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Twin Peaks revisited
In the last month, I've been rewatching Twin Peaks in bits and pieces. (I.e. up to episode 16, after which the show takes a dive until the finale; I also watched Fire Walk With Me.) It's been a long, long while. Some things like different now, some the same. Oh, and the owls are not what they seem.
1) Cooper's "and there is one thing I want to know, not just as an agent of the bureau but as a human being: what was going on between the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe, and who really killed JFK?" while he meditates in his room in the Great Northern still cracks me up.
2) David Lynch's young lovers - whether it's Donna and James, or the couple from Wild at Heart - invariably tend to be among the least interesting of his characters, though it's qualified in Donna's case because her scenes when not with James are more layered; but I'm still left with the impression Donna's friendship with/love for Laura, who is dead, is more interesting than anything in her current life.
3) I have less patience for Nadine-as-a-teenager antics this time around. Incidentally, I've seen the actress shortly after TP ended as Anne Boleyn in Los Angeles, in a performance of Anne of the Thousand Days, and she was fantastic.
4) Back then, I was disappointed Cooper and Audrey never got together, but now, I'm glad of it. The theme of sexual exploitation is really strong in this show, and though like all teenagers she's played by an adult actress, we're meant to believe Audrey as a high school girl. Cooper being the White Knight is pretty much instrumental for the show (and also for the shocking final twist at the end). Apparantly my squick level for school girl/men around 30 pairings has risen in the last 17 years.
5) Audrey discovering her father actually owns One Eyed Jack's in a variation of the "father finds daughter working in a brothel" punchline prefigures the Leland/Laura revelation, and you can say Ben and Leland and Audrey and Laura are generally narrative double/contrasts to each other. Of course, Audrey miraculously makes it out of the brothel without ever having to sleep with anyone, and without her father finding out whom he almost molested (until she tells him later); she's the bad girl who only poses as a bad girl but isn't really, and never gets burned, whereas Laura is the girl who really did it all, suffered the consequences and wasn't rescued.
6) I don't remember which critic wrote that if Cooper, as he tells the judge at one point, experiences Twin Peaks as heaven (see also his indignant speech to Albert Rosenfield of how people there still cared about murders and each other), Laura expierenced it as unrelenting hell, but I can see that, and that's one reason among several why the movie wasn't popular. It completely ties with Bobby's outburst at Laura's grave about the hypocrisy of the town, though, and the accusation that they all knew Laura was massively troubled and ignored it.
7) Which brings me to the show's most disturbing and effective gambit, simultanously blaming the killings on a supernatural entity - BOB - and a "real" person, i.e. Leland Palmer. Leland literally has the "the devil made me do it" get out clause...or has he? The murder of Laura's near identical cousin Maddy remains one of the most horrifying tv murders I can think of. (In terms of emotional impact as a single scene, I can only think of Jenny Calendar's death for comparison.) The show keeps cross cutting between the supernatural variation of the murder - BOB killing Maddy, complete in slow motion and eerie light - and the "real life" version, Leland killing her, in actual speed, and the Leland parts of the sequence are the ones that are responsible for the effect. Not just because for first time watchers, this is when the implication sinks in - i.e. if Leland kills Maddy, he must have raped and killed his own daughter as well. Because Leland keeps switching between brutally beating Maddy to death and embracing her, cradling her and singing to her as a Laura substitute. Two episodes later, you get Leland's own death scene, very movingly acted by Ray Wise, which seems to be firmly on the "Leland as another victim of BOB's" side of things; Cooper acts as a de-facto priest absolving Leland. But later, Sheriff Truman asks Cooper: "Leland was completely crazy, wasn't he?" and Cooper asks back what was more comforting to believe, Leland being possessed by a demon or "a man raping and murdering his own daughter". Unfortunately, for the audience, especially today's audience reading the headlines, it's the later.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me continues the ambiguity. On the one hand, you have Laura seemingly being denial/unaware about her father being BOB until she forces BOB to show his true face while he has sex with her and sees her father; on the other, the film shows Leland - when pointedly being Leland, not BOB, it's not like TP is especially subtle when Leland is possessed, what with the manic grins and all - being definitely sexually drawn to his daughter and emotionally both abusive and overprotective in a non-demonic way. There's the scene where he chides her about her dirty fingernails and demands to know about her "lover" (with his wife pointing out "they don't call them "lovers" in high school, Leland") which gets so disturbing that Sarah Palmer starts to scream, but you don't get the impression this is the first time she witnessed this. There's the flashback to the revelation that Leland had a sexual relationship with BOB's earlier victim Theresa Banks, telling her while in bed with her "you look just like my Laura", and again, he's not brutal or maniac at that point, which means he's not speaking as BOB. Add to this Laura telling Harold that BOB "had" her since she was twelve, and it's really impossible for a rewatcher to buy Leland as innocent and solely used by the demon.
