Horror Vanguard Twin Peaks - 10 Points per Episode

318 - Twin Peaks Retrospective Returns (Episodes 13, 14, and 15)

13,315 words in transcript

Prisadios can the monster speak this is on page 96 class set edipus free join the monsters do not hide patriarchal violence behind the so-called incestuous desire of children and place at the heart of your clinical practice the bodies and the voices his hers and there of those who have overcome rape and patriarchal violence of those who already live beyond the patriarchal nuclear family beyond heterosexuality and sexual difference and of those he she and they who are searching for and creating a way out so watching watching this episode for for this last uh viewing I had and seeing that horse right because the conventional reading of the horse in kind of literature especially in the gothic context would pull us back in towards like these patchless and tristic readings right it would pull us back towards the kind of standard you know like like Freudian edipus complex type of readings where we would see the horse as another like glowing symbol of the colonizer and of patriarchy and of oppression you know like the horse riding down on the down trotin but I kept thinking about like Prisadios writing and in the sequence and like like counter reading the horse as like a moment of freedom the the the thing that could yet find a way out right this thing this thing that is unfortunately and unduly saddled with all of the sins of patriarchy and colonialism as a symbol right when it enough itself is just a horse yeah so yeah that's that's that's what I was thinking about as I was thinking about any any takes I couldn't agree more actually I really love that I really love that um yes I think there's this I think to kind of I want to push this even further because there's something else that I do it um I think is important which is that this this this concept of the the the darkness of the lived moment means that not only is crime a kind of like a stringing moment from society but that we fundamentally are strangers to ourselves yes you know block says at the foot of the lighthouse there is no light like you don't know who you are really you can struct your sense of self like who who is Leland Palmer um is it useful is it useful to think about this idea of a coherent identity because often I think this is true especially in the context of the next episode that people kind of split him and you go oh there's Leland Palmer and then there's Bob who is like the bad guy and you go really is it that is it that is it is it that straightforward is it that dualistic and I think the whole point is the detective story like a narrative of detection is not just about these kind of ideological struggles but about the fact that we are fundamentally strangers to ourselves we are estranged from ourselves and we find ourselves kind of trapped in these recursive loops of like not knowing this movement of epistemology um and these kind of seemingly compulsive acts of restaging things right um this is why uh you know we have Laura the death of Laura Palmer again but it's on screen but it's just someone different but it's someone who thought who we looked at and saw Laura right so we see it again yeah again it's Laura's it's it's both Laura and Maddie's identities now being mediated through these series of images um and I think I think that sets up things quite well for uh very next episode yeah yeah I think I think uh the only the only the only last thing I'd want to say about uh lonely souls we would be that like I love that point about like people tend to split Bob in Leland and into two separate and distinct things that that aren't fundamentally interwoven with each other but that I think we could take that even further and if we if we do that why aren't we doing that with Ben Horn what about Leo yeah what about Bobby you know what about Koup what about what about literally everyone in the sequence why aren't we cleaving you know like these things which we which are negative or viewed as negative character depending you know why why why don't we see the moral somehow possessed by larger systemic things and and I think that you know the kind of like dialectics of the Leland Bob distinction really push us into very complicated territories of finding the locus of agency in these horrible crimes yeah precisely and and the kind of fundamentally slippery idea of identity like who are you what does it mean to be somebody else what does it mean for uh you to have within yourself many faces right um these speaking of the slippery idea of identity let's talk about a reoccurring character from this show who has some wacky views about his identity as a father jarring change of tone everyone sometimes sometimes we get these moments of silence and I don't know if it's because the call dropped or if it's because I just said something like so so ridiculous it's it's just the there would be the cricket sound effect playing if we could get the soundboard working um do you want to do you want to talk about driver the dead girl do I don't want to sound excited to talk about drive with a dead girl but yes let's talk about drive with a dead girl um there's a there's a lot of like fun kind of incidental stuff in this we have the return of Andy yes Andy is back and so are his sperms yeah his sperms there's a lot of like this this great example of masculine anxiety is still still still feeling the worry still feeling the stress what what do you think about this what I find to be really interesting is is what Andy's character reveals more and more as the show goes on is that the patriarchy is founded on a constantly shifting and constantly uncertain base of identity there is no way to be sufficiently masculine in order to satisfy the kind of preconceived needs of the patriarchy and we could see this in Andy's character and we could also see this in those tweets that people this is meme-don but people earnestly do those tweets where it's like fellas is it gay to bodybuild because you're sweating with a bunch of other dudes and and we we see this really played out in Andy's character because you know at first his tensions are oh can I can I have a romantic relationship can I be man enough to really get that going and then he's got all of these tensions of like you know his his something's wrong with his sperm maybe some erectile dysfunction he his gun can't shoot and then he kills a man for the police right he cementes himself as kind of a murderer agent of an occupying colonial force right like ostensibly filling the demands of the patriarchy but no here in this moment where he has potentially fathered a child he still does not see himself as man enough yeah it's the it's the great tragedy of his character right it's the great tragedy of his character yeah is this reckoning with his own like entirely fabricated sense of insufficiency mm-hmm someone someone sent him some Sylvia Federici we also get we also get another a new man a new man enters town um and a whole boy so uh enormous mother comes to town um and there's there's so much here about like these these kind of like misogynist standards of like what is appropriate for a woman to be normas mom is like oh you your figure hasn't changed that's good oh you're able to make a real mashed potatoes um and normas mom has remarried and is and is on the honeymoon uh what are your thoughts about the the new father-in-law Ernie we are in the Ernie zone zone zone zone zone zone so I think I think one of the there's a really telling line with Ernie and that's what he says I met Vivian at a Republican fundraiser and and I think this reveals so much to us about his character right and and that's like we we we come to find out that Ernie's done done time and jail for finance crimes and Hank uh normas normas uh terrible husband uh normas trash dick boyfriend to use twitter parlance for everyone who's very online it kind of ropes him back into crime by blackmailing him because he's been lying to Vivian this whole time about his status as a former criminal um and in him in Ernie I see so much so much of what I see in like the kind of perpetual grift that is both conservative American culture and the finance industry like like Ernie's character draws such an interesting parallel between those two maybe somebody could write one to three volumes of a book that would give us a good material understanding for this maybe a guy named Carl could do that maybe it's a it's a good idea there might be something in that I don't I don't know I'm I'm spitballing here that sounds like something a Carl would do I feel very calm coded but but again this is this is exactly what we've been saying right what is like what what what are the crimes the crimes of financial crimes and it's it's like the meme of like the astronaut looking at the earth where it's like so it's all a financial crime and rents extraction always was always was and no like this is this is also you're so