peaks series and its typical elements and traits with reference to the legacy of Gothic Fiction. The final part of the thesis is concerned with employment of music and sound in films in general and provides an analysis of Lynch’s noir work with respect to the use of various techniques concerning the use of sound in visual art, paying special attention to the role and function of sound and music accompaniment introduced in the Twin Peaks series. 117

Czech Summary

Cílem práce je rozbor filmové a televizní tvorby amerického režiséra Davida

Lynche a především pak televizního seriálu Twin Peaks. Práce se zabývá zapojením se

Lynche v oboru kinematografie od jeho začátků, které se datují do šedesátých let minulého století a jeho přechodu z výtvarného umění do role režiséra a producenta a nastiňuje vývoj jeho práce od výlučně experimentálních děl směrem k hlavnímu proudu, až po jeho televizní práci a seriál Twin Peaks. Práce popisuje vývoj gotické fikce z pohledu jejího evropského původu, vývoje a vlivu na vznik amerického romantismu v historickém kontextu a na pozadí politických a kulturních vlivů tehdejší společnosti a jejich dopadu na rozvoj a proměnu literárního diskursu do nových vizuálních a audiovizuálních vyjadřovacích prostředků. Práce se dále zabývá vlivem německého expresionistického hnutí na vznik a vývoj amerického filmu noir od raných forem, datujících se do čtyřicátých let minulého století až do období počátku let devadesátých ve vztahu k Lynchovi a jeho tvorbě v rámci tohoto žánru. Práce, na základě analýzy dokazuje, že značná část Lynchovy filmové a televizní tvorby nese a vykazuje typické znaky gotického vyprávění a nabízí stručný rozbor Lynchových raných děl, zastoupených krátkými filmy Six Men Getting Sick, The Alphabet a The Grandmother, a dále pak jeho prvním celovečerním filmem Eraserhead, následovaným filmy z období osmdesátých let The Elephant Man a Blue Velvet. Ústřední část práce se zabývá analýzou televizní tvorby z let 1990 – 1991, zastoupenou seriálem Twin Peaks a jeho typickými znaky a rysy odkazující na gotickou fikci. Závěrečná část práce se zabývá obecným využitím hudebních motivů a zvuku ve filmu a rozebírá Lynchova noir díla s ohledem na řadu použitých technik, týkajících se použití zvuku ve vizuálním umění, především pak na úlohu a funkci zvuku a hudby, použitých v seriálu Twin Peaks.

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