Culture Critique
March 2011 v 2 No 1
Twin Peaks:
Surrealism, Fandom, Usenet and X-ray Television
By Thomas Connelly
Abstract: This essay exams the short-lived, cult television show Twin Peaks (1990-1991)
as an early example of media convergence—a concept that describes new ways in which
society circulates information through new media technologies. I argue that Twin Peaks
represents a paradoxical situation in which the show’s slow aesthetic and surreal
happenings collided with the speed of a Usenet group called alt.tv.twin-peaks. I add that
the group’s speed of decoding Twin Peaks as a “collective intelligence” was fueled by the
show’s creative mixture of surrealism, melodrama and heterogeneous representations of
time and space. Twin Peaks and the fandom it spawned is not only an example of an
accelerated culture that does not relinquish distance needed for critical reflection or a
waning of the present, but points to a new emerging culture using new media technology
in new and unpredictable ways.
Thomas Connelly is pursing a doctorate degree in the Cultural Studies program with an
emphasis on cinema and media studies. He holds a BFA in Cinema from C.W. Post,
Long Island University and MA degree in English from the University of Vermont. He is
an independent filmmaker, musician and writer and lives in Southern California.
culture critique, the online journal of the cultural studies program at CGU,
situates culture as a terrain of political and economic struggle. The journal
emphasizes the ideological dimension of cultural practices and politics, as
well as their radical potential in subverting the mechanisms of power and
money that colonize the life-world.
http://ccjournal.cgu.edu
© 2011
Culture Critique
March 2011 v 2 No 1
This essay examines the short-lived, cult television show Twin Peaks (1990-1991)
as an early example of media convergence. Twin Peaks represents a paradoxical
situation in which the show’s slow aesthetic and surreal happenings collide with the
speed of emerging electronic communication. Media theorist Henry Jenkins points out
that the Twin Peaks Usenet group alt.tv.twin-peaks pressured the show’s producers,
because the speed of electronic messaging enabled users to quickly decode the show’s
narrative puzzles. I add that the speed of decoding Twin Peaks through the use of Usenet
as a “collective intelligence” is fueled by the show’s creative mixture of surrealism,
melodrama and heterogeneous representations of time and space. Here, I differ with Paul
Virilio’s claim that technologies of speed and “vision machines” create “an aesthetic of
disappearance … arisen from the unprecedented limits imposed on subjective vision by
the instrumental splitting of modes of perception and representation” (49). Twin Peaks
and the fandom it spawned is not only an example of accelerated culture that does not
relinquish distance needed for critical reflection or a waning of the present, but points to a
new emerging culture using new media technology in new and unpredictable ways.
Four points are covered in this essay. First, I trace television’s openness to new
story worlds in the 1980s, as well as its creation of a space for unconventional television
series such as Twin Peaks. Secondly, I look at the community of fandom, and its role it
terms of not only demonstrating how viewers can be active participants and meaningmakers of pop cultural texts, but how fandom was able to get Twin Peaks back on the air
post-suspension through the support of the Usenet group alt.tv.twin-peaks. Thirdly, I
examine Lynch and Frost’s employment of surrealism and puzzle narratives as a major
component that fueled the circulation of information on the Usenet board as a collective
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intelligence to decode and solve the series complex mysteries. Lastly, I investigate
Lynch and Frost’s combination of surrealism and heterogeneous representation of
pictorial time and space as a way to penetrate and interiorize the alternate plane of reality
occupied by the show’s villain, BOB (Frank Silva). The show’s surreal depiction of this
hidden supernatural realm is what I am referring to as X-ray visuality.
Television’s New Mode of Production in the 1980s
On April 8, 1990, ABC launched the pilot episode of David Lynch and Mark
Frost’s new television series entitled Twin Peaks. The story, which takes place in a rural
Northwestern town, centers on solving the brutal murder of a high school teenager named
Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). The first season of Twin Peaks was a huge hit for ABC in the
spring of 1990, drawing in many viewers who were intrigued by the plot as well as Lynch
and Frost’s untraditional approach to the detective/noir story world. But tension arose
during the second season, when viewer ratings began to wane. ABC moved Twin Peaks’
prime slot of Thursday night to Saturday evening, and then requested that Palmer’s killer
be revealed. But Lynch and Frost did not want to reveal the murderer until the end of the
series because they knew that keeping the murderer a secret is what fueled the energy of
the show. But ABC persisted that the murderer by revealed in order to generate
viewership. Though Lynch was uncertain about ABC’s move to solve the mystery, Frost
felt they had an obligation to the network. Thus, unmasking the murderer of Laura
Palmer prematurely, coupled with decline ratings and the shifting of its time slot, resulted
in even more viewer loss of interest. ABC suspended the series on February 15, 1991,
leaving Twin Peaks in limbo. However, with an overwhelming response by fans and the
mobilization of a grassroots campaign from an early manifestation of the Internet, ABC
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reinstated the show. The final six episodes of the second season were aired, followed by
the official cancellation of the series, leaving devoted fans of the show with a cliff hanger
ending that would never be explored in a third season.
Looking back twenty years, the television format would seem to be out of synch
with the trajectory of David Lynch’s film career. A question to ask is why Lynch, an
independent filmmaker who works with surrealistic and abstract imagery, would be
interested in the conventions of the television format. Lynch’s entry into television in
1990, however, was not as aberrant as it may seem. In fact, the conditions of television
as a medium open to new narrative and aesthetic possibilities was already in place upon
Lynch’s arrival at ABC.