right this this is like Ernie Ernie's character is a necessary historical material precondition for the creation of Donald Trump yeah right right we we built a society that is purpose purpose built that is that is custom engineered to produce increasingly odious increasingly conservative finance crime guys yeah I mean and like and what better example of this is Leland going off to play golf he gets his golf bag which is full of bloody clothes um and it's like well what is golf golf is the privatization of land the exploitation of natural resources and the enclosure of a common shared space all for the benefit of business guys you know you do all your best business on the golf course it's it's it's a means of mediating and optimizing rent extraction and capital accumulation through the instruments of financial speculation and talk about talk about being Trump coded we've got Leland who who is doing mountains of crime and finance crime who's using golf as a way to mediate his identity precisely oh twin peaks the gift that never stops giving well if you want to really get example of exactly what we're talking about uh there's a lot of bribery in this episode there's a lot of bribery and there's a lot of blackmail that happens in the context of law um so Ben is arrested Jerry turns up from from being in Japan I think and essentially admits that he is he's he's just a little guy he's just he's just a little bird hey boy you wouldn't you wouldn't make just an EP he's just EP he's just EP and jet lags and is terrible at his job and it's just absolute loser but like the best example here is like bobby so bobby needs to make money um and he and he figures out that Leo was behind Ben horns like he was the instrument of Ben wanting to burn down um wanting to burn down the uh the uh the uh the mill but yeah um Leo is talking with Leo's talking with them talking with Ben um and bobby's eyes basically turn into dollar signs uh and he says to Shelley that he is going to go into business but he's going to be an executive and he's going to do it by blackmail and like it's a source of play it as a joke but it's like no he's being completely serious because it's like bobby gets that's what you do if you're an executive right yeah no bobby bobby at this point bobby starts as kind of Leo's understudy and crime in a way yes and and at the in season one bobby is well on his way to being like a drug runner or a hitman or something like that but but bobby gets his taste of finance crime when he tries to con the the health insurance industry for money and now he's kind of a graduated up a wrong of crime class now he's moved on to finance crime yeah which again like I mean like there's a really good class point about all of this right like you know like Ben Ben horn is arrested and like nobody still seems to care about him running a brothel and killing people and burning down buildings it's still all centered around the kind of like you know white teenage daughter of the affluent well-liked local businessman which isn't to downplay what happens to Laura Palmer that's tragic and that's terrible but it is to like focalize the kind of levers of social power in these material conditions that actually get to the quote unquote justice system to move like how many how many women have died at one i jacks for Ben horns amusement we'll never know because it's not even part of the show but like and then you get so many return like Pete is back and it turns out that there's a recording of Catherine and josey's back and it's like all of these so like oh he's we've arrested someone we've got a good case that's the law but actually you go no now is the opportunity for for black male to happen um you know you're going to sign over the you're going to sign over the middle and the hotel back to back to Catherine uh there's the there's a five million dollars for mr.
Tockimura who's that's floating around like there's all of these all of these like things that kind of suddenly accelerate as soon as the Laura suddenly has like apparently quote unquote done its job yes yes yes yes yes yes and all of this is happening while leeland Palmer is is driving around with maddie's body yeah wrapped in plastic in the trunk of his car swarming singing looking at looking at himself in the mirror that that scene that that that scene too is even like so so oh my oh my fucking god this this sequence of events and the discourses inspires um so leeland Palmer is is swarving in an out of traffic because he is fully possessed by bob and he doesn't care whatever and in Cooper and and sheriff Truman pull him over and and he's just like he he's acting like just totally unhinged right he's he's just like oh I just so full of emotions and thoughts and feelings do you want to see my golf clubs I really love these golf clubs yep and then Cooper and the sheriff are just like well drive better next time and they let him go and and and I'm and I'm like okay like the race class gender like let's the spin spin the wheel of oppressive forces that allow local successful white businessman to to drive around with a woman's corpse in his trunk swarving in and out of traffic and being a total creep and then and then like the the psychic FBI agent and sheriff justice are just like ah you seem all right yeah yeah I know you don't need to because we captured we've recaptured jarad who um who had escaped um the one who would have been a shaman or a spirit seer and is now just a shoe salesman um yeah you're completely right and is again another good example of the ways in which this the show is about uh I'm completely sure that the show is about these explorations of like irrationalist modes of knowledge policing is not a rational institution right the what happens in a what happens specifically in America with although not um I think very what happens in a traffic stop is not a rational situation right it's not like an impartial application of the law mm-hmm oh absolutely um but but so much so much is going on right like the pace is sort of like starting to amp up as we keep going through this um well there is there is like a devastating crescendo yes at the end of this episode yeah so leland leland uh discards maddie's body in the woods and at the end of the episode it's discovered and it is kind of the you're you're totally right this episode is frenetic there is so much going on is so fast and then right at the end at the end of this kind of trilogy of episodes we just go full speed into a brick wall with the discovery of maddie's body yeah it's very interesting what keeps us to order it where he's like go to a room and lock you door um and it's like this point there's a kind of like pre sentiment that she was in trouble she's going to be in trouble she's going to be in danger um and there's this attempt to like control how knowledge circulates I think is very much implicit in kupers character but yeah the ending is yes it's Laura again it's Laura it's it's it's again this another like another body wrapped in plastic it's another beautiful young woman it's again these these these these seemingly unstoppable cycles of like compulsively restaged violence just just a shockingly brutal ending in brutal in the the kind of raw realism of it all yeah absolutely um and and and once again a further implication of like the process of investigation again this is block's point about universe right it's by investigating the problem that you actually uncover that just just how big the problem always already was and just how deeply you're involved the process that you start is the perpetuation of the process that you were trying to stop I think that's a beautiful point to close out this discussion on who well I'm so happy to be back in the Twin Peaks retrospective um I'll be excited for forthcoming episodes excited for Kyle to join the chat we will see you in an upcoming Twin Peaks retrospective episode with episode 16 arbitrary law episode 17 dispute between brothers and episode 18 masked ball until next time everybody stay spooky avoid golfing cut history of the reception of owls reveals one thing is that we have more questions than we have answers.
Again, um, I, I insist upon the idea that Lynch is actually making.
What we see play out in this episode is actually they're going to get like $12, because all that money is being spunged up by fees and equipment costs.
He says that actually the point of crime fiction is to show you the social totality in which crime appears.
I think, um, of what it means to genuinely, uh, care for someone and want the best for them.
Leo's insurance money is Shelley's means to like freedom.
This is, this is, I think you bring up really good point here because in this episode, we get this wonderful quote from Mr.
That, that scene, I think, is so we're going to get into that is so my, my, so important.
It's like actually, like the whole system, the whole systems of capitalism have material effects, but are abstracted into this kind of like spectral.

