Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

[AnotherBlueRoseCase]

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[referendum]

anotherbluerosecase

• -
  Narrative artists fucking with this are playing a riskier game than I suspect many realise, and had better have some tasty Big Fish cooked for us to make it worth it. Hats off to Lynch if he pulls it off.

the thing is, when i watch a film by lynch, my ' suspension of disbelief' only really happens when he has done something ' un-lynch-like ' - abit like hearing someone use a fake voice on the telephone. It has nothing to do with the actual plot it has to do with the inegrity of the material. OK, if it was totally technical sloppy there would not be opportunity to ' believe' in the first place, but - and i realise you think differently about this - i don't think this TP series has any technical defficiencies - although it certainly has it's tics and habits and quirks and stubborn element. I see those are characteristics rather than failings, and if anything it is those eccentricities which SERVE to re affirm the suspension of disbelief - they are part of what ' lynch's world' looks like and how it is conveyed to us - UNLESS of course, you find them intolerable, in which case best to watch something else.

[AnotherBlueRoseCase]

anotherbluerosecase

• -
  Narrative artists fucking with this are playing a riskier game than I suspect many realise, and had better have some tasty Big Fish cooked for us to make it worth it. Hats off to Lynch if he pulls it off.

the thing is, when i watch a film by lynch, my ' suspension of disbelief' only really happens when he has done something ' un-lynch-like ' - abit like hearing someone use a fake voice on the telephone. It has nothing to do with the actual plot it has to do with the inegrity of the material. OK, if it was totally technical sloppy there would not be opportunity to ' believe' in the first place, but - and i realise you think differently about this - i don't think this TP series has any technical defficiencies - although it certainly has it's tics and habits and quirks and stubborn element. I see those are characteristics rather than failings, and if anything it is those eccentricities which SERVE to re affirm the suspension of disbelief - they are part of what ' lynch's world' looks like and how it is conveyed to us - UNLESS of course, you find them intolerable, in which case best to watch something else.

Hard to see how

my ' suspension of disbelief' only really happens when he has done something ' un-lynch-like '

can be reconciled with

those are characteristics rather than failings, and if anything it is those eccentricities which SERVE to re affirm the suspension of disbelief

Sorry if I'm missing something, but is your disbelief suspended or not?

Plus remember, it has been acknowledged frequently here that characteristics and failings/"shoddiness" may be the same thing in this case. Don't let our old Guardian exchanges confuse you. After part 8 I'm now agnostic about this series, and can go either way, or neither.

[referendum]

@anotherbluerosecase

Sorry if I'm missing something, but is your disbelief suspended or not?

as the actress said to the bishop. [ or vice versa]

[LateReg]

I just wanted to briefly chime in to the discussion over the last two pages regarding BlueRose's comments about Godard and the 1960s and everyone's responses.

I don't think anything exists that is exactly like The Return. Nothing even close, save perhaps Rivette's Out 1 (tedium in the early going, a mystery taking shape that may or may not even be a mystery, performances rather than acting) and even that is so unique that really The Return is nothing like it. I think The Return is so many things at once, that everyone's comments here have validity, as do all the associations they've made. But there's no way you can accuse it of unquestionably failing based on any one reading of it, ie: that it's pathetic because its resorting to an outdated 1960s anti-narrative style of cinema. It may be doing that, partially. But that is just 1/20th (or 1/10th or 1/100th) of what it seems to be doing. There's so many games its playing at once, so many references, so many styles, so much upending of expectations in so many ways, and so many pure narrative pleasures (my disbelief is sufficiently suspended at the same time it isn't, and very few works of art have ever covered those two grounds, imo). That's all for now. Please continue.

[Cipher]

This is exactly the point I tried to make re: parabasis and formalism more generally. These are as old as theatre, if not as old as story-telling. Neither Godard nor Brecht invented them; they observed their use in age-old traditions such as Noh and its rival Kabuki, and saw their untapped potentials for a Western audience. But far more generally formalism in Western art also has its roots in the enlightenment, in post-Kantian theories of subjectivity, aesthetics and human freedom, which had profound consequences on what artists could do and considerably expanded the field of art in a way that only really became popular and fully evident with the advent of modernism. So, yes, obviously: Lynch is really doing nothing that hasn't been done many times before. Whether or not he is doing it effectively, in an understanding and nuanced way with an awareness of audience expectation, or in a bombastic I-miss-graduate-school-lectures-on-the-abstract-sublime-so-stuff-you-all way, is a separate conversation, and not one I would want to get into (I'm not an art critic, I'm an art historian).

Oh, definitely! Now I feel remiss for not mentioning all the Eastern narrative forms that eschew realism, especially as someone interested in Japanese film, which takes so many cues from noh, kabuki, etc. They aren't trying to hide the craft from audiences so much as invite them to take part in the pleasure of its success (or exploration).

