Table Of ContentFirst published in the UK in 2017 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2017 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Emily Dann
Front cover image: Twin Peaks (1990—1991). Lynch/Frost/Spelling/
The Kobal Collection
Production editors: Jelena Stanovnik & Matt Greenfield
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-659-9
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-660-5
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-661-2
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
We stand on a peak of consciousness, believing in a childish way that the
path leads upward to yet higher peaks beyond. That is the chimerical
rainbow bridge. In order to reach the next peak we must first go down into
the land where the paths begin to divide.
Jung, 1953, p.60
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
It’s Happening Again!
Chapter 1: Birds, Mountain Peaks and Dreams for Sale
Chapter 2: Northwest Passage to the Ocean of Consciousness
Chapter 3: How I Slept Like a Log: Dreams, Nightmares and Secret
Gardens
Chapter 4: Mirrors, Curtains and Windows: Introspection, Visions, Masks
and Viewpoints
Chapter 5: Mythology and Fairy Tales: Sleeping Beauties and Angry Gods
Chapter 6: Food, Clowns and Dance: Twin Peaks’ Carnival of Souls
Conclusion
Appendix 1: At the Roots of Meaning
Appendix 2: Filmic Influences
References
About the Author
Foreword
I’ve watched Twin Peaks – and by that I mean all thirty episodes, plus the
feature film Fire Walk with Me – probably two dozen times, no exaggeration.
I remember viewing the series week by week way back in 1990–1991, when
it first aired on American network television (never missed an episode, even
during the difficult Little Nicky-Evelyn Marsh-Lana Budding Milford times),
and can even recall the run-up to the show’s premiere, as I was, at the time, a
television editor at the entertainment trade paper Variety, where we seemed to
run almost weekly stories documenting David Lynch’s rapturously
anticipated dive into television (and ABC’s complete befuddlement over how
to handle it).
Years later, and another lifetime: As programme director at the nostalgia-
themed cable television outlet TV Land (spin-off of Nick at Nite), I spent two
years lobbying for the displacement of our 11 p.m. weeknight drama, the
bromitic (though admittedly popular) 1970s private-eye show Mannix, by
something – anything – with a little sting, like, say, The Prisoner or, yes,
Twin Peaks. Our Brady Bunch-obsessed VP wasn’t biting. What was I trying
to do, sink the network? (Maybe, but that’s another story.) The good news: I
spent hours and hours viewing brilliant but cancelled television shows. The
bad news? Never got a single one of them on the air.
This brings us to The Paley Center for Media, my current place of
employment, where our video library includes the entire run of Twin Peaks,
meaning that ever since I arrived here twenty-four years ago I’ve been able to
watch any episode, any time (yes, I’ve heard of Netflix). I have indulged,
plenty. Sometimes, in my luckier moments, I am even required to watch, as
in the winter of 2014, when we planned our commemoration of Laura
Palmer’s Red Room promise to see Dale Cooper again in twenty-five years
(lots of doughnuts, lots of coffee, plus a screening of a fan edit of the entire
series stripping out every single piece of footage not pertaining to the Laura
Palmer murder investigation). At my night job – as adjunct professor of
television – I frequently teach Twin Peaks, often to students who resist
anything pre-2000 – though, curiously, not Twin Peaks. Here’s my point: I
know Twin Peaks. Or thought I did. Now, thanks to Twin Peaks: Unwrapping
the Plastic, I’ve been humbled: turns out what I didn’t know about Twin
Peaks could fill a book, which is precisely what Franck Boulègue has done
here, in the pages that follow.
My signature approach to Twin Peaks is through the noir lens, darkly.
Hard-core Peaks fans know that David Lynch and Mark Frost are aficionados
of the classic cycle of noir films, hardboiled, crime-centric B pictures
produced by Hollywood studios in the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by
French film critic Nino Frank in 1946 as belonging ‘to a class that we used to
call the crime film, but would best be described from this point on by a term
such as criminal adventures, or better yet, such as criminal psychology’.
