Twin Peaks: The relationship between the surrealist art movement and the subconscious mind
For my dissertation, I’d like to explore the relationship between the surrealist art movement and the subconscious mind, with my main area of study being focused around the 1990’s cult television series, Twin Peaks, directed by David Lynch. In regards to surrealism, I want to explore the transition between art, photography, film, music & design and discuss how well these relay the subconscious mind. I find the interaction between these visual art concepts interesting and want to explore this further.
My initial idea for my dissertation was to write a shorter analytical text in support of an accompanying artefact. As a creative, this dissertation option stood out most for me as it would allow me to express my thoughts and opinions in a visual and creative way, however, I have now decided to write a full academic text as this will allow me to further expand my ideas and go into more depth with my writing and exploration. My aim for this dissertation is to analyse David Lynch’s use of surrealism and discover how this relates to the subconscious mind. I believe this is an important topic to write about as it can give us a deeper understanding of not only the surrealist art movement but also a profound and psychological view of the world and an awareness of our own subconscious.
I will begin my dissertation by giving a brief history of surrealism and follow this up with an overview of David Lynch’s involvement with the art movement. This will allow me to educate the reader on the main ideas and topics that will arise in my dissertation. From here, I will go on to talk about the use of surrealism within Twin Peaks and the different areas this could cover, some examples of this would be the function and dysfunction of myth, psychoanalysis and alchemy of mythic imagery, lightness vs darkness, uncanny and evil forces, etc… To conclude, I will summarise the main points that were explored throughout my dissertation and briefly cover how these relate to my lead question.
A brief history of surrealism: Surrealism was introduced in the early 1920’s with the aim of revolutionising human experience, by experimenting with a new mode of expression known as automatism, which sought to release the uncontrolled imagination of the subconscious. Surrealism represented an innovative combination of avant-garde tendencies and psychoanalytic arguments, predominantly led by Sigmund Freud’s understandings of the unconscious. However, it was French author, Andre Breton, who suggested a new way of envisioning and verbalizing reality in his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto. According to the surrealists, we experience our reality while we are both awake and asleep – reality itself is a hallucination and our dreams are equally hallucinatory, with all the curiosity that transpires within them. This encouraged artists and members of the movement to create new and unusual combinations of motifs in visual arts, in order to construct new representations of language, space and time in art and elicit powerful, sensual and exciting reactions. From 1920’s to the present, numerous filmmakers have explored similar methods and ideas, with filmmakers such as Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, Alfred Hitchcock, Dario Argento and David Lynch being just a handful of honourable mentions.
Surrealism through the eyes of David Lynch: Lynch is often regarded as one of the most significant living surrealists. His audience was exposed to bizarre stories told through perplexing narrative approaches since his cinematic beginnings, the inspiration for which he discovered in his own reveries. Lynch famously stated, “I love daydreaming and dream logic and the way dreams go”. Lynch and Frost used Twin Peaks to highlight the tension between two worlds: mundane and supernatural. The space-time continuum in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, like in dreams, is full of twists and turns, repetitions and doubles, like the series name itself. It is filled with logic of dreams – a method that Lynch especially developed in his other works to torment viewers who are accustomed to conventional narratives.
Making sense of the Surreal: Lynch likes to leave his audience in suspense, waiting for that one thing that’s going to make sense of it all, but a lot of the time he refuses to make things make sense. He abandons us in suspense. As viewers, we’re willing to accept the surreal and observations that are not subject to continuous, linear time, and by doing this, Lynch makes us reconsider our own perception and understanding of reality. We get so used to an alternative reality that to see anything real doesn’t make sense to us anymore.
For any given scene in Twin Peaks, we are constantly asking ourselves “But what does it mean?”. Lynch is not interested in merely telling a simple story that can be explained in such explicit, literal ways. Rather, the series is meant to confuse the viewer and provide the opportunity for us to invent our own meanings, within the confines of the shows framework. It is no coincidence that Lynch relies so heavily on surrealism and dream imagery since that is the very essence of cinema itself. As a result, Twin Peaks requires us to not only interpret the events of the show, but also to reflect on the medium and methods of the filmmaking process.
In the theory of aesthetics, the Uncanny Valley describes the strange and anxious feeling sometimes created by familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts. This is a term often used to describe a point at which the appearance of a figure, almost, but not quite, resembles that of a realistic human. And at this point, a person observing the figure doesn’t register it as an object, but also doesn’t register it as another person – it is a new threshold, something in between, something that causes us to feel a sense of unease and revulsion. In Twin peaks, mysterious figures, such as the Man from Another Place or the Cryptic Giant, are great examples of an Uncanny Valley response - they are supposed to unnerve us with their unusual appearance and bizarre modes of speech. But the people of twin peaks, the actual human beings, have a kind of behavioural Uncanny Valley, where their actions and words are what signal that they must not be quite as they seem.
There are many different ideas about why the Uncanny Valley effect exists, but some of them seem very relevant for describing how Lynch has achieved this through the use of cinematic performance. Besides the characters who are deliberately non-human, a lot of the seemingly human citizens of Twin Peaks aren’t quite real people either, or at least aren’t always real people. But because we, the audience, aren’t consistently aware of who is who, or what, or where - when we see the characters behaving in unusual ways, we are left questioning this, yet again.
And while Twin Peaks begins with a perfectly conventional storyline, lynch is interested in something much more enigmatic and cryptic. It’s not so much the answers that disturb us, but the nature and very existence of the questions themselves – the clues and suggestions that compel us to ask these questions in the first place and the threat of unveiling truths that prove the world is not what it seems – that’s what twin peaks does to make its audience unsure of our knowledge and our place in the world. That’s what unnerves us, the uncertainty and surrealism.
Chapter Plan:
I. Introduction
II. Brief History of Surrealism
III. Surrealism through the eyes of David Lynch
IV. Twin Peaks breakdown and overview
V. Subconscious and Philosophy
VI. Psychoanalysis and the alchemy of mythic imagery
VII. Function and dysfunction of myth
VIII. Lightness vs Darkness
IX. Uncanny and evil forces
X. Madness vs sanity
XI. Dream Logic
XII. Conclusion
Progress Map:
Resources / Bibliography:
Primary Resources:
Twin Peaks (1990) Created by David Lynch & Mark Frost [Television Series 1-2] Place of Distribution: CBS Television
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) Directed by David Lynch [Film] Place of Distribution: New Line Cinema
Twin Peaks (2017) Created by David Lynch & Mark Frost [Television Series 3] Place of Distribution: CBS Television
Secondary Resources:
Green Richard (2018) Twin Peaks and Philosophy: That’s Damn Fine Philosophy! [Book]
Loncar, Karla (2017) Surrealism and Twin Peaks: The origin of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s great work Available at: https://desistfilm.com/surrealism-and-twin-peaks-the-origin-of-david-lynch-and-mark-frosts-great-work/
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