Breaking the fourth wall?

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Mibbler
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Breaking the fourth wall?

Post by Mibbler »

Hi everyone! I´m newbie here, but I´ve been a huge fan of TP since it was first aired. I wanted to share an abstract (and therefore, arguable) idea that came to my mind just the other day: The same way we are seeing in FWWM Laura´s POV during the scene when the LMFAP offers her the ring and Cooper warns her not to the take it, as both are looking straight to the camera, could we consider the same intention when in episode 29 Cooper´s doppelganger and BOB look right to us in these specific moments?

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I know maybe these can be only "artistical" shots withouth any other intention, but, I´ve always thought that what happens inside the lodges (at least when there´s some kind of interaction between humans beings and spirits) can be "broadcasted" through people´s dreams, as a way of sending messages to them, just to communicate something (a piece of advice, a warning, asking for help...). Maybe what we see in the last episode is something that, sooner or later, someone will dream about in Twin Peaks, presumably someone with some kind of "gift" (major Briggs, the Log Lady...), just the same way Cooper had the same dream about LMFAP and Laura at the beginning of the show. May this conception be connected with what Hawk says about "dream souls that wander" and what Phillip Jeffries says to FBI in its Philadelphia headquarters?

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Maybe the appearance of the lodges as a group of, more or less, identical red rooms and hallways is the result of a collective creation through the subconcious of generations and generations of Twin Peaks´ citizens, and the spirits that inhabit this place could be ectoplasmic creations. It could be something similar to the famous paranormal spanish case of "The faces of Bélmez" (in the sixties, in the little village of Bélmez, some faces started to appear like some kind of drawings on the floor and the walls of the house of an elderly woman, and some parapsychologists had the theory that those "drawings" were ectoplasmic creations of the owner of the house´s subconcious) but brought to a bigger scale.

Anyway, don´t take this too seriously, I know there are lots of weak points in this theory, I haven´t thought about it in deep, really. It´s just an abstract idea, as I said :wink:
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bluefrank
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Re: Breaking the fourth wall?

Post by bluefrank »

"dream souls that wander"

Likely implying that the 'spirit soul of man' is able to venture into the ether via dreaming...perhaps even forms of initiation could take place under this remit.

"Others declared that the "Brothers of the Rose Cross" communicated with them through dreams and visions, revealing the secrets of Hermetic wisdom to them while they were asleep. Having been instructed, the candidate was bound to secrecy not only concerning the chemical formulæ which had been disclosed to him but also concerning the method by which he had secured them. While these nameless adepts were suspected of being ''Brothers of the Rose Cross," it could never be proved who they were, and those visited could only conjecture.
Manly P Hall

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Blue 'Rosicrucian' Velvet. You get the red rose via blue (blue velvet) and the blue rose via red (Twin Peaks:FWWM).
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"In dreams...I talk to you" (yes, perhaps meaning you/us...breaking that 4th wall, as you've stated!)
Dennis Potter used to do this with his TV plays/serials too...break the 4th wall. Frost (particularly) and Lynch utilised Potter's The Singing Detective as a sort of framework with which to build Twin Peaks with.

Many suspect the Rosicrucian rose to be a conventionalization of the Egyptian and Hindu lotus blossom (The lotus, from Sanskrit and Tibetan word "padma," is one of the most well-known symbols of Buddhism, the Tibetan angle covered!) with the same symbolic meaning as this more ancient symbol. The Divine Comedy stamps Dante Alighieri as being familiar with the theory of Rosicrucianism. Concerning this point, Albert Pike in his Morals and Dogma makes this significant statement: "His Hell is but a negative Purgatory. His heaven is composed of a series of Kabalistic circles, divided by a cross, like the Pantacle of Ezekiel. In the center of this cross blooms a rose, and we see the symbol of the Adepts of the Rose-Croix for the first time publicly expounded and almost categorically explained."
Manly P Hall


STANLEY: A blue rose.
DESMOND: Very good, but I can't tell you about that.

(Having been instructed, the candidate was bound to secrecy not only concerning the chemical formulæ which had been disclosed to him but also concerning the method by which he had secured them.)
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: Breaking the fourth wall?

