So, in case you all didn't know, I'm a dropout. Not a proper one mind you - just a 6th year dropout. There was something I clung onto longer than the rest though, and that was my english dissertation on the subject of how director David Lynch portrays the American Dream as unattainable through his female characters. I was intending to use three of Lynch's films - 'Blue Velvet', 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me', and 'Mulholland Drive' to explore the idea but didn't quite get that far.
Though I did write quite a bit on the subject of 'Blue Velvet' and I thought it would be a shame to let it go stale on my hard drive, so I'm sharing what I managed to get written today. So without further ado, my incomplete dissertation.
(NOTE: IT CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR 'BLUE VELVET'.)
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While David Lynch’s diverse filmography contains many recurring elements - notions of good and evil, meticulous sound design, a dream-like sensibility - there is perhaps none more fascinating than his portrayal of American society. Offering nightmarish visions of suburbia, idyllic small towns, and hope-filled metropolis’, the director soared to popularity by utilising his unique surrealist vision as a subtle critique of life in the USA. The unifying factor in his four-decade film career, however, is not the places but their inhabitants. The typical “Lynchian” characters will toy with the American dream: some embracing it fully; some being soured by its shortfalls; and some abusing it for their own nefarious purposes. This cannot be see more clearly than in his women. Presenting an intriguing blend of innocence and corruption with his female characters, they are always profoundly affected by their environment and the sensitivities of living in such a pristine culture. The very fact that his female roles suffer similar plights despite their diversity only reinforces this fact. Within Blue Velvet (1986), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) and Mulholland Drive (2001) there are takes on the 50s femme fatale, drug-addled homecoming queens, and aspiring starlets who all suffer in their attempts at the American dream. It would seem Lynch believes they were destined to fail. The land of the free he portrays is a society whose ideals are fundamentally unattainable due to, ironically, the nature of life in the country itself. This paradox provides inspiration for some of the thematic and cinematic qualities that make David Lynch’s films so surreally compelling.
Having achieved art house success with his debut feature Eraserhead (1977), Lynch eventually broke through commercially in the 80s with his much respected The Elephant Man (1980), garnering numerous prestigious award nominations. Following the failure of his next project, the epic Dune (1984), Lynch expressed a desire to return to a more personal film-making. The result was Blue Velvet - the tale of a nightclub singer tormented by a gangster whom is holding her family hostage. The film tapped into the national psyche, offering a warped view of Americana in which the kept suburban veneer is shattered, revealing an underworld of crime and abuse. It centres on Jeffery Beaumont (played by Kyle MacLachlan), a college student returned to his humble home of Lumberton in order to see his ailing father. When he finds an ear on the way back from the hospital, he begins to investigate with sweet high school student Sandy (Laura Dern). Their sleuthing leads them to torch singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), and from here Jeffery he is drawn into the illicit circumstances of her life. Vallens is living under the thumb of the psychopathic Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has kidnapped her husband and son in order to gain sexual favours. He forces her to engage in unsettling acts of emotional exploitation and sadomasochism to the revulsion of Beaumont, whose obsession with her results in a physical relationship and an unhappy Booth. During the climax of the film, after Frank has intimidated Jeffery through violence and substance abuse, the protagonist hides from the gun-wielding villain in the closet where he first witnessed Dorothy’s molestation. He manages to eventually trick Booth and shoots him in the head, killing him. The film closes on a montage where Dorothy is reunited with her son.
Blue Velvet bestows Rossellini’s character much thematic significance. She is clearly the victim of an irrepressible society: a society which allows her to be humiliated, degraded and taken advantage of. By explicitly showing the criminal underworld of quaint Lumberton, and all its bizarre characters, a stark contrast is created between the suburban dream and harsh reality. The beautiful homes are built on foundations of evil and corruption. This is the basis on which Lynch’s embellishments - his casting decisions, locations, symbolism, commentary - lay, and Dorothy Vallens is the result of an America which attempts to paint over its appalling problems.
Of the film, Lynch had this to say:
“This is the way America is to me. There’s a very innocent, naive quality to life, and there’s a horror and a sickness as well. It’s everything. Blue Velvet is a very American movie. The look of it was inspired by my childhood in Spokane, Washington.” - Lynch
Within the movie the contrast between “a very innocent, naive quality to life” and “a horror and a sickness” transcends even the plot, the very film itself being a constant struggle between an enjoyable romantic movie and a dark exposé on the beaten and forgotten. This is best epitomised when looking at the environments of the two female leads. Sandy seems to appear in “American approved” locations such as high school, Arlene’s diner or house parties; as opposed to Dorothy’s seedy clubs, dingy apartment building or weird brothels/drug dens. Where Sandy has to deal with trivial issues such as troubles with her boyfriend, Dorothy has to come to terms with rape and the abduction of her family.
