As I ponder this further–and in some respects I can’t stop it, since images and ideas just come to me–I really do think Lynch intended a commentary on Life writ large.
Peter Gabriel, 1982: Working in gardens, thornless roses, fat men play with their garden hoses
That album, the whole thing, had a big impact on me at the time. It was both sinister and alluring, both hopeful, and an prophet of despair.
But unmistakably Lynch chose to bookend the movie with the same scenes–the flowers, the firetruck as if on a 4th of July parade on Main Street.
And unmistakably the fat man, when he fell, revealed a dark subterranean terrain of conflict.
Actually, though, now that I think about it, the robin eating the bug could be viewed as Love eating Evil, couldn’t it? I am so cynical sometimes I miss the good things.
But the whole thing is a circle, or if you will, the Cycle of the Hero. I looked up the Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell PBS series, and it was slightly after Blue Velvet, but Campbell was, I think, in the air.
What you have throughout this movie is good mixing with evil. Kyle MacGlachlan “put his poison” into Isabella Rosellini. He starts with Laura Dern, loses his virginity (presumably) to Isabella, then returns to Laura Dern. Innocence, violence, then wiser innocence, as mediated by the robin eating the bug.
I will point out the obvious, too, that the scene where MacGlachlan first tells Laura Dern about what he has seen happens in front of a church. That framing was unmistakable, where they both talk about how life and people are funny. I forget the exact phrasing, but I remember him asking why there are people like that. This whole scene happens with lit church windows in the background.
I read some reviews on that movie. I was curious what other people saw. Roger Ebert seemed to think it wasn’t kinky enough. The rest were throwaway. That movie WAS a long time ago.
To me, the sex was really a symbol for emotional realities. Sex, in important respects, is ALWAYS a symbol for emotional realities. It is cold for cold people. Cruel for cruel people. Loving for loving people. Sex is not the most important reality. Never.
I myself have not been laid in forever, but not because I couldn’t get something basic if I wanted to. I could. I am a good talker, not bad looking, and in any event that is about persistence. There is always some drunk girl at the end of the night, if you are willing to lower your standards and your self respect.
My issue is it would be impossible to have the sort of sex I would want AS I AM NOW. I am not emotionally available the way I would want to be. What I truly crave, what would be healthy for me, is precluded. Not forever, but for right now. And integrity prohibits pretending otherwise.
No doubt those sex scenes were shocking back in the day. Now, with the ubiquity of porn all of have seen any sort of scene that interests us.
To my mind, the urge for Isabella Rosselini to be hit was very simply understood: she was severely traumatized. She was used to being hit. And until she was hit, she felt the anxiety that she was ABOUT to be hit, which is what created in some part of her a desire not just to get it over with, but an active pleasure in the release of anxiety.
As I have said before, there seem to be two sorts of pleasure in this world: the release of anxiety, and the positive energy of enjoyment. I think most evil comes from those who can only feel the former, due to trauma and its following emotional handicaps. They crave power because not being in charge fills them with anxiety. They crave money, because lacking anything fills them with anxiety. They become cruel, since, paradoxically, their numbness fills them with anxiety.
And I thought the home where Bennie lived was interesting. You had the same sorts of babushkas there as MacLachlan had at his home. But there the “father” was an obvious homosexual (in a time when open homosexuality was very, very uncommon in cinema, to the point that portraying it was almost guaranteed to get you good reviews). It was sort of visual equivalent, but psychologically and morally inverted picture, and intended, I think, as a sort of picture, a static situation, a fixed reality, since everyone was just sitting there. You wondered how these matrons participated in this horrific captivity.
This was structurally in the middle, as one commentator noted. And then, what? The hero’s journey? The trip far, far outside the bounds of the normal, where the hero met the monster fully for the first time.
And of course in the climax, the hero kills the monster. All returns to normal, but the robin shows up, with the insect–symbol of primitive conflict in the beginning–in its mouth.
So I think I am perhaps projecting, now, my own issues onto Lynch’s art. I think he did intend to create a visceral and unpleasant experience, but anchor it into what in the end amounted to Midwestern values, even after placing one of the Hardy Boys into a porn film.
But me, I look at Isabella Rossellini and I know her struggle is not over. Her pain is not over. Nor is that of her son, who would be at considerable risk of becoming another Dennis Hopper, although if Rosselini soldiers on in the immortal feminine way, of enduring the unendurable for love, he will be OK enough. Today, both would in a perfect world be counseled for long time for trauma, and in my personal view use things like Neurofeedback, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR and the like.
Here is my last thought: there is a Manichean distinction to be made between Reality and Illusion, between what Bruce Springsteen calls–in lyrics I will always like, even if I can’t figure out why he is so stupid in many ways–between “what’s flesh and what’s fantasy“.
One could argue some forms of Hinduism and Buddhism are in fact Manichean, and rather than Good and Evil, you have Satya and Maya.
As I say, I think in the end Lynch was trying to convey an essentially positive vision. The monster was vanquished, literally and symbolically.
It was an interesting film, though. It was unpleasant. I now have to add those images to my store.
Actually, if I might channel my inner Baptist Preacher, one more thing: I think the use of Dennis Hopper, specifically, in this context is significant.
The 60’s intruded on the 50’s, did they not? They rode in on motorcycles, and shot the town to pieces. They created both good and destruction. They changed our world in ways which we wrestle with daily even now.
As an inverted image, I would offer again Meatloaf intruding into Dr. Frankenfurter’s life in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. He represented the 1950’s and traditional masculinity. He was hacked to pieces and eaten.
Everywhere in life, true kindness and more importantly understanding are vital. No political task is ever worth losing your humanity. No one can EVER accomplish anything lastingly good from a standpoint of hatred, irreconcilable difference, aggression, and lies.