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Feb. 3rd, 2017 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionGot through to Twin Peaks' "Arbitrary Law," the unmasking of the killer.
Wonder why it's called that. Life's laws are arbitrary? Any law that punishes is arbitrary because we are all fundamentally innocent, since not in control of how liable we are to be guilty?
Albert offers that Bob is "the evil that men do," which by virtue of not making sense in context becomes highlighted, thus is the takeaway. The writers deliberately make most of the language Leland uses about meeting Bob as a kid fit both being possesed by a demon or molested by a man. Since he chewed the gum as a kid, its coming back in style fits the return of his innocence prior to his death. The suggestion that Leland might love the daughter he raped and murdered is probably the most shocking thing about the "realist" reading. Since Cooper gives him a sort of zen-gnostic last rites, and since he himself is a victim, we're asked to accept the possibility of the innocence of the guilty. They too are a consciousness on whom reality has been inflicted. The world may be beautiful, but it is hazardous, with its chief dangers being not to our lives but to our minds. Hence all the stuff about the woods: they're dark, you can trip, get cut, get lost. What we reject in Leland flies straight at us in the last frame, since we too might find ourselves doing some sort of evil, as whatever variety of self we really are is often lost within another self, a sort of alien world, which at those times acts without us, despite us. Not a message network audiences were or are ready for, but a surprisingly coherent one. I forgot that - that the show basically doesn't explain itself till this point. And does so so thoroughly that it isn't just the mystery of Laura's killer that's spent.
They were doing a pretty thorough foil thing with Audrey in the series' first half - she's another Laura, or close enough to be endangered, and Cooper's supposed to save her because he couldn't save the first one. Donna's what Laura would have been if she'd come from an uncracked home. That's made a little clearer in Fire Walk With Me, IIRC, where we see Donna wanting to experience what Laura does to show she supports her and Laura refuses to let her. But they drop enough bits in the dialogue on the show that that was already on the drawing board, and Lynch especially takes pains showing how normal and functional Donna's household is, in his handful of episodes. That's what those characters are - they come across as a lot less planned because of all the multi-episode shenanigans that happen. Laura corrupts Bobby, her version of Leland's "kicking down" his molestation at her, but stops short with James. I think we're to understand James' drunk, promiscuous, frequently unavailable mother attracts him to Laura (and makes him unable to accept that what he has with Donna should exist - love shouldn't be trustworthy, his experiences have taught him), but that having been largely raised by his accepting uncle he'll be at last capable of a more stable attachment. Which is what Laura sees and why she matches him with Donna.
Writers have always been writers, but on those older shows you have to dig for this stuff like dinosaur bones. The directors, actors, and whole format usually smudge away access to subtext. I still can't get over the direction contrasts. Lynch is world-class, Hunter is B+, the others are Ds or low Cs. Hunter treats the show like a film at every point - he's all about depth of field that's *used*. Closeups for emotion, distance shots for people walking, foregrounding objects someone is looking at or about to pick up and framing that person at the back of the shot to clarify the fact etc. A bright film school student, say. Whereas Lynch is about unused or unexpectedly used depth. He'll often frame everything in the middle distance and keep it still (TV standard is to frame everything close and still). Sometimes works like a demonic parody of TV, showing how it artificially narrows the world by widening it just slightly past where it would usually be - leaving just enough room for a tiger to wander by behind the Fonz, as it were. I know nothing about the technical aspects of TV or film, but the shifts between episodes are so jarring they can make you notice some things you normally wouldn't.
I think I'm going to take some time off before launching into the ten or so terrible episodes. So tempting to just skip straight to the closing Lynch one, or maybe the penultimate one, another Hunter, then rent Fire Walk With Me and check out that alternate version Lynch patched together a couple years ago. But resolutions are resolutions. Though last time through I resolved to only ever rewatch the Lynch ones. Decisions I make about future decisions tend to be a lot wiser than those future decisions.
Wonder why it's called that. Life's laws are arbitrary? Any law that punishes is arbitrary because we are all fundamentally innocent, since not in control of how liable we are to be guilty?
Albert offers that Bob is "the evil that men do," which by virtue of not making sense in context becomes highlighted, thus is the takeaway. The writers deliberately make most of the language Leland uses about meeting Bob as a kid fit both being possesed by a demon or molested by a man. Since he chewed the gum as a kid, its coming back in style fits the return of his innocence prior to his death. The suggestion that Leland might love the daughter he raped and murdered is probably the most shocking thing about the "realist" reading. Since Cooper gives him a sort of zen-gnostic last rites, and since he himself is a victim, we're asked to accept the possibility of the innocence of the guilty. They too are a consciousness on whom reality has been inflicted. The world may be beautiful, but it is hazardous, with its chief dangers being not to our lives but to our minds. Hence all the stuff about the woods: they're dark, you can trip, get cut, get lost. What we reject in Leland flies straight at us in the last frame, since we too might find ourselves doing some sort of evil, as whatever variety of self we really are is often lost within another self, a sort of alien world, which at those times acts without us, despite us. Not a message network audiences were or are ready for, but a surprisingly coherent one. I forgot that - that the show basically doesn't explain itself till this point. And does so so thoroughly that it isn't just the mystery of Laura's killer that's spent.
They were doing a pretty thorough foil thing with Audrey in the series' first half - she's another Laura, or close enough to be endangered, and Cooper's supposed to save her because he couldn't save the first one. Donna's what Laura would have been if she'd come from an uncracked home. That's made a little clearer in Fire Walk With Me, IIRC, where we see Donna wanting to experience what Laura does to show she supports her and Laura refuses to let her. But they drop enough bits in the dialogue on the show that that was already on the drawing board, and Lynch especially takes pains showing how normal and functional Donna's household is, in his handful of episodes. That's what those characters are - they come across as a lot less planned because of all the multi-episode shenanigans that happen. Laura corrupts Bobby, her version of Leland's "kicking down" his molestation at her, but stops short with James. I think we're to understand James' drunk, promiscuous, frequently unavailable mother attracts him to Laura (and makes him unable to accept that what he has with Donna should exist - love shouldn't be trustworthy, his experiences have taught him), but that having been largely raised by his accepting uncle he'll be at last capable of a more stable attachment. Which is what Laura sees and why she matches him with Donna.
Writers have always been writers, but on those older shows you have to dig for this stuff like dinosaur bones. The directors, actors, and whole format usually smudge away access to subtext. I still can't get over the direction contrasts. Lynch is world-class, Hunter is B+, the others are Ds or low Cs. Hunter treats the show like a film at every point - he's all about depth of field that's *used*. Closeups for emotion, distance shots for people walking, foregrounding objects someone is looking at or about to pick up and framing that person at the back of the shot to clarify the fact etc. A bright film school student, say. Whereas Lynch is about unused or unexpectedly used depth. He'll often frame everything in the middle distance and keep it still (TV standard is to frame everything close and still). Sometimes works like a demonic parody of TV, showing how it artificially narrows the world by widening it just slightly past where it would usually be - leaving just enough room for a tiger to wander by behind the Fonz, as it were. I know nothing about the technical aspects of TV or film, but the shifts between episodes are so jarring they can make you notice some things you normally wouldn't.
I think I'm going to take some time off before launching into the ten or so terrible episodes. So tempting to just skip straight to the closing Lynch one, or maybe the penultimate one, another Hunter, then rent Fire Walk With Me and check out that alternate version Lynch patched together a couple years ago. But resolutions are resolutions. Though last time through I resolved to only ever rewatch the Lynch ones. Decisions I make about future decisions tend to be a lot wiser than those future decisions.
