Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

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

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djsunyc
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Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by djsunyc »

i'm sure this must've been posted somewhere on these forums but couldn't find it.

this is a 4.5 hour video of the guy explaining all of twin peaks. you may agree, you may disagree but this is without a doubt one of the best explanation videos ever created let alone created about twin peaks.

if you have the time, i STRONGLY recommend watching it. it really is quite brilliant. he even explains season 3 and the whole thing actually makes alot of sense. i'm still kind of shocked at how really well thought out this was.

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Methedrome
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by Methedrome »

Finally finished watching the whole thing.

This guy is incredible.

Expected him to take off his own mask to reveal David Lynch a la Scooby Doo.

This is by far the most intensive, comprehensive and substantiated explanation of Twin Peaks as a whole I have ever seen.

Who is this guy?
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by greg4882 »

I watched it and this guy actually broke down clues from Lynch in interviews. It’s impressive.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by enumbs »

It's a didactic and silly theory. Yes, there is a strain of meta-commentary throughout Twin Peaks, but to view it entirely as a piece of media criticism is such a banal take. This isn't quite as terrible as the Twelve Rainbow Trout video, but it's perhaps even more irritating. The number of people who are buying into it a hundred percent is deeply dispiriting indeed.

David Lynch does not hate modern TV. Yes, he has criticised aspects of it over the years, but he has also praised Mad Men, Breaking Bad and True Detective, and frequently calls cable television the "new art house". Despite this, he says he does not watch much TV, so the idea that he undertake such a mammoth project just to critique the medium in such a shallow way seems suspect. For all the apparent research on display, the theory totally ignores context when it isn't helpful to the argument. Twin Perfect casually incorporates episodes which weren't written or directed by Lynch into his argument, and he doesn't even speculate as to Mark Frost's intentions despite the fact that Frost was effectively captain of the ship throughout season 1 and 2. Is it really plausible that throughout this period Lynch kept on sticking his head through the door, insisting that everything be kept on track to fulfil some clumsy, overstretched metaphor he apparently had in mind?

The idea that everything in the show must be filtered through a single governing idea is also flawed. If you look at a work of art and consider what it seems to be evoking, the ways in which it resonates, you can have an interesting and substantial discussion. When you settle on a "theory" and watch every scene thinking about how to crowbar your idea into a predetermined interpretation then you're just succumbing to confirmation bias and fundamentally misunderstanding art. By the time the video gets into discussing Ed and Norma it's so far gone into cloud-cuckoo land I'm not sure how anyone can take it seriously. It can't just be that Lynch and Frost are communicating something about art and commerce through the story of the Double R franchising, everything has to be a one to one metaphor. Ed must be Lynch, Norma must be Twin Peaks etc. It's the most simplistic possible understanding of symbolism, and it does a disservice to a thematically rich piece of work.

Every time this guy approaches a valid idea he ruins it by squeezing it into his argument. There are cycles of violence which we are all to keen to leave unexamined.... in TV storytelling. The fantasy of retaining one's youth and naive perspective is unsustainable... if you are a character from a cancelled TV show. There are forces of positivity and negativity which can be thrown out of balance... in poorly handled TV plotlines. Why be so reductive about ideas which are far more pertinent and powerful when applied to life and spirituality?

I would argue that the more self-referential moments of Twin Peaks actually operate in the opposite way to the one the video suggests. Lynch and Frost use our relationship with the show as a way of getting us to think about the passage of time, and the way in which people change or choose not to. Yes, James miming to a 25 year old recording of 'Just You' is a brazenly meta moment, but the effect of seeing a character we recognise from long ago, now greyer but still beset by hopeless infatuations and literally performing the same song is far more potent than Twin Perfect's interpretation could ever allow. Audrey's Dance and the withholding of Cooper operate in a similar way. We have a pre-existing relationship to Twin Peaks and its characters, and the revival exploits that fact masterfully as a means of communicating how we relate to earlier moments of our lives.