322 - Twin Peaks Retrospective (Episodes 16, 17, 18)

12,398 words in transcript

Yeah yeah just superhuman strength that she's not sweating and like the coach walks in and he's like all you losers pick up the slack and then he sees her like doing 600 pound reps and immediately he's like do you want to join the either boys or gender neutral wrestling team which this this ties in to to after this we get to see in where the the the the the wedding at the great northern and we see that Denise has caught the bouquet to which she responds with to Cooper's like oh you caught it and like Denise is like oh unfair advantage how many of those other girls were wide receivers so so we we have we have here a woman joining the men's wrestling team and a trans woman using her former football powers to do like the traditional feminine thing at a wedding and I'm just like I'm just like oh yeah this west this whole episode is designed to make a bunch of Twitter losers extremely angry yeah yes yeah I think the the idea about it not being played as a joke really at any point it's not like is not just like very ahead of its time right people hadn't even really figured out how to be more offensive when it comes to depicting trans women and people's revulsion with them but instead like see her as a human being as well as all the other people in Twin Peaks as human beings and uses it to force us in it uses like well-made characters to interrogate social formation in a very like direct in simple way that is very relatable and honestly in some ways aspirational again like obviously there's like there's you know it's a show from 1989 like it's not like like the like the the the perfect depiction that everyone is looking for and that we still don't have doesn't like doesn't exist here of course not but like if we you know we're all you know adults with brains and can see that like Dale Cooper's character in so many ways he's the he's the person he's always the person with his even in his flaws he's always the person that you want to be guiding you through the world he's the perfect character and always has been because the aspiration is in the journey like we all want to be guided through hell by somebody that we can trust and someone who we feel like understands us and the goal has to be not to that's where it gets into this all this very sort of like self-serving you know to cis-splay some things there's this very sort of self-serving attitude there's a self-serving attitude in the drive toward being the perfect ally I literally made ally jokes on the last episode but like the and you one point for them yeah well yeah I want a literal award as every ally desires in their hearts to win the trophy eggs let's see exactly and it's not about like part of that is like drawn from people's like anxious imagination on the one hand some people they retreat into the like the fantasy of cruelty right like I'm gonna get the opportunity to embarrass and humiliate a trans person one day or they take the other justice fetishizing just as condescending position which is that I'm one day going to be able to stand up and defend a trans person and everyone is going to clap for me and what is actually happens when you go outside and talk to other people and you have trans people in your life is that you're probably going to make some mistakes you're probably going to think back on things that you said at one point and cringe a little bit but then also you're going to have the moments where you had a chance to not make something about yourself and to make it about somebody else and to make it about like just trying to be like like in recognition like I know the you know the recognition of humanity as a loaded fucking this is a in part a theory podcast so that that you know we're not doing humanism or anti-humanism or non-humanism here but just very simply that like human relationships are about making mistakes and about doing your best and a lot of ways about being well intention and being well intentions doesn't mean that everyone's going to stand up and clap for you when you do things correctly it means that in your day to day life you care about somebody else and you have a willingness to just not make something about you and like because care is not about you and it's never going to be about you it means it's about not maybe into to Christian for you know some things in this world but like it's always going to be about reducing yourself in a in such a way that actually results in the care of another person and I think that's really kind of like the remarkable take is that you know like we all like I as this is man like can can only aspire to that level of humility when it comes to the people in my life who aren't cisgendered who exists across a spectrum of gender representation and identity and the like you know you just you just have to like you have to be well intentioned and you have to not make something about yourself and that's my rant that's my gender rant yeah and no I think I think I think that's like slots into the discourse of the episode perfectly right because like you know like I think there's a there's a temptation to analyze this from like a transphobic standpoint and that isn't that is not to say adopting the views of a transphobic person because fuck what a transphobic thinks but to like look at it from that angle and kind of do the negative critique of the show and kind of like saddle it with all of this baggage but I think the inverse of that is also really productive here right because like a lot of Denise's dialogue feels like it's coming straight out of egg IRL like girl I've seen those memes I like like like I know what you're processing to to a degree and like that is like like there's a shocking reality to that and I think like especially because like yeah I think you're totally right we need to focalize a little bit in this ironically maybe Cooper's perspective because like you know even if we take the kind of supposition that like you know like at the kind of like one of the worst fears right like of being just a man in a dress or whatever right like Cooper is still totally accepting is like oh cool that that must be some wild stories behind that anyway moving on Denise let's talk about the cocaine like he's so nonchalant he's so open and accepting and direct it kind of negates that space that would otherwise be dictated by transphobic discourses and allows Denise's identity as a trans woman to kind of just come forward claim that space exist there without those kind of added pressures and just kind of like naturally fold and interact with other characters in their perspectives fix your hearts right or die yep like sit sit simple as that I mean it is it is as simple as that and into some ways to it that that is complicated itself right because obviously this the show is kind of like a exploration of a sort of like folksy small town Americana but it's often an exploration that's done through Cooper and I think Lynch's own quite sincere Americanisms right like David Lynch goes out for Maltitz right there's this great this is great interview this is great series of interviews with like the the women who've worked with David Lynch talking about and Laura Dunn tells the story of when she's like 19 and she goes out on a like chemistry date with David Lynch and Kyle McLaughlin and David Lynch insists they go out for french fries and Maltitz to a diner to see if to see if they could get on and she describes it as this being this kind of like really weird moment where you go either I want nothing to do with these people or I'm gonna love them for the rest of my life like but like the point I'm getting at is like Lynch is has these kind of like folksy Americana aspects to his work and it's like in a way that they they also are imbricated in kind of often more subtle uh bigotrys that that come up right there's no black people in twin peaks yes yes except from the last two episodes which is a stark contrast to the usual.
