Twin Peaks Rewatch 38: The Return, Part 4

[Bjorn]

6 hours ago, jamesklambert said:

 

I do not want to discount your feels/reactions here but I also do not want to make these things out to be undeniable facts, which can only be read one way. I fear that you are making a list of all the "bad" things, as you see them, and once you fill up the page you will be convinced that the show is what you worried it might be. Once you go down a road like that it is hard to turn back, because the cumulative effect continues to grow and block out anything else.

 

Consider, just consider, that there are other factors and ways of looking at this:

1. Lynch's work, like the majority of work out there, is male dominated, but this is particularly true for the themes that he generally deals with (i.e. evil, aggressive, disgusting people committing horrible, violent, and callous actions - the majority of which are committed by men in the real world).
2. Lynch is acknowledging the base instincts of most heterosexal men while showing a clear contrast between those who abuse women and those who make an effort to be something better. They are not going to escape being men (Preston's walk is not going to go unnoticed) but they are going to choose how they behave (Albert comments on it, as he shouldn't, while Cole does not, but neither are giving any indication that they are less liking to give her work or expect her to do a bad job or expect anything outside of work from her).
3. Albert may be insensitive to workplace etiquette (commenting on Preston's walk) but he also knows her well enough to know she gets car sick and does not seem to be indifferent to her suffering, just as he's not indifferent to Cole's desire to see Mount Rushmore, despite his reputation for being a heartless jerk.
4. Why is Preston's walk "ridiculous?" Have you never known a woman who looks like a runway model and chooses to play it up at some moments by playing the part? Why does it have to be a bad thing here? Maybe she's feeling disrespected and wants them to take a good look at what they will never have. Is it the best choice in the workplace? No. Is it a choice someone might make? Yes.
5. The action that I loved from Preston is her hand wave in the car when the driver suddenly stops because he thinks the big-wig in the back is sick. Without saying a word she is letting him know that it's not all about Cole and he should keep moving.
6. One of the four woman murdered (Tracy?) was clearly sent to the glass box room to seduce a really stupid young man. Couldn't you complain about the sexist portrayal of that young man, who doesn't respect the job he has been hired to do and will ignore all the rules at a moments notice just for the opportunity to sit next to a pretty woman? They are both murdered together, and both in a state of undress, after she initiates a sexual encounter (presumably to take advantage of him and get whatever she was hired to find).
7. Another murdered woman is the wife of the man set up for murder, who is clearly a much more powerful and smarter character than her husband. Why is the fact that Bad Coop shoots her so much worse than the implication that Bad Coop set up her whiny husband for murder?
8. Another murdered woman's head is found in bed with a naked man's headless body? Why doesn't he factor into your assessment of how men and women are represented?
9. I saw someone else comment here about how we first see Jade topless. Actually we see her naked but turned to the side, and this is perfectly appropriate for a prostitute character. She is also depicted as totally in control of her situation, not a helpless victim; and kind, even to an idiot like Duggy. As they said on the podcast, she is one of the most real characters we see. Shouldn't that count for something?
10. How does Cooper get out of the netherworld? Only through the actions/help of women.

I'll stop there and hope this gives you enough things to consider. Is there sexism going on in Twin Peak: The Return? Yes. As there is in the rest of life. But I do not believe that it is uniquely horrid or nearly as one-dimensionally bad as you make it out to be.

 

1. So what?  This is just filler, distracting hand waving avoiding the specifics of looking at Twin Peaks.

2. Everything about this is supposition filled in by your own imagination

3. Okay, so what?  Literally, what does this have to do with how women are presented in Twin Peaks?  A man who's defining characteristic is being an asshole sometimes isn't an asshole. Alert the press.

4. Why isn't Preston's walk ridiculous?  Nothing you said doesn't make it not ridiculous. Your just making suppositions to explain the ridiculous, not making it not ridiculous. 

5. WTF?  You really read a whole lot into stuff, don't you. And of course, your read is the correct read.  There aren't other ways to read this.

6. Supposition once again, there's not yet anything to prove this (I agree it's a possibility, and one I've mentioned myself, but it's still purely supposition, and one that presumes the worst of a woman character I might add, while almost all your other suppositions assume the best from male characters).