8) Both Leland, when dying, in his confession to Cooper, and Fire Walk With Me the film add one twist to Laura's death which makes it different from all the other deaths on the show. Because BOB didn't want to kill Laura originally, he wanted her as his next host, and Laura refused, preferring to die, and not relenting despite the cruelty of her death. Which creates the interesting dichotomy of Laura being simultanously the female victim (of murder, of abuse), the girl/woman with a past (taking cocaine, having various relationships, prostituting herself) and yet being stronger than the men of the show when they're in the same position (Leland in the past, who let Bob in, and saying "yes" is a condition to demonic possession in this 'verse, and Cooper at the end of the show, though he acts under blackmail), unwilling to continue the cycle of abuse. It's also a contrast to Josie Packard, who in one of the show's other plots is also a victim (simultanously comitting crimes) but accepts any degradation out of fear, and remains a metaphorical and practical slave until her death.
1) Cooper's "and there is one thing I want to know, not just as an agent of the bureau but as a human being: what was going on between the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe, and who really killed JFK?" while he meditates in his room in the Great Northern still cracks me up.
2) David Lynch's young lovers - whether it's Donna and James, or the couple from Wild at Heart - invariably tend to be among the least interesting of his characters, though it's qualified in Donna's case because her scenes when not with James are more layered; but I'm still left with the impression Donna's friendship with/love for Laura, who is dead, is more interesting than anything in her current life.
3) I have less patience for Nadine-as-a-teenager antics this time around. Incidentally, I've seen the actress shortly after TP ended as Anne Boleyn in Los Angeles, in a performance of Anne of the Thousand Days, and she was fantastic.
4) Back then, I was disappointed Cooper and Audrey never got together, but now, I'm glad of it. The theme of sexual exploitation is really strong in this show, and though like all teenagers she's played by an adult actress, we're meant to believe Audrey as a high school girl. Cooper being the White Knight is pretty much instrumental for the show (and also for the shocking final twist at the end). Apparantly my squick level for school girl/men around 30 pairings has risen in the last 17 years.
5) Audrey discovering her father actually owns One Eyed Jack's in a variation of the "father finds daughter working in a brothel" punchline prefigures the Leland/Laura revelation, and you can say Ben and Leland and Audrey and Laura are generally narrative double/contrasts to each other. Of course, Audrey miraculously makes it out of the brothel without ever having to sleep with anyone, and without her father finding out whom he almost molested (until she tells him later); she's the bad girl who only poses as a bad girl but isn't really, and never gets burned, whereas Laura is the girl who really did it all, suffered the consequences and wasn't rescued.
6) I don't remember which critic wrote that if Cooper, as he tells the judge at one point, experiences Twin Peaks as heaven (see also his indignant speech to Albert Rosenfield of how people there still cared about murders and each other), Laura expierenced it as unrelenting hell, but I can see that, and that's one reason among several why the movie wasn't popular. It completely ties with Bobby's outburst at Laura's grave about the hypocrisy of the town, though, and the accusation that they all knew Laura was massively troubled and ignored it.
7) Which brings me to the show's most disturbing and effective gambit, simultanously blaming the killings on a supernatural entity - BOB - and a "real" person, i.e. Leland Palmer. Leland literally has the "the devil made me do it" get out clause...or has he? The murder of Laura's near identical cousin Maddy remains one of the most horrifying tv murders I can think of. (In terms of emotional impact as a single scene, I can only think of Jenny Calendar's death for comparison.) The show keeps cross cutting between the supernatural variation of the murder - BOB killing Maddy, complete in slow motion and eerie light - and the "real life" version, Leland killing her, in actual speed, and the Leland parts of the sequence are the ones that are responsible for the effect. Not just because for first time watchers, this is when the implication sinks in - i.e. if Leland kills Maddy, he must have raped and killed his own daughter as well. Because Leland keeps switching between brutally beating Maddy to death and embracing her, cradling her and singing to her as a Laura substitute. Two episodes later, you get Leland's own death scene, very movingly acted by Ray Wise, which seems to be firmly on the "Leland as another victim of BOB's" side of things; Cooper acts as a de-facto priest absolving Leland. But later, Sheriff Truman asks Cooper: "Leland was completely crazy, wasn't he?" and Cooper asks back what was more comforting to believe, Leland being possessed by a demon or "a man raping and murdering his own daughter". Unfortunately, for the audience, especially today's audience reading the headlines, it's the later.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me continues the ambiguity. On the one hand, you have Laura seemingly being denial/unaware about her father being BOB until she forces BOB to show his true face while he has sex with her and sees her father; on the other, the film shows Leland - when pointedly being Leland, not BOB, it's not like TP is especially subtle when Leland is possessed, what with the manic grins and all - being definitely sexually drawn to his daughter and emotionally both abusive and overprotective in a non-demonic way. There's the scene where he chides her about her dirty fingernails and demands to know about her "lover" (with his wife pointing out "they don't call them "lovers" in high school, Leland") which gets so disturbing that Sarah Palmer starts to scream, but you don't get the impression this is the first time she witnessed this. There's the flashback to the revelation that Leland had a sexual relationship with BOB's earlier victim Theresa Banks, telling her while in bed with her "you look just like my Laura", and again, he's not brutal or maniac at that point, which means he's not speaking as BOB. Add to this Laura telling Harold that BOB "had" her since she was twelve, and it's really impossible for a rewatcher to buy Leland as innocent and solely used by the demon.
