Tue 2 May 2006
Just a few things running around my mind today:
- One of the criticisms leveled against Twin Peaks in what little scholarship I’ve read regarding the series’ encoded meanings is that it is an anti-feminist work that glorifies violence against women. Taking the series and film as a whole, however, and especially in light of the last scene of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, it seems to me that it has no agenda other than to reflect Laura as a whole person with good and bad qualities and decisions all her own. She is neither held up as a saint nor damned as a sinner. In fact, the end of FWWM suggests that the only way she is able to move forward is by having someone, presumably the audience, witness – neither condemn nor endorse but witness – the whole truth of her complicated life and recognize her as a fully three-dimensional human being rather than a positive or negative stereotype or otherwise pigeonhole her specific and unique and human experience. As such, it has no specifically feminist agenda but it is also impossible to classify as anti-feminist; given that its message, if one chooses to find it in this way, is that each person must be allowed to be all of themselves and recognized as such, and that each person has a right to face their own fears and demons and, by integrating those and other experiences into the whole of their being, gain enlightenment, it seems that it is equally empowering of all people and, in that regard, may be more subtly feminist than anyone suspects. It also means I’ve probably watched Twin Peaks too many times, but in fact sitting around thinking about it like this makes me want to watch it again. I also think that the show’s message, if there is one, is no more complicated than that the social pressures of the middle class make it easy for kids to turn out fucked up.
- There are few things in the world more tasty than salmon.
- I would rather spend a sweaty morning mowing my back yard every 2 years than sew it with grass seed and have an easy time of mowing it every 2 weeks.
- I really need to get my emergency brake fixed so that I can get my car inspected.
- Dan Brown (author of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code) should be publicly mocked for publishing such a thinly veiled pitch for a screen adaptation and daring to call it a novel.
Just wanted to chime in and say I totally agree with you on the Twin Peaks and Dan Brown points.
And more on the Twin Peaks topic – I really don’t get where those scholars get that it’s anti-feminist. I mean, just because violence against wimmin is portrayed doesn’t not make the piece anti-womyn. In fact, I think it’s made pretty clear that the agents of said violence are, um, evil and heinous and do shit that nice people just don’t do. Also, Lynch has a tendency to have mystical, knowledge-keeping wimmin in his films (and in Twin Peaks I’m thinking primarily of the Log Lady, but also Laura to a degree), and I think you can read into that some sort of respect of wimmin, wimmin’s intuition, whatever you want to call it.
Basically, I think it’s far too easy to point to the violence against wimmin in Twin Peaks and conclude that TP is anti-womyn – and that kind of “scholarship” (the lazy kind) isn’t doing feminism any favors. I don’t think it’s really representing feminism either, for that matter. Except maybe in that twisted way that Phyllis Schlafly considers herself a feminist.
Precisely. In fact, I think that the relatively uncensored and utterly unsensational way in which the violence is portrayed is (a) meant to underscore the tragedy of it and (b) absolutely the absence of glorification of it. There is no way to look at what happens and come away thinking that anyone who made the scene felt like it was a good thing, or an act that should be emulated.
The point about the mystical, knowledge-keeping characters is an excellent one that had never occurred to me. (Ironically, in the one book I’m thinking of today, several of the articles in it point to the secret knowledge of characters such as The Log Lady and Laura herself as a sign that Lynch [or Frost, or whoever directed that episode, etc.] think of women as impenatrably [pun intended] secretive creatures, incapable of being understood.)
Rob Corddry’s got you covered on that last one, on last night’s Daily Show.
He made a shitload of money though.
It was a fun read when I was stuck in the airport.
What I find interesting about the DaVinci Code is, well, if you wanted to topple the Catholic Church, really knck it’s legs out from under it, how would you do it? Press conference with alarming revelations? Naaa, even if they were true, nobody watches press conferences or the news anymore. Write a book damning them? Naaa, nobody really reads. Get rich and famous and rip the Pope’s picture in half? Nope, nobody cares all that much what famous people do either.