The 1980s was a transitional decade for ABC. In 1986, at the age of 80, Leonard
Goldenson, chair of the board and Chief Executive Officer of ABC, sold the network to
Capital Cities, Inc. Goldenson held the helms at ABC’s since 1953 and played a major
role during the United States vs. Paramount Pictures, a landmark anti-trust case that
decided that the major Hollywood studios could no longer hold executive rights on
theatres that showed their films. Goldenson came to work for Paramount studios in the
1930s and was assigned to manage their theatre chains. After the U.S Supreme Court
divorced the studio from exhibition, he had taken over United Paramount theaters
exclusively, which he then later sold to movie palaces. Goldenson invested these funds
into ABC, and in 1953, officially took over as the President and CEO.
Since ABC’s inception in the 1950s, they had always trailed behind their main
competitors NBC and CBS in terms of programming. But it was not until they acquired
the Wide World of Sports in the 1960s, and hit programs in the mid 1970s such as The
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Love Boat, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Monday Night Football that ABC had
made their mark as a pioneer network. During the 1980s, NBC was ranked as the
number one network, hosting shows such as Cheers, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting and
The Wonder Years. ABC, consequently, had fallen to the ranks of basement ratings and
had to re-make its image in order to stay competitive with NBC, CBS and emerging cable
television. One of the plans or philosophies put forth by ABC’s new President of
Entertainment, Brandon Stoddard, was for innovative programming. Bill Carter writes in
the New York Times, “He [Stoddard] declared an end to the old style at ABC and said the
network would strive for shows that ‘stood for something.’” Thus, ABC began a five year
plan to re-build the network to become competitive with the other networks and to
respond to the growing need for quality television.
The cinematic aesthetic of Twin Peaks reflected a number of new tendencies in
the industry’s mode of production in the 1980s. The competition of cable television and
the emerging Fox Network resulted in a dramatic decline in market share for the three
major networks. To deal with this new economic crisis, John Thorton Caldwell notes that
“American mass-market television underwent an uneven shift in the conceptual and
ideological paradigms that governed its look and presentational demeanor” (4). The look
and style of many television shows during the 1980s represent what Caldwell describes
as a “structural inversion.” Caldwell states that “In many shows by the mid-1980s…style
was no longer a bracketed flourish, but was the text of the show” (6). Television was not
only becoming a “more visual” medium, but it was emphasizing an “extreme” style that
was conscious of itself. Style was no longer solely meant to express the narrative, but
also a way to differentiate the product. Television’s new mode of production in the
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1980s, for instance, began to attract prominent Hollywood directors. With filmmaker
creations such as Michael Mann’s hyper-stylized Miami Vice and Steven Spielberg’s
Amazing Stories, coupled with the postmodern influence of MTV, signaled an aesthetic
transformation into a new wave of television occurring in the 1980s. 1
Yet despite new efforts to create quality television and to respond to audience’s
expectations, cable television continued to pose a threat to the three major television
networks. J. Fred MacDonald notes that “Although network prime time averaged a 56.5
rating/90 share during the 1979-80 season, the figure fell precipitously, to 48.5/77 for
1984-85 and to 41.5/67 for 1988-89—a rating drop off of 26.5 percent and a shared loss
of 25.5 percent in less than a decade” (228). These figures clearly indicate a significant
decline in broadcast viewership occurring in the 1980s. More so, the expansion of the
cable networks provided viewers with an assortment of channels and tailored content also
known as “narrow casting.” Therefore, the three networks would have to transform the
prime time television format in order to satisfy and reflect the needs of a changing
television culture in order to stay competitive.
A part of ABC’s plan was to invest in riskier shows that would push the
boundaries of conventional television both narrative and aesthetically. NBC’s Hill Street
Blues, for example, had already broken new ground in the 1980s, adding a gritty and
realistic punch to the traditional police narrative. Neutral lighting and static camera shots
associated with the first wave of television was becoming outdated, and the networks
wanted to give viewers something visually new and exciting. But even the realistic grit
1
Structural inversion is one of the six principles Caldwell list as television’s qualification of “interrelated
tendencies and changes” occurring in the landscape of network television of the 1980s. See chapter one in
Televisuality: style, crisis, and authority in American Television. New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 1995.
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of the new wave of television started to become routine. Robert J. Thompson notes that
“Quality television had helped networks like NBC and ABC fend off the onslaught of
cable competition by giving the audiences something different and unexpected” (152).
However, when this new “quality television” began to loose it steam or became
normalized, ABC, according to Thompson, was looking for something fresh which they
found with Twin Peaks.
