Naido/Diane - Theories Thread

[Jasper]

This is a thread for any and all thoughts or theories about Naido/Diane.

I’ve been interested in theories, found here and elsewhere, that the character of Naido, who is Diane, was chosen to represent the Japanese victims of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. Other people have offered additional support for this idea, but here I’ll stick to my own observations.

The Return posits the 1945 Trinity test in New Mexico, the first detonation of the atomic bomb, as being the central event that summoned or enabled Judy to manifest and vomit offspring into our reality. The atomic test sequence in Part 8 of The Return is scored using Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.” BOB is prominent among the offspring to emerge from Judy in this sequence, and BOB is a part of the character that is Mr. C, and it is Mr. C who banishes Diane to the Mauve Zone, which is perhaps a representation of “nonexistence.” The dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were banished to material nonexistence, and furthermore, many survivors were disabled and/or disfigured, and found themselves living apart from society. A group of 25 young female survivors, who’d later become known as the Hiroshima Maidens, were left unable to find spouses or meaningfully participate in society. As described here:

“many of them were just school girls when the bomb was dropped and as young adults were now missing eyes and noses and had burns covering huge swaths of their bodies.”

And here:

“they existed as liminal beings, their bodies viewed as abject, unliveable and uninhabitable,” and “there was a sense of pity and hopelessness for their solitary future non-lives, perceived as dead maidens walking.”

Here it's described how the Hiroshima Maidens bonded over shared experiences:

“such as being hidden from view by parents, stared at when they ventured outside, unwanted by employers, and rejected as potential wives for fear they were genetically damaged.”

Championed by Japanese Methodist minister Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, news of the plight of the Hiroshima Maidens ultimately led them to receive privately funded humanitarian surgery in the United States in 1955, including, as described here:

“not only cosmetic surgery for their appearances but also reconstructive surgery to improve functionality in their hands on which the fingers had often been fused together by scar tissue.”

One woman died in surgery, but others indeed went on to find spouses and build families, or otherwise participate meaningfully in society. Their May 1955 arrival in the United States was highly publicized, and Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who had also made the trip, was the featured subject of an episode of the popular television program This Is Your Life. Mark Frost was only one year old at the time, but David Lynch was nine. Frost or Lynch could have easily learned about these events later, but it’s possible or even likely that a young David Lynch heard about the Hiroshima Maidens at the time of their visit, via mass media and/or word of mouth, which could have made quite an impression.

There is a photograph by photographer Christer Strömholm, from somewhere around 1961-1963, showing a girl from Hiroshima with milky eyes, and it became a popular notion that this girl had seen the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. She may be too young in the photograph for that to have been the case, but either way, this further reinforced the notion of damaged eyes resulting from exposure to an atomic blast.

Perhaps Diane, by virtue of being a victim in the causal chain stemming from the creation of the bomb, became metaphysically akin to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing victims, and Naido was perhaps even more specifically inspired by the famous Hiroshima Maidens. Nae Yuuki, the actress who portrays the Naido form of Diane, is indeed Japanese. Diane, like the Maidens, suffers from disfigurement and impairment, and exists in some kind of twilight realm. Diane likewise later undergoes a transformation, regaining her appearance, sight and speech, and is romantically paired with Cooper.

Diane’s transformation takes place in the United States, which is completely unsurprising based upon the setting of Twin Peaks, but, interestingly, the transformation takes place in the office of Harry S. Truman (occupied at the time by his brother, Frank). At the time of the 1945 Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico, Harry S. Truman had recently become president, and he noted in his diary that, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.” Truman would later personally approve the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (It should be emphasized that the United States government did not assist in nor appreciate the project to help the Hiroshima Maidens, and is said to have later quashed similar efforts, uncomfortable with the moral light in which such activities placed certain of its wartime actions.) In any event, as this article on the Hiroshima Maidens puts it:

“Existing in the liminal space between life and death, they shed their death masks through intervention by the same nation that created their disfigurements.”

In the above instance, it might be reaching to suggest any authorial intent in Twin Peaks relating to the sheriffs Truman and president Truman, but the victimization, disfigurement, impairment, banishment, and subsequent transformation of Diane is somewhat more difficult to dismiss as coincidence.

During the Naido transformation, her face opens as if it's some kind of cocoon-like mask, and her surroundings become the red room. This cocoon-like husk hovers in the red room and Diane’s face appears. The surroundings fade back into the sheriff’s office where Diane’s true form is now revealed, still in bathrobe and slippers. Because Naido is a mask, and not an entity separate from Diane, we only see the cocoon-like husk in the lodge, rather than the human forms that we see in the case of doppelgängers and tulpas, and we likewise don’t see a golden seed as is left behind by tulpas. These transformations occur in the lodge, and Diane now appears in the sheriff’s station decked out like the lodge, with red hair, red lips, and b&w chevron nails. (I won’t linger on the nature of the connection between the lodge and the Mauve Zone.)

