POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation

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In your opinion, what is the nature of Audrey’s situation in Part 12?

Poll ended at Mon Sep 04, 2017 2:37 am

She is in the “real” world of Twin Peaks.
57
38%
She is in a coma, and the scene takes place in her head.
29
19%
She is not in a coma, but she is dreaming.
2
1%
She is not in a coma or dreaming, but experiencing a psychological delusion.
40
26%
She is trapped in the Black Lodge.
7
5%
Audrey and Charlie are acting in or rehearsing for a movie or play (not Twin Peaks)
5
3%
Other (please explain in thread)
12
8%
 
Total votes: 152
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Novalis
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Novalis »

ThumbsUp wrote:
Novalis wrote:
Cipher wrote: Both of the above are closest to my take. Within the season, her story is a signpost for the slippery realities and stories of Cooper and Laura, if not the entire town. That doesn't mean there couldn't be something supernatural and plot-related in her background, but ... that's how the show (and all decent magical realism and surrealism) always work -- the impossibilities of the plot are narratively literal, but are included because they function as communicators of real thoughts and feelings.

It's not an ending for the character that I love, but if this was the route they had to go down, it's not unfitting for the only person in the original run who demonstrated an ability to both hear and control the series' non-diegetic soundtrack.

This has been my destination too, after a lot of wavering. Being able to be aware (in whatever state doesn't really matter, ironically enough) of one of the official soundtrack's titles, and to hear it literally announced by the Roadhouse compère, placed Audrey as a character on the utmost outer limit or threshold of diegetic consistency. Her request to 'get me out' and the sudden awakening in a blank, unfurnished environment can comfortably be read as signalling her transition to an extra-diegetic situation (or at least, to a diegetic representation of the extra-diegetic).

I get the feeling this hadn't been her intended arc from the beginning, and was maybe affected by the late signing on of Fenn, but for me it works as a kind of epilogue: a way of suggesting that Audrey maybe died sometime before the events of this season. I like to think that Audrey's spirit was strong enough to survive her death for a while on its own, create its own story where it could enjoy some kind of minimal level of narrative subsistence, always plagued and nagged by the reality-principle Charlie, before collapsing in the realisation that it didn't exist as a Twin Peaks character any more. It's a bit of a ghost story.

Like you, this is not the way I would have liked Audrey's story to go, but I feel it's the most satisfying and well-supported reading available of the material we've got so far. I'm entirely open to being surprised, of course.
Hmm, I don't think Audrey is dead or in a mental hospital or Fenn in a movie trailer (though the latter is interesting when you consider the fourth wall-breaking and metafictional elements of part 18). Of course I think they intended Audrey's story to be abstract (and I do think Fenn's late arrival influenced this), but I think her story is more relevant and urgent and constrained to the Twin Peaks universe and Cooper's reality-skimming journey.

Again, I have to assume that the electricity sounds and backwards-playing band are extremely explicit indicators that Audrey's fate and situation is Lodge-related, plus the fact that she and The Arm say literally the exact same line about the girl on the lane.

I think the function of Audrey's thread is to to give us another example of another character trapped in a Buddhist-like cycle of resets and alternate realities of pain and sorrow. Throw in the Audrey-Carrie similarities (coats, phones, male sidekicks - maybe Audrey wanted to put a bullet through Charlie's head?) and it suggests to me that Audrey is another case study within the show of parallel universes, different timelines, etc., and she was probably put in that situation by Mr. C taking her to the Convenience Store. Why else would they go to the trouble of drawing parallels between Audrey and Diane?
I posted this elsewhere but I think it applies here too, and it might help clarify what I was trying to say above:
Novalis wrote:It is a dark road to go down, but it's possible to see the Diane character, who is suddenly real in this season after being a dictaphone for so long (ambiguous deleted scenes notwithstanding), as a kind of fig-leaf or shoe-in for Audrey.

Their stories are, after all, similar: both raped by the doppelganger of the man they adored.