Post by LostInTheMovies »

Mibbler wrote:Maybe the appearance of the lodges as a group of, more or less, identical red rooms and hallways is the result of a collective creation through the subconcious of generations and generations of Twin Peaks´ citizens, and the spirits that inhabit this place could be ectoplasmic creations. It could be something similar to the famous paranormal spanish case of "The faces of Bélmez" (in the sixties, in the little village of Bélmez, some faces started to appear like some kind of drawings on the floor and the walls of the house of an elderly woman, and some parapsychologists had the theory that those "drawings" were ectoplasmic creations of the owner of the house´s subconcious) but brought to a bigger scale.
I like the idea of the Red Room being a collective psychic projection of Twin Peaks, come to independent life (and, I suppose, vice versa, the outside world being a psychic projection of that spirit world come to independent life). Sorry if you've read this already, but this article by Brett Steven Abelman will probably be up your alley: https://babelwright.wordpress.com/2012/ ... k-with-me/
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bluefrank
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Re: Breaking the fourth wall?

Post by bluefrank »

Cooper clearly only entered the Black Lodge....he never made it to the White Lodge, Briggs likely did though. I don't believe we ever see the White Lodge (save Briggs on his throne). Briggs succeeded, whereas Cooper failed. Every spirit on its way to perfection MUST first pass through the black lodge (iow, deal with the darkside of his nature and defeat it)...under that remit, Cooper never progressed beyond the Black Lodge...he fled from his doppelganger (fear...the mind killer) and became an asset of the Black Lodge (as did Earle). In the closing episode we are specifically told that Earle is inside the Black Lodge (with Cooper) and he is waiting. The rules are relatively simple.
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: Breaking the fourth wall?

Post by LostInTheMovies »

bluefrank wrote:Cooper clearly only entered the Black Lodge....he never made it to the White Lodge, Briggs likely did though. I don't believe we ever see the White Lodge (save Briggs on his throne). Briggs succeeded, whereas Cooper failed. Every spirit on its way to perfection MUST first pass through the black lodge (iow, deal with the darkside of his nature and defeat it)...under that remit, Cooper never progressed beyond the Black Lodge...he fled from his doppelganger (fear...the mind killer) and became an asset of the Black Lodge (as did Earle). In the closing episode we are specifically told that Earle is inside the Black Lodge (with Cooper) and he is waiting. The rules are relatively simple.
Pretty much agree with all of this. That said, I do believe Laura makes it to the White Lodge in FWWM. She certainly confronts her dark side without caving in.

The closing shot of the film thus begs the question: is the "good" half of Cooper also in the White Lodge? This is where the mixture of concepts & philosophies & approaches to the mythology becomes tricky. Cooper as a whole person failed his test, but the good side of him remains in the spirit world. To paraphrase Lynch's video about Laura...what does good Coop see? What does he hear? Most of all, what does he think and feel there? How does half a consciousness operate?

Also tricky, of course, is the fact that Laura died before entering the Lodge whereas Briggs/Coop entered it without abandoning their earthly bodies. 2016 is going to be very interesting.
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StealThisCorn
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Re: Breaking the fourth wall?

Post by StealThisCorn »

I love the whole idea of this thread. I love these kinds of conversations. Just wanted to add that there is another moment of breaking the fourth wall in Episode 13, where Mike/Philip Gerard is talking about who can see Bob's true face and says, "the gifted" and, looking straight at the camera, "the damned."
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Mibbler
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Re: Breaking the fourth wall?

Post by Mibbler »

Thank you very much for your answers, folks! :D Bluefrank: it´s interesting to see that the Rosicrucianism reading matches with the wandering dream souls communicating with people through dreams and visions (and, why not, as you say, with us, the audience, as well!) I have also enjoyed a lot reading that article by Brett Steven Abelman, LostInTheMovies. Thanks for the link! I didn´t know about it, and I´m aware that there must be tons of Twin Peaks´ theories I still haven´t read, so it´s very funny to notice how every fan can reach more or less very similar conclusions at some point. And, yes, StealThisCorn, you´re right about that MIKE´s scene, I have forgotten it! The curious thing is that all of these “breaking the fourth wall” examples are always played by “spirit beings”, which makes me remember as well first Cooper´s dream, when MIKE says to him the famous poem (ok, in that specific shot we are seeing Coop´s POV, but we can still interpret that it can also be audience´s point of view. Nevertheless, that shot in the European version of the pilot it wasn´t supposed to be a dream).
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