For those of you who either dislike The Return or just vastly prefer the original series, how do you feel about FWWM?

General discussion on Twin Peaks not related to the series, film, books, music, photos, or collectors merchandise.

Moderators: Brad D, Annie, Jonah, BookhouseBoyBob, Ross, Jerry Horne

Post Reply
User avatar
Jonah
Global Moderator
Posts: 2815
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2007 8:39 am

For those of you who either dislike The Return or just vastly prefer the original series, how do you feel about FWWM?

Post by Jonah »

Just wondering if there's any correlation.(We might have had a thread like this before, but if so it probably got lost in the shuffle with all the threads about Season 3, such as the Profoundly Disappointed Support Group and others.) Also, does anyone who loves The Return not like FWWM?

In a lot of ways, I think The Return is more like FWWM, but in some other ways I could see people thinking it feels closer to the original, as some of its narrative (at least the middle part) is a bit more linear than parts of the new series plus it was filmed back in the day (only a year later).
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
johndaker
Roadhouse Member
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2015 5:08 pm

Re: For those of you who either dislike The Return or just vastly prefer the original series, how do you feel about FWWM

Post by johndaker »

I'm not quite in the group you're seeking to survey, but maybe I'm close enough to be of interest to you, because while I don't dislike The Return, I do prefer part of the original series.

To my mind, Twin Peaks can be neatly divided into four distinct "segments":

A) The first "half" of the original run, i.e., the Pilot through episode 16/17 ("Arbitrary Law"—though I don't usually like these titles, this one is an exception, as you'll see below, and anyway they're more precise episode identifiers than the numbers are). Call this Seasons 1 through 2A.
B) The rest of season 2. Call this Season 2B.
C) FWWM
D) The Return

Each of these segments feels pretty unified and "of a piece." Of course there are variations within each segment—episodes from the first part of season 2 don't feel quite the same as season 1 episodes, for example. But each of these four segments forms a unit, in my opinion—episodes from Season 2A feel a lot more like Season 1 episodes to me than they feel like Season 2B episodes.

The only real confounding element for this segmentation, in my view, is the season 2 finale, which feels very different from the rest of Season 2B and should be seen as a transitional chapter between Season 2 and what comes after.

I should also mention that I draw a distinction between high art and popular entertainment. To my mind, for example, Antonioni's L'avventura or Beckett's The Unnamable, both brilliant works of high art, really have almost nothing in common with The Empire Strikes Back or Gone Girl (the novel), both brilliant works of popular entertainment. The fact that most things fall somewhere in the middle of these extremes doesn't make it any less silly to pretend there's not a profound difference between these two kinds of creative endeavor, which nonetheless form a spectrum with relatively few "pure" examples representing either pole.

Here's how I would rank the segments of "Twin Peaks":

1) Seasons 1 through 2A. Among the most excellent creative works ever made, precisely because it succeeds so fully both as popular entertainment and as high art, which is a very rare thing.

2 and 3) Quite a ways below #1: FWWM and Season 3, tied. FWWM is a total success as high art but isn't really trying to be popular entertainment; it's a masterpiece but not of the same level as #1, for that reason. Season 3 is mostly but not entirely successful as high art, and is resolute in its refusal to be popular entertainment, which is admirable in its way. S3 might rank below FWWM for me if not for the bonus points awarded for its sheer sublime ballsy honey-badger-don't-care audacity, which utterly eclipses anything else that goes under the name "Twin Peaks."

4) WAY below #1 through 3: Season 2B, which apart from the finale I find to be dreadful almost entirely without exception, a complete failure as high art and a 90% failure as popular entertainment. I know them's fightin' words 'round here, but to me, the drop in quality from one episode to the next going from "Arbitrary Law" to "Dispute between Brothers" is breathtaking, and I don't know of any comparable example in serialized storytelling without something like a big change of creative team or a season-break hiatus being at fault.

Now to the real gist of your question: how I feel about FWWM. It's a masterpiece.