A major event that led Lynch into broadcast television was the bankruptcy of
Dino DeLaurentiis’ studio, which had produced Lynch’s Dune (1984) and Blue Velvet
(1986). The folding of DeLaurentiis’ studio resulted in the cancellation of Lynch’s next
feature film One Salvia Bubble, which he had co-written with his new writing partner
Mark Frost, the creator of Hill Street Blues. According to Lynch, his agent Tony Krantz
had been pushing him and Frost to get involved in television. Lynch was intrigued with
Frost’s idea of a body washing up on shore, as well as a story told over numerous
episodes. ABC was also drawn into the premise of an episodic murder mystery, as Frost
recalls in a recent interview with Screenrush: “What ABC had in mind when they sat
down with us, was something along the lines of a bizarro version of a daytime soap. This
was, remember, coming out of an era which had been dominated by shows like Dallas
and Dynasty.” Frost and Lynch wrote the pilot for Twin Peaks, which was supported by
both Brandon Stoddard and the Vice-President of Drama Series, Chad Hoffman. As
Thompson notes, “Hoffman saw the script for the pilot of Twin Peaks. He saw the
bewildering proliferation of characters, the subtle nuances, the obscure inside references
and allusions. He knew what he was getting into, and that was exactly what he wanted”
(154). ABC had found the show that they believed would help repair the network’s
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failing viewer ratings. But, as Frost states, “Even at the point when they [ABC] wanted
us to make the pilot, they didn’t think it would be made into a full series. They said it
should run as a seven-hour mini-series and if we were lucky we’d get a few college
students to take a look at it during their spring break. But they were caught completely by
surprise when we hit the kind of numbers we did.” What ABC did not predict, however,
was that the eccentric world of Twin Peaks would not only become a landmark show in
the re-defining landscape of television, but would also spawned one of the first online
communities of fandom or what is now referred to as convergence media.
Twin Peaks Mania: Fandom and Media Convergence
When ABC aired the Twin Peaks two hour pilot on April 8, 1990, it earned 32
percent of viewers, coming in seventh place and winning overall viewer approval. The
following week, when the series went live with its first of seven episodes, it scored the
highest ratings for ABC in four years with a 16.2 rating. 2 TV critics were very
enthusiastic about the series, particularly David Lynch’s insertion of art house aesthetics
into the television medium. As Thompson notes, “The TV critics … made Lynch the
center of their attentions…. They gushed on about the show, finding it different from
regular TV and therefore excellent, and they became fascinated by the quirky oddness of
its creator” (154).
But it was not only the critics who were raving about the series. Fans and viewers
were fascinated by its eccentric murder mystery, and all of the show’s clues and odd
happenings generated weekly discussion and in depth analysis of the show. One reason
in particular that Twin Peaks drew so much analysis and decoding from its viewers was
2
Each rating point equals 921,000 homes with televisions.
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Lynch and Frost’s refusal to solve the mystery of who murdered Laura Palmer. Lynch
and Frost never intended to solve the crime until very end of the series. Lynch stated that
the mystery of Laura Palmer’s death was a macguffin—that is, a meaningless plot
element or an absent structure used to sustain viewer interest. In many ways, what fueled
the mass appeal of the series was Frost and Lynch’s resistance to unmask the murderer.
As Lynch states, “the progress towards it, [who killed Laura Palmer] but never getting
there, was what made us know all the people in Twin Peaks: how they surrounded Laura
and intermingled … the mystery was the magical ingredient” (1997: 180). The weekly
narrative impediment to solving the murder allowed the narrative to continuously unfold,
creating various implicating and intriguing storylines, all circling around the macguffin—
the death of Laura Palmer.
The oddities that made up the story world of Twin Peaks not only generated the
typical water cooler conversations, but also spawned a community of fandom that Henry
Jenkins describes (borrowing from Michel de Certeau) as “textual poachers.” Jenkins
draws upon de Certeau’s concept of active reading within the practices of everyday life.
For de Certeau, the relationship between the author and reader is a struggle and
negotiation of the text. De Certeau, for example, points out that school children are
taught to read for authorial meaning or what he terms “scriptural economy.” That is, they
are expected to decipher the text in its authorial intention as oppose to leaving their own
mark on the text. For textual poachers, however, the reader tacitly steals or plunders
what he or she finds useful or pleasurable within the text. According to de Certeau, “He
invents in texts something different from that they intended. He detaches them from their
(lost or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something unknown
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in their space organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of
meanings” (169).
Henry Jenkins’ ethnographic account of fan culture extends the concept of textual
poachers into the world of popular entertainment. Whereas de Certeau’s model of
nomadic readers describes a tacit and lone process of appropriating texts; Jenkins
explores fandom as a participatory culture that further expands story worlds such as Star
Wars and Star Trek. Jenkins notes, “What is significant about the fans in relation to de
Certeau’s model is that they constitute a particularly active and vocal community of
consumers whose activities direct attention onto this process of cultural appropriation”
(1992: 27). Jenkins’ account of textual poaching is evident in when fans create new
narratives from their favorite movies and television shows into texts such as videos,
fanzines, songs and fan fiction.
One of the most noteworthy fandom platforms for Twin Peaks was the Usenet
newsgroup called alt.tv.twin-peaks, created during the first season of the series.
Conceived in 1979 by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis,
Usenet is a world-wide shared electronic bulletin board system where user can discuss
information on subjects or categories known as newsgroups. Usenet was created for
technological and scholarly purposes, and users were typically housed in Universities and
technology and research companies. But the Usenet became more than just a research
tool. As Jenkins points out, the Twin Peaks Usenet served many purposes, such as
deciphering the show’s symbols, the exchange of video tapes for missed episodes, and
reviews of Lynch and Frost’s other works. Alt.tv.twin-peaks formed shortly after the
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first airing of the pilot episode, and, as Jenkins states “became one of the most active and
prolific groups on the [Usenet] system” (2006b 119).