In addition to all this, the guy's tone is so condescending and self-important. He's not the first person to view aspects of the show in this way, he is just the first to ignore all other aspects of the show and turn a meditation on violence, trauma and consciousness into some nebulous diatribe about bad TV. The fact he keeps going with his Lynch impression despite how self evidently fucking terrible it is serves as the ultimate testament to his utterly unearned confidence.
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AXX°N N.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by AXX°N N. »

Twin Perfect is a name that to me instantly conjures infamy. As someone who is a huge Silent Hill buff, and someone who back in the day at the series' peak dabbled in the fandom, I've got quite an insider's take to give about Twin Perfect, who has also made an hours-long video series treating Silent Hill the same way he treats Twin Peaks here. And like in this thread (plus I've also been seeing the twitter/reddit praise and criticism split), there was also a huge split in the Silent Hill fanbase's reception of TP's ideas, some hostility between TP and the fans of which I don't remember the details, and in the end the general viewpoint that TP is disengenuous and motivated out of a quite delusional/somewhat typical overzealous fan impulse to lay claim and 'own' the piece of media for themselves, almost to the point of severing it from its actual makers, and all other fans. It's an obsessional, negative impulse imo. And quite like what is outlined in the post above, the SH video series was built on self-serving arguments, rhetorical devices of convenience, elimination of counterpoint, etc.

I haven't watched the TP one, maybe it's better. I'll get through it at some point. But my opinion of his SH video series was that it was obviously well-researched, paid attention to things that, admittedly, many fans miss and don't incorporate into their perspective of the series that are important, appreciable aspects very much present in the work itself, but that ultimately, TP's methods had the 'mere surface' of authority, but no underlying universality to warrant it. It's pretty much what the greeks called sophistry.
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Panapaok
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by Panapaok »

Quite interesting.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by ManBehindWinkies »

I listened to this guy on a podcast. I didn't come away from it feeling like it would be worth the time to watch this whole thing. I watched the intro of the video. He described himself in the podcast as "creator-centric", and it seems he's attempting to create a kind of definitive "creator-centric" bible for Twin Peaks. I'm "experience-centric" and very skeptical that A) no matter how much work this guy puts in, he is not David Lynch and he cannot legitimately claim to be speaking for David Lynch's intentions and B) that there's much value in attempting to decode the artist's intentions (I'd say this even if it was the artist himself explaining his/her intentions). I think I'm in the minority in rejecting a "creator-centric" approach to engaging with art so I assume many will find this worthwhile. No matter what the content of the video though, it's going to tell you more about this particular fellow than what David Lynch intended with Twin Peaks.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by LateReg »

enumbs wrote:I would argue that the more self-referential moments of Twin Peaks actually operate in the opposite way to the one the video suggests. Lynch and Frost use our relationship with the show as a way of getting us to think about the passage of time, and the way in which people change or choose not to. Yes, James miming to a 25 year old recording of 'Just You' is a brazenly meta moment, but the effect of seeing a character we recognise from long ago, now greyer but still beset by hopeless infatuations and literally performing the same song is far more potent than Twin Perfect's interpretation could ever allow. Audrey's Dance and the withholding of Cooper operate in a similar way. We have a pre-existing relationship to Twin Peaks and its characters, and the revival exploits that fact masterfully as a means of communicating how we relate to earlier moments of our lives.

In addition to all this, the guy's tone is so condescending and self-important. He's not the first person to view aspects of the show in this way, he is just the first to ignore all other aspects of the show and turn a meditation on violence, trauma and consciousness into some nebulous diatribe about bad TV. The fact he keeps going with his Lynch impression despite how self evidently fucking terrible it is serves as the ultimate testament to his utterly unearned confidence.
I have to say, great post. I haven't watched this explanation yet, but I had responded to another person in another thread in order to defend this explanation, stating that I do think that there is a very vital strain of meta-ness running throughout the series, and especially The Return. But I didn't realize that that element was ALL that this explanation focused on. The meta-ness is at work on one level, while many other levels coexist. To chalk it all up to meta commentary seems like a massive mistake to me, for the reasons you list, such as James' brazenly meta moment, which is devastatingly effective far beyond any interpretation that clings to one avenue and drains the work of its deeper levels of feeling and intuition. I loved everything about your post, especially this line: "We have a pre-existing relationship to Twin Peaks and its characters, and the revival exploits that fact masterfully as a means of communicating how we relate to earlier moments of our lives."

