anderbubble

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Posts posted by anderbubble

  1. Posted

    Lynch frequently describes ideas as though they are entities that are alive, and flit into and out of his presence. He must catch them and hold onto them, or he loses them. Then he can use those ideas as bait to attract other ideas.

     

    Lynch also tends to avoid explaining his interpretation of his work; and, when presented with someone else's explanation, often says that it is not what it means to him; but if it's what it means to the viewer, that's great.

     

    My wife and I are quickly settling on the interpretation that Judy is jiāo dài (交代, "to explain"); that the ultimate evil is to explain the idea. That BOB, the offspring of Judy, is literally the explanation ("who killed Laura Palmer") who killed the idea, Laura.

  4. Posted

    I haven't thought this through much yet; but I wanted to at least get it out there.

     

    I think the ending might be about the border between the reality of Twin Peaks in the show and the reality of the real world itself.

     

    The first thing I though this about was when  Leland says "find Laura"; who does Cooper go find immediately? Laura Dern.

     

    Then, they go to Sarah Palmer's house. Who do they find? The literal person who actually owns the house in real life.

  7. Posted

    7 minutes ago, Mike Danger said:

    Dougie-Cooper wouldn't have the gunshot wound, though, because that'd be on Cooper's original body, which is currently being driven around by the doppelganger Cooper.

     

    I really don't think that's a valid way to interpret this. If this were the way it works, Cooper's Doppelganger wouldn't have a backwards fingerprint.

     

    But, ultimately, I don't think much of this matters so far as it's been on the screen. Cooper has a cut physique because that's what Frost and/or Lynch decided they wanted on the screen. Because they wanted to present a contrast between Dougie before and after Cooper. Because they wanted Cooper to be portrayed with confidence and strength.

     

    Why doesn't Dougie have a gunshot wound? "When the will is invoked, the recuperative powers of the physical body are simply extraordinary."

  8. Posted

    I still want to stay far away from the "is it rape or is it not rape" argument. That stuff is poison.

     

    But I'm still bothered by the sex scene, and I'm still piecing together why.

     

    In an earlier post I tried to describe my perspective on what this means for Dougie; but, as I posted it, I knew I was leaving Janey-E's perspective out. It wasn't that I was blind to the fact that she has a perspective; but I needed more time to work through my thoughts.

     

    I find the scene sad, not funny, and the reason I'm uncomfortable about it is because I think we're meant to interpret it as comedy, not tragedy. Even setting aside the potential tragic implications of what this means for Coop if he stops being Dougie, which could just as easily be written away; the scene itself represents continued disregard for Dougie and his situation.

     

    But for Janey-E, it's just as tragic. She is so desperate for intimacy, to feel respect for her partner, to be attracted to and be seen as attractive by her husband, that even these dark glimpses of Cooper coming through the image of her husband seem to her like a rejuvenation of their relationship. There's a bit of fantastical setting in the fact that Dougie disarmed Ike like he did; but if we allow that to be muted a bit as standard television over-drama what we have here is the tiniest evidence that her husband cares for her, takes care of himself (in a good way), and is even interested in having a relationship with their son. Contrast that to what we know of Dougie: a man who was off gambling in stead of being at his son's birthday party. A man who had rung up life-threatening gambling debt. A man who was unfit (in more ways than one). And, ultimately, a man who has managed to be confused for the Dougie we pervasively have on screen right now: absent, incapable, disconnected, unresponsive.

     

    I can't reduce the scene to comedy, both because of what it represents to me about the Dougie character as an unseen rebirth for Cooper; but also because of what it represents to me about Janey-E as an unseen and unappreciated wife and mother.

  9. Posted

    17 minutes ago, Crunchnoisy said:

    How is it she hasn't seen him naked every day, just administratively?  That... that doesn't track.

     

    I interpreted this as just one more way in which Janey-E just hasn't actually been seeing him. She's going through the motions, not paying too much attention, and this just happened to actually catch her attention this time.

     

    In some ways, she's both the counterpoint to, but on the same track as, Dougie. They're both disconnected. They're both in a haze. They're both going through the motions. But Dougie is stuck, incapable of action. Janey-E is stuck pressing onward, unable to look to either side.

  10. Posted

    I don't want to quibble about the definition of rape here. That's turning into a distraction [edit: and I don't know that anyone's going to be satisfied with the argument in the context of a fictional, fantastical setting].

     

    What I'm thinking about, though, is the fact that Janey-E still hasn't given appropriate thought and consideration to the fact that Dougie has changed in every conceivable way, and is acting like he has suffered some kind of trauma. The doctor signing off on him mutes this concern at least a little bit; but she should know that something is wrong.