Usenet played a supporting role in organizing fans when ABC placed Twin Peaks
on hiatus in February of 1991. By the airing of the seventh episode in the spring of 1990,
viewership began to wane. Since Lynch and Frost had not revealed the murderer, new
ABC president Robert Iger decided to renew the show for a second season. However,
because viewership had fallen during the first season, he moved Twin Peak’s prime
schedule of Thursday night to the dreaded Saturday night slot. As the second season
progressed, Iger then requested that Palmer’s murderer be revealed to generate more
viewership. After Palmer’s murder was revealed half way through the second season,
viewer ratings fell even more. This caused Iger to place the show on moratorium in
February of 1991.
Alt.tv.twin-peaks helped to mobilize a grassroots campaign to get Twin Peaks
back on television. Of course, Usenet was not a world wide popular media technology in
the early 1990s. So making phone calls, mailing letters and jamming fax lines were the
methods used for protesting the network’s decision. The following fans’ response from
alt.tv.twin-peaks posted on Feb 18, 1991 demonstrates grassroots campaigning in action:
By the way, when writing to ABC, it may be helpful to avoid cursing
them out, that only makes you sound like a fanatic. What you want to
do is be polite, and firm, and let them know how enormously disappointed
you are with the network for their decision, and that Twin Peaks was
really your only reason to watch anything on ABC, and so on. It might
also help to point out how the show actually makes the network look
good, since it does show that they're willing to take a chance on an
unusual show because it's well done and interesting and offers some
quality entertainment. I have a feeling a letter campaign like this
might actually do some good. Telling them you're angry is one thing,
getting them to understand that there's something in it for them if
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they keep Twin Peaks on the air, however, might get them to do just
that, and that is, after all, what we want. 3
From this fan’s response, we can gather that a Twin Peaks viewer sees him or herself as
sophisticated and intelligent. The posting makes it clear that fans of Twin Peaks do not
want to be associated with the myth of the unstable fan that tends to make fandom culture
(in general) appear mentally unbalanced or anti-social. It also addresses the notion of
quality television, a similiar concern for fans of Cagney and Lacey when that show was
temporarily canceled by CBS. In fact, one poster on the board refers to the cancellation
and return of Cagney and Lacey as a rallying cry for fans not to give up on getting Twin
Peaks back on television. The fan posts:
Writing MIGHT help, it has in the past with CAGNEY AND
LACEY, DESIGNING WOMEN, etc. recently and even as far
back as I REMEMBER MAMA and THE LAW AND MR.
JONES….
But the fan of this posting admits that most of the time when these shows returned, they
were quickly canceled or lost their cutting edge, which clearly was the case for Twin
Peaks. What is important to stress, however, is how fast and effectively the online
community conveyed information to each other on the Usenet board. Thus, the Twin
Peak’s Usenet board in conjunction with the letter-writing campaign called COOP
(Citizens Opposed to the Offing of Peaks) drew enough attention to Robert Iger at ABC,
resulting in the airing of the last six episodes.
3
In Dec of 2001, Google expanded its Usenet archive, which is available for anyone to view on the web.
Google, however, will remove postings at the posters’ request. Since the Alt.tv.twin-peaks postings are
available to the public, I have decided to remove the name of each authors’ postings for privacy purposes.
For more information about Google’s restoration of the Usenet archive, go to:
http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2002/01/07/saving_usenet/index.html
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Surrealism, the Melodramatic Imagination and Puzzle Narratives
Henry Jenkins explains that an active source of exchange on the Usenet board was
the group pooling its resources as a collective intelligence to solve the narrative’s
complex storylines and unravel the odd happenings in Twin Peaks. Jenkins notes, “Twin
Peaks won the computer netters’ admiration for its complexity, its density, its technical
precision and virtuosity, its consistency and yet its ability to continually pose problems
for interpretation” (2006b: 121). Here, I would like to expand upon Jenkins’
ethnographic account of alt.tv.twin-peaks by emphasizing the role of surrealism and
abstract art in Twin Peaks. I add that surrealism not only helped to fuel the circulation of
information on the Usenet board, but it also created a paradoxical situation where the
speed of communication through media technologies converges with the show’s
challenging and unusual representations of time and space.
Surrealism developed out of Paris in the 1920s. In the “Surrealist Manifesto,”
Andre Breton used the term “to designate the new mode of pure expressionism.” He
described surrealism as a “Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express,
either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought.” Influenced by Freud’s work
on the unconscious and dream-work, the Surrealists attempted to represent the “strange
forces” concealed in the human mind. They perceived the ordinary or mundane life in
modernity as living “under the reign of logic” and that experience has been guarded by
“boundaries” and “common sense.” Instead of capturing or attempting to mirror the
familiar world of the everyday (closely connected to classical realism), surrealism sought
to uncover and represent the layers lurking underneath the “reign” of the logical and
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sensible world. Surrealism, thus, was utilized to expand the viewer’s imagination, to
break down and distort the barrier between the realm of the logical and illogical.
