Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks is an American television series that first aired on the ABC network in the United States on 8 April 1990. Despite its critical acclaim the show was cancelled at the end of its second season in 1991 and remained off-air until its third series, titled Twin Peaks: The Return, was aired on the premium television network Showtime in 2017. The show was created by renowned filmmakers David Lynch and Mark Frost, whose television successes included police drama Hill Street Blues, and it was widely promoted as the series that would “change television.” The program, set in the fictional northwestern US town of Twin Peaks, was focused on the central mystery surrounding the murder of local schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and the efforts of FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in solving the case. The show featured a cast of inhabitants of the town and was renowned for quirky characters, dream sequences, and surrealism, which were seen as hallmarks of David Lynch’s cinematic work. The question of “who killed Laura Palmer?” constituted the key narrative enigma for the first season of the show. When this mystery was resolved at the midpoint of the second series, audience interest waned, and the show’s declining viewing figures led to its cancellation. The program’s original run ended on a cliffhanger where lead character Dale Cooper became possessed by the evil spirit BOB (who was responsible for Palmer’s death while possessing her father Leyland Palmer [Ray Wise]). In 1992, David Lynch directed the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which involved a return to Twin Peaks to depict the events leading up to Laura Palmer’s murder. The film was initially viewed as a disappointment, especially for those who wanted resolution to the show’s cliffhanger ending. Fire Walk with Me has since been reappraised and is now widely viewed as a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking. In 2016, David Lynch and Mark Frost began teasing a Twin Peaks–related announcement on their social media, with The Return of the series on Showtime announced soon after. While some setbacks were encountered when Lynch temporarily departed due to conflicts over budget and artistic vision, Twin Peaks: The Return aired in 2017 and was widely hailed as a return to form for the series. Throughout its history, Twin Peaks has attracted a loyal fanbase and critical attention on issues, including authorship, aesthetics, narrative, and genre.

Experimentações narrativas em Twin Peaks: The Return: narração paramétrica na ficção televisiva contemporânea

O objetivo deste artigo é identificar a existência de narração paramétrica (conceito originalmente aplicado por David Bordwell a certas obras fílmicas) na ficção televisiva contemporânea, bem como apontar uma hipótese sobre o propósito do uso desse modo narrativo. Para tanto, elegemos como corpus a série "Twin Peaks: the return" (2017), dirigida por David Lynch e escrita por ele e por Mark Frost. Acreditamos ser possível identificar que existe pelo menos um evento narrativo na série que pode ser considerado paramétrico, que denominamos “Dale Cooper letárgico”. Através da análise desse evento narrativo, pretendemos demonstrar, que, usando uma narrativa paramétrica, Lynch e Frost subvertem grande parte das convenções que a própria série original engendrou em 1990, trazendo, assim, novas experimentações à ficção televisiva.

“Are You a Bad Boy?”: Variations of the American Adam in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet

This paper mobilises R. W. B. Lewis’ myth of the American Adam, articulated in 1955, to examine David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet’s formulaic use of this masculinity archetype. Lewis’ ideal type of innocent masculinity is replicated by Blue Velvet’s protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who must navigate the stereotyped conventions of good and evil against the backdrop of the idealised US suburb. Beyond the generalised assessment of David Lynch as the quintessential eccentric, this article brings to the fore the ways in which his work can be analysed as formulaic, paying special attention to the interaction between masculinity, spatiality, and dominant national mythology.

The Return of Twin Peaks: Squaring the Circle

Franck Boulègue's latest book about David Lynch and Mark Frost's famous television series focuses on the eighteen new episodes directed by Lynch for season 3, screened in 2017. Analyses the season with special importance given to readings from an intertextual, ontological and spiritual perspectives.

The “Eagle Scout Film”: David Lynch as Auteur and Genre Filmmaker

Knowing David Lynch’s background as an Eagle Scout, this article explores that many of Lynch’s films and their protagonists, particularly Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) in Blue Velvet (1986), embody Eagle Scout-like heroes and serve as genre-like “Eagle Scout films.” These films and their protagonists have similarities with the film noir and western genres and their detective/cowboy heroes through their dealings with ethics, morality, and justice in sadistic worlds. In his genre-hybrid films, Lynch acts as an auteur in using recurring thematic preoccupations/stylistic tendencies, while exemplifying hostile environments offset by a central protagonist with an Eagle Scout-like set of morals.

