SickNotes

Wanted to insert this here just because I have been thinking about it. There had been some discussion about racial stereotypes early on: particularly the characters of Josie Packard and Hawk. One of the things which I was running up against was the idea that the character of Hawk is a bad ass. So, maybe not such a bad stereotype; however, I did a little bit of thinking and internet searching on that subject and have a piece of evidence which kind of changed my opinion. Hawk's bad ass stereotype is actually something that worked against many Native Americans in the Vietnam war. From what I have been reading the injury rate for Native Americans in that war was up around 37%. Which I believe is high. I'm not an expert in this area, so if anyone has something to add to those statistics feel free. Many of the Native Americans who fought in that war contend this injury rate was directly related to the way they were usually positioned in their units. They were usually positioned out front as "trackers" or recon. Even though they had very few skills necessary to fill this role beyond that of their African American or Caucasian counterparts. It was assumed they had a sixth sense about the enemy and that worked to their advantage. It didn't. I only bring this up, because I found it to be an error in the way I was thinking and is an example of how even a "positive" stereotype can work against you.

I think this is a really important thing to realize with David Lynch. Especially, if we are speaking about anything that David Lynch writes or directs on his own, there is definitely some level of scrutiny passed which you can delve but really can't support. You can put together a lot of fan theory around what he is trying to do, but in the end, David Lynch has been very thorough in speaking about his love for inscrutability.

Haha. Um, I didn't realize this for a long while, but have now figured it out. In case you didn't know. Every Twin Peaks episode has its own wikipedia page which talks about the director and writer of that episode and gives a synopsis of the episode. WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS The episode overview page is here. Clicking on the episodes provides many more details. I didn't realize this because I don't have that many shows that I watch which have 20 year plus histories. The ones I go to usually have less info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aqua_Teen_Hunger_Force_episodes

Yeah, the coffee being a thing that most people are forced to drink is something I hadn't thought about until CLWheeljack brought it up. Someone else mentioned Dale Cooper's trench coat. The coffee and the trench coat together kind of clench the idea that both things are being "redeemed" in some way from the noir stereotype. The trench coat has been appropriated so much that it actually has a trope of its own called the trenchcoat brigade. I love Constantine (the Reeves movie; haven't read the graphic novels), but it stands in contrast to Dale's pressed and starched version. Disheveled trench coats and bad coffee in styro foam cups are the realm of stakeouts (think Columbo). As to whether it was intentionally redeeming. I don't know. I have no read on that. Could have been that Agent Cooper needs to say positive optimistic things and the end result arrives at starch and damn fine coffee.

That is a really good essay. I had to copy and paste it elsewhere to get through it when I first read it. Reading white text on black backgrounds then looking away is exactly what a migraine feels like when it is starting.

Been meaning to watch the European pilot; however, my wife is a task master and worries that if we don't doggedly watch the episodes we will leave season 2 and never come back to it because it is a bit of a slog.

Yeah, they are really heavy handed about following through on the idea that lots of stuff is possible and that ALL the characters are somewhat used to that idea. The reason they have to involve lots of characters outside the "task force" is because it is a trope that the police will often use psychics when their investigations reach dead ends. By adding the community of Twin Peaks into the mix, they are acknowledging that everyone in Twin Peaks is NOT phased by the possible magical nature of the evil they are dealing with. In my personal opinion not culled from any other site. I believe that we as humans shift our understanding throughout our lives into three categories on a continuum: the probable, the possible, and the impossible. When we read or watch fiction, we sort the world that is being created into these categories so that we can expect the world to play by certain rules. We do this in real life when we are children. Monsters under the bed (in the closet) are possible until we have enough experience of them not grabbing us to sort them into the impossible category. In opposition to this, logic dictates that you can't do this, because you can't prove the absence of something. But, in order to live our daily lives we have to be illogical so that we don't fear monsters under the bed or realize every waking moment that there are missiles that can annihilate us all. We sort those things closer to the impossible because of the experience of them not happening constantly, because we must. Otherwise, we wouldn't be any less scared of the dangers of monsters or nuclear war than the day we first learned about them. This could be called something, but I don't know the philosophical term. Twin Peaks is slowly letting us know how possible and probable the magic in their world is.

