Later this year I'll be publishing a book on Twin Peaks. Entitled "Speaking Backward," the book examines the themes and mythology of the show, episode by episode. It is, I hope, an entertaining read for fans of the show as well as a handy guide for those who are just discovering the world of Twin Peaks for the first time.
Today, in honor of the show's 25th anniversary, I'm posting a sneak preview of the draft introduction to Speaking Backward. I hope it's enjoyed, and I hope that you'll consider plunking down a few nickels for a copy when it's finally unveiled. I encourage you to leave comments, constructive criticism, and recipes for pie in the comments below.
Welcome to Twin Peaks :
An Introduction
When Twin Peaks
first appeared on the ABC television network back in the Ancient Year Of 1990
it became an instantaneous cultural phenomenon. If you were alive, sentient,
and within range of a water cooler/school locker the question “Who killed Laura
Palmer” was, for a brief moment in time, largely inescapable. Co-creator David
Lynch graced the cover of Time magazine; Actor Kyle MacLachlan hosted Saturday
Night Live for the first and last time in his career; T-shirts bearing Laura
Palmer’s face, the phrase “Who killed Laura Palmer?” and/or the visage of lead
character Special Agent Dale Cooper sold like hotcakes; There were several
spin-off books, including The
Autobiography of Agent Dale Cooper: My Life and Tapes, and The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.
None of this was business as usual.
Twin Peaks entered a prime time network television landscape that
had carefully and rigorously defined audience expectation over decades, and swiftly
proceeded to gleefully subvert and destroy those expectations. Long-standing
television conventions were twisted and changed, made unfamiliar and strange.
No one at that time had ever seen anything quite like it and no one’s seen
anything like it since, although it’s served to inspire a host of subsequent
creative types in all areas of the arts from television to film to music and
on and on anon. Oddball/cult/genre shows sprouted in its wake with programs
like The X-Files, Northern Exposure, Picket Fences, Carnivale,
and Lost (to name just a very few)
all owing obvious debts to Co-creators David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s
weirdo-epic about a small town struggling against and/or succumbing to the
primal, animalistic call of capital-E Evil.
The first season of Twin
Peaks – just nine gorgeously strange hours in all – is unassailable “Great Television.” Some of that Greatness is historic in terms of the show’s
place in time and culture, and in the ways in which the show has continued to
reverberate with cult audiences around the world decades after its cancellation.
Some of that Greatness is artistic, in terms of what co-creators David Lynch
and Mark Frost were able to achieve on a major American television network, and
in the ways it has subsequently influenced other artists and creators.
The
second season of Twin Peaks is…well….problematic.
It begins well, builds to a genuinely shocking revelation, and then just sort
of slowly lies down in the middle of the figurative road and stays there for
awhile muttering to itself before rousing once more over the course of a couple
hours for what remains perhaps the most unconventional, bewildering,
artistically inspired and just-plain-gonzo finale ever to grace a television
screen.
For this particular viewer much of Twin Peaks ’ cumulative
power lies in its unblinking fascination with Evil. In its best moments the
show offers a startlingly-clear view through grimy, warping glass at what feels
and sounds and seems to be pretty much Evil Incarnate. It doesn’t have this
effect on everyone (it’s far too idiosyncratic for that), but for some of you Twin Peaks is
going to burrow under your skin and slither there. It’s going to creep you out, man. Lynch doesn't screw with
everyone's head the way that he screws so very, very effortlessly with mine.
Some folks find his films to be empty exercises in surrealism and juxtaposed
banality that don't land their punches. If you're among that crowd then you're
probably going to hate this book.
Much as I recognize and will write about the potential
for, and existence of, overinflated, underwhelming melodrama and of style without
substance in Twin Peaks, overall
(with frankly frightening regularity) Lynch's vision works the psyche over
thoroughly. His way of portraying the emergence of Evil into a mundane world
has the power to genuinely disturb. Lynch
conjures the shivers that precede the urge to flee like few others. That he can
manage this feat, not through elaborate special effects or through copious
gore, but through the careful deployment of sound, extreme lighting and
ordinary objects, is nothing short of astonishing. Lynch and his Peaks compatriots touch, somehow, on the best/worst
sort of fear there is: the uneasy prickle, the chill at the back of your neck
you get walking a hallway in your home late at night; that sense that someone
or something is THERE with you, present in some awful, inexplicable, invisible
sense.
Why is it that Lynch’s films in general (and Twin Peaks in particular) are capable
of doing this to us? Setting aside the technical aspects involved – the ways in
which sound, light and performance are deployed – what is it about the subject
matter involved here that manages to so thoroughly disarm and distress? David
Foster Wallace, writing on Lynch and his films for Premiere Magazine,
articulated an answer to this question that cuts straight to the heart of the
matter:
“Lynch’s movies are not about monsters (i.e.
people whose intrinsic natures are evil) but about hauntings, about evil as environment, possibility,
force. This helps explain Lynch’s constant deployment of noirish lighting
and eerie sound-carpets and grotesque figurants: in his movies’ world, a kind
of ambient spiritual antimatter hangs just overhead. It also explains why
Lynch’s villains seem not merely wicked or sick but ecstatic, transported: they
are, literally, possessed….they have yielded themselves up to a Darkness way
bigger than any one person….Lynch’s idea that evil is a force has unsettling
implications. People can be good or bad, but forces simply are. And forces are
– at least potentially – everywhere. Evil for Lynch thus moves and shifts,
pervades; Darkness is in everything, all the time – not ‘lurking below’ or
‘lying in wait’ or ‘hovering on the horizon’: evil is here, right now.”[1]
Wallace submits in his (terrific) essay that all of
Lynch’s films focus on Evil, and that this focus comes without the comforting
narrative fiction of clear “moral victory.” As in Lynch’s films overall, so
also in Twin
Peaks . When people do terrible things on this show
there are sometimes consequences but there are sometimes no consequences at
all. Lynch and Frost don’t introduce Evil into Twin Peaks so that “Good” can vanquish it. They introduce
Evil as fact, as uncaring force of nature; a storm to (maybe) survive but not
to vanquish – not really, not ever.