7. More supposition.  And at the end of the day, the wife is murdered.  Her arc is finished.  Her character gone.  The husband has many chances at redemption left.  The implication is that one is fucking dead, and the other is in jail with at least some life ahead of him.  

8. 1 dead man = Multiple dead women.  Please, think about that for just a second. That's what this point heavily implies.  Edited to add: Actually, there have been multiple murders in the show already (a surprising number of bodies actually, for 4 episodes).  But I think the way you made this point came off as the way I originally presented it.  I also think there's been a pretty major difference between how the killings have been shown that one could talk about (the mechanic guy is killed off screen, while the Darya killing is incredibly graphic, and that serves a narrative role, but narrative justifications are generally not all that interesting for examining the way that writers and directors handle violence against women and men differently). 

9.  Jade is naked, Dougie is not.  Why is it "perfectly appropriate" for a prostitute to be naked at the start of this scene?  Not reasonable.  Not believable.  Not possible.  But, "perfectly appropriate".  If you don't respond to anything else, I would really like to here your thoughts on this.  

10.  Oh, look, a woman sacrificing herself to advance the story arc of a man in fiction.  Color me shocked.

 

Your post is mostly filled with distracting elements that have nothing to do with the subject at hand and wild supposition that you've internally accepted as truth already. 

 

I'll trust that you'll take the same consideration that you asked of others and really give some contemplation to what it was this post was actually communicating, and the kinds of assumptions, suppositions and presumptions of objectivity that you poured into it.

[Jake]

1 hour ago, James said:

To the extent that that is deliberate, I wonder who is behind it. I didn't take Lynch to be into that kind of precision and game-playing, but perhaps I've misapprehended his nature. Or perhaps the intention is not for people to actually watch them side-by-side, but for it to have some kind of subconscious resonance. 

 

Then again, I wonder how much licence has been taken by the person who compiled that video, given that Cooper's perspective is split over two episodes. Did that lead to there being some leeway in the timing? Not that I don't think that there's something there; I'm just wondering. 

 

Some of the similarities are definitely striking. 

 

The lead credited editor is Duwayne Dunham, who was editor of the Twin Peaks pilot as well as many of Lynch's feature films (and Return of the Jedi!). Maybe it was something he massaged deliberately? Maybe he and Lynch talked about these scenes being echoes of each other and the editing team decided to make it literal? It's all so hard to know, because for as opaque as Lynch is about the story and character motivation side of his work, he's even more cagey about the craft side, how things actually got made and what specific techniques he used and that sort of thing. If he legitimately said to his editors "I want these two scenes to time out so that this happens at two minutes and this happens at two minutes forty five seconds" he'd never tell someone that after the fact.

[Urthman]

5 hours ago, James said:

To the extent that that is deliberate, I wonder who is behind it. I didn't take Lynch to be into that kind of precision and game-playing, but perhaps I've misapprehended his nature.

 

Well, given that one side of the match-up consists mostly of long, drawn-out, time-shifting shots of Cooper falling or looking at weird stuff, it seems like it wouldn't require much precision to get everything to match.  A few extra seconds of Cooper in space, a few extra bits cut out (or sped-up, or rewound) of the glitchy scene with the eyeless woman, and it all lines up.  All Lynch would have to say is, "This bit with Cooper in the box happens when the guy was out of the room, and that bit with the woman making slashing noises coincides with those two getting killed" and the editor could pretty easily make it happen.  It wouldn't really need to have been planned out at all before they did the filming.  And I can definitely imagine Lynch enjoying the serendipity of making the bit where Cooper is dangling in space go on even more uncomfortably-too-long than he originally intended just so the timing lines up right.

For me, the most surprising and freaky bit was how the terrifying knocking/banging starts exactly when they start having sex.  Cliché perhaps, or maybe even an eye-rolling pun, but that part was really creepy the first time I watched this mash-up.

[dartmonkey]

So I watched the international pilot last night and two things struck me in relation to S3:

 

- Cooper is much more impish and less boyscout than I remember! I'm really hoping we get to see that Coop again before long.

 

- Lucy and Andy used to be useful! As Jake mentioned (I think), she's doing a great job in the pilot. Even Andy feels like a cop when he's interrogating Bobby. Less so when he's crying at the crime scenes, but he doesn't feel like a caricature. I really hope they get something to do soon.