Haha. Now we are just speaking in spoilers:

I think this is a really interesting analysis of the trope. I'm with you. I think it was probably a comment on the "noir relationship" with coffee. Thanks for pointing it out. I think furthermore that David Lynch himself has a special connection with coffee: "I'd have coffee, sometimes six cups, along with the shake, and I'd have sugar in my coffee. By then I would be pretty jazzed up, and I'd start writing down ideas. Many, many things came out of Bob's." "I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all. New York has great water for coffee. Water varies all around. We've got to drink something. Do you just drink water, sometimes? It's very good for you." http://thecityofabsurdity.com/quotecollection/coffee.html I think this is a comment also on the nature of Twin Peaks and that it is "special;" therefore, the coffee and the pie taste better than other places. This is explored a little in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in that... I haven't come up with any firm conclusions about this, but I think it is a comment on the whole duality concept that keeps coming up. It would be hard to get into this at this early juncture, but suffice it to say, the price they pay for having it special is the nature of the darkness in the woods. This is classic Yin and Yang dualism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism#Ontological_dualism In which every good force has a spot of concentrated bad within its boundaries. Lots of the characters have duality built into them. Laura has her Maddy. MIKE has his BOB. This list gets longer especially for supernatural characters as the episodes progress. I am almost through season two at this point.

The scene where Andy is drawing Sarah Palmer's visions is pretty important because it's the first time that everyone...not just people tasked with finding Laura's murder...seem unconcerned with the idea that someone's visions are being taken seriously in the search for a killer. In a previous episode, the idea of Twin Peaks being "special" and having a darkness that surrounds it is introduced, but it isn't until this episode we get everyone in a room and they seem not at all concerned with the idea of magic being a tool that can be depended upon for results. They are, after all, going to put these posters that Andy draws in shops and whatnot for the whole town to see we assume. They aren't just humoring her and Agent Cooper corroborates this by saying, "That's the guy."

I think the creators/writers of the show meant it as a soap opera trope whereby people would often play their twin. So, in soap opera terms, it wouldn't have been surprising to see someone reprise a similar role even though they had been killed off in a previous episode. Additionally, as a young actress, the fact that she played Laura Palmer wouldn't have gained her anything on a resume, because she only played dead. They probably had to pay her anyway, regardless, cause her image is everywhere. So, it worked to her advantage to bring her back as a "cousin." EDIT: Laura Palmer did play brief snippets in flashback.

Haha. "Did you just say dick cream?"

I see Bobby as Judd Nelson's character from The Breakfast Club complete with the loosely tied boots.

Thanks for reminding me to this. The palm leaves were a nice touch. I don't know what that's symbolic of in Christianity or the show. But damn, I thought it was a church or at least the funeral home.

I was reading a page of quotes someone put together from David Lynch. The page doesn't do a good job of noting which interview the quotes came from, but I liked this bit all the same: "In Hollywood, more often than not, they're making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone. But what's so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can't, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say 'Did you understand that?' but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that's magical and that's the power that film has." "Film can do amazing things with abstraction, but it rarely gets a chance. People are treated like idiots, and people are not idiots. We're hip to the human condition, the human experience, and we love mysteries." "I keep hoping people will like abstractions, space to dream, consider things that don't necessarily add up." Quoted from here: http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/quotecollection/abstract.html

On the podcast, it was mentioned that this episode had a "Confident and intentional hand behind the camera" being directed by David Lynch. I really have to agree with that. If you look at a list of episodes: POTENTIALLY SPOILERS. I can't say their aren't spoilers by following this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Twin_Peaks_episodes David Lynch seems to be "present" as either a writer or director for a whole bunch of the magical parts that happen. The writer might be credited as someone else, but I wonder if David Lynch didn't write all the weird magical stuff uncredited and just request a block of time in the episode to plug it in. My theory here is that all the other writers were trying to illuminate things while David Lynch was adding parts that mystified. My wife and I have watched forward to the third episode of the second season. It's so odd watching these episodes years later and realizing that so little of the show was devoted to the Red Room or other happenings, yet those are the key sequences and seem fill my estimation of the series.

Hey, thanks for mentioning my comments Chris and Jake. I didn't send them in to the email address till you asked because I thought it was too involved, but I'm glad you found them interesting nonetheless. One short note, Magical Realism is not something that we practice here in the United States a lot, so, coming up with a thing that was definitely Magical Realism but NOT Lynch was difficult because most of them are books. Like Water for Chocolate is one of the few movies that have been made from a Magical Realism books. That's why I picked it. All the others are equally obscure. That's why I just went on and explained what the plot of the movie was. David Lynch practices a lot of different genres and I think a good case can be made that he uses it regardless of whether he would mention it as an influence. In fact, the wikipedia page for him doesn't mention any Magical Realism influences (I don't think), but does go on to state: "His films are known for their use of Magical Realism." SPOILERS PROBABLY? I can't say that there will not be spoilers following the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch#Influences I think it is wonderful to have a director that pulls from such varied sources so far afield and makes them consumable to a larger audience, but it is still difficult to talk about those genres without going real deep on their history and having to pick such obscure sources. This from TVTropes.org is great: Rule of thumb: Say there are vampires in New York. If the protagonists spend a lot of time with vampires, either taking evil ones down, incorporating them into romance stories, etc. it's Urban Fantasy. If the cop just goes through his life as a cop, but his partner is a vampire, is greeted with "Hi, Mr. vampire!" by cheerful little children in the street, and casually drinks blood in plain sight out of transfusion packs during coffee breaks, it's a case of Mundane Fantastic. If a cop's partner is very pale, very strong, generally acts odd, and come to think of it, he's never been seen in daylight, but the story focuses primarily on just a Police Procedural or the interpersonal relationships, it's Magical Realism.

