The Unappreciated Moral Courage Of David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”
David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” delves into the sinister elements that exist underneath the mundanity of small-town America, yet also highlights moral courage of the townspeople.
Airing in 1990, David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” shattered what had then been considered typical network television. Lynch married his trademark elements of surrealist, fever-dream like sequences with more familiar themes of commercial television, such as commonplace tropes from daytime soap-operas and film noir murder mysteries. Throughout its production, an eerie sensation left viewers shifting in their seat, aided by an iconic and unsettling score by Angelo Badalamenti. This unique fusion that only Lynch himself could produce spurs viewers to describe the show with the adjective, Lynchian. David Lynch’s indeterminate yet unmistakable artistic expression has produced this descriptor bearing his name-sake.
However, I find that the term has been utilized so frequently without explanation that it’s fair to assume that its understanding has been lost. A Lynchian piece pushes the viewer to reckon with the dark, sinister underbelly that persists and shifts underneath the mundanity of our daily lives. Lynch’s cult-classic film, “Blue Velvet,” opens with a sequence that explicitly presents this dynamic: a beautiful neighborhood ripped out of a Norman Rockwell painting, complete with white picket fences and freshly watered flowers. However, with closer notice, an infestation of swarming bugs and insects slither over one another underneath the perfectly kempt grass that cover the dream-like, Americana neighborhood.
Much has been made about Lynch’s consistent artistic focus on the wickeness that threatens to expose the thin veneer shielding small-town American living. Yet, typical analysis fails to acknowledge the admiration he possesses of the attempt by these communities to preserve values of mutual respect and association.
Who Killed Laura Palmer?
“Twin Peaks” main thrust is surrounding the murder mystery of local prom queen, Laura Palmer. Laura is found mutilated, discolored, and wrapped in a plastic sheet by the local mill. Upon her discovery, the local law enforcement arrive on the scene, where local police officer Andy is so distraught by the scene he breaks into hysterics. Throughout the show, Officer Andy is often moved to tears in an almost cartoonish way as the investigation uncovers further violence throughout the town. Although Andy's emotions are initially checked by Sheriff Harry S. Truman, the townsfolk eventually permit his outward display of emotion. Although less willing to so openly weep, a sensation of dread and horror is shared amongst those striving to uncover the truth about Laura’s murder. Any violence or harm done is of consequence and worthy of shedding tears over in Twin Peaks.
Following Laura’s murder, each inhabitant is shaken to their core. Everybody had their own individual relationship with her, and can offer an anecdote on how she changed their life. The town’s patrons refuse to treat Laura Palmer’s murder like a “statistic to be tallied up at the end of the day,” because in Twin Peaks, murder “is not a faceless event.”
Dispatched to Twin Peaks to investigate Laura’s murder, we meet special agent Dale Cooper. Cooper possesses an almost off-putting capacity for positivity, and is easily swayed by the friendly, stereotypical small-town dynamics present within the town. Twin Peaks is an isolated mill town, where everybody knows everybody. The inhabitants freely associate amongst one another, and the general warmth among the populace rings of a lost, easy-living lifestyle of yesteryear.
As an agent of the FBI, special agent Cooper witnesses unspeakable acts of violence in his profession on a consistent basis. For the sake of preserving his sanity, he approaches each case with an air of professionalism that permits him to carry out his duty of solving the crime. However, the meaning that the town of Twin Peaks places upon a single individual person’s life shakes him to his core, and restores a faith in humanity that was slowly slipping through his fingers.
Cooper remarks to his curmudgeon FBI co-worker, Albert, “I’ve only been in Twin Peaks a short time, but in that time, I have seen decency, honor, and dignity…Laura Palmer’s death has affected each and every man, woman, and child because life has meaning here- every life. That’s a way of living I thought had vanished from the earth, but it hasn’t Albert. It’s right here in Twin Peaks.”
As Lynch permits the audience to learn more about the stomach-churning presence of domestic-violence, sex-trafficking, and violence that occurs in the po-dunk town of Twin Peaks, it becomes easy for the viewer to leave with the sole conclusion that the pervasiveness of evil in Twin Peaks is its defining attribute.
Lynch acknowleges the reality of the banality of evil finding a home in small-town America, and spends considerable time poring into this dynamic. Lynch’s own suburban upbringing surely contributed to his fascination with the tension between suburbia’s desire to keep up appearances and social niceties, and the threat of violence and social discord that lurked beneath. Yet, recognizing and shining light to this tension does not correspond to a wholesale condemnation by Lynch. “Twin Peaks” laboriously illustrates the veil covering the realities of violence in small-town dynamics, yet vaunts the seriousness in which the town’s citizens take to determining how the horror of Laura’s murder came about, and how they can fight against ever permitting such a tragedy from wrecking their community again.
Special agent Dale Cooper does not find that the violence present in the town of Twin Peaks spells its damnation. What Cooper finds, and what I think Lynch pains to demonstrate, is that what is most laudable and demands the most attention is the moral courage that the inhabitants of Twin Peaks possess in fighting back against the subversive underbelly that threatens their way of life. Every life has meaning, and nobody is left behind. Although the facade of peaceful exchanging of pleasantries and simple-living of Twin Peaks may have granted shade for the sinister elements of the town to operate, what Lynch strives to portrays is how the town’s moral determination embroils it in battle with darkness, and it is in the attempt to combat evil that moral courage finds its home.
 |
|