thereâs a great write up by someone on here that i will have to search for in which they discuss how the ultimate evil for david lynch is sexual violence against women (even more severe than murder, which is often auxiliary to that type of specific violence); twin peaks is incredibly soapyâon purpose! lynch and frost are playing with form and content on purpose to examine incredibly difficult subject matter through a (for lack of a better word) more palatable formatâwhich most of the time i think works to its advantage and makes those moments of visible horror so much more effective (i use âvisibleâ rather than âtrueâ or other similar adjectives because the horror is always there, itâs embedded in the entire town, shows up in every generation we see in screen and we watch them grapple with it in different ways, but thatâs a separate post)
howeverâand iâve talked about this beforeâi find that once youâve watched fire walk with me it is so much harder to watch the show because the ignorance of nearly every single member of the town (yes, including cooper) pervades the way the action unfolds. twin peaks viewers knew the premise of the show going in and we get to discover details and information alongside the characters. when albert rosenfield comes in as the only voice of reason and reality, itâs set up to be jarring to both the townspeople and to the viewer. why?
sheryl lee said in an interview, âfire walk with me was very difficult for me to watch⊠and, emotionally itâs a reminder: this is a movie, but this continues to happen every day and how can we stop it? when i watch fire walk with me now, as a mother, i watch it and i think look at all those signs that were being exhibited. this girl was in danger, and look at all these people that were in her life. what would have happened if someone, somewhere, somehow could have helped or stopped it? thatâs hard to watch.â
much has been discussed critically about fire walk with me and whether or not itâs exploitative in the ways that it portrays sexual violence against women. while lynch does not shy away from making that violence visible, it is done so in an attempt to make the viewer examine their own relationship to that violence and how it shows up in their own lives. the audience is forced to think about the ways that they are complicit in how and why these violent acts occur and what they can do to stop it, which is why for many it is an uncomfortable watch. for others, it is a painful (and speaking from my own perspective) necessary watch because lynch didnât make a horror movie, he made a documentary.
fire walk with me is necessary (in my humblest of opinions) to understand why the pieces that lynch and frost put into twin peaks work. thereâs so much backstory to how they werenât originally going to reveal who laura palmerâs killer was until ABC made them, lynch wasnât around during much of the second season so things got a little off the rails storytelling-wise, etc. etc. but fire walk with me allows them to tie difficult, often horrifying threads (ben horne unknowingly attempting to have sex with his daughter, the townspeopleâs distancing of albert, the hands of random townspeople trembling as BOB attempts to claw back into the material world, the list goes on and on) back to the central thesis of âsexual violence is the ultimate evil, it is completely avoidable, and you have a responsibility to recognize the signs and stop being complicitâ
annaxmalina
stormborns
origamiaround
snowghoul
germansingergirl
ellievsbear
gummygunk
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