Don’t get me wrong, Twin Peaks has
plenty of quirky comedy and purple melodrama. It’s
loaded with wry, oddball touches that you might find similar to dry-as-sand
comedies like Waiting For Guffman.
It is by no means a non-stop horror show, but the horrors it offers are
profoundly disquieting and may linger with you long after you’ve turned off the television.
Part of what makes Lynch’s overall body of work so
compelling/frustrating lies in the way in which it resists concrete
interpretation. As an artist, Lynch consciously chooses not to explain himself[2],
inviting the audience to explain for itself, which brings me, finally, to the
subject of the book you’re currently holding in your grubby little hands.
This book and all of its contents represent one man’s
interpretation of, and analysis of, Twin Peaks . It is not nor does it purport to be a
definitive text. However, for all of Twin Peaks ’ inarguable, wonderful strangeness the show
is doggedly dedicated to exploring certain themes that appear near and dear to
its dark, deranged heart. There are a number of genuinely interesting ideas
being batted about throughout the running time of this show, and they are ideas
that are worth discussing and exploring and chewing over with the sort of
relish that Benjamin Horne reserves for Brie and Butter sandwiches. This book
exists in order to provoke fodder for said-discussions/explorations/displays of
rampant, figurative mastication. Within these pages you will find ruminations
on David Lynch’s obsession with twins and the subconscious, on seeking truth
and on the unknowable mysteries, on ideas of “Goodness” and “Evil,” on
voyeurism and secrets, on faith and purpose and the possible futility of Love
in a world that seems designed to crush the decency within and seed corruption
in its stead.
Each chapter of Speaking Backward focuses on one episode in the series and attempts to dissect the
themes and mythology present in each hour of the show. In addition to the main
body of each chapter, you’ll also find sections devoted to “Pieces of Peaks”
(commentary or observation on episode happenings that don’t really directly
relate to the themes or mythology, but which are worth noting and/or
celebrating and/or relentlessly mocking), as well as “Trivial Trivia” (bits and
bobs of interesting/enlightening/stupefying information about the actors, the
production, and the impact of Twin Peaks).
I highly recommend that you watch each episode of the show prior to reading the
corresponding chapter in this book. Without the context that the show itself
provides, much of the writing that follows will likely read in a manner similar
to the half-crazed scrawls of a monkey on acid[3]. This
might sound appealing to you, but the monkey in question will assure you that it is
not[4]. Care has been taken to make this book friendly to those of you who have
not watched Twin
Peaks before. You can safely read along as you watch, one episode to one chapter at a time, without fearing
any real “spoilers” regarding future events. Those of you who have seen the
show before will hopefully find that this same care has been taken to
nonetheless illuminate aspects of the show’s themes and mythology.
…You’ll also discover a fair amount of irreverence in
these pages. While it is my intent to honor the creative effort and artistic
skill that went into the crafting of Twin Peaks , it is undeniable that the show as a whole
has some serious rough patches. There are elements/sections of Twin Peaks
that simply do not work. At all[5]. Rather
than ignore this I’ve embraced it. While this book is primarily concerned with
teasing out the thematic and mythological strands of the narrative, it’s also
concerned with enjoying and honestly critiquing a show that
is seriously weird, and seriously all-over-the-place.
If this is your first time among the wind-tossed
Douglas Firs: welcome. If you’re returning to this town for another trip on Lynch’s
Scary-Go-‘Round: welcome to you as well. We’re going to have a lot of fun
exploring this weird world together.
Now, how should you watch Twin Peaks ? Whether
you’re entering these woods for the first time or making a return trip allow me
to offer some unsolicited advice: Turn all the lights off (leaving one on is
acceptable – it is also appropriately “Lynchian”). Make sure your television’s
volume is up. If you have a fancy speaker system use it. David Lynch deploys
sound like few Directors, and to my experience that sound – sometimes haunting,
sometimes sensual, sometimes baffling – is a large part of what makes much of Twin
Peaks so timelessly arresting.
To say that Twin Peaks is a
weird show is to make something of a massive, laughable understatement.
Characters often voice stilted, bizarre thoughts, or behave crazily and melodramatically,
in ways that are both soap opera-esque and a grotesque reflection of that genre.
Things happen without rational explanation. There is a Log Lady.
Don’t fight the weird; roll with it if you’re able. I
think you’ll find that it becomes kind of intoxicating in ways that are both
lovely and disturbing. You’re entering David Lynch’s head here, with only
co-creator Mark Frost and a shaken-looking Standards and Practices lawyer as
your tour guides. While that’s some cause for alarm it’s also cause for
celebration. Twin Peaks is one strange town,
but its woods are lovely, dark and deep.
Give yourself permission to lose yourself in them.
[1] Excerpted solely for critical purposes from “David
Lynch Keeps His Head” by David Foster Wallace, available in the essay
collection “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” You should purchase it
immediately. The entire article on Lynch is fascinating.
[2]
As Martha Nochimson notes in The Passion
of David Lynch: Wild At Heart In Hollywood, “…Lynch explained that, when he
is directing, ninety percent of the time he doesn’t know, intellectually, what
he is doing.”
[3]
It may read that way regardless.
[4]
Right after he mutters “Judy.”
[5]
If the name “Evelyn Marsh” doesn’t already strike fear and loathing into your
heart, rest assured that it soon will.
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