Tudjimuro Katherine reveals themself and takes uh a genuinely like vicious and horrible revenge mm-hmm uh what do you all thoughts about this both of you i mean i mean because this is gender the episode like the the first thing that i i i would like trace about this is like Josie's character is very mask right like Josie is like i don't i don't know what framework we would want to apply to this like maybe foot sure like her her identity is expressed through very masculinely coded terms yeah all the power suits the slick had the power dressing yes the hair yeah mm-hmm and even even her role in business even her independence on that frontier as another one of the business crime lords of this quote unquote small american town right like she's playing in a very masculine arena so her character kind of has all these masculine signifiers baked into it and like what it what is Catherine's chosen punishment it's it's to reduce her to a live in made right it's it's to kind of cut out all of those like masculine qualities that she was otherwise freely exploring which in the episode with with gender and sports discourse is just like like this episode David David Lynch and team must have like received a vision from 2024 and and crafted this verhavi and bomb designed to detonate in our time frame basically you know Joan Chan who is just as as as all all of the women in 20x are just the most ethereal beautiful creatures like yeah Joan Chan this like god s walking among us uh is this kind of like there is this again there's this kind of like orientalism and exorcising of particularly Asian women as a stereotype um that is there are some interesting things happening with her character in relationship to specifically small town america and small town american capitalism that i think is kind of a worth thinking through particularly about the relationships between you know america in the late 80s and 90s and the big fears of like Hong Kong and Japanese business that were going to come over and you know it was supposed to be the Japanese century um what what do you about think take it away a cut oh yeah oh yeah i like that i think that um i think that actually just really sums it up the um sort of the interplay and the like everything a lot about anxiety and social formation recently because of other podcasting that if i recorded five podcasts in two days um and have talked a lot over all of that time we're talking about all kinds of different things but they all related together uh when thinking about the sort of like anxious urgences that make their way from the top very top to the very bottom of the social order in capitalism and that how the cultural like the when we get a sort of countervailing cultural expression like we pretty much always do anytime David Lynch decides to pick up and write anything or to pick up and film anything um i think is uh i think is actually in with all seriousness incredibly important because the anxiety of capital and of in the case of some of the things i was talking about of like imperial power um and the and especially in the american context it's always in this uh mediating tension between the exterior and the interior because america is a kind of a distinct in a lot of ways a very distinct imperial power it distinct from the your the imperial the various imperialisms the high and low imperialisms of european powers throughout the 19th and 20th century like that the like as the emergent like as an emergent power from a settler colonial context and then the basically the inheritor to the like the the the high achiever of capitalism as an inheritance from that same um or original metropole um has carried over in such a like the the reason why american culture is so rich in deeply deeply weird is because of that specific inheritance um and so as a sort of like a countervalence to this culturally the way that this is expressed in culture in the 80s and the 90s they were the sort of like oppositional imagined oppositions that were either remnants of the cold war or of the um sort of like ramping up of the conflicts like leading toward the Gulf War and all like all that kind of a thing and so you don't get like there are sort of like countervaling perspectives but there's not something that feels so like urgent in a like something that feels like it is directly bubbling up from within the american sphere and this like sort of anxiousness about Asia as an emerging capital power i think is is pretty remarkable um there's this like and then like and that doesn't even touch on the gender dynamics right there's always this sort of like implied like leftover again left over from the exact same period americans we are not interesting and not creative like it's all derived from this from the like the gifilms of the 50 of the forties in the fifties the like postwar the postwar filmic imagination of the subservient japanese woman um the like the subservient asian woman the silent and domineering asian man um and that like you know it's all production it's like it's all the fear of foreign intervention and are sort of like anxious attempts to to cohere it around this like often very mid century that's why lynch is perfect is because he understands that like or at least like in his perspective right he understands that the stuff at the root of his childhood is still so fundamental to our psyche in the united states that like he just figures out new ways to repackage it and reconstruct it introduce it into new time periods with similar aesthetics to like embrace the like fear of change at the core of his like there's a diner into impeach and the diner is incredibly fucking important and that's not by an accident right like that that is deliberate and clear and someone's like anxiousness around their like business where what they mostly care about is making a living for themselves and like yeah I'm not going to do small business apologia but in like in this case the diner it represents not just a small business but represents like one's value in the contemporary moment in the passage of time and well I guess I had more to say about that than I thought I did we will bend that we will bend that okay oh I'm sorry I literally thought I literally thought I dropped the call or something absolutely not we were just in of another outstanding Kyle take what I got scared we're gonna like oh fuck oh we have to we have to talk about the new hire here in the hv crypt I want you to both know that now I'm literally laying down I like the play ahead I feel like we've been we've been exhausted we have been we've been thrust through the the the the the the gender zone we have been we have gone into I've been turned I gotta turn my video back on you gotta see where I am this is peak podcasting performance uh I've been doing this you may not like it you may I'm sorry that y'all can't see this but this is what peak podcasting sounds like yeah yeah listen I imagine the coziest possible podcaster that's the sleepy time t bear is is now podcasting for Kyle pull the pillow over into a more comfortable position and yeah I'm like now I'm just on a bed lying um anyway well I couldn't think of a better place to wrap up our latest installment of the Twin Peaks retrospective then the greatest show ever it's the best fucking show I googled Twin Peaks merch while we were talking about it just to like I don't know I don't know why we know we know why we we all know why listeners uh thank you thank you listeners thank you for joining us for this episode of the Twin Peaks retrospective we will be back next week with more Twin Peaks more retrospective more gender as we discuss episode 19 the black widow episode 20 checkmate and episode 21 double play until then stay uh ducted by gender.
Because what has Laura been this entire time is just this, this kind of vacant symbol waiting to be flooded with everyone else's meaning.
Because like, what would two white business, quote unquote, business community leaders, you know, and actually be doing, right?
Because like, what is Andy's perennial problem?
Because of the conversation that Andy is having with Dick Tramann about his, the potential parentage of this unborn child.
It is something fungible and exchangeable and it's not actually a life for an identity or a culture.
Again, it's like, it's like, this grand metaphysical statement, because really, like the whole episode is about Bob and like, the nature of evil.
Because this is, I think in a bit more of a traditional series, this is the episode where we wrap up all the loose ends.
You have the sort of snappy I can't remember the titles of the songs this is private discrete rant about this being the the greatest scored television show of all time that there is literally no competition.

