kaworu posted:

There are some interesting theories about the existence of the Glass Box.

I don't know how many of you guys have seen this video that got uploaded to youtube from an account called 'Twin Perfect' last fall - it is a four and a half hour long detailed analysis of the show, making the audacious claim of revealing the "Definitive Meaning of Twin Peaks". It's actually not that bad, and it's quite professionally done and even well-paced and engaging, given the subject matter and exhaustive nature of the video.

It's an interesting video, and most certainly worth watching if you're the kinda person who cares enough to read this thread. The basis of his analysis is that Twin Peaks is a self-aware TV show that is meant to be a metaphor/microcosm of TV itself. I think he actually makes some fantastic and VERY correct analyses concerning various aspects of the show.

For example... Take the Little Man/The Arm, and put him up against The Giant/The Fireman. They are both Lodge Spirits, they both give Coop hints, we know they are related or connected in some way. We know that there has always been something rather more dark and sinister about The Arm, while The Fireman seems to be wholly a force of goodness/positivity. Twin Perfect posits that the "secret" is essentially that the Little Man represents the spirit of television entertainment which tends to be violent, low-brow, satisfying but ultimately empty, broadcast onto a *small* screen (Lynch hates small screens) and thus is represented by someone much physically smaller than normal.

Whereas conversely you have the Giant and the spirit of film. Film is deep, thoughtful, portentous'; where television entertainment offers half-hour homiles and stories that always reveal the "secret" and wrap themselves up into a neat bow with no consequences at the end, whereas film tackles real issues in a deeply thought-out and artistic manner. And of course, like people on film screens, The Fireman is physically larger than normal.

It is very hard to argue with that particular interpretation once you see it, I have to admit. And it is definitely illuminating and makes many things make a lot more sense. But it's far from perfect.

Volte posted:

Also that Twin Perfect video has a few very good ideas, especially about FWWM being a rumination on the fate of Twin Peaks as a TV show and the role that the TV landscape, and TV audiences completely missing the point of the show, played in its demise, but it's wrapped up in a load of over-rationalized horseshit that desperately wants Twin Peaks to be a direct allegory for David Lynch's hatred of TV. It starts with some interpretations that could hold water but then builds on those as if they are undeniable axioms, and continues to do so for four hours until it eventually concludes that Twin Peaks season 3 was David Lynch saying "gently caress you" to the audience for liking Twin Peaks too much and forcing him to resurrect and ruin it somehow. As if David Lynch is the kind of person who would create art out of spite.

El Jeffe posted:

Candie

Dirt Road Junglist posted:

Jade gives TWO rides!

Data Graham posted:

also what the hell is that dog-deer thing Cole is drawing with the Sharpie, with the suit-clad arm reaching out to it

Data Graham posted:

Also uh, what does "Now I know how Brando felt" mean?

And More posted:

Could I get screenshots of:
- Dougie's sexy abs as seen from Janey-e's POV
- Janey-e's back (as she's straddling Dougie)
- Dougie and Janey-e cuddling after sex
- Candie crying by the TV
- The Mitchums fuming with rage on their couch (after they learn that they have an enemy in Douglas Jones)

And More posted:

While I can see the potential of this working as a allegory, I don't see any particular evidence that would force me to interpret the lodge spirits that way, at least in your summary. Maybe we should actually watch that video once the rewatch is over. Honestly, I don't think I'm gonna like it, though. The first fifteen minutes disappointed me pretty thoroughly because they spent minutes reassuring me that every minute was worth my attention, and then they just go on to summarise a bunch of stuff without any analysis whatsoever. This is the kind of poo poo my professor would have lowered my grade for.

quote:

That last part in particular doesn't really track with how much fun it is to watch the Return. Honestly, any comprehensive, straight forward interpretation like that is probably extremely limited because art is rarely just one thing. That's at least why I keep coming back to the show. There's something new and different to discover every time.