8) Both Leland, when dying, in his confession to Cooper, and Fire Walk With Me the film add one twist to Laura's death which makes it different from all the other deaths on the show. Because BOB didn't want to kill Laura originally, he wanted her as his next host, and Laura refused, preferring to die, and not relenting despite the cruelty of her death. Which creates the interesting dichotomy of Laura being simultanously the female victim (of murder, of abuse), the girl/woman with a past (taking cocaine, having various relationships, prostituting herself) and yet being stronger than the men of the show when they're in the same position (Leland in the past, who let Bob in, and saying "yes" is a condition to demonic possession in this 'verse, and Cooper at the end of the show, though he acts under blackmail), unwilling to continue the cycle of abuse. It's also a contrast to Josie Packard, who in one of the show's other plots is also a victim (simultanously comitting crimes) but accepts any degradation out of fear, and remains a metaphorical and practical slave until her death.
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The death of Maddy is on my list of "Top Ten Screen Murders" (which I really must finish some time - I stopped because it seemed over-dominated by TV murders and I wanted to think of some more film ones). I thought it was perfectly done. I remember watching the repeat when it was first broadcast because I wanted to see it again, but
My interpretation was that Albert was right, and that Bob was the name we give to the evil that men do. When Sarah and others say that they have never seen Bob before, the real meaning is that they have never seen that "face" of Leland. And once Maddy sees it, she understands what he is, and can see both faces - family man and abuser - almost but not quite simultaneously.
I also thought that Cooper's refusal to accept Bob as a natural manifestation of humanity was a weakness: as I remember it, he says "Would you rather believe that a man could rape and kill his own daughter?" And I thought "What's rather got to do with it? You believe in the supernatural because you find reality too distressing?" So in time I came to believe that it was his inability to recognise and accept his own dark side that allowed him to succumb to it.
But I wish they'd wound up the series with the death of Leland. Though there were occasional interesting moments after that, it struck me as a demonstration of American TV not knowing that some stories have a natural shape and length, and that when that's completed it's a mistake to try to add more.
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Oh, I can understand that. I think this was only the second or third time I watched it myself, though I did rewatch the episodes on video ten years ago, but I fast forwarded then. It's a fantastic and deeply scarring sequence.
(Oh, btw, on the documentaries for the Golden DVD addition I learned that Sheryl Lee had to film this three times - once with Frank Silva (Bob), once with Ray Wise (Leland) and once with Richard Beymer (Ben Horne, to throw off spoiler hounds), which made for an entire long shooting day of getting beat up and having to die again and again, and they all admired her for not being a complete wreck at the end of it. )
I also thought that Cooper's refusal to accept Bob as a natural manifestation of humanity was a weakness: as I remember it, he says "Would you rather believe that a man could rape and kill his own daughter?" And I thought "What's rather got to do with it? You believe in the supernatural because you find reality too distressing?"
Yes, that's how it felt like to me. If Leland is the innocent victim of possession, then evil is external. Though Cooper has no difficulties in dealing with the brothers Reynold or Leo as embodying utterly mundane non-supernatural evil; I suppose it's the insidiousness of family abuse that makes him shy away and blame it all on the supernatural.
So in time I came to believe that it was his inability to recognise and accept his own dark side that allowed him to succumb to it.
Makes sense (and also fits with Laura being the one potential host able to refuse to succumb (i.e. continue the cycle of abuse by becoming a killer/abuser), because no matter how damaged as she was, she didn't see herself as solely a victim, she knew had her own darkness).
But I wish they'd wound up the series with the death of Leland.
I haven't met a single TP watcher who thinks otherwise, and of course entirely agree myself.
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Do you know which ep # it happens in? I still have the whole thing on my hard-drive.
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Makes sense (and also fits with Laura being the one potential host able to refuse to succumb (i.e. continue the cycle of abuse by becoming a killer/abuser), because no matter how damaged as she was, she didn't see herself as solely a victim, she knew had her own darkness).
Aha! Yes, this makes perfect sense to me, too.