Representations of queer identity in David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive

The purpose of the article. This essay considers the queer identity as a modern tragic figure through a reading of David Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive. Methodology. The article uses a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach using the methodological tools of cultural studies and queer theory based on structural-functional, semiotic-hermeneutic analysis, as well as Lacan's psychoanalytic concept of the subject. The scientific novelty. Within the framework of the humanities, in particular cultural studies, the analysis of the film by David Lynch "Mulholland Drive" in the context of queer theory is carried out for the first time. Conclusions. Since cinematography is a synthesis of various types of art, it embodies cultural phenomena and reproduces realities of life. Analysis of the peculiarities of the representation of queer identity in David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive through the prism of queer theory, in which identity is nothing more than a phenomenon that forms under the pressure of the dominant discourse and social order gives it the status of a cultural illusion or myth, demonstrates existing ideals. Cinema in the context of queer theory is self-reflective, autocratic, not indifferent. It can create a safe space - and at the same time be a protest action. The means by which the representation of a queer identity takes the place can be traced at all symbolic levels (material, index, iconic). At the material level, the grand plan is used as a sign in which all the characters in the film are related, without separating homosexual women visually. At the level of index status, the creation of the image of a homosexual couple is due to their profession. The heroines belong to the creative environment, in their relationship the dominant role is played by Diane. At the iconic level, images are constructed through their relationship with society. The heroines experience internal contradictions between their psychological state, natural nature, and social norms. The sexuality that is represented in the film contains a confrontation between the individual and the social. There is a tendency to normalize the image of queer identity in cinema, due to changes in the public consciousness. Based on the analysis, it was found that the film David Lynch reflects homosexuality as such, and not in the canonical models of traditional relationships.

Ética Noir en LA

En su vigésimo aniversario, Mulholland Drive mantiene los enigmas morales que la convierten en un objeto de estudio con múltiples interpretaciones. El largometraje de David Lynch es la lucha entre la fantasía y la realidad, con elementos propios de la ética y el romanticismo. ¿Qué enseñanzas podemos sacar de esta cinta de culto? La combinación de un mundo onírico irreal con la tragedia clásica da como resultado una absorbente experiencia para la audiencia, críticos, estudios filosóficos del cine y cualquier persona fascinada por la experimentación en la narrativa. Se propone una lectura de la película considerando investigaciones previas sobre el misterioso trabajo de Lynch. La historia de Betty/Diane Selwyn, una identidad dual, es una oportunidad para reflexionar sobre la condición humana, sus contradicciones y dilemas. Desde su estreno en 2001 hasta el día de hoy, la audiencia de Mulholland Drive está destinada a cuestionarse todo lo que creía saber sobre ella.

Moral and Cognitive Dissonance in Cinema

Cognitive dissonance provides a model for understanding how we experience film texts as profound. This chapter looks at the ways in which filmmakers might motivate or exploit the pleasure of resolving familiar narrative dissonance to inspire emotions associated with profundity, sublimity, or transcendence. David Lynch scholarship is presented as a primary case study in the conflation of cognitive dissonance and transcendence; however, it is contended that moral obligations to rape and trauma victims are sublimated in the process. Alternative moral dissonances across a range of cinematic modes are subsequently addressed. Comparative analysis of vigilantism in American revenge and “social cleansing” films, Ken Loach’s social realism, and John Sayles’s Lone Star (1996) permits an exploration of variability in filmic dissonance and narrative comprehension, as well as alternative approaches to filmmaking ethics and responsibility. The chapter concludes with suggestions for an applied ethics extended from theories of cognitive dissonance.

John Nutt: Comunicação não-semântica na edição experimental de som em Hollywood

Nesta entrevista, o editor de som de cinema especializado em diálogos, John Nutt, resgata a forma de produção audiovisual de Hollywood por meio das inovações de linguagem criadas com o advento do som estéreo a partir dos anos 1970. Ele trata de suas experiências com diretores como David Lynch, Carroll Ballard, Bob Rafelson e até o brasileiro Walter Salles. Nutt também destaca o que configurou o trabalho experimental do sound designer Alan Splet, pela valorização dos efeitos sonoros e sua harmonização com diálogos e música, soluções hoje assimiladas pela indústria cinematográfica e a comunicação audiovisual como um todo, tanto na produção de sentidos quanto de estímulos sensoriais de apelo emocional.

David Lynch

Ce petit film, au-delà de l’héritage revendiqué du surréalisme, utilise des procédés comiques et fantastiques hybrides (création d’une chimère, narration disruptive, dialogues abusant du coq-à-l’âne et tournant à la fatrasie) qui relèvent de l’inversion carnavalesque décrite par Michaël Bakhtine et plus particulièrement de la Sottie, pièce satyrique en vers que l’on représentait au moment du carnaval. La référence aux Absurda de Érasme en serait la preuve. Dans cette parade bouffonne, David Lynch en Maître-Sot ou Maître es Folie s’amuse à court-circuiter les codes du film noir de la narration, comme de as propre filmographie, créant une esthétique turbulente propre à défier la plateforme disruptive sur laquelle il fait son entrée.