Surrealism has a close connection to the world of melodrama because both artistic
expressions employ excessive style as a means to produce surges of expression that go
beyond representations of daily life. The archetypes of traditional melodrama (such as
exaggerated emotions and a clear distinction between good and evil characters) aim to
register a visceral and emotional response from the viewer. A component of melodrama
that specifically appealed to Lynch and Frost when developing Twin Peaks was the openended and episodic format of the soap opera narrative. It is what Ien Ang terms “the
tragic structures of feeling,” which describes the formatic fusion of the melodrama and
the soap opera formats, creating a continuous storyline of suffering and sorrow. But, as
Ang notes, “This tragic structure of feeling does not, however, being bowed down by the
Great Tragedy of Man … but of a half-conscious realization of the tragic side of ordinary
everyday life” (78). For example, Ang sees the tragic structure of feeling embedded in
the “meaning-structure” for the watchers of the television show Dallas. But the
meaning-making structures applied while watching Dallas will differ for each viewer,
because, according to Ang, spectators project their own experiences of daily life and
reading practices in the process of decoding Dallas. Ang adds that, “Viewers must
therefore have a certain cultural competence or orientation to understand and evaluate
Dallas in a melodramatic way” (79). This cultural capacity that viewers bring to the
melodramatic narrative is what Peter Brooks describes as “the melodramatic
imagination”—an expression that denies a view of the everyday world as banal and
quotidian. Brooks notes, “The melodramatisits refuse to allow that the world has been
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completely drained of transcendence” (65). This is why melodramatic narratives tend to
register the raw materials of the everyday life with such an emotional charge for the
viewer. Similar to surrealism, melodramas, especially soap operas, take ordinary events
and flood them with an abundance of meaning or what John Fiske terms “hyperbolic
excess” (193).
Lynch was specifically drawn to both the excessive components of the soap opera
melodrama as well as to the tragic structure of feeling. But he furthered the conventions
of the genre by registering the mise en scene into a world of the bizarre and surreal. This
is what Andre Breton describes as deracination, which expresses intense and powerful
emotions. It is the point of going beyond or transcending the boundaries of “acceptable
behavior” and that which is taboo. Barbara Creed notes, “In deracination the spectator
begins to identify so strongly with what is taking place on the screen that she or he is
transported into another realm” (119). Deracination clearly fits within the world of Twin
Peaks in several ways by dealing with taboo subjects such as incest and rape, and by
borrowing from traditional melodramas as a way to intensify the emotions of the
narrative, creating an immersive story world.
Twin Peaks’ immersive setting is not only due to its heightened-emotional
experience of being transported to another world, but also by its invitation to unscramble
and decode its weekly narrative puzzles. Additionally, the journey to uncovering these
clues is met with the show’s campy and unusual narrative emphasis on objects, as well as
strange and unexplained interruptions within the storyline. For example, Agent Dale
Cooper’s (Kyle MacLachlan) excessive love of good and strong coffee, Audrey Horne’s
(Sherilyn Fenn) unplanned dance in the diner, the mysterious Log Lady (Catherine E.
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Coulson) who travels throughout town holding a log and speaking in metaphors, Nadine
Hurley’s (Wendy Robie) obsession with creating a silent drape runner, Jerry Horne’s
(David Patrick Kelly) excessive excitement over French baguettes with brie cheese and
butter, and Leland Palmer’s (Ray Wise) random and haunting rendition of “Mairzy
Doats”—these moments all draws attention to the characters while at the same time
briefly disrupting the time flow of the narrative.
These bizarre and spontaneous moments within the show situate viewers between
the realms of the normal and the surreal, between reality and the dream logic. And the
connection made between these visual worlds offer viewers endless interpretations of the
text with no real final solutions. Judith Williamson finds a similar distinction between
naturalism and the surreal in print advertising. Williamson notes: “The cultural image of
surrealism means that the spectator of the ads assumes a link between [the natural and the
absolute world]” (132). The absolute world refers to the mythic structures of surrealism,
which has a close connection with the realm of the dream landscape. For Williamson, the
missing or absent link between these two worlds (the surreal and the natural) creates a
space for the spectator to decode and solve the ads’ puzzle—but a puzzle that has no
answer.
For example, in his review of Twin Peaks, New Yorker film critic Terrence
Rafferty noted that “The early Surrealists loved the nonsensical, interminable
inventiveness of pulp serials…. Works like [Louis] Bunuel’s and Lynch’s derive their
force—even their narrative force—from the swift movement of the artist's mind, a strong
current of ideas and imaginative energy…. Lynch sets us drifting through a vivid dream
of American life, and wakes us, two hours later, with the message that all dreams (and all
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soap operas) imply: ‘To Be Continued’.” One poster on the Usenet board recognized
Lynch’s combination of the surreal and the endless soap narrative by specifically
referring to Rafferty’s review. The poster wrote on May 25, 1990:
According to [Terrence] Rafferty, the surrealists were/are fascinated by
the notion of serials and the way they leave everything hanging at the end
of an episode, and embraced the idea of a film that would just STOP there
and never resolve anything. I’ve been watching the whole TP series with
these ideas in the back of my mind, sort of hoping that none of our
questions would be answered—not because it's an especially pleasant
sensation, but in order to feel that peculiar queasy feeling that only
surrealism can induce (my emphasis).
