S03E18: Part 18 (What is your name?)

i never really liked any interpretations of S3 that focus on a very literal, strategic conflict between good and evil that requires us to interpret Lynch's powerful emotional symbolism throughout as some sort of coded language for mechanical plotwork that ultimately frame the final image of Laura screaming in horror as something positive when its so clearly harrowing, and especially haunting to anyone with a deep emotional connection to that character. i think the exact purpose of Cooper's mission in S3 is meant to be not just cryptic but truly unknowable, and as a result, unjustifiable when Cooper is ultimately faced with the emotional consequences of all his tunnel-visioned "greater good" pursuing, which is embodied throughout the season in the worst way by the much more obviously harmful Mr. C, who is also running around on some cryptic quest which he seems willing to destroy everything and everyone in order to accomplish.

that said, i also dont think Lynch means for us to fully interpret Classic Cooper as a bad person. i think his intentions are good but i think perhaps what the end of S3 leaves us to question is if the ends truly justify the means? (well, one of the thousands of things it leaves us to question, at least.) this is very speculative of course but i find S3 as a whole feels like it could be Lynch reflecting on his own sort of zen philosophy toward life and coming to the conclusion that he's just as lost in this world as anybody. i know theres an innate frustration in trying to put out positivity into the universe with an enlightened, "big picture" mindset and still only seeing things get worse and worse. maybe trying to focus on some greater good cosmic force and trusting that your faith in it will guide you to only do good things, only makes it harder to predict the unforeseen consequences of your actions on the lives of individuals around you. i think even in the S2 finale we were starting to see how Cooper's hero complex leads him to blindly giving away his soul and giving rise to his evil shadow self. i also think the scene of Annie turning into Caroline who turns into Laura's doppelganger (not sure i got the order right on that) implies that Cooper is already stuck in a repeating cycle of trying to save women and only leading them to more suffering. Cooper's greatest virtue throughout the original run is his unbreakable commitment to his noble way of seeing things, but that also ends up being his tragic flaw.

im not sure if the way i phrased any of this makes sense, ha. i dont often analyze things outside of my own head but i always love when we share personal interpretations around here (y)
 
Ultimately, I don't do meta. I hate it.

I'm content to take things at face value. BOB was a demon who possessed Leland and wanted to possess Laura. When he couldn't, he killed her. Laura 'ascended'. Cooper was the hero. He got trapped in the Red Room for 25 years, evidently doing other jobs for the Fireman in the meantime. Something invades the Lodges. Laura is destroyed. Cooper has to return to Twin Peaks to rescue Laura. Cooper saves her, but Laura is catapulted into another reality. Cooper finds her in that other reality, having been told to go and find Gordon there. Possibly Audrey is there too.

People can look for symbolism if it makes them happy. To me, it's all quite straightforward.
 
I don't think something becomes meta when it veers from certain modern narrative tropes. Is the Bhagavad Gita 'meta'?

im not sure if the way i phrased any of this makes sense, ha. i dont often analyze things outside of my own head but i always love when we share personal interpretations around here (y)
Makes sense to me and I'm in agreement. I think part of what's at play in S3 in terms of where Cooper fits into it is the duality of the sensible and the insensible. He has the best of intentions, but I get the sense his mission is one of selective interpretation--he realizes only at the end that he was out of his depth. Much like viewers who try to impose a literal framework, moralistic or otherwise, Cooper was navigating a chaotic realm with the assumption that he could finagle the elements toward some fulfilling climax.

Instead we're left with what feels like a limbo state centered around a bare expression of grief, as if Laura's scream is suspending the point of the series in time by token of where it's placed structurally--an 'Eye of the Duck' that has a kind of didactic quality, or chant-like power or spell. It's a rather deliberate undoing of every prior step and it rejects understanding and it aggressively ends on a feeling of intense anguish and helplessness.

I've inadvertently been on a "sad ending" streak--many things I've watched lately happen to have sad endings. In looking up other's thoughts on these, I find those who treat 'sad ending' synonymous with 'bad ending.' Historically, I've encountered people that won't accept anything short of a happily ever after, and react to a sad ending as if it's a personal offense. Doesn't matter how well-written nor acted nor directed nor how fitting thematically. I don't want to say it's a kind of entitlement, nor do I want to say this is stunted in some way, or that anyone who disliked S3's ending must therefore have something against endings that leave one feeling hollow. But I think S3's ending is an active rejection of whatever fuels the notion that this isn't how you end a story.