     

    If we can consider Dougie as he is as his own character for the moment, this scene makes me feel sad for him. Sad for the play-acting of intimacy that the sex scene represents. Sad that Janey-E's entire demeanor towards him has changed, partly due to having seen him without a shirt on, but she still isn't actually seeing him.

     

    He's still just Mr. Jackpots. Wandering around the casino, with everything going right for him, but no-one is actually taking the time to understand what he's going through.

  11. Posted

    8 minutes ago, Mister said:

    by the end of this season we'll realize that there was actually no time wasted in this season

     

    Except maybe this episode. It seems to me that it exists solely to convince us that other stuff in the show matters. Everything totally connects, man!

     

    I felt disappointed by this episode. It's not bad; but it seems non-essential compared with everything else that's come before it. In a second viewing, where there's no mandatory wait between episodes, I expect this one will be waited through more than looked forward to.

     

    The drape runners sign was good. Most everything else felt redundant: doubling-down on something we've already seen. Bad people keep being bad, or we have new reasons to keep thinking they're bad. That's about it.

     

    The one exception might be Dougie and Janey-E, but we'll have to see where that goes (as in all things). From Cooper's perspective, I already got this kind of familial emotionality when he cried while watching Sonny Jim. There's value in seeing Janey-E start to see Dougie differently; but while he's still in his fugue state, it could just as easily be a gag, and at her expense. It really all depends on who Cooper is if and when he comes out, and what their relationship is at that point.

  12. Posted

    8 minutes ago, Gailbraithe said:

    One of the reasons I came here from reddit is the fans here seem much smarter than the fans on reddit, where it seems like 75%+ of the fans are drooling idiots.

     

    I don't think ridiculing others' ignorance is the answer. The audience here is just a more tightly self-selected group of people. People who have chosen to seek out a more niche forum, and likely who are interested in not only watching a show but in listening to an hour-long podcast on each episode.

     

    One of the things that also makes this forum so great is the generally positive discourse.

  13. Posted

    1 hour ago, LillyBaeum said:

    "Why are you saying this thing is bad?? This forum is for people who like this thing!!" is totally unconstructive, sure there's a line to draw to avoid unnecessary trolling, but I don't think we need an echo chamber.

     

    Well, that's not actually what I said. I don't have a problem with people disagreeing; it's great, in fact. But simply voicing a different opinion isn't constructive, either: describing one's experience is.

     

    It's fair enough that I didn't really provide much else to go on myself: perhaps a better response I could have had would have been to ask _why_ the poster thought this episode was bad. The poster claims that it is as though it's obviously true and needs no supporting argument, but that's clearly not the case given the general conversation in the forum to that point. The poster should state their opinion in the context of the current discussion.

     

    As-is, the post comes off as though anyone who doesn't see the episode as ridiculous garbage is an idiot.

  14. Posted

    14 hours ago, fellintooblivion said:

    Making this season 18 hours was the dumbest decision the person who made that decision ever made. Everything that happened in this episode could have been condensed into 30 minutes. Every week Lynch continues to prove why the people at ABC were correct in not giving him total creative control. It's now clear that whatever Lynch is making here he is making for himself. This is masturbation pure and simple. 

     

    Why are you voicing this dislike in a forum clearly populated by people who enjoy it?

  16. Posted

    11 minutes ago, TurboPubx-16 said:

    I love Lynch's work, but why you gotta do stuff like this man? They guy made an entire movie about treating different and differently-abled people with respect. I've been listening to Lynch talk about getting ideas through Transcendental Meditation and staying true to those ideas as he develops them into films: "I was meditating and while I was transcending I got the idea of a midget grinding a shoemaker's awl into a woman's guts." I had the same idea when I was 14 and listening to Tool albums on repeat. 

     

    It's my impression that Lynch sees the process of filmmaking as one of discovery rather than creation. He gets an idea, and it comes from somewhere, and it exists "over there" and you learn more about it. Lynch's strength comes from his willingness to identify and portray the idea nakedly and without the filter of cultural or personal expectation.

     

    The side-effect of this, though, is that he portrays things that might not actually be the result of his conscious, intentional, thought; but from his subconscious, automatic thought. And we aren't as defensible in our subconscious as we are in our conscious minds. But with Lynch, we get to see the subconscious, with all its faults.

     

     

  17. Posted

    One of the complaints I've had with Twin Peaks, particularly the finale, is how hard they lean into the red room setting and aesthetic. It seemed to me that Cooper's dream in the red room should have been just one manifestation of a place that doesn't have a specific, defined form, and I was kind of disappointed to see more of it yet again at the start of this season.