It's important to remember realism is just an aesthetic, one that is all too often put on a pillar in Western media and critique with the unfair assumption that everything outside of it is trying solely to subvert. We assume in narrative works that the goal is always to try to allow the audience to forget they're experiencing a story or film, and that that's the sole manner through which they can impact our emotions, but that's rather unfair and myopic. We don't make that assumption of non-narrative art. Western criticism has had this problem since I don't know how far back.

But yes, not all techniques that remind the audience of craft or medium are intended to subvert, nor to eschew an emotional response in favor of an intellectual one. I'm really glad you brought that up.

I also want to acknowledge that, as the artist behind Eraserhead, which stands out for me as a singularly powerful work (and just behind it, Inland Empire), Lynch has earned my patience and trust even through missteps. New Peaks certainly isn't perfect; it has small moments I'd change or expect Lynch might change if given more time. For example, I don't think the bystander reactions to the hit-and-run in episode 6 (otherwise my second-favorite hour so far) required such stilted takes. It doesn't ruin the scene for me, as, again, Twin Peaks and Lynch's filmography have established stilted, artificial takes as part of their filmic language, but I think that may have been the wrong time to employ them. The scenes at the RR Diner, possibly because of the technical difficulties of shooting solely on-location, have largely felt more distant than the material calls for. Early on I was tepid about its use of women (whose roles and sexuality in the opening episodes feel a bit more thoughtless than Lynch's usual style, and with the expanded world of Twin Peaks come expanded obligations toward thoughtful representation) and POC characters (who have always been an unfortunate blind spot for Lynch, one that's unlikely to change here; I can't really spin it any other way). It's hard to get caught up in misgivings when the overall work moves so confidently though. At the very least, it's managed to move me a few times so far, and I look forward to seeing how I'll feel about how it operates as a whole.

[AnotherBlueRoseCase]

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[LateReg]

I just wanted to briefly chime in to the discussion over the last two pages regarding BlueRose's comments about Godard and the 1960s and everyone's responses.

I don't think anything exists that is exactly like The Return. Nothing even close, save perhaps Rivette's Out 1 (tedium in the early going, a mystery taking shape that may or may not even be a mystery, performances rather than acting) and even that is so unique that really The Return is nothing like it. I think The Return is so many things at once, that everyone's comments here have validity, as do all the associations they've made. But there's no way you can accuse it of unquestionably failing based on any one reading of it, ie: that it's pathetic because its resorting to an outdated 1960s anti-narrative style of cinema. It may be doing that, partially. But that is just 1/20th (or 1/10th or 1/100th) of what it seems to be doing. There's so many games its playing at once, so many references, so many styles, so much upending of expectations in so many ways, and so many pure narrative pleasures (my disbelief is sufficiently suspended at the same time it isn't, and very few works of art have ever covered those two grounds, imo). That's all for now. Please continue.

Hard to tell if that's a response to anything I've said, but if it is here's a request to you and everybody else here: please respond to the actual comments, precisely as they're written here (no straw men, in other words). Years ago I stopped responding to comments that fail to do this -- it's basic online discourtesy and a tremendous waste of time. It's only due to my respect for your contributions here, LateReg and others, that I've responded at all when my comments have been misrepresented. /rant

It was a response to everybody's discussion over the past two pages based on your initial comment about this possibly not only being bad, but pathetic, based on the notion that Lynch is primarily channeling a 1960s film movement that had its day in the sun a half century ago. I don't believe I misrepresented what you said, and I didn't quote you only because I didn't think my short response was worthy of you taking the time to respond. It was just a thought I had that lingered that no one else touched upon while responding to you.

[Novalis]

@ Novalis

"It's as if narrative realism were some kind of timeless default, and had not emerged (and re-emerged) in answer to specific historical contexts."

Suspension of disbelief is one of the nearest things our species has to a cognitive 'timeless default'. It's almost 70 000 (seventy thousand) years old and is what enabled homo sapiens' Cognitive Revolution at that time to conquer the planet. It's literally one of the core features of our species. Have a look at Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. Narrative artists fucking with this are playing a riskier game than I suspect many realise, and had better have some tasty Big Fish cooked for us to make it worth it. Hats off to Lynch if he pulls it off.

Interesting points which have given me something to think about. I think I would reply, provisionally, in this way:

I'm not overly fond of that book, or the whole 'stories we tell ourselves' approach. I can see how, from an evolutionary-psychology / sociobiological standpoint, it might appear as if suspension of disbelief is the mechanism operating within the so-called Cognitive Revolution, but I think this fails to disambiguate precisely what is meant by suspension of disbelief. The argument is fine, on the other hand, if instead of suspension of disbelief we are talking simply about testimony, as the subject is discussed for example in the classical debate about the rationality of testimony between David Hume (1777) and Thomas Reid (1764). Here Hume wants to see peoples' belief in testimony as something that can be explained in terms of their experience alone, that is, in terms of their perceptions and memories (on Hume's empiricist account, we only believe testimony because it constitutes evidence and can be tested by experience and by appealing to memory). Reid holds that belief in testimony is an innate or a priori feature of human beings already operating in infancy, long before the faculty of empirical testing of experience is honed and developed; it is in human nature to believe in testimony. This second position seems close to what you are arguing.