Multiple Twin Peaks denizens are namesakes of classic noir characters,
including Laura Palmer, a nod to the title character in Otto Preminger’s
masterful 1944 crime thriller, titled simply Laura. Grouping Twin Peaks
within this style of film can be an unconventional choice, in that classic noir
is typically tellurian, eschewing the supernatural. However, the argument can
be made that the black spirits roaming the Twin Peaks universe are merely
metaphors for the darkness in our own souls, and what is noir ultimately
about if not that?
Connections of this sort transcend academic exercise. They illuminate and
challenge, prying our minds open to new avenues of interpretation. ‘Buddha
urged people to investigate things – he didn’t just command them to believe’,
the Dalai Lama has said (the quote seems appropriate, given the influence of
Eastern thought on the series – read all about it in the pages ahead).
Investigate! Isn’t that what drives the Twin Peaks narrative? The great,
overriding gift of Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic is that it offers
provocative new approaches to our critical appreciation of Twin Peaks,
profoundly and innovatively investigating the artistic, spiritual, cultural and
psychological influences on David Lynch and Mark Frost as they created and
executed first the series and then (Lynch, but not Frost) the film. Nietzsche,
Jung, Kafka, Hopper, Ernst, Duchamp, Cocteau, Blavatsky, Carroll,
Bettelheim, Campbell – all of them are here, along with many distinguished
brethren. Franck’s expansive knowledge of these titanic thinkers, and his
virtuosic articulation of this erudition, is, for lack of a better word, awesome,
in a literal sense. As a television historian, I’m particularly enthralled by his
excavation of the obscure 1987 BBC Two programme Arena, in which Lynch
discusses the work of twentieth-century surrealists like Man Ray, Marcel
Duchamp, Max Ernst and Jean Cocteau – I had to find and watch it! – but
this book really brims with citations of films, paintings and literature that are
so convincingly linked aesthetically or thematically to Twin Peaks that they
cry out for direct interaction by any intellectually curious fan of the film and
series.
In his introduction, Franck writes that ‘Twin Peaks is fundamentally about
one thing: the “process of individuation” described by Carl Gustav Jung, that
is to say, the integration by the various characters of the unconscious
elements of their personalities in order to evolve as individuals’. Clearly, so
many of the souls who pass through Twin Peaks undergo metamorphoses of
this sort, perhaps none more so than Dale Cooper, the seeker, who journeys
thousands of miles in search of truth, finding, yes, evil beyond
comprehension, but also transformative love, so profound he is willing to
sacrifice his soul for it. Reading Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic is itself
a journey, on the other end of which we arrive wiser, clearer and more
appreciative than ever of this truly wonderful and strange place known as
Twin Peaks.
I can’t wait for season 3.
David Bushman, Paley Center for Media, New York City
Acknowledgements
First, I wish to thank Diana Heyne for the editorial work she has contributed
to this book. Without her numerous revisions, my text might very well have
sounded like something written by The Man From Another Place!
To Scott Ryan of the Red Room Podcast, thank you for the perfect picture
of Big Boy. One of these days, I hope we will be able to share a damn fine
cup of coffee in just such a place.
Many thanks to Cherie Sampson for reading my unfinished manuscript,
clarifying elements related to Transcendental Meditation and suggesting
various connections to Native American mythology. I am very grateful for
your comments and support.
My gratitude also goes to David Bushman for his expertise, his advice and
especially his willingness to contribute the foreword to this book. It has
always been a particularly rewarding experience working and exchanging
thoughts with him.
Many thanks to the staff of Intellect Press who have followed this project
since its beginning in late 2013: Gabriel Solomons, May Yao and Jelena
Stanovnik. Thank you for taking a chance on a weird Frenchman obsessed
with an old American TV series from the early 1990s!
And last but certainly not least, I am, as always, completely indebted to my
beautiful wifey Marisa C. Hayes, whose attentive comments, suggestions,
editing and corrections on this book helped to transmute an awkward first
draft into a beautiful text. To quote Deputy Hawk from Twin Peaks:
One woman can make you fly like an eagle
another can give you the strength of a lion
but only one in the cycle of life
can fill your heart with wonder
and the wisdom that you have known a singular joy
It’s Happening Again!