I can't imagine a more fitting end to the narrative. I've often thought about how on one level it upsets me that FWWM's "happy ending" was reversed--but there's something effective and necessary about the ending of S3 in terms of what it's abandoning on one hand (plot literalism, catharsis) and how it operates as a pure expression of what the essential feeling is behind Laura Palmer's existence. Not just as a person, but an idea that has a certain relationship with culture, TV history and the circumstances of the production of a TV show. As a plot device it was basically exploited, more important for what it allowed to happen than what in itself already happened. The actual tangible horror that is its corollary in reality finding purchase in fictional expression was less important in the eyes of executives compared against their MO to make sure viewers didn't lose interest. Following a harrowing display of murder and even more harrowing revelation that the narrative crux turns out to have rested on incest, late S2 actually actively forgets about her for a stretch--more reward in melodrama and gags than discomfort. Even after FWWM set the record straight and stubbornly chose to disregard a cliffhanger and instead slip back in time to document the emotional realism of her as a person, her presence is more or less up in the air throughout S3. It's not until the last moment that her significance is cemented as being deeply woven into the complicated fabric of the whole DNA of the franchise, after so much of S3 kept it close to its vest what the DNA even was as we were watching it--but specifically, the way her significance is cemented is both abstract and immediately, disarmingly easy to read.

This got more in the weeds than I'd hoped, but what I'm trying to say is I agree--to view the last scene and come up with a "no, actually it's a good outcome because..." seems 10000% counter the actual point. The point to me seems to be something along the lines of "disregarding everything, the horror of this thing can't be truthfully expressed as anything other than bare horror." It requires a radical approach, the paring away of character and even of a comprehensible separation between fiction and reality. That would naturally include any attempt at a climactic ending that relies on tropes the likes of which are often employed to cleanly mark fiction as separate (or even alien) from underlying realities, accurate portrayals of what's horrifying about life instead best treated with distance to better fit in among the sales-driven television landscape. The TV industry is its own horror and blight that it itself would naturally never want to demonstrate, even if it were capable.

Something more literal wouldn't be treating Laura's feelings with respect beyond that of a fictional character, which is what I take S3's ending to amount to.

Coming at the end of following Cooper so closely and relegating Laura to a spectral presence, I almost want to say it was an act of elevation and deflation. "It's not about Cooper and it never was--it's about Laura."

Anyway, focusing so much on the ending almost makes it seem like S3 is philosophically nihilist, but I think it's just realistic about what can and can't be scrubbed away. But so much of S3 takes pleasure in small moments, acts of kindness and allowances of pleasure and joy. If there's a philosophy to TP it's both an abstract and simple one--it involves grand horror and small joy, and stubbornly sizes them up according to what might actually be the case in life--small joys and big horrors.
 
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Ultimately, I don't do meta. I hate it.

I'm content to take things at face value. BOB was a demon who possessed Leland and wanted to possess Laura. When he couldn't, he killed her. Laura 'ascended'. Cooper was the hero. He got trapped in the Red Room for 25 years, evidently doing other jobs for the Fireman in the meantime. Something invades the Lodges. Laura is destroyed. Cooper has to return to Twin Peaks to rescue Laura. Cooper saves her, but Laura is catapulted into another reality. Cooper finds her in that other reality, having been told to go and find Gordon there. Possibly Audrey is there too.

People can look for symbolism if it makes them happy. To me, it's all quite straightforward.
and that's totally a fair way to think about it, too! i agree with that face-value interpretation of events, but ive always been very emotionally-driven when it comes to art. and while theres definitely straightforward narratives to be found in all of Lynch's work (even Inland Empire has some plot points, though they're all tangled up in a disjointed mess and difficult to analyze by design) - ive always been drawn to it most because of the abstractions and unexplainable things that invite the audience to speculate and get analytical.

i think if theres any categorical difference in Lynch fans, its determined on how they choose to fill in those narrative "gaps" for themselves; not sure what i'd categorize myself as exactly, but i just try to analyze my own emotional response to the work and then piece together why i felt that way from speculating about the meaning of certain creative choices.

i dont try to think of it from a meta perspective per say, thats just more how i tend to phrase things when talking to other fans because it always feels like i need that outside framing to justify my analysis, partly an insecurity thing and partly to avoid it becoming a diary entry thats 100% me and my feelings, lol. and while i said i dont agree with certain interpretations, i find almost any interpretation of TP to still have value of both the entertainment and conversational variety!
 