Knowing Lynch as we do, one can image a first draft, quickly vetoed by members of production, in which it was Audrey, and not Diane, that was imprisoned in the Naido form and subsequently sleeps with Cooper in the motel. This would no doubt have been flagged as tasteless and insane. Like I said, a dark road to go down. In this dark fantasy/hypothesis I'm having right now (and which I apologise for) over changed storylines, someone probably pointed back to the age difference and Cooper's reactions to naked Audrey in the original series, and the idea wasn't so much scrapped as saved by bringing in the new character of Diane.

I'm not saying this is what happened, but when you weigh up external factors -- Fenn's delay in signing on, the extraneous and inessential nature of the character Diane as Diane -- then this horrible suspicion gains some traction.

It would also explain why Audrey's actual character then has nowhere to go in the script, and why she is side-lined into her sidebar plot. She has a short story, trapped in a kind of narrative limbo fighting herself and not really knowing who she is or if she is. This can't be sustained for more than a few episodes obviously. In the end she starts to suspect she's not a real person at all, and her hallucinatory world becomes so unstable that it even breaks the fourth wall in calling out the name of a musical piece from the Twin Peaks soundtrack in our world: 'Audrey's Dance'. She goes with it for a short while -- why not, there's nothing else happening for her -- but a sudden eruption of violence regarding relationships with people terrifies her and she pleads with Charlie (who in my mind is the reality principle that keeps resisting her attempts to make the hallucinatory bubble consistent and whole) for release. In doing so, she is pleading for 'an end' to this crazy, pocket narrative, this story that doesn't go anywhere but bends back into metafiction. Then we cut to Sherilyn/Audrey in a blank environment, astonished to see herself in a mirror. This blank unfurnished environment is exactly what you get after a story ends: blank pages. We're either offered a metaphysical glimpse of what happens to characters in Meinong's Jungle when their day is up or this is Sherilyn Fenn in some kind of representation of a non-diegetic dressing room. She's expelled from the story of Twin Peaks and finds herself on our side of the screen, so to speak (or, let us say, more precisely, an onscreen representation of our side of the screen -- which is necessarily blank and unknowable). Her face in the mirror lacks her characteristic Audrey make-up, and made to appear a lot less made-up, a 'naturalistic' look.

I'm so-so about all this. I'm not saying it's what I 100% believe is going on here; maybe 50-50; in fact I'm convinced that there is no one 'correct' version of events. I'm just throwing it out there as another bone to gnaw on.
As a matter of fact, 'Chalfont' was the name of the people that rented this space before. Two Chalfonts. Weird, huh?
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Cipher »

Re: Above: Audrey is the dog from the climax of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by powerleftist »

This is the ultimate anti plot arc of all times. The audience is encouraged to make what they want from it. Anything goes. It would be an interesting narrative experiment in an experimental film. Being part of the Twin Peaks universe, though, it's extremely abstract to be enjoyed, specially since these are the only Audrey scenes that we got.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by asmahan »

Cipher wrote:Re: Above: Audrey is the dog from the climax of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.
Ohh that would explain why she says Charlie has "no balls" :shock: :shock:
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by ThumbsUp »

powerleftist wrote:This is the ultimate anti plot arc of all times. The audience is encouraged to make what they want from it. Anything goes. It would be an interesting narrative experiment in an experimental film. Being part of the Twin Peaks universe, though, it's extremely abstract to be enjoyed, specially since these are the only Audrey scenes that we got.
Like we've talked about before, I'm sure it had to do with Fenn's late arrival to production, but I dunno, I kinda loved the narrative structure of Audrey's arc. I've never seen a character treated like that in a show before (in a good way). It was almost like a mini film-within-a-film, or a self-contained Sartre-like play. I found it all really interesting.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Endangered_Wulf »

According to David Lynch himself, Audrey Horne's story arc was to find her pursuing a career in Hollywood.

Mulholland Drive is quite a Masterpiece in my opinion, however the film was originally planned to be a new kind of Twin Peaks 'Spin-Off' Television Show with Audrey Horne at the center of it all. After pitching the proposed series to several television networks to no avail, Audrey's 'Spin-off' morphed into a wonderful film starring Naomi Watts. That said.... I'm confident in my resolve that Audrey Horne's few appearances in Twin Peaks Season 3 has David Lynch honoring his ORIGINAL plans.