247 - Twin Peaks Retrospective: Episode 7 "The Last Evening"

12,290 words in transcript

It will give you a bite it will go run away and hide under something you know like a cat can run outdoors and never come home and live you know it might be a more painful and uncomfortable life but it can survive in ways that like you know if if your your tiny little toy dog runs away and goes outside it's getting killed by a raccoon and a fortnight you know like like those things are not built to survive in the way that cats are and so I think that there's cats around a more level playing field with us in a certain respect you know you have to give part of yourself back over to the cat if you want to you know cohabitate with one you can't just dictate everything about its existence you know it's it's very hard to go like go sit in your kennel to a cat yeah because like I say cats yeah a cat's are not subservient that's the word I was looking for yeah cats are not subservient and if anything quite the opposite yeah you know they they don't how many times if we worship cats in our history as a species like there's the there's the great Terry Pratchett line about that which is like cats were once worshipped as gods they have not forgotten this it's it is I mean like this is this is so true you know like I you know harker sitting next to me right now and I'm like I'm like I would do anything I would do anything for this thing that you know has has no like under under the auspices of capitalism has no material value for me you know he's not a mouse or anymore you know he's not an Instagram cat influencer it's just my little buddy yeah I mean I my the grumpy little demon that lives in my house is probably held up in my bed somewhere but this raises the question right what is what do you think blanche is oh see this this I think is really fun right because for me if I kind of continue that line right of of like mutual aid a factor of evolution cats as being something that we need to respect right we need to give more of ourselves over to the cat you know we we have less ability we have a smaller ability to dictate the terms of its existence and it has an outsized ability to dictate the terms of ours and if we look at this movie blanche is kind of it is the thing guiding everyone around it's it's both the object that contains the kind of paranormal forces of the haunting and it's the object that guides these young women into the house so it kind of guides them to their doom in the first place what are what are some of your thoughts yeah there's a kind of like there is something kind of like otherworldly what is what what is blanche blanche is both the spirit and the kind of like psychopath there's there's so many interesting questions because there are so many moments in the film where you go that's not a real cat anymore and then they'll like throw the real cat into shot shot yep and you go there's this kind of weird doubling because nobody notices right nobody notices this cat the cat can go anywhere and do anything cats are kind of spectral supernatural cats are see things that we don't so yeah no no wonder that we've we've we've almost always associated them with with the uncanny and the supernatural yeah and if we if we like take a step back from the text of this movie to and see it less as a a bunch of young teenager girls getting mulched by a ghost and see it more as kind of a young a young self coming into the first understanding of its kind of horrific totality the the kind of spectral nature of the cat is I don't want to say this it's the it is it is that kind of necessary encounter with this like totally unrecognizable other right it's it's like this very first and very simplistic encounter with another that cannot be fully subsumed by the self you know that the cat is at once an actual real little fuzzy white cat and a painting and a bunch of like really surreal artistic effects you know it's it's both real and it's not real it's both an object in our world and it's not an object in our world there's no way to ever fully encapsulate what blanche is or what blanche is doing this is uh this brings us to the question of reality itself right what do we mean by the real and the unreal in the context of this film because there's so much of this film which is not real but there's also so much of this film which is just not real when you look at it on the screen and I think to really encapsulate the point what I'm trying to get out here we have to talk about the water melon and the water melon seller oh okay so what let's let's unpack let's unpack dude who sells water melons on the roadside out of a height which I really appreciate as as kind of like a just just one of the great human endeavors just selling your produce selling your wares to passers-by yeah great great character in that but you're also fulfilling the kind of age old tradition of like the guy who gives the warning right that don't don't go near the old Johnson please I think oh no but let me have one of these uh clearly like a volleyball that you painted green let me take this away like the water melons are not real they're not they are they're fake and they're obviously fake and there is this kind of like hyper abundance to them they are like they're it's way too big it looks very odd and there it gives it gives there's a kind of plasticity to the world in which these young women these girls kind of live and and move through before even before they arrive at the house right the world is not real none of these there's a there's a these these are similar kind of these are like symbols emptied of content then these kind of like post modern gestures towards something that we might want to remembered and it's like you take it because it's hospitable right it's hot it's hospitality to take something uh so I I love I love the obvious not unreality of it what what about you what do you think so I I love I love the guy who is haggling with me like a seller of melons in the marketplace I love this dude so much and I think you're absolutely right and I think that's the reading that I would do is looking at him as your your Scooby-Doo-esque character the guy that's that's saying like oh don't go don't go find him behind in that old mansion and I think that in the context of our story you you you're absolutely nailing the kind of like formalist experimental interpretation of him he's he is this kind of like like barrier of surreality that these kids are pushed through and I think that in terms of the kind of text of the story he also functions as he's the last he's the last adult warning the kids away he's he's the last kind of supervisor figure the last adult figure that's like hey like don't go any further because if you go any further something's gonna happen and if we if we kind of look at like the shift between a juvenile reality which is once you you know the older you start to get the more your younger years become this hazy refracted dream and nightmare landscape you know memories memories become worn like stones in the river and this guy is this guy's warning them he's just warning them about that is like you're you're about to grow into something and becoming adult is horrific and beautiful