[Argobot]

Does anyone think that Laura Dern is going to play Diane?

[Mike Danger]

12 minutes ago, Argobot said:

Does anyone think that Laura Detn is going to play Diane?

 

I'm leaning that way. Her character was described in PR from before the show started as "a big surprise" or "a big secret" or something. I can't think of a female character whose identity would have to be kept secret to be a big surprise other than Diane or I guess Caroline Earle?

 

Granted, all that PR stuff has to be taken with a big grain of salt but given the generally low-key stylings of the lead-up to the show, that sticks out to me.

[Jake]

24 minutes ago, Argobot said:

Does anyone think that Laura Detn is going to play Diane?

A lot of the Internet thinks that. 

 

Hopefully she is playing the new Montana on the new Invation to Love. 

[Argobot]

I'm the dumb one who posted that Laura Dern comment minutes before it was mentioned on the podcast.

[Gregalor]

Is anyone else hoping that Diane isn't in this, and we never see her?

[Woodfella]

1 hour ago, Argobot said:

Does anyone think that Laura Detn is going to play Diane?

Yeah maybe! And do you think that will be the woman Albert and Coke are taking about?

 

I always liked the idea that Diane wasnt actually a real person and was just what Dale called his tape recorder or whatever to better organise his thoughts. But he talks to her face to face in a (rubbish) deleted scene of the film

[pyide]

17 hours ago, Urthman said:

Well, given that one side of the match-up consists mostly of long, drawn-out, time-shifting shots of Cooper falling or looking at weird stuff, it seems like it wouldn't require much precision to get everything to match.  A few extra seconds of Cooper in space, a few extra bits cut out (or sped-up, or rewound) of the glitchy scene with the eyeless woman, and it all lines up.  All Lynch would have to say is, "This bit with Cooper in the box happens when the guy was out of the room, and that bit with the woman making slashing noises coincides with those two getting killed" and the editor could pretty easily make it happen.  It wouldn't really need to have been planned out at all before they did the filming.  And I can definitely imagine Lynch enjoying the serendipity of making the bit where Cooper is dangling in space go on even more uncomfortably-too-long than he originally intended just so the timing lines up right.

For me, the most surprising and freaky bit was how the terrifying knocking/banging starts exactly when they start having sex.  Cliché perhaps, or maybe even an eye-rolling pun, but that part was really creepy the first time I watched this mash-up.

 

The banging noise is part of what makes me think it's all just a coincidence, because when he comes back into the room with the "American Girl" it starts up again and she urges him to leave. And this is some time after no-eyes is zapped off into space and the two are dead. But then that whole scene could be a reset of sorts, I don't know.

[marginalgloss]

Almost forgot to say something very important about the long-awaited reappearance of Laura Palmer's Theme in this episode: 

 

Spoiler

 

(via reddit, obviously)

 

[Jake]

4 hours ago, Gregalor said:

Is anyone else hoping that Diane isn't in this, and we never see her?

I am hoping that yes. 

 

Im happy to be wrong if they show Dianne and she's a great character, though. Transcending the novelty of her past as the unseen person Cooper talks to on his tape recorder, blowing past that to the point that she feels like a fully realized character who "has always been a part of the show," for lack of a better way of phrasing it, will be super duper tough, if they try to go that route. 

[Argobot]

Diane would be a good person to help Cooper remember himself though...

 

What if they made a big deal out of casting Laura Dern and then it turns out we never see her? Maybe we'll only get her voice as Diane on the other end of a recorder.

 

Would people be annoyed if the woman who Albert/Gordon are looking for turns out to be a completely new character? It has to be someone who was significant to the real Cooper 25 years ago, so presumably she'd be a none character. And since Albert and Cole know her, it makes sense that she'd be tied to the FBI.

 

Guys, I really want a new episode

[Mike Danger]

26 minutes ago, Argobot said:

Would people be annoyed if the woman who Albert/Gordon are looking for turns out to be a completely new character? It has to be someone who was significant to the real Cooper 25 years ago, so presumably she'd be a none character. And since Albert and Cole know her, it makes sense that she'd be tied to the FBI.

 

Funnily enough, I almost made a second post earlier with this exact line of thinking as evidence that it IS Diane

[Marius]

On 24. Mai 2017 at 8:54 PM, KidAmnesiac said:

I have finally created an account here, for the single purpose of requesting that Jake and Chris comment on the picture seen in the attached image.