We know Audrey Horne was injured from the blast in Season 2 and that's okay too. The experience (good or bad) may have heightened her sense of artistic awareness and that's what was briefly shown during Season 3.

-Maybe Audrey is a writer and we are experiencing her "process" through her mind's eye.

-Maybe Audrey is a broadway actress/director in the midst of working on her own personal 'playwright' stuff.

There are many theories concerning Audrey Horne being mentioned in past-tense during Season 3 but none of those theories 'technically' hold up.

for example: during the scene when Richard meets Bad-Coop referencing a photo of FBI AGENT DALE COOPER the picture "BELONGED" to my mother.
-okay. that doesn't mean she's dead. there are many things that at one time belonged to many of us we no longer own, like an old bike, an old guitar, furniture etc. etc. etc. and yes maybe even photographs.

another example from that same theory is when Doc Hayward mentioned that Audrey "WAS" in that coma. -okay. that still doesn't mean she's dead. All it truly means is....Audrey is no longer in a life-threatening coma. For all we know after a long and exhaustive stay in REHAB both physical and mental, Audrey could very much be alive and well.

Anyhow...we all would have liked a definitive answer to Audrey Horne's whereabouts but David Lynch left that purposefully ambiguous in Season 3.

Perhaps, he purposefully left that open and available for us, the audience to imagine, interpret and discuss for ourselves.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Audrey Horne »

To clarify Mulholland Drive, because it kinda becomes another Lynch was away filming Wild at Heart during the second season... the Audrey spinoff was toyed with during the second season when the show was still a hot pop culture topic. I believe it was either in late fall of 1990 or early winter 1991 (after the murder was resolved) ...Entertainment Tonight teased about it, and a few blurbs in papers. I don't believe it was ever pitched to a network, and it was before most of the late season two scripts were even written. I think this was most likely Lynch and Frost excited about their world and exploring ideas... I think there was even slight discussion of doing an Albert spinoff as well for a brief moment.

For the signing on late debate, I don't believe it really affected much and they knew she'd be coming aboard. Not to get into it, but I believe a few tweaks were made and everyone was pleased in the end. And from what I understand there was always supposed to be a Richard Horne son.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Novalis »

I'm still in the 'Audrey's situation is indeterminacy' camp, but of course this means that I can keep viewing it from different angles. It's like a narrative ambigram -- from one perspective it says one thing, and from another perspective it says something quite different, and so on. You can keep shifting position and see different things in it without having to reduce it to that one view.

One thing I glimpsed in it briefly is drug use. Twin Peaks in S3 is still full of drug use, and we've even had Charlie himself explicitly accuse Audrey of being on drugs. But more than this, Audrey's marriage and romantic attachments are to people whose names are common nicknames for drugs: Charlie (cocaine) and Billy (amphetamine). A marriage to Charlie that she has become very sour of could represent long term cocaine addiction -- the tryst with Billy representing her attempting to self-medicate a withdrawal by turning to another drug.

Again, I'm not saying that this is what Audrey's situation IS. The word 'is' is much too big and definitive for what I'm saying. I'm just saying that this is one of the viewing positions, among many, that seems to be invited by the material.
As a matter of fact, 'Chalfont' was the name of the people that rented this space before. Two Chalfonts. Weird, huh?
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by N. Needleman »

I'm just curious if more really was filmed. And if it was withheld that tells a story right there - not about anything BTS IMO, but about possible future plans.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Voided »

It's kind of interesting to compare Audrey's scenes with Carrie Page's. Carrie asks if she'll need a coat, whereas Audrey constantly hesitates to put hers on. Carrie asks how far it is to Washington whilst Audrey asks how far it is to the Roeadhouse.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Jasper »

Voided wrote:It's kind of interesting to compare Audrey's scenes with Carrie Page's. Carrie asks if she'll need a coat, whereas Audrey constantly hesitates to put hers on. Carrie asks how far it is to Washington whilst Audrey asks how far it is to the Roeadhouse.
Audrey is looking for a missing man (Billy). Carrie is also looking for a missing man. When Cooper identifies himself as FBI, Carrie quickly opens the door and asks "Did you find him?!"

