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i need to rewatch FWWM and the original TP series before i dive into the new eps, but here’s something i was thinking about at work:
i think FWWM is Lynch’s most compassionate film, while also possibly being his saddest and most despairing. what the public at large wanted was answers to Twin Peaks (which they’re never going to get, obviously, it’s David Lynch), and instead, almost perversely, Lynch gives us a prequel, and I think it’s because he realizes that the series gets away from Laura Palmer as it goes on, and what he wanted to do was give Laura what she deserved. She may be the inciting action for the series, but she falls away as the cast expands and things get away from her, but what Lynch wanted to do was justice to her. Justice to this person (obviously she’s a character, not a real person, but i think Lynch understands that the importance of that distinction is somewhat minimal when it comes to art). And so he gave this rabid fanbase exactly what they didn’t want- a prequel, with information they already thought they knew. He didn’t give answers, because what answers are there for rape and murder? He takes Laura’s suffering entirely seriously, in a way that is incredibly rare for male filmmakers to consider the suffering of a teenage girl. he wants the audience to face up to the fact that all this mythology and storytelling and surrealism happened because, at the core of the series, a teenage girl was raped and killed, and he wants us to never forget that.
i think he feels an injustice was done to Laura by us not knowing her, by not really spending time with her. FWWM says: this is the person we lost. this is what she went through. this was her suffering. she’s not a random plot instigation, she’s a person, and her suffering is important because she’s important. because she shouldn’t have had to suffer. because the things that happened to her were so awful that there is no explanation, and there’s no comfort, and there should be no distance. Where Twin Peaks at times treats her rape and murder as an entirely mechanical plot point, much the way i hate when films in general treat rape as a plot point, something that could be replaced by any other assault and is only in there for shock value, her assault means something in FWWM, and what it means is meaningless. it’s not a plot point. it’s her life, and FWWM is Lynch apologizing to Laura for what happened to her, for saying that it shouldn’t have happened, for telling us that forgetting about this suffering or treating Laura as an object instead of a real person is our own evil. Because for all the weird and supernatural things that happen in Twin Peaks, the evil is totally human. and the human thing is the pain and death of a young woman.
in honor of new twin peaks i’m reblogging this because i thought it was mildly insightful
This post is exactly right. It’s also why the reveal in season 2 that Laura’s father was the one that killed her is so powerful and devastating. When Leland murders Maddy in the previous disturbing scene, the point of the show, the point behind everything that was happening to Laura is made clear and really hits home. (warning: some blood briefly in the video).
The entire show was about Laura. It was about how a small town aided and abetted years of rape, abuse and the murder of a young woman because no one thought to find out what was going on with her. She was taking drugs, she smoked and drank, she had multiple boyfriends and sexual partners, she had a secret diary she hid away with someone outside of her house, and everyone was thinking that was just who Laura was, she was wild, she was mysterious and unknowable, instead of realizing what all those things were in response to. Her mother had holes in her memory because Leland was drugging her to cover it up. At Laura’s funeral, Bobby says that everyone there was responsible for killing her, but even he didn’t realize the obvious question, the question that everyone and Cooper should have asked from the beginning, the question that might have saved her and Maddy: what was going on at home?
Laura’s murder set off a cultural phenomenon that included viewing parties, announcements on the nightly news and an incredible amount of buzz all centered around one question: who killed her? As such it became a guessing game, a series of clues that everyone was trying to solve. All of the big suspects for people were the obvious choices; the manipulative doctor, the violent husband, the drug dealer, the moody jock, the mysterious motor boy. Everyone was so caught up in imagining the league of super-villains who could be responsible that Leland barely registered.
In season 2 after Leland is literally arrested for the murder of Jacques Renault the judge just lets him go because he’s a good man and he’s a father who’s grieving and didn’t realize what he was doing. Simply keeping him in jail would have saved Maddy.
So when Cooper goes to the Road House with the Log Lady and Truman he’s expecting to find another clue, another shattered piece of Laura’s life that will lead him to the killer’s identity. For the last few episodes the trail of the investigation was at a loose end, because as they looked into BOB, or stuff having to do with the spiritual realm in Twin Peaks, the trail in the physical realm ran cold. But that was just a catalyst for what happened. Maddy, who is nothing like Laura, is a tragedy not just in her own right, but as a reality that no one acknowledged.
The real evil was in the father. The real evil was in Laura’s house. That it continued to happen was also the real evil, as this post said. Nobody realized this when Laura was alive, and nobody realized it after she was dead. Because of that, another woman was abused and killed. It’s why the dawn of realization that comes over each character is so moving, the host of the Giant saying “I’m so sorry” to Cooper, and why Fire Walk With Me was both so important and so polarizing to long time fans: because it wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t a game. The show tried to forget this, that it uncovered the dark truth of this reality by halfway-absolving Leland of what he did and writing the mother out of the show, at least until the finale when were reminded of what happened to her, Laura, Maddy, and Ronette, but the film made it clear as day again. While we were watching the crime as entertainment, much like how Cooper and everyone else is watching the entertainment on the stage, someone was being killed somewhere else.
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