Mark Frost said it best: Lynch is a stylist. He isn't particularly putting meanings in there, but leaving other people to do so. It's essentially what astrologers do: write something that anyone can read anything into.
 
Mark Frost said it best: Lynch is a stylist. He isn't particularly putting meanings in there, but leaving other people to do so. It's essentially what astrologers do: write something that anyone can read anything into.
The intention of an astrologer when they write what they write is very, very different from why an artist would want to maintain ambiguity. Lynch has said in several interviews, "I know what it means for me, but it means different things for different people, and you have to decide for yourself what it means for you." Reading his own words, I have no doubt that he does what he does with a clear understanding of meaning. The picture you paint of someone rolling dice and creating a narrative of empty signifiers, to me, logically can't result in a body of work that has such a strong level of deliberate and specific tone and emotion to it.
 
Just to be clear, terminology-wise, metatextualism and subtext are two completely different concepts not to be conflated. Metatextualism is a work commenting on itself. It could be a character breaking the fourth wall to address the audience, or characters commenting on the absurdity of something that's happening onscreen. Cooper saying, "See you at the curtain call," is arguably an example of this, and there are arguably plenty of others in The Return, as one of its fascinations seems to be breaking down barriers between the real and fictional (Mary Reber, etc.).

Subtext is something completely different. It's a theme, an analogy, an allegory, etc., that on either a literal or subconscious level connects with the audience, conveying something without saying it out loud. I find it strange to be outright dismissive of subtext, since the concept of subtext is baked into the idea of storytelling back to the earliest recorded sources. Early cultures began telling stories orally not just to pass the time, but to embody their society’s values and struggles, which is why analyzing old myths and ancient texts has such historical worth. As stories got more sophisticated, symbolism also got more complex and nuanced, but the two have always been indelibly linked.

As far as the implications of Part 18 go, Frost himself repeatedly talked about Cooper's "White Knight Syndrome" in interviews. That's not to say that we can't go all "Death of the Author" and say that Frost's and Lynch's intents don't matter once the work is out in the world for us to interpret, and that's fair. I think Lynch would probably agree with that. I'm not here to force an interpretation on anyone. What I will say is to echo Axxon N. and everylittlestar (both of whom I pretty much totally agree with) that the portrayal of Cooper in my view is not meant to be "white man bad." It's meant to show how myopic good intentions, too singular a focus no matter how well-meaning, can have bad consequences. I've just been reading Max Evry's new book on the making of Lynch's Dune, where it discusses the character arc of Paul in the Frank Herbert book (as distinct from the 1984 film version), as a well-meaning guy trying to do the right thing who ultimately unleashes a bloody jihad on the universe. It doesn't make Paul evil (or good) necessarily; it makes him complicated. YMMV, but I'm always happier to have complicated characters as opposed to perfect ones. Even on the original series, we see Cooper breaking his sworn oath by crossing the Canadian border out of his jurisdiction. Good intentions, bad judgment.

As to Lynch being purely a "stylist": I think Frost (and many others) tend to underestimate Lynch's sophistication as a storyteller. Reading the solo-Lynch scripts for Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive reveals a guy with a strong command of the written word, of character-specific dialogue and of structure that belies the semi-inarticulate way he often chooses to present himself. Even the Dune scripts display a remarkable comprehension of Herbert's complex books and themes (much of which scripted material unfortunately didn't make it to the screen). Likewise, reading early interviews with him (Kenneth Godwin's 1981 Eraserhead interviews, or even Rodley's Lynch on Lynch in the 1990s) shows him to be a very intellectual and thoughtful guy, far more than just a visual "stylist." While he of course doesn't like to verbalize things too much (even to his collaborators), and that surreal interpretive quality of his works is a large part of why I keep coming back to his stuff and why we can all debate endlessly about his films, it would be silly to say that--for instance--Eraserhead isn't a psychosexual nightmare about lust and reproduction, rife with images of phalluses, semen, and patricide. There is certainly symbolism and subtext in Lynch's films, some more obvious or open to interpretation than others, but it's not like the guy just shoots a bunch of random abstract things and throws them into a blender without any thought.