you simultaneously realize that like the trite childhood depictions of magic no longer mean anything but now you are capable of that stuff you are capable of being the cause of all of the mysticism and wonder in the world and what is more horrifying than that realization well this is why I want to talk about the skeleton I love the plastic skeleton in that boy in the house who you can see you can see the strings dancing away he's dancing away in the background uh just bustin out some sweet moves uh if you if you follow the show on the social media website twitter twitter.com slash harivan god you may have come across uh perhaps our favorite gif which is a dancer which is a dancing skeleton we we we refer to skeletons and skeletons dancing all the time and to me there's something so interesting about the body beyond death still being a site of productive activity right isn't that the kind of very base model of the haunting like the ghost is the ghost is the body without the body right but the skeleton is the physical body without the physical body right so there is but still still even in death even as inert matter still dancers right even in all of its plasticity and the the fact that it is not uh real even in all of its glorious unreality the skeleton still dances there's a sort of there's a sort of like beautiful kind of hopeful forward-looking philosophy here because it it it means that we associate we associate the the the the skeleton with the mental mori right just uh i you know you might have seen it in the walls of a church you'll see you'll see a uh a memory of death a skeleton with the words just as i just as just as you are so just so just as just as i was so just as i am so shall you be right it's warning like everything falls into entropy but even in its entropy and decay the skeleton dances still um what do you think so i love i love the skeleton in this i love the skeleton this route like just so many reasons it reminds me of uh Vincent Price is the house on haunted hill where it it closes with with him killing people using a large skeleton marionette that looks so much like this one um it's it's this and you know the figure of you know like the kind of cheesy clearly puppeteered fake skeleton is so effective i think as as a bit of horror we need more skeletons i think i i would like to see skeletons come back um because you're absolutely right like it is it is something to grapple with because there is a vitality that cannot be extinguished it's not you know so much of our existence is concerned with whether or not you know like oh what's going to happen when i die you know like will will there be a part of me that lives on in some way whether that's religiously or through a family line but the the real creepy thing about that is you don't have a choice part of you will live on like there there is there is no true totalizing death some aspect of what you've done in this world will outlive you and and you owe it to an infinite sea of potential that you'll never be able to see the horizon of to try and make that something good you know like to try and do something materially correct with with the short time frame the unknowable time frame of existence and the memento mori is like like the literal skull staring back at you it's the skull that's in your head you know like all these wonderful memes about like like oh my god there's a skeleton in the room it's inside you you know like that kind of that kind of like playful attitude towards death is like it is literally the dancing skeleton you know like it's it's these things that will keep living on that we have absolutely no control over yes yes yes yes now I know you mentioned this you mentioned this film in 2022 best of the episode I know you wanted to kind of join the house so up to skidmer ink oo so this I think is I think we're gonna have a lot of fun with this part of the discussion right because like haunted house movies there there's so much material discourse to have here skidmer ink was my pick for the best movie of 2022 since recording that episode it has been picked up for a wide release so it's going to be released on streaming platforms which is great to see that's absolutely fantastic um in the whole the whole point of skidmer ink is that it's an exploration of the kind of haunted house from the perspective of not children but of childhood memory yeah it's it's it's this hazy disconnected imperceptible thing you know because literal literal children can't can't really make movies they can't really tell their own story you know so it has to be told by older individuals in retrospect and there's always something inconsistent about that there's always something that changes in the in the translation and one of the things I find to be really interesting about how sue skidmer ink poltergeist evil dead is is the kind of site of home ownership as as a place of unbridled terror and how it how it's gone from like or how it continues to become how it shouldn't say gone because this has never not been a factor it's only getting worse that home home ownership is just wildly precarious you know like and even home ownership is a phrase like I was talking about my praisy that's that's another capitalistic linguistic trick I don't I don't think I actually know anyone who owns a home I know a lot of people who pay mortgage to a bank with considerable interest to effectively pseudo rent a home from a bank you know like like we are so far from what true housing stability would look like that of course the space is going to become hazier harder to remember and infinitely more terrifying as the system gets worse yeah I mean I've read I've written about got a box as the purchase the whole did housefilms right okay can I can I share something yeah can I share a fun thing fun thing fun fun HV thing before you and I we were we were like Twitter acquaintances you know but like before you and I had actually met on my first trip to England I saw you give a give a speech give a presentation on the haunted house and Gothic Marxism oh yeah I was I was I was at M.M.
Necessarily because it means you might get property and property equals some sort of safety, but it is also this phenomenal risk.
You step into the circle to accept the play space because the rules of games don't matter anywhere else.
What is what is like so I kind of straightforward narrative film is trying to convince us of the truth of what we're seeing, right?
The commercial is all about manufacturing and synthesizing and directing desire.
Capitalism is like oh well these things are fine and good as long as you're doing them to work better.
What you get in jaws is you actually do get the revelation of American political ideology and full force in the in the figure of like the mayor like yep.
Yeah like jaws is jazza's also another film that's very open about it but it's instead of taking an experimental route it's it's kind of going going for the going for the throne of the first blockbuster.
Or gorgeous and her father and like the new mother figure because in lots of ways this is a film about the relationship between mothers and daughters.
What do you think about this is like a film about kind of matrilineal relationships?