So Diane’s form of Naido is a prison and symbolic mask. She is metaphysically akin to the Hiroshima victims, but not literally one of them, though she is ultimately also a victim of what was unleashed by the creation of the bomb. Diane is not a different entity from Naido, but is locked in another form and deprived of much of her sensory perception and communicative abilities. If there’s any truth in the speculation about Naido being connected to Japanese victims of atomic bombings, then Lynch and Frost seem to have devised an ingenious way to provide representation to this demographic, despite the show being set almost entirely in the United States, and ultimately having nothing whatsoever to do with Japan, (unless we count Catherine Martell disguised as Mr. Tojamura, which was actually an identity chosen by Piper Laurie herself).

All of this is even more interesting given the well known popularity of Twin Peaks in Japan. Kyle MacLachlan even went to Japan in 1992 to promote Fire Walk With Me, and again in 2017 in order to promote The Return. David Lynch filmed this spot advertising The Return for the Japanese market. Japan enjoyed some unusual extra Peaks material, such this television advertisement for Fire Walk With Me, wherein Cooper records a message to Diane on his tape recorder from the Black Lodge. More famously, David Lynch returned to Twin Peaks in 1993 to personally direct this continuing story told over the course of four Georgia Coffee advertisements made for Japanese television.




The Twin Peaks Georgia Coffee story culminates in Cooper entering the lodge to rescue a young Japanese woman, Asami (actress name?), and emerging at night to reunite her with her partner, Ken (Taka Higuchi), in Glastonbury Grove, This is a rather like part 18 of The Return, when Cooper emerges from the lodge, at night, to reunite with his partner, Diane, in Glastonbury Grove. Hey, wait a minute . . .


WAIT



JUST



A



DARN



MINUTE.




Well! Here we have noticeably similar shots, in the same setting, with remarkable narrative overlap. (Note that I’ve cropped the widescreen shots from The Return, while the Georgia Coffee commercial is its original aspect ratio.) In the composition of these shots, Diane, whether by Lynch’s conscious design or not, is mirroring the position of Asami, a Japanese woman, from an earlier, noncanonical(?) narrative. It could be meaningless, but this represents an interesting correlation nonetheless. It can at least be reasonably suggested that Lynch likes the image of a couple reuniting under these very specific circumstances, staged in a very specific way, leading him to depict it twice. Make of this what you will.


Feel free to add any thoughts on the subject of Naido/Diane, whether or not they have anything to do with the above interpretation.

 

[Jordan Cole]

I don't have much to add to this interp, because I'm very agnostic on it myself (I just wonder if the actress for Naido was chosen for any other reason besides being Japanese or if that's even a thing that's supposed to be important about her.) I do wonder if Lynch is playing off Dern and Nae Yuuki's pairing from Inland Empire...?

I mainly wanted to say I'm still shocked those Japanese coffee commercials exist, and done after Twin Peaks cancelation and the filming of Fire Walk With Me. I just can't believe the band got back together to do that.

 

[Jasper]

I don't have much to add to this interp, because I'm very agnostic on it myself (I just wonder if the actress for Naido was chosen for any other reason besides being Japanese or if that's even a thing that's supposed to be important about her.) I do wonder if Lynch is playing off Dern and Nae Yuuki's pairing from Inland Empire...?

I mainly wanted to say I'm still shocked those Japanese coffee commercials exist, and done after Twin Peaks cancelation and the filming of Fire Walk With Me. I just can't believe the band got back together to do that.

The immediate and narratively practical thing about Nae Yuuki is that she isn’t Laura Dern, so we the viewers might not know that she’s actually Diane as we watch for the first time. (Some people figured out very early on that Naido might in some way be related to Diane, since Naido backwards is Odian.) That one actor is Asian and the other European certainly helps to further conceal Naido’s identity.

Once you realize that Naido is Diane, and you go back and watch the “Mauve Zone” scene, it’s clear that upon touching Cooper’s face she says something like, “Cooper? Cooper? Yes! Yes!” I don’t think that this is likely to be controversial.

The other thing, of course, is the condition of Naido’s eyes, which, in practical narrative terms, are part of her overall imprisonment and inability to effectively communicate, identify herself, orient herself, and so on. Is there any additional meaning there, such as I’ve suggested in the first post, and has been suggested by others? I find it very likely, but who knows? It’s ultimately better left mysterious and abstract. If Lynch or Frost came out and said, yes, that was part of the inspiration for Naido, it might be somewhat diminished.