How does Lynch create these two different worlds? A pertinent example is the film’s opening. It begins with a tilt shot from the picturesque blue sky down to a white picket fence protecting a bed of blood red roses. The image is very saturated and colourful, perpetuating the clean suburban paradise one has come to expect. This is then succeeded by numerous shots of everyday life in Lumberton (schoolchildren crossing the road, men waving from passing trucks) scored by an upbeat version of the song ‘Blue Velvet’. Through these cinematic choices, a certain message is conveyed: that this simple suburb is one to be idolised. This set-up lends itself well to the irony about to follow, and pre-emptively justifies the naivety of Sandy’s character and curiosity of Jeffery in a very succinct manner. Living in a closed garden of white picket fences had meant its inhabitants have little knowledge of what lurks just beneath them.
With this established, Lynch’s directorial flourishes begin to set in and the contrast becomes evident. While hosing down the garden, Jeffery’s father has the collapse which sets the film in motion. In the suburban world this is a tragedy, and and the director cleverly uses the idea of tragedy to connect this world to that of the criminals, where tragedy is commonplace. From the dropped hose the camera moves on a dolly through the grass, finally settling on a dim shot of black beetles burrowing through the earth. This is part of the bug motif which recurs often throughout the film, but is used each time in different contexts. It is clear that the pests symbolise members of the criminal underworld, that need to be exterminated through brute force. Bugs are reviled by most, yet they are inconspicuous and commonplace. They are also part of the national ecosystem, much like organised crime.
Yet it is not just sequences, but many cinematic elements that support Dorothy and Sandy as the leads of their own very different pieces. There is Angelo Badalamenti’s score, which offers luscious Hollywood classic string cues to Sandy’s scenes, and almost goofy cymbal and double bass investigation music as she schemes with Jeffery in Arlene’s diner - the film, like America, unwilling to take their plight seriously. The use of pop music also gives a modern feel. Dern is dressed in typically teenage clothes such as homely pink jumpers, her blonde hair adding to her “girl next door” image. Dorothy is portrayed amorously throughout.
Dorothy's portrayal is thematically of note, and the subject of much debate amongst Lynch’s critics. Dorothy Vallen’s power exists solely in her sexuality. It is the only reason her husband and child are still alive, though were she not attractive her family would perhaps not be put through such strife. Due to this fact, she has gained a twisted view of sex grown from a personal resentment. This is displayed in her desire to be demeaned during sexual acts (ie. commanding Jeffery to “Hit me!”) and taking pleasure when she is abated. The brutalised Dorothy uses her sexuality to manipulate power dynamics. When she first discovers Jeffery in her closet and assumes it is so he can watch her undress, she instructs him himself to “get undressed!” thus she feels in control of the situation. It is a comment on the inherent sexism existing within America - that women are sexualised and seen as objects, toys, and in an unsettling sadomasochistic scene with Frank, mothers, on which we can leech. When her tormenter grasps the strip of blue velvet from her dress as she sings in the club, it shows he owns her. Her objectification is a direct contradiction to the ideals of equal opportunity for every person that the US purports.
Whether the auteur’s work is deemed satirical or celebratory it is clear examining sex is a part of his search for a more personal film-making:
“Certain aspects of sex are troubling - the way it’s used as power, for instance, or the way it takes the form of perversions that exploit other people. Those things are not good, but I think a lot of people find them a real kick and it’s a fairly common sort of behaviour.” - Lynch
That he believes sexual perversions are quite universal is antithetical to what is portrayed in the film. In fact, in what appears to be satire, he equates the odd characters with the dangerous and unstable. Throughout the film, the unusual character’s are seen as corruptive. Dorothy, Frank, and his entourage (including Ben, in light drag) are all unconventional people who’s behaviour is seen to be irrational, psychotic or destructive. Even the voyeuristic tendencies of Jeffery are subdued by his straight-laced values. It would appear Lynch is commenting on the way Americans view people who do no fit the mould that the tight spectrum of the American Dream allows. Aspects such as the casting of Italian Rossellini and the feminine qualities of the male characters detach them from ‘typical citizens’, so are seen as an assault on the average way of life. The characters are actively portrayed as violent. In perhaps the movie’s most surreal scene Ben lip-synchs to a performance of Roy Orbson’s ‘In Dreams’. The scene is hypnotic in its dreaminess, and after the viewer is charmed, the character lands a brutal punch to Jeffery’s stomach. We are encouraged not to be seduced by oddities, to instead clutch on to traditional ways and moral standards.
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Tara x
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