330 - Twin Peaks Retrospective (Episodes 25, 26, 27)

11,776 words in transcript

On an, on an interpersonal level, because there's a kind of deep sincerity to this idea of actually, there's something kind of magical about the idea of falling for someone.
Yep and I think I think we can even like read that against itself as well too because like to be a sorcerer in this context is to be the one with the explanatory power over what's going on yeah which is which is so much of the endeavor of the state and the empire right it's to be the one who gets to explain things whether that's the one who's writing the history or the one that's cranking out the propaganda or as political theory would call that legitimation yes right magic is a process of legitimation and what is being legitimated and why is a is tries you might dress it up in a kind of like spiritual or immaterial discourse that is fundamentally a political question and I think I think this ties in nicely to this episode also proliferates the sudden hand tremors that are popping up with everyone in twin peaks yes I'm so curious about what you think about this because the episode itself doesn't really spend much time or anytime explaining this so I I was reading this as and I'm glad you brought up like legitimation right because I was reading this as a kind of decay in the structure of legitimation in twin peaks right the the the the sudden hand tremors are affecting everyone it's it's literally a destabilization of the part of our body with which we manipulate and engage the world around us it is a ropt at the core of our agency these these unexplained hand tremors that are shaking their way through twin peaks and this is happening in a moment where the literal foundation of this community right owl cave is beginning to shake you know power is beginning to solidify to an increasingly small number of hands right and you know the hands that don't have that power are starting to tremble I really love that reading what a what a great way of putting it and so that brings us up brings us on quite nicely I think to Cooper and of course the reappearance yeah poor Cooper of the reappearance of an old friend the giant so Cooper Cooper and Annie have a little dance at the roadhouse there were the romances in bloom and Cooper is treated to a vision of the giant malthing malthing shouting the word no what do you what do you make of this what do you think the warning is well I think I think the the most direct right the crash reading of this especially if you know how season two ends like it's a warning for Cooper to stay away from Annie I think that's but that's that's the surface reading right like I think the much more we can comment rather I think we can complicate that reading and we can complicate that reading in a whole array of other directions beyond just like oh stay away from Annie because you're going to be the source of great trouble for her Cooper this isn't your fate or whatever because those you know that ties him with what's going on with major brygues that ties in what's going on with Sheriff Truman like that kind of puts a bow on you know in contrast again with Gordon and Shelley right Gordon and Shelley you know they they bow out of this very short kind of like somewhat somewhat religious romance that Gordon gets to experience right like yeah something very chivalrous yes yes something very chased and very chivalrous and then you know contrasts with what's about to happen with Cooper and Annie but I think the warning that the that the giant is giving here is more of like I think it's a bit more broad for Cooper's character because the kind of like Thorne and Cooper's heel this entire time is his kind of like naivete about his sense of his place in the world and his role they're in right he has so much faith in the kind of systemic forces of the FBI and the local constabulary to to put down windom Earl and restore twin peaks to a place of justice and perhaps chasing around he believes it will become mayberry right he believes in the system that much right he's Sheriff Andy Griffith and I think in a way we've got the giant warning him that like you know he's he's succumbing to this ideological apparatus that's going to be his downfall yeah this it's so it's so interesting that it's nonverbal right um so there's no enigmatic clue or there's no you know uh epigraph or aphorism that gets dropped that gets unlocked later or yes new event like it's just just just direct yeah but at the same time gestures are deeply ambiguous right and yeah we can read it in the kind of straightforward sense of how season two ends that's fine but I also think it's it's like it there's something so powerful about it because it's like it's the gestures you make before somebody like drives into a wall it's really it's it's about trying to catch Cooper's attention um exactly not only he doesn't he doesn't listen because there are no words right or rather there might be no words because he's not listening mm-hmm yeah and I think I think that that is the point of the scene in such a strong way is that no one's listening you know like like they're the kind of coming catastrophe is not being heated appropriately and it's it's the giant trying to catch Cooper's attention but Cooper is so much the character of the audience right it is through Cooper's perspective that we experience Twin Peaks for the vast majority of the show um and it's also the giant kind of shouting at us right like it is it is this moment where you know in a lot of ways I view the kind of like agents of the lodge as being the like director stepping on stage for a moment to kind of like direct his cast and characters and pieces and this is this is just such a sign of like none of us are playing the game as hard as we could be in a sense when we're watching Twin Peaks we're all kind of like missing chunks of the metaphor it's it's in a way like as much as this is a dire warning like I really think your car crash metaphor is appropriate but it is also an invitation to because we as the viewer have a greater power than any member of the lodge in Twin Peaks does we can rewind time we can take things back and it does give us the invitation to go like oh the giant's warning Cooper is something well I can go back I can rewatch an old episode I can hit rewind I can kind of do the studying and the viewing that Cooper is unable to do to kind of get out and interpretation rather than the interpretation of that warning yes absolutely and of course we have the return this this warning is immediately kind of like justified when we have the return of Bob I love the final shots in this episode so much just some beautiful layering you know the cave mouth and the you know the sights of the red curtains there's something there's something so I think it's very easy to read the show if you've never seen it before is being a collection of often very disparate symbols but as you start going you realize that for all of the production problems of the show there is actually a very clear aesthetic dramatic unity happening here and you know I can't I'm excited to get to talk about how this plays out yeah I think the the the kind of re-emergence of Bob here is just shot beautifully it reads as being incredibly ominous it's deeply threatening it's it's one of our first kind of like really strong contacts with this point of connection between like the the kind of like supernatural and mundane worlds of twin peaks and it does set us up so nicely now that we have walked the path to the black lodge for episode 28 miss twin peaks and episode 29 at the finale of season two and the finale of season two of our twin peaks retrospective beyond life and death we look forward to joining us next week for the last installment of the twin peaks retrospective at least for now if the long history of the reception of owls reveals one thing is that we have more questions than we have answers.
The reason that I bring up particularly late 18th, early 19th century literature is because this is the era of sensibility.
Because the thing is like, Shelley has been treated really badly, like consistently treated horrendously by Leo.
I actually think there's two kind of important points here, which is one.
What would actually be going on if there was a world in which like we were something to be treasured rather than something that is like seen as societally disposable?
She is actually the femme fatale, right?
I think this is actually very true.
I think honestly the only way to think about this is to think about it in the context of late 18th and early 19th century literature.
It's like actually there's a certain level of emotional response that is appropriate for particularly patriarchal men to show, right?