Lynch is at his most profound when he leans into the elements of psychosis explored in his work: the "normal world" as a precious dream threatened by disruptive demonic forces; a foundational refusal or inability to incorporate the unjust and evil "arbitrary law" of the primal father into one's psychic reality, followed by assault by representatives of that law; and an approach to symbolism whereby something mundane does not "represent" something abstract (therefore isn't really a symbol at all) but rather becomes a vessel for forces of abstraction with such potency that the mundane thing is the abstraction just as much as it is its own material form (it is wrong to think of garmonbozia as creamed corn that symbolizes pain and sorrow; garmonbozia is creamed corn that is also pain and sorrow; or, if you prefer, it is pain and sorrow inhabiting the vessel of creamed corn). All of these things are central to his aesthetic and are present in almost every single work of art he's ever made, with the exceptions of things like lamps and tables; but this central aesthetic is, in my view, realized in FWWM more successfully than in any of the rest of his work (except Mulholland Dr. and perhaps INLAND EMPIRE).

The problem with TP Season 3 is that there's really no longer a minimally stable (fantasy) world at all; S3 give us a psychotic experience after a psychotic break, rather than before or during one, which is less rare among works of art, even if Season 3 is very compelling and successful in so many ways. (This can be seen as the culmination of a progression in Lynch's late work—everything from FWWM to INLAND EMPIRE with the exception of Straight showcases the unraveling of a normal fantasy world, but places progressively more emphasis on the unmoored experience that results after the unraveling, and only in Season 3 has the unraveling already transpired and only tattered scraps of the normal fantasy remain even from the start. But it is also necessitated by Season 3's psychic focus on the threat of the phallic mother rather than the primal father, which is a brilliant move to make after what came before in TP, and incidentally also finally cashes out the promissory note Lynch wrote when he placed the Rebel without a Cause monkey reference of "Judy" at the very end of FWWM; Season 3 is to Rebel without a Cause as FWWM is to Bigger than Life.)

Lost Highway comes close but ismarred by excessive grunge-noirness, which makes it feel immature to me. Blue Velvet is his other masterpiece, but it depicts an encounter with the primal father by someone who isn't psychotic (despite the famous line, Jeffrey isn't a pervert either) and who ultimately triumphs and restores the normal fantasy; at the time he made it, Lynch also hadn't yet fully embraced the puzzle-film approach that we see starting with TP.

Starting with TP (and setting aside the later exception of The Straight Story, which announces with its title that it's not going to be a puzzle film), spectators themselves are seduced into performing a version of the paranoid conspiracy-theorizing clue-scrounging characteristic of psychosis. (Eraserhead, The Grandmother, etc. predict this to some extent, but none of those films presents concealed or effaced clues in the way the later films do—think of "you stole the corn," a crucial line that's hard to make out precisely because Leland is trying to prevent Laura from understanding it, which means we too have to struggle to do so, or, in INLAND EMPIRE, the whispered phone conversation between the psychoanalyst figure, deliberately muffled to prevent the protagonist's comprehension, in which the crucial line is even spoken in unsubtitled Polish: "Cerwony, tak.") This is the final missing element that completes the aesthetic: psychic structure (psychosis) + narrative genre (mystery) + spectatorial experience (pleasurably paranoid interpretation of clues within the text, constructing truly bizarre explanations that nonetheless "make sense" of the evidence, just as we see in psychotic individuals), a perfect relationship between content and form, a golden circle. Of all these, FWWM and Mulholland have the strongest sense of the tragedy of psychosis, and of these two, FWWM is more forceful in its condemnation of the arbitrary law that produces psychosis as a perfectly reasonable psychic revolt (Mulholland tempts the viewer to blame the psychotic for her fate, which is an ethical mistake). Incidentally, I should also note that all the works I'm talking about here contain many more multitudes than what I've discussed, and what I'm saying isn't a totalizing interpretation—but I'm convinced that what I'm outlining here is a huge part of why Lynch's work is so powerful, profound, and unique.

But while this Lynchian aesthetic isn't as fully realized in Season 1 through 2A, nontheless that segment is a total success as high art on its own terms AND as pop entertainment, and as I said that's a real hat trick, and anything that pulls it off is just miles ahead of anything else.
User avatar
Mr. Reindeer
Lodge Member
Posts: 3680
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 4:09 pm

Re: For those of you who either dislike The Return or just vastly prefer the original series, how do you feel about FWWM

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

johndaker wrote:despite the famous line, Jeffrey isn't a pervert either
I dunno about that. He watches Dorothy undressing pretty intently, even if it’s not the primary reason he’s hiding in her closet. And you can discount deleted scenes, but I think they go some ways to showing the director’s intent...in the deleted scenes, he straight up watches a rape happening and doesn’t interrupt until someones else does.
Post Reply