Twin Peaks 2017


I don't know. I'm just not feeling the new Twin Peaks.

What I loved about his movies and the original Twin Peaks was that Lynch would take something familiar and sort of twist it around and reveal this dark slithering world that lies beneath. The original Twin Peaks starts as a police procedural about a murder, but it becomes so much more. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems: not the town, the characters, the murderer, or the victim.

In Blue Velvet, Lynch takes Roy Orbison's In Dreams and completely turns it around. The sweet innocent sounding lyrics about unrequited love take on this sinister meaning when spoken by Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth. The song has never sounded the same to me since.

In this new series, I don't feel that twist. Nothing's familiar. No expectations that can be turned around on themselves have been established. Without that, I end an episode feeling flat. It ends up feeling weird but only for weirdness' sake. Nothing in the show particularly resonates with me. I see David Lynch at his best as this channeler of the subconscious and emotions. He takes me to these dark places within myself that I'm not that comfortable with. The places that he is taking me to now are not within myself. They are foreign to me, and so the impact is lacking.

Part of me wonders if this is actually a reflection of our current culture. Perhaps it is only because it is the past and the past feels easier to make sense of than the present, but I think the culture of the U.S. in the late 80s and early 90s was more coherent. One could tap into a national subconscious. Currently, the U.S. seems so fractured and incoherent that finding what lies beneath is even more difficult than it was.

Is it this lack of cultural cohesion affecting what the show can accomplish?




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