The poster was referring to the funny and strange moment when Pete Martell (Jack
Nance) discovers a dead fish in his coffee percolator. There is never a clear explanation
why or how the fish made its way into the percolator. The framing of these nonsensical
images not only break the flow of the narrative, but they also help to amplify the world of
Twin Peaks, creating a hyper-reality located within the everyday world.
The labor of decoding abstract texts has a strong connection to puzzle and game
narratives and often contains complex story lines and a distortion between subjectivity
and objectivity—elements that certainly fit the world of Twin Peaks. And the challenge
of unlocking these codes provided pleasurable currency for the posters on the Usenet
board. As Henry Jenkins points out: “For these viewers, what made the program so
exceptional was the demand Twin Peaks made upon the spectator, the justification its
narrative complexity offered for their own preferred activities” (2006: 31). Thus, the
show’s incompleteness and ending cliff hangers coupled with the surrealistic imagery and
puzzle narratives intensified the experience of immersion in Twin Peaks because it
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challenged and actively engaged viewers to draw upon their reading strategies to solve its
mysteries.
X-ray Television
The early Surrealists were drawn to the world of cinema because of its ability to
render representations of time and space that deviate from the landscape of daily life.
Barbara Creed notes that the surrealist filmmakers used cinema’s method of montage and
odd juxtaposing images “to create shocking and fantastic associations in order to affect
the viewer emotionally” (115). For instance, one of the most well-known deployments of
shock through juxtaposition in surrealistic cinema is the slitting of a woman’s eye in Luis
Bunel’s short film (made with Salvador Dali) called Un Chien Andalou (1929). Creed
notes that filmmakers such as Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock and David Cronenberg were
greatly influenced by the Surrealist attitude, but they deviated from Breton’s vision of
“the marvelous” and “love and liberation” by capturing surrealism’s dark side through
odd and heterogeneous representations of time and space.
In Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Time and Space: 1880-1918, he notes that
Cubist painters (who were a strong influence on the Surrealists) were also inspired by
cinema’s ability to spawn a multiplicity of perspectives through editing and the breaking
up of linear time and space. Kern notes “They [the Cubists] abandoned the homogenous
space of linear perspective and painted objects in a multiplicity of spaces from multiple
perspectives with X-ray like viewers of the interiors” (143). Kern posits that Wilhem
Conrad Roentgen’s newly invented X-ray technology at the turn of the twentieth century
may have influenced the Cubists unusual rendering of objects. Kern cites George
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Braque’s Still Life with Violin and Pitcher (1910), which depicts successive points of
view of a violin and pitcher that exist outside the shell of normal time and space.
I would like to expand upon Kern’s analogy of X-ray vision of an object’s interior
space by showing its televisual representation in the world of Twin Peaks. It is what I am
calling X-ray visuality—the penetration and rendering of a property within an invisible
and/or reality outside of normal pictorial time and space. For example, consider the
opening of Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) which portrays the small suburban town of
Lumbertown. In this sequence, viewers are presented with images such as a white picket
fence, beautiful red roses, and a passing fire truck—all filmed in luscious and bright
colors to represent the fantasy of an innocent and idyllic suburban world within America.
The image then focuses on Mr. Beamount (Jack Harvey) watering his lawn. As Mr.
Beamount untangles the garden hose, he unexpectedly falls to the ground with a massive
stroke. While Mr. Beamount lay paralyzed, his dog drinks water from the hose water
sprout. The image cuts to a close image of the grass, moving closer and closer through
its green blades. Suddenly the image burrows underground as an array of insects violent
dig through the dirt. X-ray visuality is captured in this opening of Blue Velvet by
shocking viewers through its juxtaposing the idyllic town of Lumberton with the violence
hidden below it. Furthermore, the opening sets up the movie’s theme, in which the
narrative will move from the world of everyday time and space and into the unseen
sordid realm embodied by the frightening character of Frank Booth (Dennis Hooper).
Lynch’s connection of surrealistic imagery with the dreamscape is a salient
feature in his work in terms of exploring the underside of American suburbia and
metropolitan spaces. Lynch and Frost wanted to apply these same themes into the rural
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setting of Twin Peaks through the realm of the supernatural. Here, X-ray visuality is
illustrated in the odd representations of a fourth dimension or alternate plane of reality
that has been penetrating the town of Twin Peaks. As revealed in the fourth episode, the
secret society of the Bookhouse Boys are aware there is an “evil that lurks in those
woods.” However, only a few people have powers to access this world. For instance, it
is revealed at the end of the pilot episode that Laura’s distraught mother, Sarah Palmer
(Grace Zabriskie) has psychic powers. During the sequence, Sarah is restlessly sleeping
as she sees an image of a person (not revealed) walking through the woods with a
flashlight. Sarah awakens and violently screams as the show’s villain and evil entity
BOB is seen in the mirror on the wall. 4 The image cuts back to a hand stealing Laura’s
half-heart necklace, ending the episode over Sarah’s haunting scream. Later in the series,
she has another frightening vision of BOB at the foot of Laura’s bed. One could easily
deduce that these sequences are all but Sarah’s dream. But, in fact, Sarah’s paranormal
powers are a conduit to a dimension that most cannot see.
At the start of the second season, it is revealed Madeleine Ferguson (also played
by Sheryl Lee), Laura’s cousin (who is visiting her Aunt Sarah and Uncle Leland to help
them through their crisis) may also occupy psychic powers. The morning after she
accomplices James Hurley (James Marshall) and Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) in
breaking into Dr. Jacoby’s office, Madeleine is seen staring intensely at the carpet.