Yeah. Great post.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by Cappy »

enumbs wrote:It's a didactic and silly theory. Yes, there is a strain of meta-commentary throughout Twin Peaks, but to view it entirely as a piece of media criticism is such a banal take.
Ditto...

I'm fine with people watching Twin Peaks and getting these sort of impressions from it -- I think that's part of what makes TP so great is the fact that it reflects back something different to everyone who experience it. And I think that individuals who are in the business of critical theory and media criticism have a tendency to interpret works of art (or in this case media) as being meta perspectives about the media in question itself. Like all great films are somehow about the concept of cinema or movie criticism... I generally don't agree with those sort of takes, but I'm fine with them, as great art has a way of showing you aspects of yourself and your own interests. Which again, is part of why I love Twin Peaks, is that everyone who watches it has their own unique experience with it.

But yeah, to suggest that TP is *solely* about media itself kind of reduces the whole work down to something I'm not wholly comfortable with. It's cool to consider Peaks on these terms, and look at what it says to us about the way we view and consume media, but Twin Peaks is also about love, the experience of mystery, identity, the psychology of lies, the myth of the idyllic small town, and about a thousand other things. I'm worried that one who only sees TP as some sort of meta take on television culture is robbed of the experiences of looking at it through a multitude of other lens and perspectives.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by JackwithOneEye »

Cappy wrote:
enumbs wrote:It's a didactic and silly theory. Yes, there is a strain of meta-commentary throughout Twin Peaks, but to view it entirely as a piece of media criticism is such a banal take.
Ditto...
Ditto here too.

There's some meta commentary for sure. Laura could well be saying she is a fictional character when she removes her face in the red room. That makes sense to me. That's on track with his themes from Inland Empire, of stories within stories. Having the real owner of the house at the end is a meta cue. The dreamer being Lynch/audience, those are good observations.

From having seen 'The Art Life', I remember Lynch saying he and his brother would play outside all day, and his mother would yell "DAAAVID, JOHNNNNN", when it was time for them to come back inside when it got dark. The ending of episode 18 reminded me of this. The idea of playing and making up a world, and living in that made up world, but now it's time to come back to reality. Also, the kids playing and finding Miriam bleeding, definitely referential to a story Lynch told about his childhood. The way Lynch is interacting as Cole with Albert and whatnot with the whirlpool in the sky is reminiscent to the way Lynch just describes his childhood, making up stories, "tall tales'" if you will, playing war on the playground. Playing and getting lost in your imagination is something he's never lost track of.

The way Lynch has described his father in the past makes me think he is an influence on Major Briggs. The stuff in the you tube vid about Briggs being a stand-in for Mark Frost I think is bunk. Lynch described himself as smoking cigarettes and getting in trouble a lot as a teenager, there is a seed there for the bobby briggs/ major briggs relationship. The Jack Rabbits palace thing I'm willing to bet is an in-joke reference to a childhood thing between Lynch and his father. I don't think it's a reference to rabbit ear antenna. I think it is part of the Twin Peaks narrative though, that making up stories, whether it be drama, or creating Lodges as an afterlife to help explain death, or a demon as stand-in for a molesting father, is part of how we deal things that traumatic and hard to deal with.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by TwinsPeak »

Cappy wrote:
enumbs wrote:It's a didactic and silly theory. Yes, there is a strain of meta-commentary throughout Twin Peaks, but to view it entirely as a piece of media criticism is such a banal take.
Ditto...