Endings in Lynch's works have always been of primary interest to me. The majority of his endings seem to be the Buddhist thing he talks about, of a golden age of peace and joy being born out of our current age of suffering, but the suffering must come first. So many of his "happy" endings are born from acts of extreme violence and the death of the main character, often by suicide. We see this in Eraserhead (where infanticide and implied suicide results in Henry reaching his heaven), The Elephant Man (Merrick decides to end his physical suffering by sleeping in a position he knows will kill him, reuniting him with his mother), Mulholland Drive (where Diane finally achieves peace/silence through suicide), and maybe INLAND EMPIRE (admittedly, I'm not really sure what happens there, but the Phantom seems to become Nikki at one point as she's shooting at it, and she ultimately transcends to a different plane of existence where she appears happy). I still go back and forth on the exact meaning of Laura's scream and the subsequent blackout. Is this just the end of one more loop in a cycle that has repeated perhaps hundreds of times (as arguably implied by the end credits footage of the whisper replaying)? Does Laura's scream (and the associated realization/confrontation of the truth) break the universe (an interesting and appropriate resolution to a story centered around a victim of abuse: being forced out of her dissociated state is so overwhelming that it brings about absolute destruction)? Does her awakening bring about a victory for Judy? Or does it merely symbolize the first step in a confrontation to come? Or does it transport Cooper and Laura/Carrie to yet another plane of existence that we're not privy to, the next chapter? In some way, maybe it's all of these at once, since that's where Lynch chose to leave us. I do think the electricity shutting off is significant, as time and time again in TP and Lynch's other works, we see electricity as a mysterious element that seems to be essentially powering the universe (and surging electricity frequently presages violence or death, as at the end of Eraserhead). Any viable way I can see of reading it, personally, it seems to be clearly one of Lynch’s most downbeat endings. Even that moody Angelo piece that plays over the credits is so funereal.
 
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The intention of an astrologer when they write what they write is very, very different from why an artist would want to maintain ambiguity. Lynch has said in several interviews, "I know what it means for me, but it means different things for different people, and you have to decide for yourself what it means for you." Reading his own words, I have no doubt that he does what he does with a clear understanding of meaning. The picture you paint of someone rolling dice and creating a narrative of empty signifiers, to me, logically can't result in a body of work that has such a strong level of deliberate and specific tone and emotion to it.

On the other hand, an astrologer's words could mean plenty to him too, as he's bothered to write it, but he's still flogging something to other people specifically so that they can read whatever they want into it.

I actually find Lynch's animations down the years to be the most informative things he's done where his art is concerned. You can see his Eastern European training in his animated work and where Season 3 was interesting in his blend of live action and effects that looked like something you'd see in an animated film. All that stuff with Laura being dragged away, the way Coop disappears from his conversation with the Fireman and the tulpas' heads exploding in the waiting room could have come out of a Jan Švankmajer film!

Edited to add: One of the things that set the likes of Twin Peaks apart from its many 1990s imitators is that David Lynch had a thorough understanding of filmic art. Because Lynch had mastered narrative film, he was able to experiment. It's like composers such as Berio and Boulez having a brilliant grounding in how music worked so that they could create some of their wildly avant garde music. Berio, IIRC, very capably wrote a new ending to Puccini's Turandot.

Nowadays, people aren't given enough grounding in the basics and are told to do whatever they want. The result is, to be blunt, shit! It really is the amateur daubing of children. The likes of David Lynch could, if he wanted to, go out and make a David Lean-esque epic. You see it so often in David Lynch's original generation Twin Peaks episodes: people outside the fan community seem to think everything by David Lynch is 'way out'. For the most part, he isn't doing anything way out in his episodes, but pretty much every episode David Lynch directed was better directed than most television had ever been.
 
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Great post, Mr. Reindeer. I would add as well I find Lynch's solo writing on Inland Empire to be quite brilliant. Seems about any given scene has some of the most powerful, beautifully constructed dialogue I've ever seen. Lynch can suggest a lot of weight and portent with dialogue without spilling the beans.

Iirc Lynch wrote much of Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh's material for Peaks on his own, and it's amazing. Same goes for the exchanges between Sherilyn Fenn and Clark Middleton, which I believe was also primarily Lynch flying solo.
 
Great post, Mr. Reindeer. I would add as well I find Lynch's solo writing on Inland Empire to be quite brilliant. Seems about any given scene has some of the most powerful, beautifully constructed dialogue I've ever seen. Lynch can suggest a lot of weight and portent with dialogue without spilling the beans.