Madeleine tells her aunt Sarah that she had a terrible dream about this very spot on the
carpet. Suddenly, Madeleine shockingly sees a depression materialzing in the carpet in
4
It should be noted that Frank Silva, the show’s set dresser, was accidentally caught in the mirror when
filming the scene. When reviewing the footage, Lynch liked Silva’s presence, so they created the character
of BOB and began building his story into the narrative.
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the form of blood. The blood is a premonition that Madeleine will be killed by BOB,
after he takes corporal form as her uncle Leland. In episode nine, Madeleine’s powers
are confirmed when she takes over Laura’s volunteer job serving meals on wheels. On
her first day, she meets Mrs. Tremond (Frances Bay), an odd old woman and her
grandson, Pierre (Austin Jack Lynch). Mrs. Tremond notices that her meal contains
creamed corn. She tells Madeleine that she specifically requested no creamed corn with
her meals. Mrs. Tremond says “do you see creamed corn on that plate?” Madeleine
looks to the plate and sees the creamed corn is now missing. She then looks at Pierre
who is strangely holding creamed corn in the palms of his hands. Although the meaning
of creamed corn is not made apparent to Madeleine, BOB from the Black Lodge feeds on
it for nourishment and it is referred to as Garmonbozia (pain and suffering). A canned
everyday food such as creamed corn suddenly takes on a complex meaning as it becomes
a vessel between the normal world and the evil realm of the Black Lodge. These
examples illustrate how both Sarah and Madeleine have the ability to penetrate through
normal time and space, and see into another worldly dimension that most cannot posses.
When representing the realm of the supernatural in Twin Peaks, filmic time
begins to slow down and meaning tends to becomes obscure. For example, Dale Cooper
is shot in his hotel room, which ends the first season, and is suddenly visited by a tall
Giant (Carel Struycken). As Cooper lays hurt on the floor, the Giant tells him to
consider him a friend and that he will tell him three things or clues which pertain to the
murder of Laura Palmer. The manner is which the scene is filmed moves between
extremely low and wide angles images of the Giant and the brightly lit overhead shot of
Cooper lying paralyzed on the floor. Helping to create this disconcerting effect is the
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characters’ slow enunciated dialogue and the ambient rumbling of an ominous and
haunting noise. The intermixing of these complex elements in the mise en scene
suggests that the Giant is not from the everyday world. 5
The most notable example of derailing filmic time and space as a means to
capture the alternate reality of the Black Lodge is Cooper’s dream/vision sequence where
the spirit of BOB is revealed as the killer. The character of BOB is an entity from the
extra-dimension of the Black Lodge which is a place of pure evil. The portal into the
Black Lodge is a ring surrounded by twelve sycamore trees in the woods of Twin Peaks
called Glastonbury Grove. 6 Located within the Black Lodge is the red room, which first
appears in Cooper’s dream during the second episode of the series. The dream begins
with Cooper asleep in the Northwestern hotel. Over the sounds of thunder, the image
cuts to Cooper as an older man sitting in a chair in the Black Lodge’s red room which is
surrounded by red drapes. In the corner, Cooper sees a dwarf standing with his back
towards him, who seems to be obscurely shaking with no explanation. The image cuts to
Sarah Palmer’s vision (seen earlier in the episode) of BOB hiding near the foot of Laura’s
bed. MIKE the seer’s (Al Strobel) voice is heard as the image returns to Cooper asleep.
MIKE appears and says, “Through the darkness of future past. The magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds. Fire walk with me” (my emphasis). MIKE adds
that they (meaning him and BOB) once lived above a convenience store. But MIKE says
that he has seen the face of God and changed his ways, and then cuts off his arm. MIKE
then says his name is “MIKE” and his name is “BOB.” We then see BOB, who appears
5
It has been suggested that the Giant is also from the Black Lodge, but is positioned in a neutral realm
called the waiting room.
6
It was also suggested that scorched burning oil can also transport one into the Black Lodge.
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to be in the basement of Twin Peaks’ hospital. Hearing MIKE’s voice, BOB says that he
promises to kill again. The image cuts to twelve candles in a circle in an undefined
location. The candle’s flames are blown out. 7 The image returns back to Dale asleep
and then dissolves into the red room where Dale now sees who he thinks is Laura Palmer.
The enigmatic dwarf known as the “The Man from Another Place” (Michael J. Anderson)
then turns to him and says (speaking backwards), “let’s rock.” The image cuts to a full
shot of the room as the dwarf sits on the couch near Laura. Near the drapes behind the
couch, a statue is position between two lamps. Behind the drapes is a silhouette of bird
flying past—suggesting the owls, which BOB will sometimes take the form of.
Continuing to speak backwards, the dwarf strangely says that the gum Cooper likes is
coming back in style. The dwarf adds that Laura is his cousin and “looks almost exactly
as Laura.” Dale responds that it is Laura Palmer. Dale then asks if she is Laura. She
responds that she feels like Laura, “but sometimes my arms bend back.” 8 The dwarf says
that she is filled with secrets, adding they are both from a place where birds sing a pretty
song and music is always in the air. We then hear one of the show’s jazzy themes as the
image dollys towards the dwarf. The dwarf stands and begins to do a dance over the
strobe light. 9 Laura stands up and whispers something into Cooper’s ear, which viewers
are not privy to. Cooper awakens from the dream.