Audrey is tired of waiting for the phone to ring. Carrie's phone is ringing and ringing (and being ignored) during the latter part of Cooper's visit to her place in Odessa.

Audrey doesn't feel like herself. Carrie has some issues with identity:
• When she tells Cooper that she doesn't know "her" (Laura Palmer).
• When she seems disoriented upon hearing that her mother's name is Sarah. ("What's going on?")
• When she hears Sarah's voice calling Laura outside of the house (and lets out a full tilt Laura Palmer scream).

Both Audrey and Carrie/Laura seem to be trapped in unreal places, and we last see each of them as they seem to be experiencing their respective shocked awakenings.

On a related note, there's also the fact that Audrey says that she doesn't recognize Charlie anymore, while Diane (as "Linda") writes that she no longer recognizes Cooper (as "Richard").
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Voided »

Jasper wrote:
Voided wrote:It's kind of interesting to compare Audrey's scenes with Carrie Page's. Carrie asks if she'll need a coat, whereas Audrey constantly hesitates to put hers on. Carrie asks how far it is to Washington whilst Audrey asks how far it is to the Roeadhouse.
Audrey is looking for a missing man (Billy). Carrie is also looking for a missing man. When Cooper identifies himself as FBI, Carrie quickly opens the door and asks "Did you find him?!"

Audrey is tired of waiting for the phone to ring. Carrie's phone is ringing and ringing (and being ignored) during the latter part of Cooper's visit to her place in Odessa.

Audrey doesn't feel like herself. Carrie has some issues with identity:
• When she tells Cooper that she doesn't know "her" (Laura Palmer).
• When she seems disoriented upon hearing that her mother's name is Sarah. ("What's going on?")
• When she hears Sarah's voice calling Laura outside of the house (and lets out a full tilt Laura Palmer scream).

Both Audrey and Carrie/Laura seem to be trapped in unreal places, and we last see each of them as they seem to be experiencing their respective shocked awakenings.

On a related note, there's also the fact that Audrey says that she doesn't recognize Charlie anymore, while Diane (as "Linda") writes that she no longer recognizes Cooper (as "Richard").
These parallels are really interesting. There is so much that relates thematically to Inland Empire, which seems to be all about trapped women. Beverly's relationship with her husband ties into these themes.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by KnewItsPa »

What we see is Coopers lodge fantasy about Audrey based on his recollection of her and imagining her 25 years on.

It starts off with her being irrational, with complete dependance on a male figure - due to the impossibility of imagining Audrey without a man in tow, but he is less of a man than coop or Justice Wheeler, which is his fantasy compensation for not having 'got' her. This is also why she is robbed of her sexual prowess, independence, intelligence and attractiveness. The fantasy then drifts off to her still doing the Audrey dance, regressing to the behaviours of the teenaged Audrey that Coop remembers, rendered ridiculous by her encroaching middle age.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

KnewItsPa wrote:What we see is Coopers lodge fantasy about Audrey based on his recollection of her and imagining her 25 years on.

It starts off with her being irrational, with complete dependance on a male figure - due to the impossibility of imagining Audrey without a man in tow, but he is less of a man than coop or Justice Wheeler, which is his fantasy compensation for not having 'got' her. This is also why she is robbed of her sexual prowess, independence, intelligence and attractiveness. The fantasy then drifts off to her still doing the Audrey dance, regressing to the behaviours of the teenaged Audrey that Coop remembers, rendered ridiculous by her encroaching middle age.
I thought the dance was beautiful, and there's not a doubt in my mind that that was Lynch's intent. And Fenn isn't 25 anymore, but I sure wouldn't say she's been "robbed of her ... attractiveness." She looks great for her early 50s.
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Re: POLL: The Nature of Audrey's Situation (Spoilers)

Post by Xavi »

It does not require a lot of imagination to understand that Audrey in TP:TR was stuck in time and that she was unable to show her true self to the "outside." Then, at the Roadhouse, a surprise awaited her just before awakening. The haunting music "Isn't it too dreamy?" hypnotised her once again and the mere feeling of the air-sound vibrations started her to move, to dance. Audrey's dance was hauntingly wonderful!
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