There are further things linking Naido/Diane to the bomb. I pointed out that the Naido/Diane transformation is in the lodge, and the lodge is within her, appearing in Naido’s face, then in Diane’s appearance. It’s also been noted that Diane’s appearance upon emerging from her Naido form is so much like that of whack job Marjorie Cameron that it’s hard to imagine that it’s a coincidence. See for example this article on Medium, and this Reddit post, which feature some useful observations and images. The similarities with Cameron also extend to the Diane tulpa. From said Medium article:

If you’ve read Frost’s Secret History of Twin Peaks, you know that the history of occultist Jack Parsons is intricately entwined with the mythology of the show. Parsons performed a magickal ritual in the desert which may or may not have opened a portal allowing the entry of BOB/Judy into our realm. He summoned the mythical Whore of Babylon, & when he returned home, he found red-headed bombshell actress Marjorie Cameron waiting at his door.

The candy-red hair is most obvious, but the geisha-esque fashion sense gives it away. Is it possible that Cooper & Diane’s own magickal ritual was intended to counteract Parsons’ Babylon Working, which, it would seem, may have been the original instigator of the entry of Judy/BOB into the world? The female orgasm has been identified by occultists like Kenneth Grant to be, in effect, a portal-opening cosmic event, so it’s no surprise that the sex scene between them is concentrated solely on Diane—she is the conduit between worlds, & her climax completes the ritual. It’s worth noting that Cameron appeared to Parsons only after he completed his ritual; in part 18, Diane instead disappears after completion. If Parsons opened a portal, were Cooper & Diane the ones who closed it?

Regarding Inland Empire, I was going to touch upon it, but it didn’t seem relevant enough to include, especially since Lynch reuses actors all the time. I think Nae Yuuki’s character mentions a monkey in IE, and for some reason Naido makes monkey-like vocalizations in the sheriff’s station holding cell, but trying to connect those things seems like a stretch, and I also don’t know if there’s any connection between Naido’s monkey sounds and the FWWM “Judy” monkey.

It’s also curious that Naido is replaced in the Mauve Zone by Phoebe Augustine, credited as American Girl. She also warns that her mother is coming, accompanied by loud pounding. The mother of all bombs? Many assume an association with Judy. Is Augustine “American Girl” because the bomb was American? Is it a coincidence that Mr. C makes his entrance with a pounding Lynch-mixed version of American Woman? More food for thought.

P.S. It is sort of amazing that the final original Twin Peaks installment is a continuing story told in a Japanese coffee commercial, but it's less surprising when we remember that Japan was the last place where Twin Peaks mania held its grip. Even FWWM went over well in Japan. Lynch and Frost are well aware of the special love for Twin Peaks in Japan, which of course increases the likelihood that they'd think of Japan when working on their bomb narrative (as when “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” was used as the score for the bomb sequence) since, obviously, it's Japan that was bombed.

 

[Jordan Cole]

It's more like how much work went into those Japanese commercials. I had assumed for years they were made during season 2. But two years later!?? Like wouldn't they have to recreate all those sets and etc...It just seems incredible to me. It looks like it happened right during that time.

 

[Soolsma]

(I won’t linger on the nature of the connection between the lodge and the Mauve Zone.)

But I will! It's interesting that seeing how Naido/Diane was seemingly pulled out of the Mauve zone by the Fireman, one could deduce it's accessible from both the White and the Black lodge.

That's some serious sleuthing by the way, well done. It's so thorough that I don't have anything to add in the nuclear aspect.

 

[Jasper]

But I will! It's interesting that seeing how Naido/Diane was seemingly pulled out of the Mauve zone by the Fireman, one could deduce it's accessible from both the White and the Black lodge.

It could be. I don’t know where the Fireman comes into things. Did Naido/Diane fall into space on her own, and then get steered by the Fireman so that she’d land in Twin Peaks near the portal to the Fireman’s home? He had to be involved somewhere along the line.

It’s interesting, because, in dreamlike fashion, when Cooper and Naido go to the roof of the Mauve Zone, it’s not the building Cooper entered, but instead a small floating cube in space. It’s like when you’re having a dream and you open your bedroom door to find that it leads to a hallway in your old high school or something.

Then there’s the way that MIKE seems to be, perhaps, more “good” in The Return, and the red room image leads Dougie-Coop to the casino winnings, the Arm helps him defeat Ike The Spike, and MIKE even beckons him to the pastry shop with positive results. MIKE also uses some kind of electrical lodge magic to make the final Dougie tulpa from Cooper’s hair and the golden seed. So there’s all of this seemingly good magic coming from the lodge.

That's some serious sleuthing by the way, well done. It's so thorough that I don't have anything to add in the nuclear aspect.