 

Thanks.

 

 

[James]

On 2017-6-3 at 4:37 AM, Urthman said:

 

Well, given that one side of the match-up consists mostly of long, drawn-out, time-shifting shots of Cooper falling or looking at weird stuff, it seems like it wouldn't require much precision to get everything to match.  A few extra seconds of Cooper in space, a few extra bits cut out (or sped-up, or rewound) of the glitchy scene with the eyeless woman, and it all lines up.  All Lynch would have to say is, "This bit with Cooper in the box happens when the guy was out of the room, and that bit with the woman making slashing noises coincides with those two getting killed" and the editor could pretty easily make it happen.

That's a good point, but my point about the timing of the precision wasn't that it's difficult, it's that it doesn't conform to my conception of what Lynch is interested in. I could be entirely wrong, of course, but getting things to line up frame-by-frame in a way that can only be seen if people edit together the videos and watch them on their computers just doesn't seem like it would come from the same guy who is happy to just put an owl over Bob's face and so on. I could be entirely wrong, of course, and as Jake says, Lynch would probably never elaborate on that. I don't mean to be discount the careful and deliberate work that Lynch puts into his art - it's clearly very intentional, even when it's improvised - this just doesn't seem like the kind effort he makes. It seems too neat. But I could have him wrong on that. 

 

Is it possible that Mark Frost might have suggested it? It seems more like his sort of thing - in a way it's a kind of game to play with the viewer, and it feels more concrete, like the stuff in the cave. Secret codes and maps and all that. Things that line up just so.

 

I don't know, that's just the impression I get. 

 

13 hours ago, pyide said:

The banging noise is part of what makes me think it's all just a coincidence, because when he comes back into the room with the "American Girl" it starts up again and she urges him to leave. And this is some time after no-eyes is zapped off into space and the two are dead. But then that whole scene could be a reset of sorts, I don't know.

I noticed that, too. I don't know if I'd say that makes it a coincidence, though. Perhaps the sex is what attracted the motion blur monster, but in coming to get them, it also found Cooper, or the pink room, or whatever. 

[MrHoatzin]

Heyo!

 

Jake & Chris mention the movie screen of the highway behind the curtain, the glass box tv setup, the purple old-school Caligari world below it all, the ultimate return into a super saturated modern family sitcom—just wanted to explicitly tie all of these themes into a bigger unifying theme so far, namely a journey through motion picture tech. Plus there's the b&w opening with ?????? which doesn't neatly fit into that trajectory but the grading is quite lovely and gets that warm silver gelatin look pat.

 

You never really make this is your angle, but you flirt dangerously close to portraying Lynch as an out-of-touch grampa in matters of technology. Yes, he is angry at phones because the screens are small and a dumb way to see cinema, and he made Inland Empire with the shittiest camera imaginable—but he, in unequivocal words, embraced video over film when it was a ludicrous thing to do and all the serious people still shot on film. Sure he chose the ugly as sin SD because he prolly wanted Inland Empire to look like butt for reasons. I bet the purple room editing in ep3 and the tactless blue filter in ep4 also purposefully read like baby's first art school video projects for reasons I don't really wish to try to excuse...

 

It is weird because his subtlety with special effects is sorta second to none in the industry. Eraserhead and Dune to this day look amazing. In '95 he used the original Lumière brothers camera to shoot Premonitions Following an Evil Deed—which I seem to recall reading somewhere was done in a single take. He is very aware of everything at his disposal and he chooses to use video effects over mainline CG. And true, all his computer interfaces we've seen look weird and out of time, but he also produced video content for the internet years before youtube and broadband penetration made that a sane proposition... so like he knows what's up. He just has nuanced opinions.

 

Anyway, damn good pods. And hot.

 

That Lumière camera thing for those who've not seen it:

 

 

[Jake]

I'm glad you brought up the idea of a journey through motion picture tech and aesthetics. It's something that was on my mind in 3 and 4 a lot, going from the stuttering silent film in the start of 3, to the sitcom aesthetic at the end of 4.