I agree. FLCL also has the bonus of being a good example of something that is defying or commenting on its own artform. Spefically when the artists do something like comment in the anime about how the particular type of animation is hurting the artist's hands (which is awesome). I think anime in general also has the benefit of being foreign to begin with. I think the same could be said of David Lynch himself, because he tries to be anachronistic. His foreign qualities are due to liking things from a wider range of eras. Agent Cooper has a quality that is the same. In other words, many people have commented on the fact that the music and Cooper himself seems to have driven into town from 1966. I think David Lynch tries to be that way as well. I like it that he pulls from a wider range of references.

It is in no small part do to the magical powers of his chin. It is unmatched.

1) It is difficult in a forum which is watching or re-watching a serialized television show to make any statements that move too far ahead in the series, both because, that would talk about the series as a whole and I haven't watched the series recently enough to understand it as a whole. I only added mention of episode 5: The One Armed Man, because I was watching ahead for what I felt was the first time the surreal moments crossed paths with the real world and infringe on the possibility of Magical Realism. I didn't mean to sum up the series as a whole. My only intent was to define Magical Realism and the way it differs from Surrealism and to caution that stuff in dreams is merely surreal until it has to be explained otherwise. Basically, this is what is “in play” at this point. So, in answer to that question, no, I can't treat it as a whole thing, because I don't have a firm enough grasp on it to do so at this point. Nor would it look like anything worth reading cause it would just be spoilers all over the place and no text. This is why I said, “My memory is still hazy on the later episodes and season two.” 2) “While I think we probably all agree that genre labels are more convenience than any kind of strict delimiter, "magical realism" is quite amorphous even amongst its peers.” I can agree that Magical Realism is somewhat without form, which is why I chose two basic concepts to define Magical Realism and tried to describe how I felt Twin Peaks has succeeded and failed at being so. I think I did an adequate job of that without defining the show itself by using examples of movies that hewed more closely to the genres I was defining. So, it's ironic that you go on to define what Twin Peaks is, therefore "delimiting" rather than saying how it does or does not resemble a thing. It's no surprise that David Lynch would actually play with the genre's because he has made his career defying genre's intentionally.

I know the "coat" part of this statement probably wasn't the main thrust of your statement, but it got me to thinking about wardrobe and its selection of clothes for Cooper. So, there's this link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadassLongcoat Which doesn't seem to describe Cooper at all. Although some of the stuff in the article fits (har-har), most of the stuff doesn't. I like this statement a lot: "A Badass Trenchcoat is never closed (unless it's on Humphrey Bogart)." I like that a lot. That trench coat Cooper wears is REALLY present, though. For me, it is the main focal point in most shots where Cooper can be seen in full? In my opinion, he's wearing it because it is part of what makes up an FBI agent. Mulder wears one a lot in the X-files. Maybe if he didn't wear it, he wouldn't be the inspector, he'd just be some guy in a suit? I don't have any firm read on this other than his coat is really THERE in a wardrobe sense.

Yeah, haha, the dance scene in The Wicker Man is accurately described as uncomfortably-extended, yet naked, so, I'm not complaining a lot.

Also, As a follow-up, I would like to note that there is one mistake in my previous arguments. Silence of the Lambs the movie didn't come out till 1991 which I believe is after the premier of this series; however, the book came out in 1988. So, serial killers and the FBI forensic psychologists (I think that's what they are called) who hunt them were part of the culture because of the Ted Bundy and others. I think the book was a big success. So, maybe it was used for inspiration, but wasn't quite as culturally significant as I give it credit for here.

Short note to say, I always look at the table of donuts and try and spot the donuts without holes, because they would be the jelly filled donuts that Cooper likes. I can never spot them. It messes with me. I said this to my wife last night just before a scene where Cooper takes a jelly donut off the table. I'm not one of the guys who often looks for this type of thing, but I'm always wondering if they are prop donuts and whether prop-nuts only come in the holed versions. Damn brain! Why can't you apply this level of attention to real life?

I will have to look out for that moment. I was looking up the writing credits for Mark Frost. He had written for the Six Million Dollar Man and Hill Street Blues before coming to Twin Peaks and working with David Lynch. It's funny to think of that conversation in the context of Mark Frost saying it to David Lynch in the writing room. As in, you know, I'm writing a crime procedural whodunit and your writing...your stuff, but in the end we have to put them together in order to resolve parts of the plot not just obscure and mystify the audience. And Lynch coming at it from the exact opposite direction.