However, testimony is not an equivalent term for suspension of disbelief, and the function of testimony is only one amongst the many functions that narrative can play. Nor is it necessary for narrative to perform the function of testimony in order to be narrative. It can exist purely for entertainment, for example, and require suspension of disbelief while for all that imparting little to no information about the state of the world. There is thus no necessary or essential connection between suspension of disbelief and the accelerated learning processes portrayed as the Cognitive Revolution; whereas it is probably undeniably true that a theory of testimony is required to explain the same thing.

All of this seems quite removed from the point I was making however, which was that narrative conventions are just that: conventions, having historical origins and historical forms.

[douglasb]

My main worry now that in episode 9, Dougie wakes up and it turns out we're all living inside this thread.

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

I feel the most resounding and tumultuous need to present my argument regarding the use of anti narrative 'badness' in characteristic verbose harangue.

Whilst I commend the efforts of my compatriots in comparing the avante garde use of Lynchian 'Badness' to the French New Wave and the profound influence of the earliest film makers to forge basic linear structures of storytelling by use of juxtaposed imagery... I believe we have to go much further back than Jean-Luc Godard, Brecht, or indeed the surrealist, impressionist, and other prominent art movements who paved the way for the brilliant 'badness' of The Return.

In the Stone Age, we are to learn from certain Lithuanian excavations that certain tribes of Neanderthals had within them, great stone pushers who were tasked to push large stones around the village. Some of these stone pushers we have now learned (by examining fossilised footprints in clay sediment) -- broke off with all narrative convention and performed some of the earliest acts of contumacious 'badness' that would define the Stone Age Avante Garde. Often times they would simply abandon the stones in the middle of a push, leaving their statement like a barren sculpture of symbolic absence.

The next line we trace in the historic precedent of such insurgency is the Roman Empire. The Greeks and the Romans, we know loved to engage in ecstatic orgies for sport and pleasure. However what marks certain roman orgies apart from others, we learn in the obscure annals of Atrotious Ridiculo which describes certain dissident orgiests who revelled in inserting their penal glands into peculiar orifices (particularly the ear hole) of the slaves. This slavular ear fucking would set the stage for aeons of narrative-breakage and other wayward artistic statements.

One need only look at the Russians for a good example of the excellence of 'badness' as a progressive non effort and as a form of cultural evolution. Compare Ivan Alvazovsky's 'The Ninth Wave' 1850 with Marc Chagall's 'The Fiddler' of 1912. Where Alzazovsky is pre-occupied with the antiquated notions of perspective, form and realism, Chagall is happy to utilise his pastal pens like a child squiggling gleefully on the page like he himself was the very fiddler of his own title.

Now cut to a late 20th Century Lynch, fiddling with a young Shelley Johnson. The evolution of writing oneself into the script, (not so much for the benefit of the audience, but rather for the benefit of the writer) This rock n roll style abandonment of the old conventions seems like it should have caught on beyond the smutty pornography industry, where the exploitation and sale of women's virtues has become the accepted norm. Now in the 21st Century, this age's Picasso has utterly done away with scripts alogether, bringing his self absorption to new levels, revamping a popular Televison series, and using it as a tawdry platform to pay homage to his own work with a series of unconnected film collages.

As the world tires of 'good' film and television, we can only hope this evolution of 'badness' continues.

One can imagine a bright future where one sits themself down in front of the 'collage box' and merely absorbs the transient colours of hypnotic sights and sounds which relax the mind with comforting absence, rather than confound us with interconnected narrative arcs and well laid plots.

[N. Needleman]

This is going great.

[Cipher]

I feel the most resounding and tumultuous need to present my argument regarding the use of anti narrative 'badness' in characteristic verbose harangue.

Albert, where does this attitude of general unpleasantness come from?

It's fine if you aren't enjoying this particular series, but unless you want to walk around with two black eyes on a regular basis, I suggest you make some kind of peace with interest in narrative experimentation on a David Lynch forum.

[sylvia_north]

Exactly my motivations and feelings regarding this thread. It's certainly one of the most interesting threads, and I wouldn't expect to, or even want to, see anything like a consensus here.

I dunno, I kinda miss the 'skeptics-only-pedants-pissoff' club.

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

I feel the most resounding and tumultuous need to present my argument regarding the use of anti narrative 'badness' in characteristic verbose harangue.

Albert, where does this attitude of general unpleasantness come from?

It's fine if you aren't enjoying this particular series, but unless you want to walk around with two black eyes on a regular basis, I suggest you make some kind of peace with interest in narrative experimentation on a David Lynch forum.

I love you Sherrif Truman