Forming part of the ‘David Lynch at HOME’ season for the Manchester International Festival, the University of Salford’s Dr. Kirsty Fairclough (she is presently an Associate Dean of Research and Innovation), presented a talk focusing on the cultural impact and legacy of Lynch’s television series (co-created with Mark Frost), Twin Peaks (1990-92, 2017).
Fairclough began by explaining how viewing Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet put her on the path to become an academic (so the interest isn’t just purely from a research background but there is a personal passion there too), and screened the opening sequence of that film which contains within it several elements which would reappear in Twin Peaks (and Lynch’s other films) and also encapsulates the blend of tensions between the wholesome, ‘American Dream’ surface which belies the dark, horrors underneath (literally in the case of Blue Velvet’s opening, where scenes of friendly school crossing ladies, a waving fireman with his dog both positioned on a moving fire engine, and the white picket fences of suburbia, give way to close-ups of bugs scurrying underneath the lawns in the idyllic town of Lumberton). This then led to a brief discussion of how Twin Peaks caught the interests of academics who proceeded to explore the television series through various aspects -the way it introduced a more cinematic quality to television, its use of surreal elements and how it would encourage audiences to try and decode it, the representation of female characters, amongst others – before discussing what makes a film, television show, or even music, ‘Lynchian,’ and what that term means. That term entered the Oxford English Dictionary in September 2018 where it is defined as “Characteristic, reminiscent, or imitative of the films or television work of David Lynch. Lynch is noted for juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasize a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace.”
After setting up the context, Fairclough went on to discuss how Lynch evolved from a painter to filmmaker and then, with Twin Peaks, television series co-creator. When directing, Lynch often treats the film (or television) set as he would a canvas when painting, and that there are unfinished elements within it and allows for improvisation or images to appear in his mind which he then incorporates into his work (for instance, the idea of the malevolent spirit ‘Bob’ in Twin Peaks came about after Frank Silva, working on the props team when the pilot episode was shot, had his reflection caught in a mirror while filming a scene and Lynch ran with the idea of him being in the room for a specific reason). This working practice when applied to the first series of Twin Peaks enabled it to become the cultural phenomenon, and its narrative complexity was the apex of the shift in tone which programmes such as Hill Street Blues had begun in the decade before Twin Peaks first aired.
The original run of the series was centred around the murder of high school prom queen Laura Palmer but as the investigation into her death unfolded, other narrative lines piled in on top. Fairclough drew attention to Lynch’s status as an ‘auteur’ in that contentious area of film studies (a term first used by French film critics in the 1960s to highlight a distinct style and thematic concerns in the body of a film director’s work which separates their work from other film-makers – such as Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Orson Welles, and Martin Scorsese, amongst many others), and noted how Lynch’s involvement with Twin Peaks marked the first time that an art cinema auteur worked within the medium of television. Fairclough did, however, point out that Mark Frost, with whom Lynch created the show, got some recognition for his work on the show but not nearly enough as he deserves (as the more experienced ‘hand’ in terms of television production, Frost did a lot of work to help fashion Lynch’s more outré ideas and style into one which prime time television audiences could handle).
Fairclough then discussed an often-overlooked element of Lynch’s filmmaking: his use of sound design. In Twin Peaks, the sound of wind howling through the trees creates an unsettling ambience, hinting as it does at the ‘evil’ which lurks in the woods on the edge of the town; the buzz of electricity is often heard throughout the series and becomes a more prominent narrative element in the show’s prequel film ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ (1992) and the 2017 series (referred to as ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’). Fairclough played a short video where Dean Hurley – who collaborated with Lynch on the sound design of the 2017 series of Twin Peaks – explained Lynch’s working practice with sound and how he’ll experiment to get what he wants.
The talk then moved onto how Twin Peaks’ mixture of genres helped make it the cultural phenomena it is: by blending the police/mystery genre with supernatural elements, melodrama, and even horror, the show redefined what one show could contain within its narrative. As Fairclough herself said, with all these elements at play, “you can…buy into so many aspects of Twin Peaks.” Fairclough then addressed how the ‘para texts’ around the show (spin-off novels such as The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer which was published as the second series started and was referred to in the show’s narrative; Frosts’ novels The Secret History of Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, which bookended the transmission of the 2017 series) helped create an active fan culture, ready to devour anything related to the show and spending time analysing the narrative threads and creating fan art, in an acts of what academic Jason Mittell termed ‘forensic fandom.’
With the time drawing to a close, Fairclough briefly discussed the cancellation of the show’s original run at the end of its second series, with there being a general feeling that the show had become too bloated and had gone too far in some of its ideas (while this is true of the middle section of that season, the final few episodes did much to put the show back on course, however it was too late to rescue the show from the impending axing by the network), before sketching out how the return of Twin Peaks in 2017, in an 18 part series fully written by Frost and Lynch and directed entirely by Lynch, went beyond what the original run had done in redefining television by blurring the distinction between feature film and television series (marked by the brief controversy over Sight & Sound magazine hailing the 2017 Twin Peaks as the second best film of the year), with Part 8 of that series in particular pushing at the boundaries of what a ‘television show’ could be.
As an introduction to the world of Twin Peaks and its legacy, Fairclough’s talk was interesting and gave a good overview of how influential the series was. However, it could easily have gone on for longer with many other elements ripe for exploration: such as how the 2017 series defied all expectations by resisting the trap of becoming a ‘nostalgia fest’ by replicating the original series; instead it actively fought against the instinct by spending a lot of its sprawling narrative set in locations other than Twin Peaks and by keeping its protagonist, Dale Cooper, trapped for most of the run as the monosyllabic Dougie Jones. Perhaps that is the subject of a future talk if HOME (or any other venue) hold another event dedicated to Lynch.
Reviewer - Andrew Marsden
on - 7/7/19
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