I'm fine with people watching Twin Peaks and getting these sort of impressions from it -- I think that's part of what makes TP so great is the fact that it reflects back something different to everyone who experience it. And I think that individuals who are in the business of critical theory and media criticism have a tendency to interpret works of art (or in this case media) as being meta perspectives about the media in question itself. Like all great films are somehow about the concept of cinema or movie criticism... I generally don't agree with those sort of takes, but I'm fine with them, as great art has a way of showing you aspects of yourself and your own interests. Which again, is part of why I love Twin Peaks, is that everyone who watches it has their own unique experience with it.

But yeah, to suggest that TP is *solely* about media itself kind of reduces the whole work down to something I'm not wholly comfortable with. It's cool to consider Peaks on these terms, and look at what it says to us about the way we view and consume media, but Twin Peaks is also about love, the experience of mystery, identity, the psychology of lies, the myth of the idyllic small town, and about a thousand other things. I'm worried that one who only sees TP as some sort of meta take on television culture is robbed of the experiences of looking at it through a multitude of other lens and perspectives.


Once again I completely agree with you Cappy.

"Twin Peaks Actually Explained"...what a joke

I don't like it when people force beliefs about how they view Twin Peaks. Yes there may be signs of Meta or whatever but to say this is what Twin Peaks is about because they say so ruins it for me. Twin Peaks is so open and isn't one thing. And its different for everyone. And I understand they are entitled to their opinions as I am mine. But some people on here want to be the one that knows Twin Peaks the best and write long explanations trying to force their agenda. Its like I get it you want to be the one that explains it to us all but I don't want to view Twin Peaks the same way as you sorry.

Maybe title it a theory of Twin Peaks, Or how I view Twin Peaks but not Twin Peaks explained.

You can explain Twin Peaks to yourself but not to other people because its different to them.

Lynch is the best (imo)
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by Agent Earle »

Well, to be fair, he's not forcing anyone to watch it. I know I'm not going to, as I generally am just not that interested in fans' all-encompassing, hermetically sealed theories (in contrast, I'm very interested in debating the canvas and minutiae of a show/film/art etc., but more in the form of a chat, where opinions are challenged, re-considered, and maybe even changed - in other words, where you can have a big, healthy argument :D ). Maybe I would be more interested, in this present case, if I'd care more for The Return. As it is, I couldn't care less for his explanation. As for the title of his video - "Actually Explained" - hey, you gotta get your clicks and views in somehow :D Especially since it looks like he put a ton of work into this project - of course he wishes for people to give it a look.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by Cappy »

I do feel like there are moments of Peaks that cry out as being explicitly meta. "Invitation to Love" from S1, the TV being smashed at the beginning of FWWM, and possibly the large glass box from S3 as a metaphor for the experience of watching S3. But beyond that it's just not something I really consider when watching TP. Not that it's not interesting to think about. I sometimes consider BOB and JUDY as kind of narrative concepts to be overcome/understood by the characters, but other times I just think of them as being straightforward characters. I just don't personally think that approaching Twin Peaks as a kind of meta-story about stories themselves is the most interesting way of looking at it, but I wouldn't fault anyone that does.

One specific thing though: I feel like people overstate the importance of Gordon Cole, or more specifically, the fact that Gordon Cole is played by the guy who co-created and directed the show. A lot of fan theories treat Gordon's words as being extra significant due to the fact that he's played by Lynch. But... I dunno. I just view Gordon as kind of filling a sort of Maj. Briggs role, peppered with the comic misunderstandings of Pete Martell. Gordon delivers a bunch of useful exposition, but does in an entertaining way so it's never dull or cumbersome. I think Lynch is great in that role, but I just don't think he'd be so direct of an artist to just start lifting the curtain up and speaking frankly to the audience about the meaning of TP or any of his works.