Iirc Lynch wrote much of Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh's material for Peaks on his own, and it's amazing. Same goes for the exchanges between Sherilyn Fenn and Clark Middleton, which I believe was also primarily Lynch flying solo.
I agree. I hesitate to use INLAND EMPIRE as an example of Lynch’s writing abilities because I imagine a lot of that film’s detractors might look at me as if I have six heads, and would write off my point. But just the Mr. K monologue scenes alone are a masterclass in character-specific dialogue writing. Those scenes could be assembled into a one-woman show on Broadway and it would be a masterpiece.
 
Mark Frost said it best: Lynch is a stylist. He isn't particularly putting meanings in there, but leaving other people to do so. It's essentially what astrologers do: write something that anyone can read anything into.

I totally disagree with this. I'd actually say Lynch does the exact opposite.
 
I think Lynch does have a linear story in mind. It’s just that when he puts it on film he tries to make it abstract and upto interpretation.
 
Am I the only one here who thinks...both?

Lynch works from instinct, sometimes follows his gut and doesn't know exactly what the "meaning" is (sometimesn not till later, possibly not ever, in the case of "Judy" in FWWM, as discussed by Frost), or the details of a narrative, while also sometimes being a great, precise narrative storyteller and having clear inspiration of what things emotionally mean, based on his life experiences and philosophies about various things (i.e. read what Lynch has said about what electricity means to him, etc.)

I don't think Lynch is mapping out what every symbol or image means but I think he knows how they feel to him, and often when people think Lynch is referencing some political or historical thing, he'll come out with "actually this is based on a weird worm I saw when I was a little boy in the backyard" or something.
 
I never believed the "real world" theory, too many strange things happen - like the changing motel. The real point where it's make or break for me is when they get to Laura's house and the inhabitant there is called Alice _Tremond_ not Mary Reber (her actual name), they specifically chose a Black Lodge name, and then there's some flash of light or something going on in the house.
 
I never believed the "real world" theory, too many strange things happen - like the changing motel. The real point where it's make or break for me is when they get to Laura's house and the inhabitant there is called Alice _Tremond_ not Mary Reber (her actual name), they specifically chose a Black Lodge name, and then there's some flash of light or something going on in the house.
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned it's another reality and it 'moulds' itself around the newly-arrived Cooper to give him his new identity of 'Richard'. And this time, when he reaches her, Laura (now called Carrie) has successfully killed BOB - possibly because BOB was sufficiently weakened in the Twin Peaks reality. If Alice Tremond lives in what was Laura's house in the other reality, that might explain the weird events in Laura's life there. Evidently the building houses supernatural entities in multiple realities, making it some sort of focal point for supernatural events.
 
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned it's another reality and it 'moulds' itself around the newly-arrived Cooper to give him his new identity of 'Richard'.
Does he get a new identity, though? He’s still Cooper with all his memories intact. When Alice opens the door, he still refers to himself as “Special Agent Dale Cooper.” He never takes ownership of the Richard name, and just seems confused by it.
 
I never believed the "real world" theory, too many strange things happen - like the changing motel. The real point where it's make or break for me is when they get to Laura's house and the inhabitant there is called Alice _Tremond_ not Mary Reber (her actual name), they specifically chose a Black Lodge name, and then there's some flash of light or something going on in the house.
This is all true. I think it’s more complicated than being a literal one-to-one “crossing over” into our world, but I think that’s definitely one of the ingredients. Not only does Lynch put Reber in, but if you watch the behind the scenes, he gets annoyed when wardrobe tries to dress her, and insists that she has to be wearing something from her own closet. All these “real world” touches were important to him for some reason. Another example is seeing the real location of the sheriff’s station location in relation to the mill—the geography makes no sense in light of the original show, yet Lynch goes out of his way to show it.
 
Another aspect is that one of the two writers has nothing to do with "Richard" and has not greenlit it, so clearly the episode/season was not built around that idea.
 
Another aspect is that one of the two writers has nothing to do with "Richard" and has not greenlit it, so clearly the episode/season was not built around that idea.
It's one of those peculiar things with anything Lynch collaborates on: he ends up ignoring things set up elsewhere and doing his own thing, leaving everyone to play 'catch up' and work around it.

I took it as read that RIchard/Coop retained his memories from the other reality, even after he became 'Richard', although Richard is temperamentally very different - more a surly, taciturn gunslinger/hardboiled private eye type. Diane and Laura didn't, at least initially, remember their past identities.
 
Was unsure whether to spin this brilliant discussion off into a new thread, the general Peaks thread, or here to the episode thread. Let's try here for now.

And I'm really sorry for the continued delay in repopulating this section.
 
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