Blue Velvet is the second David Lynch film I have seen, the first being Eraserhead. I really enjoyed Blue Velvet as far as one can say they "enjoyed" a Lynch movie. What I like most about his style and the reading really exemplified this was Lynch's Subverted Eden. I love seeing the skin of suburban American living peeled back to show it's rotten musculature. As a jaded suburbanite, I find this exploration of what happens after dark in our safe neighborhoods fascinating.
The Post-Modernity of the film really shines thorough with it's it's anachronistic setting, a kind of 80's/50's melange. Frank Booth plays a great 1950's high school bully who has hit middle age and fallen down an ether soaked rabbit hole. He reminded me of Biff from Back To The Future or the bully from IT. Lynch plays up the 50's incredibly, the joyriding in big American cars while playing with switchblades and weird lounge jazz. But this isn't the fifties, because how we see the fifties is completely constructed from movies and shows. I couldn't for the life of me give you an accurate representation of life in that decade, it's all been revised by Beaver and Greasers. Lynch is presenting us with a dream of what might have been had the world been like those representations of the 50's in actuality. A world where the Hardy Boys get pulled down into a dirty world of sadomasochism, where representations of idyllic youth screw.
Blue Velvet is a cynical journey into the heart of American repression and greed. Jeffery is a good boy, probably an eagle scout, but he wants to know about the world he can't have. Before we know it Jeffery is playing boy detective in his mind but his body belongs to a dark wilderness. The garden of Eden flips at night into an overgrown jungle, filled with predators and truer human beings that Jeffery must learn to cope with as he is the Pinocchio in the situation.
The film expresses duality through illusion. The reading talks about that art's truth lies in it's illusory nature. I believe Lynch subverts that view by presenting his audience with a paradox. The truth is a lie. Nothing in the film is real, it's all a dream, a reference twisted into a dark psycho sexual reflection. Even the heavy handed opening proclaiming the virtue of America, all I could think about were dispossessed suicidal housewives and Silent Spring. Lynch is playing to our disillusionment with what we are sold as the "chosen people."
You did a good job describing Lynch's way of showing us the world of decay compared to the "American Dream" lifestyle we are all so familiar with, suggested in the reading. The initial scene has a much different vibe to it than the rest of the film. Although we are presented with the white picket fence and greenery, the hose incident foreshadows that there is something unusual going on. I also think that Lynch's use of illusions definitely created a paradox that was confusing to many people. Is it ok to mix sex with violence? What is good and what is evil? These are just a few of the many questions that Lynch got us asking as viewers.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is a lie. Correct. Nothing in Lynch's world can be taken at face value. The suburban dream is teeming with beetles underneath and even the dirty underside of the city has complicated criminals involved in complicated relationships. I love how Lynch doesn't even begin to try to explain everything in this world. Much like Jeffrey, he throws you into this crazy story that twists and turns and is as much jarring to you as it probably is to Jeffrey. It's interesting the outcomes though, because I doubt like Jeffrey we want to keep coming back to this world for more than a taste. Although, some people could be that intrigued. Great post.
ReplyDeleteReally nice discussion of the postmodern aspects of the film--particularly its construction of the 50s not from any realistic images, but just artifice and representations from movies (and music. I can't listen to 50s music anymore, because of him). More in-depth work with the reading would have been good. You got the point, but you're also good enough to engage it a bit more extensively.
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