     

    I'm really happy that, while they do continue to use that imagery here, there is finally more. I particularly liked the stuff at the beginning of episode 3.

     

    I kinda wish they'd not had anything supernatural in the first couple episodes at all, though. Don't get me wrong; I'm loving this stuff; but it feels indulgent. I'd say we shouldn't have even seen Cooper until a few episodes in, to give the audience a chance to just be in the place before things get weird again. As-is, there's barely been any actual time spent in twin peaks the place.

     

    I'd argue that people didn't like original twin peaks because of the supernatural stuff; they liked it because of the soap opera, and the crazy stuff just made it more subconsciously compelling, particularly because it left you unsure what was normal and what was weird. (Tibetan rock throwing is a great example of the blurred line between the two.) I'm a nerd who loves all the crazy stuff on screen, both then and now; but I don't know that that makes it the best twin peaks.

     

    I keep thinking "this is what Lost was trying to be," but, when I was into Lost, I didn't even know Twin Peaks existed. Watching this now, it reminds me a lot of of Silent Hills; which is interesting, because people (at the time) said that Silent Hills reminded them of Eraserhead (which I haven't seen).

  19. Posted

    4 hours ago, Nappi said:

    The constant drawing of parallels between the story of Silence and the life of Christ [...] quickly become tiresome for me

     

    It is tiresome, and no mistake. Rodrigues' willingness and desire to compare himself to Christ is his downfall. It is only when he stops considering himself above even the appearance of apostasy that he is able to help end any suffering.

     

    The reference to the vinegar is particularly interesting to me because my impression--though I need to go back and check this--was that he was drawing contradictory comparisons to that particular event. It seemed a particular example of Rodrigues' cognitive dissonance that he would see Christ-parallels in himself no matter what was actually happening.

     

    Quote

    I also wish Kichijiro – who had travel great distances to move the plot forward, since he was seemingly the only person able to do so – had felt a bit more like an actual person and less like a stereotypical Judas/weakling character of Christian teachings.

     

    Oh, man--I couldn't disagree more about Kichijiro. Rodrigues thinks of him like Judas, because Rodrigues thinks of himself as Christ; but where Judas betrayed Christ and then hanged himself, Kichijiro repeatedly betrays Rodrigues (and the others) and reliably repents and begs for forgiveness. Rodrigues--and the audience--understandably interpret this as disingenuous; but the whole point of the story is that Rodrigues is no better than Kichijiro. Kichijiro betrayed others to save himself from harm; but Rodrigues betrayed others to save his own self-image.

     

    Quote

     

     

  20. Posted

    On the off-chance that there's someone from Japan in here, I would absolutely *love* to hear your perspective on this book, especially if you read it in Japanese.

     

    My biggest lamentation with respect to my reading of this book is that I can only read it in English from my western, Christian perspective. I can't imagine what it must be like for a Buddhist Japanese person to read, and knowing that that was the actual target audience blows my mind.

  21. Posted

    12 hours ago, Argobot said:

     

    I happened to watch the movie first and the book and the movie are exactly the same.

    I had what I consider to be the absolutely optimal experience reading and watching these. I read the book for our book club, but didn't manage to finish it before our scheduled go-watch-the-movie get-together. I had stopped almost exactly before the climactic moment of decision; and then got to see that entire build-up on screen, too. I had a palpable sensation of "this has all been building up to this moment, and I really do not know what's about to happen." It was great.

     

    I also really appreciated the film's length and deliberate pace. I don't have a lot of time for theatre-going these days, and when I do I usually feel like the film is disappointingly frenetic and rushed. A lot of my peers complained that the film was long; but I though it was precisely as long as it should be.

  24. Posted

    Sorry for being slightly off-topic:

     

    I've been mainlining this show with all my no-work-tomorrow free nights re Thanksgiving; but now I'm in the unfortunate position of having watched *past* the rewatch schedule. I think I'm going to meditate on self-restraint, and restrict myself to the podcast schedule from here on so that I can be a part of this discussion.

     

    Hello!

  25. Posted

    I like games (both video and table top), and have been playing them for most of my life. I'm blessed with a great wife who also enjoys video games, and is even willing to take them seriously enough to have meaningful conversations about gameplay, story, art, plot, setting…

     

    Now I have a kid, about eighteen months old now. Bed time has become a bit more predictable, so we're able to get some game time in the evenings (we recently finished the Mass Effect series this way); but I find that my game-related-activities tend toward the "listening to podcasts" and "reading articles" now, rather than the actual "playing a video game."

     

    How has having children impacted your habit or interest in gaming?