Escobarbarian posted:

Twin Peaks pilot aired 30 years ago today!!!! (unless you’re in certain US time zones where it’s still the 7th)

Volte posted:

I just had a weird thought, since we're going meta - what if the Fireman's domain is in some sense Lynch's mind? He has invoked the image of an ocean in relation to consciousness many times in his discussions of Transcendental Meditation. All those machines visible in there could represent the vast bank of thought and knowledge. The theatre could represent the mind's eye or visual cortex, the Fireman himself being Lynch's consciousness. He's a giant because Lynch believes he has grown his consciousness through meditation. When Cooper gets banished to non-existence, he ended up back there. Bad Cooper's ultimate goal seems to be to get inside there to find answers, but when he tries, he gets denied. Just something interesting to think about.

Here's a video where Lynch talks about some of these concepts directly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2UHLMVr4vg&t=40s

kaworu posted:

To answer the question before of why The Arm has "evolved" in the intervening years into this weird electrified tree... Well, the way we watch TV has evolved dramatically in the intervening years. Back then, everyone still watched TV on a big heavy CRT monitor in 1990, and it was still a pretty drat big deal to have like 3 or more TV sets in a house - most of us still only had one still back then - maybe 2 if your family was doing fairly well. Today, that form of TV watching is basically non-existent - we all have multiple screens - tablets, phones, laptops, ultra-high res giant LED screens, etc.... The TV viewing experience is not what it once was, and instead of "Invitation to Love", we see Nadine watching Jacoby's show on (what seems to be) a computer at her desk. and Jerry Horne was watching it on a tablet outside while smoking up. Not exactly traditional TV watching as it once was. I think this is why The Arm is "evolved" and sounds like a weird digitized shadow of the "indian whoop".

quote:

The glass box came up again, as we see Bad Coop in that room in this last episode. Inland Empire, as a film, is full of holes. I mean actual, literal holes - like the one in the silk that Laura Dern peers through in order to observe the "other world". This is very clearly a metaphor, representative of watching a film and falling through that hole into that other world - or you could look at it in a number of ways. Now, the *glass box* is connected to the outside world via a *circular hole*. And there MUST both be cameras observing the box from multiple angles as well as a person watching the box in order for anything that comes out of that hole and into the box to be be observed - after all, does anything in the box exist if nobody is directly observing it? Does a TV show exist if it gets moved to a Saturday time slot, and nobody knows about it and nobody watches it?

Did you not find it odd that the video footage Tammi, Albert, and Gordon Cole look at of the glass box from that night showed an image of Judy (or whatever it was) and yet there was NOT any footage of Cooper, even though WE saw him there? Odd, no? Cooper wasn't there because nobody was watching - thus he simply did not exist. Does a TV show and its characters exist if nobody watches it? I mean, there is a reason why someone had to sit there and watch the Glass Box in addition to it being recorded by multiple cameras. I won't say I know quite what's going on, but I feel like I have a very strong idea. I think the *basic idea* is somewhat similar to The Lost Girl who appears to be watching the film Inland Empire along with us on a screen in a hotel room. I really think there is a lot to be learned from the structure of Inland Empire that helps sort of "decode" the structure of The Return, and why things happen when they do.

Rageaholic posted:

pyrotek posted:

https://twitter.com/Kyle_MacLachlan/status/1248091210893258752?s=20
https://twitter.com/Kyle_MacLachlan/status/1248092278867943425?s=20

Hmmmm.

kaworu posted:

Fascinating.

Upon further reflection, it probably means something that "Richard" also happens to be the name of Cooper's one and only genetic offspring. I have absolutely no idea what it means, but I doubt Lynch pulled the name "Richard" out of a hat.

And More posted:

Honestly, I'm very doubtful that MacLachlan knows anything about the meaning of that episode beyond the performance he gave. Which is to say, I completely disagree with his second tweet.


I never noticed that. Then again, this is the kind of show in which BOB and MIKE have barely anything to do with Bobby and Mike. So

Doctor Teeth posted:

oh poo poo i just realized Jerry Horne is Luther from The Warriors.

i am a dumb rear end

The Vosgian Beast posted:

He's also the guy Arnold lies about killing last in Commando

El Jeffe posted:

The Van Whistle

El Jeffe posted:

The Van Whistle

From: Fradley, Martin & John A. Riley, 2019: "Dirty Bearded Men in a Room". Twin Peaks: The Return and the Politics of Lynchian Comedy. In: Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies. The Politics of Twin Peaks. London: Lexington Books posted:

In Twin Peaks’ original run, Cooper’s wholesomeness was underscored by his appreciation of quotidian physical pleasures and a devout love of black coffee and cherry pie. In The Return, however, this boyish enthusiasm becomes comically grotesque, with Dougie grinning maniacally at the mere mention of his favorite hot beverage. […] (76)

However, the regular employment of absurdism in The Return is also densely comingled with the ambiguous politics of Lynchian irony. Take, for example, Dougie Jones’ nonsensical conflation of infantile passivity with a broad range of revered adult competencies. Despite Dougie’s inability to function on little more than a primal level — eating, drinking, pissing — he was also widely loved and respected by friends and colleagues, proving himself to be preternaturally adept over a broad-ranging skill set: parenting, gambling, detecting organized crime, fending off would-be assassins, and bringing his previously unhappy wife to ecstatic orgasm. […] (78)

Dougie, like Cooper, is prone to flashes of metaphysical insight, but here they are rendered as grotesque parody. Guided by mystical dancing lights, the unwitting Dougie becomes a prodigious slot machine-savant. Unthinkingly mimicking another punter’s four-syllable celebration, “hell-oo-oo-oo!,” Dougie transforms into the unaccountably lucky “Mister Jackpots”: a grotesque inversion of his famously lateral crime solving methods, his spirituality and intuition put solely to the service of base material gain. Dougie is guided to similarly materialistic ends when working through a series of insurance case files. Transfixed by their half-remembered resemblance to his FBI case workload, Dougie’s incoherent scribblings ultimately expose corruption both within and without the “Lucky 7” offices. This leads to a vast payout for neo-Mafioso casino owners Bradley and Rodney Mitchum. Where Cooper’s deductive idiosyncrasies functioned as a counter-hegemonic challenge to rationalist logic in 1990, in The Return Dougie is ultimately in the service of a deeply corrupt neo- liberal status quo. The Return repeatedly draws comic parallels between the Mitchums’ illicit business practices and the would-be wholesome pragmatism of Bushnell Mullins’ insurance firm. (75f.)

quote:

This weeks Twin Peaks episode aired Sunday. I had a special scene with director David Lynch, actors Kyle MacLachlan, Linda Porter, James Belushi and Robert Knepper.

During rehearshal Linda asked me if my name wasn't Trevor what would it be? I casually said oh probably Denver (my younger brother who passed in 2007.) I had no idea she was going to include it in the scene.

During one take she said my real name Trevor accidentally after already saying Denver in the previous take. The script supervisor came over and said David really liked the name Trevor but then Linda said oh no we are saying Denver in memoriam of Trevor's brother he lost years ago. The supervisor said awe...I'll go ask David, but I'm sure it will be fine. She came back and said Denver it is. 🙂

I will recall this moment as thee most memorable scene I have ever had on set. Thank you Twin Peaks, David Lynch and Linda Porter for being so loving. #twinpeaks #davidlynch #kylemaclachlan #lindaporter #jamesbelushi #robertknepper

And More posted:

Could I get screenshots of
- Becky screaming in the trailer
- Carl and Shelly in the van
- Hawk and Truman
- Dougie holding the box (with Mitchums in the foreground)
- Candie pondering traffic

AstroWhale posted:

I need a screenshot of Dougie hearing the piano and listening for a second.

Data Graham posted:

It's a small thing but I really enjoyed seeing Shelly and Bobby being adults and parents with their poo poo together. They're dealing with a crisis, sure, but they're grownups now and a really neat extension and evolution of the erratic teenagers they were back in the day. Their lives haven't been perfect and neither of them is where they imagined they'd be, but they're institutions now for better or worse.

kaworu posted:

I just get a strange, frightened vibe from both scenes and locations. They are both places that are somehow more terrifying in broad daylight rather than at night. I mean, 2240 Sycamore is apparently a place where a naked decapitated corpse can sit for days without being called in, and which FBI agents don't even notice or realize it's there when looking around for... probably a bit too long? Don't you think the corpse would... pop out a bit? It's actually very odd, that whole scene - in fact, Albert does not notice or see Ruth Davenport's body until *after* Gordon has his encounter with the vortex. Was the body even there before that encounter? I'm starting to think Albert would have noticed it right away, if it was.