But then again, Lynch has surprised us all many times before.
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by JackwithOneEye »

One specific thing though: I feel like people overstate the importance of Gordon Cole, or more specifically, the fact that Gordon Cole is played by the guy who co-created and directed the show. A lot of fan theories treat Gordon's words as being extra significant due to the fact that he's played by Lynch. [/quote]

When I saw Inland Empire in 2006 at the NY film festival, Lynch in person introduced it with the 'we are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream' quote.

kindof a big coincidence, that Lynch as Cole reads the quote that the real Lynch uses to setup an audience for a film about acting/ illusion/ performance/ filmmaking. He is literally the dreamer inside the dream as the scene unfolds. Furthermore, Monica Belluci is a person who exists in our reality. interesting that he chooses someone who plays roles/ pretends/ performance to be the carrier of the phrase, bit of an allusion to drama/ pretend reality/ illusion. choosing the cafe the real Lynch goes to in Paris next to a gallery real Lynch has exhibited at... also I kinda think noteworthy.

he also included the Sunset Boulevard Gordon Cole scene in new Peaks. and Sunset Blvd Cole he says is notable for him, for being an in-joke about intersection of Gordon and Cole streets..

I do think Lynch as an artist largely improvises and works from intuition, so he probably not thinking too hard about it, but there are some patterns at work here....
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Re: Twin Peaks Actually Explained (Youtube)

Post by LateReg »

Cappy wrote:One specific thing though: I feel like people overstate the importance of Gordon Cole, or more specifically, the fact that Gordon Cole is played by the guy who co-created and directed the show. A lot of fan theories treat Gordon's words as being extra significant due to the fact that he's played by Lynch. But... I dunno. I just view Gordon as kind of filling a sort of Maj. Briggs role, peppered with the comic misunderstandings of Pete Martell. Gordon delivers a bunch of useful exposition, but does in an entertaining way so it's never dull or cumbersome. I think Lynch is great in that role, but I just don't think he'd be so direct of an artist to just start lifting the curtain up and speaking frankly to the audience about the meaning of TP or any of his works.

But then again, Lynch has surprised us all many times before.
Hmmm...yeah, like JackwithOneEye, I gotta say I also disagree with this. Most readings of Fire Walk With Me begin with Lynch himself cheekily setting the film in motion, soon using Lil to poke fun at the fun viewers have with interpretation of symbols and every little thing. And I think he doubled down on that in The Return. I can't read too much of a coincidence into the director of the film playing someone who is always referred to as Deputy Director Gordon Cole. And even if I did, there's just too much going on there, some of which JackwithOneEye referenced above my post. The Monica Bellucci dream being key to the understanding of the whole thing and its multiple levels of reality, imo.

And no, I don't think he's being so direct of an artist to start speaking frankly to the audience. I don't think that at all. I think he's being very cheeky and sneaky, and that's part of the disorienting trick of Lynch being the one to deliver the exposition dumps. Which, even if they're nothing more than fun or simply meant as an acknowledgment that the story must move along, still contain a meta element that places Lynch in command of the entire enterprise. When he delivers the Part 17 exposition dump, it's extra hilarious because it's Lynch the tight-lipped director delivering it, and it's also an admittance of his vast knowledge, of his ability to rewrite the show as it goes along, and therefore that he can't be completely trusted, especially when he's setting us up for a tidy resolution and then pulls the rug out halfway through the episode; there's quite a few references to Cole always knowing more than he's leading on, too, and a lot of interactions with actors that don't make as much sense without acknowledging Lynch's role as the director of the series. I also don't think the line at the end of Part 4, "Albert, I hate to admit this, but I don't understand this situation at all." contains half of its meaning without Lynch delivering it, nor is there as much pathos without Lynch interacting with Albert during the conversation about time and wine (in Part 12, I think). And so on.

If none of this seems particularly important in the way you mean, and still strikes you as just a bit of fun, then that's fine and good. All I'm saying is I think it has to be acknowledged that Lynch is almost definitely calling attention to the fact that he is both the director of the FBI and of the series throughout The Return.
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