thedarktrees wrote:somevelvetmorning wrote:So we have a woodsman that looks like he has recently been bleeding from his mouth and then we have this weird guy in the jail cell.
Just a coincidence?
Not sure I see the similarty -- but more than that, I really don't see WHY we would or should want to see a similarity. Not to take away from any of the discussions that people want to have about the show, or to say that it needs to be viewed in any particular way, but I really, really don't understand that massive rush of interpretation that tries to find parallels and equivalences between different scenes -- and then try to assume that that has cracked some code that the viewer is supposed to solve.
There's a couple of false premises here as far as I am concerned:
- that the pointing out of parallels always forms part of an interpretive strategy
- that the assigning of value or significance to these parallels can be understood as suggesting an authorial intent to communicate something to the audience
I think the first premise -- that there is a 'massive rush of interpretation' involved when drawing parallels between scenes -- is patently false. Sometimes people are just pointing out aesthetic resonances between sequences: how they echo or appear to respond to each other, as one might do when analysing musical structures like call-and-response, or visual rhythm in paintings such as the way two groups of pikesman hold their weapons at similar or complementary angles despite being in positions that cannot see each other. And so on. I don't see anyone attaching cosmic importance to these aesthetic concordances, just describing them in order to appreciate them in a social setting where they can be further noted, inventoried, and discussed.
The second premise -- that commenters believe that there is a pre-existing intent on the part of the director to embed an encoded message which must be cracked by decoding such parallels, is, as far as I can see, also false. I see people noticing equivalences and occasionally supplying confirmation and expanding on them, even -- though rarely -- citing close confidants and interviewers of Lynch like Martha Nochimson on artistic methods of representing Lynch's alleged views on the universal connectedness of consciousness. But as yet I've yet to see people suggesting that we as an audience are supposed,
en bloc, to arrive at certain conclusions about the identity of characters, in accordance with the writers' wishes. Sure, there are speculations, but the context clearly marks them up as such, not as definitive declaratives in the form (look at me I solved it!)
S is P. There are plenty of suggestions, tagged as such by tantalising questions (e.g. 'just a coincidence?') but no assertoric propositions. Again, these can be read, with very little charity needed, as forms of appreciation of the work, just as the identification of patterns and underlying convergences in any artwork function as interesting ways to describe what is shown or heard. And insofar as these patterns occur with any regularity they do then form a stylisation or formal positivity that is very useful to talk about as it becomes widely recognised as a characteristic of the artist(s) in question, one of the ways to create discourse about them.
thedarktrees wrote: I sort of get why and how that can be fun (that's the basic form of pop narrative puzzle solving popularized by the DaVinci Code and stuff like that, which pulls more generally from internet conspiracy theory-style associational argumentation).
But how and when has Twin Peaks ever suggested that we're supposed to look at its story and scenes in this way? Sure, filmmakers invoke parallels all the time, and sometimes for more and less specific purposes (aesthetic, narrative, etc). But I really don't understand how and why fan theorizing around Twin Peaks has gone down this path in such a hardcore way. Asking this honestly -- why exactly should we be so desperately hunting for parallels like this?
I refer you to what I already wrote: when it becomes obvious that an artist -- be it film director, writer, sculptor or whatever -- uses and reuses various forms it becomes convenient to approach his or her work through those forms. Yes, lots of filmmakers use resemblance and syntactic patterning in their films (and are frequently discussed in these terms). Every filmmaker develops their own 'cinematic language' so to speak. And part of the enjoyment of their works, for me at least, is learning to listen to and spot that language, and to demonstrate some kind of competence with it in a social setting. I don't think anyone here is doing anything different, let alone 'desperately hunting' meaning.
On the question of meaning vs. meaninglessness, there has been a lot of debate which I think misses the point. Mystery, which is something Lynch always highlights as important in his works, depends a great deal on his use of floating signifiers: symbols and sequences and sometimes objects that in themselves mean nothing, but which acquire great significance owing to their location within the overall scheme of things. The obvious example is the classic plot-device or MacGuffin which serves no other purpose than to drive characters motivations, such as Rosebud in Citizen Kane. No-one really cares what is it in the end, and the reveal is actually completely anti-climactic: the point is that a floating signifier like this accrues Manna-like meaning because of all the motivations and strivings it can drive. Who killed Laura Palmer was, for the original run at least, something like a MacGuffin or floating signifier; when it was finally (and reluctantly) answered, new floating signifiers had to be invented, like Earle; the Blue Rose was a floating signifier in FWWM, at least for the first half of that film. The Return is literally packed with floating signifiers. These things occupy and infuriate us, not because we truly believe we can uncover some thoroughgoing truth by means of which everything will neatly fall into place, but because they are significant in themselves without, in the end, bearing much in the way of meaningful content. Every time one is demystified and appears in its meaningless banality, every time there is an autopsy on a Teresa Banks figure (who we all wondered about throughout the original run) or an exposition scene about the Blue Rose (which we've all wondered about since FWWM), there has to be a new mystery (e.g. Lois Duffy, the Experiment, etc.) In this kind of climate, in which there is a premium on the preservation of a certain level of mystery, then speculation is absolutely natural and indeed necessary. If people weren't wondering why scene x mirrors scene y, there would be something terribly wrong with this process -- the writing and the art of it would have failed. I don't see any of that activity, however, as representing some frenzied scurrying to iron things out into a simplified, everyday narrative. Maybe there is an element of enthusiasm or interested investment in getting to the next floating signifier, to inventory and collect it, to become further fascinated and fixated, but not in order to explain everything, still less to pin the whole down to a single explanation in which all mystery evaporates. I certainly don't think any of this behaviour and way of consuming (in which I myself am deeply involved) is deeply at odds with the product, and I really can't see what harm it does or how it intrudes on anyone else's enjoyment.
Finally, I have to ask -- what's the alternative? How would you have us enjoy it?