 

I don't think Lynch is a tech grandpa at all for what it's worth. I think his aesthetic is sometimes fun to chuckle at because he sometimes makes things that are culturally coded as "badly done" and they're shocking to see amidst everything else going on, but I hope we've given plenty of time in the discussion to our beliefs that they're deliberate effects and Lynch very clearly knows what he's doing with every choice including wacky motion blurred characters leaping out of frame in 2D. Twin Peaks season 3 has shown seamless CG effects (Laura taking off her face in tw red room) within seconds of crazy 2D photo manipulation style copositing (Laura disappearing from the red room). It'd be hard to argue Lynch is somehow confused or out of his depth technologically when these things take place in the same scene. 

 

I think his unorthodox choices combined with his complete lack of desire to publicly discuss process make it really easy to dismiss a lot of what he does as cheesy or accidental or cheaping out, so I'm glad to see you heaping even more examples onto the fire of "this is on purpose and done with a lot of awareness, just different."

[LillyBaeum]

Re: arrowheads, indian heritage

See the massive arrow shapes in the girl who gets killed (Can't remember her name)'s outfit, her earrings and her v-neck.

Funnily, Bad Coop also has a bit of an arrow shape in his shirt but that's probably not actually anything.

 

On the first night she wears hoop earrings but does have the arrow-shaped cutaway v-neck. Also, see Evil Coop.

 

 

 

 

NSFW: Her thong, prominently shown from behind when she undresses, also makes an arrow shape.

http://i.imgur.com/s2As4LM.png

 

My (obvious) theory is that the V-shape/arrowhead is some sort of representation of lust/sex/(/evil?) and seduction into the dark side. Note that the male monster-victim has a plain white T-shirt with a nice round shaped neck, which he eventually takes off to have sex on the couch, before being brutally murdered.

 

Also, Hawk, when discussing with Log Lady that it has something to do with his heritage, is wearing an earring himself: It's a white circle! Not an arrowhead like you might expect the stereotypical thing to be.

 

 

Other characters as well, when acting their most violent and/or heartless, have very clear V-shaped necklines.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'm really hoping that we get a new Cooper soon. Seeing him shuffle around mostly not there is intensely distressing to me. I didn't find the breakfast scene funny at all, it actually felt torturous (in an interesting way). This honestly has more to do with my personal fears about mental illness/degradation, but it makes these sections very hard to watch especially when other characters in the show treat Coop with so little care. I'd love if the coffee 'woke' him up, but that seems a very quick and sudden fix. I'm expecting it to be longer and more drawn out.

[LillyBaeum]

4 minutes ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

I'm really hoping that we get a new Cooper soon. Seeing him shuffle around mostly not there is intensely distressing to me. I didn't find the breakfast scene funny at all, it actually felt torturous (in an interesting way). This honestly has more to do with my personal fears about mental illness/degradation, but it makes these sections very hard to watch especially when other characters in the show treat Coop with so little care. I'd love if the coffee 'woke' him up, but that seems a very quick and sudden fix. I'm expecting it to be longer and more drawn out.

Personally I don't expect 'that version' of cooper to snap out of it any time soon. I think that'll only happen when Bad Coop is somehow pulled back into the red room, and allows Doug Coop to re inhabit his body - my current theory is that Doug Coop is sort of a subconscious version of cooper, sort of like a lucid dream, and when he is able to, he'll get sucked back into a power outlet and then pop back out into Bad Coop's body and take over again.

[pyide]

"Now one of you must die"

 

Since Blank Coop appeared, Bad Coop has begun to deteriorate, very obvious in the interrogation scene.

I feel like he's going to slip even further as Blank Coop recovers a bit more to his former Normal Cooper self, but I'd wager both are only going to be operating at half capacity from then on until one of them is gone.

Who knows how long that will be? Could be many episodes for all we know. Mike seemed to indicate they cannot co-exist properly in the real world.

[Jake]

Things move slowly within each episode but the amount of plot they manage to cover each week is surprising, so it's really hard for me to predict how long anything will take. 

[LadyHawke]

On 5/23/2017 at 5:39 AM, Bolegium said:

The day-for-night-esque scene made me think of this bit of dialogue in Mulholland Drive:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

"but it's not day or night. It's kind of half-night, you know? But it looks just like this, except for the light"

 

 

Hate to be a party pooper, but has anyone considered tinted windows rather than an intentional video effect?