What does mainstream America (forget the rest of the world for this argument) pay attention to? A damn fine action movie. Blow some shit up. If you could work an almost true rant into an action movie, a good one, with some big Hollywood actor….you might not topple them, but they’ll take a hit.
And wholesome apple pie Tom Hanks?
The book is ingenious….or might be, if that was his intention. I don’t know if it was or not, but that’s definately one way to read it.
And that makes me giggle. You know, that whole hippie, “fight the power”, let’s burn some old white men thing.
Heh. A FotH once had an opportunity to spend time in a corrective facility for men, and one night the movie was Fire Walk with Me. There was shouting. Chairs were flung. Mass destruction of the day room ensued.
How this fits into sexual politics, I would
hazard to guess, but it’s a fun story, yes?
KKess.
PS please ask R. how that Oresteia’s coming.
And in truth, that’s the high point of both books. If his intent is to kick the Church in the arse, A&D does it very directly with a fairly clumsy attempt to seem balanced. Viewed through the same lens, TDVC does it much more subtly.
And I totally giggle about it.
Chairs were flung.
I’m deathly curious: were they angry at what was happening in the movie, or excited by it?
Either way, I’m not sure those guys are the best yardstick for modern sexual politics, but I will happily confess I say that in part because I really love the movie and would rather not hear that it gets anyone’s rocks off, thus, that if it does get anyone’s rocks off it also happens that those people are kind of f’ed up.
(Also, it is so good to have seen you lately – you’re looking fabulous!)
I think I liked A&D better than TDVC…*SPOILER*……………….any book, no matter how badly written, that can start out with a moderately “okay” believable premise and end up with the Pope(sortof) stealing the last parachute and jumping out of a mile high helicopter shooting skyward with a ticking nuclear bomb(sortof) has to get points for SOMETHING.
Hell, I don’t think we even got that out of control with the Tavern.
I will so pay to see that on the big screen.
Damn Popes. Always being shifty.
And, you know, that part is the only part of the novel that I really like, for that reason. It is so over-the-top that it can’t help being enjoyable.
“were they angry at what was happening in the movie, or excited by it?”
I think they were angrily excited by the challenges to their heteronormative values (possible masks for other possible values?), but I take pride in not knowing for sure.
And thanks for the compliment–you’re looking well yourself, and it’s been good to see you *twice* this year, and it’s only May!
stealing the last parachute and jumping out of a mile high helicopter shooting skyward
Oh, and don’t forget the best part of it all: turning to Our Hero and delivering the line, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
Those Popes, they are always using the same tired old line on you.
Gods, it actually makes me want to go reread that part.
How many Popes actually know how to fly a helicopter, anyway?
angrily excited by the challenges to their heteronormative values
I can see that. It is definitely a movie that prides itself on its ability to take “standard” ways of life and turn them inside out and then shake them.
It reminds me a little bit of _Escape from LA_. Kurt Russell and whatshisname(the director) were sitting in whatshisname’s house one night at 3 am, drunk as all get out off of tequila. Being drunk, they decided to come up with the most absurd situation they could think of to put Snake Pliskin in.
Eventually they got to, “Snake has to escape an incoming tidal wave in a canyon by surfing his way out on a surf board while sporting a bullet in one leg….AND, while doing so, chases the bad guy’s car and leaps from the surf board onto the hood.”
Then, being incredibly drunk, they grabbed a kitchen knife, slashed their hands open and swore a blood oath that they would make a movie with that scene and find a way to sneak it past Hollywood.
Makes me wonder if that’s what Dan Brown did. “Alright, thish is vat I’m gonna do [hiccup]….I want thish scene where the pope steals a parischuch and jumps oush of a heli-thing rocketing skyshward with a tishing nuke in it.”
The ONLY way you could get to that scene is if the entire book was written around it.
(Note: Apparently, in the above, he can’t pronouce “out” while drunk, but can pronounce “rocketing.”)
[glances at watch] Damnit, my beer is at least 3 hours away.