Like the Cubist’s X-ray presentation of various interior viewpoints of an object in
space and time, Lynch’s distortion of normal pictorial televisual reality renders the
alternate reality of the Black Lodge in a hyper-stylized fashion. Throughout the series,
7
The candles presumable alludes to the twelve sycamore trees—the portal that leads into the realm of the
Black Lodge, where the red room is located.
8
This line of dialogue alludes to Nadine Hurley who breaks the arms of her aerobic equipment—alluding
to the supernatural strength she will later posses from the realm of the Black Lodge.
9
The strobe light effect is made clearer in the film’s prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992).
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the switches from the everyday to the supernatural are often unpredictable and tend to
emerge out of nowhere. This distorting effect of filmic time and space is Lynch’s not
queuing viewers to the switches between reality and the realm of the supernatural.
Thus, Lynch’s use of juxtaposition as a means of shocking viewers not only follows the
surrealist model that breaks with the normal depiction of objects in time and space, but
also used to introduce another realm of reality hidden from the town of Twin Peaks.
Lastly, Cooper says to Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean), after telling him
about the dream of the red room, that finding Laura’s murderer is simple: “break the
code, solve the crime.” Though many of the clues to solving the murder of Laura are
presented within normal pictorial time and space, breaking the code requires access to a
supernatural dimension. That is, the key to solving the crime is moving back and forth
between two worlds. But the shifts between the two worlds are not always clear for
viewers. For instance, Margaret the Log Lady may at first seem to be mentally instable,
and that the log she carries around town is a non-sequitur. However, the log knows vital
information in regards to Laura’s death. And Margaret is the medium which carries the
information from the log to Dale and Cooper. These moments make Twin Peaks not only
an unusual detective narrative (especially for primetime television), but also offers
viewers the opportunity and a challenge to solve a complex puzzle beyond the traditional
who-done-it story. Janet H. Murray notes that “A linear story has to end in some one
place…. But a multithreaded story can offer many voices at once without giving any one
of them that last word” (137). This is why I have chosen to term these odd moments in
Twin Peaks as X-ray visuality, because the viewer is transported and given access to
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heterogeneous and often bizarre perspectives within a world that is invisible or hidden
within the everyday.
Conclusion:
Twin Peaks invites viewers to navigate and move through its complex and quirky
representations of time and space to solve its puzzle. This, I believe, is one of the
reasons Twin Peaks generated so much discussion and pleasure amongst fans and posters
on the Usenet board. When ABC wanted to reveal Laura Palmer’s murderer, they ended
what was one of the most enjoyable and engaging element of the show. In a recent
interview with the TimesOnline, Lynch states that “A big catastrophe was the solving of
the murder of Laura Palmer [midway through season two]. That wasn’t supposed to
happen for a long, long time. So when it was solved, the thing was killed. The goose laid
a little golden egg, solid gold, and then you’re asked to kill that little goose.” By
prematurely revealing the murderer, ABC squashed the possibilities of the unique story
world that Twin Peaks potentially held.
But one must question even if ABC had not canceled the show, could Lynch and
Frost have kept pace with the show’s fandom and desire for more complex puzzles to
solve? Jenkins notes that the collective intelligence of fans of Twin Peaks were able to
quickly pool their resources, which ultimately placed demands on the producers of the
show they could not meet. As Jenkins points out, “Television would have to become
more sophisticated if it wanted to keep up with its most committed viewers” (2006: 34).
The fans on the Usenet board as a knowledge community, according to Jenkins, were
always one step ahead of Lynch and Frost, and were let down because they could not stay
ahead of them.
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Frost and Lynch’s unique approach to television lead critics to assert that Twin
Peaks had made a strong impact on the conventions of broadcast television. In May of
1990, the New York Times noted, “Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment,
and Jeff Sagansky, president of CBS Entertainment, have said that a main goal for the
coming season is to create original programs with new formats. Their statements, made
when they announced their program development plans to advertisers, have widely been
interpreted in the industry as allusions to the creative originality of Twin Peaks.”
Moreover, critics have cited Twin Peaks as paving the way for eccentric television shows
such as The X-Files and Six Feet Under. David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, cites
Twin Peaks as a strong influence, which is evident in the show’s use of dreamscape
imagery. And Time magazine called Twin Peaks “the most hauntingly original work ever
done for American TV” (qtd. in Thompon 155).
The combination of Lynch’s unconventional and surrealistic approach to
television and fandom’s utilization of the Usenet discussion board on an early
manifestation of the Internet marks Twin Peaks not only as the series that help to expand
the boundaries of television in the 1990s (through its fusion of surrealism and pop
culture), but also as the series that involved an early movement of media convergence,
illustrating the multiple media interaction between media producers and participatory
culture. The Twin Peaks Usenet, according to Henry Jenkins, is one of the first media
platforms that enabled an online community to quickly circulate information on recently
aired episodes, which “[attracted] by some estimates 25,000 readers” (2006: 32). Thus,
Twin Peaks gave viewers a glimpse into what the future would hold for new media
platforms and their intersection with film and television.
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