328 - Twin Peaks Retrospective (Episodes 22, 23, 24)

11,151 words in transcript

I think it's very important that the log lady also talks about death masks quite a lot because a death mask is the concretization of memory.
These three episodes are in so many ways about the nature of love, I think, actually as so much of Twin Peaks is really what the show is about love.
The weirdness feels a little more kind of like, manate and like, deliberate aesthetic choices because this is what the viewer or the studio expects Twin Peaks to do.
I think that's one of the reasons why season three is such an interesting kind of resolution to so much of what's happening like on screen here.
Listeners, if you want some foreshadowing, we're changing the numbering sequence when we get to season three because the show changes the numbering sequence.
That sort of retroactively is used as justification for why he treats Donna actually really badly.
One of the elements of this that I actually really do enjoy is the adenoma.
Because this is has just become one of the most kind of like heart-breakingly straight forward relationships in Twin Peaks.
It's such a good kind of like example of the ways that the show is actually like quite achingly sincere about the nature of love.
I guess the other kind of question if we're talking about love is like what do you think about the love triangle between windom all Cooper and Earl's now deceased wife Carolyn, is it name?

326 - Twin Peaks Retrospective (Episodes 19, 20, 21)

11,118 words in transcript

It's it's just it's this fascinating like I cite of struggle it's this fascinating like erupting little flux it's this like yeah oh go on go on I'm just thinking you know like obviously there's a lot to critique the show for as Denise is like a fascinating character but obviously as you said deeply problematic but for portraying the kind of like fluctuating status and performance of gender or the performativity of gender I think this is just a super it's it's it's captivating it's captivating and it's it's done it's it's done well I don't know but it's done in such a way that it is the show has its heart in the right place right the show has fixed its heart rather than die yeah and especially coming out of the 90s right like when you know like any depiction of like trans women in cinema we're like at best corpses you know like like in one of the most like feverishly transphobic times in like western cultural production which is saying something isn't it listeners like oh yeah to have you know like of course again and like I hate that we have to worry the stone of David do company being Denise but like you know what's done is done so like let's look at the text that's sitting here right David do company please come on horror Vanguard and we can discuss your many cinematic roles and all of your feelings about gender but like you know like oh my god x files is T for T hold that thought for the forthcoming x files discussion listeners but no like like to see Denise like a trans woman with just like such mastery over the kind of like side of cultural struggle that has that has been made to be her gender by a world around her right like like something that should just be normal and easy and not conflicted to see here like not only master that but like a few episodes ago inspire a young woman to make a positive like encodes here because we're left on gas positive career choice you know you can make something of yourself like you know it's it's really theoretically useful from this kind of a laboratory perspective even if light as with everything in our world it's still kind of like partially jammed up and and kind of like lodged lodged into a lot of like other oppressive discourses and it's problematic discourses to continue to like use our favorite term um our favorite term compelling what being compelled again so let's let's let's talk about another character that's gone into some kind of transformation and this one is a transformation that sucks but is deeply revealing how do you feel about Robert E Lee oh let's talk about Ben Horn yeah okay so Ben Horn has started doing Confederacy Cause Play and also Historical revisionism and I don't know what to make of this I I don't know so so Ben Ben Horn is doing some lost cause shit yeah and listeners if you don't know what the lost cause is in quotes here it's a pseudo historical racist and revisionist look at the civil war that suggests that what the south was doing was somehow just and not about slavery in the slightest um so everyone every every time someone pretends that the civil war wasn't about slavery for the south they are doing lost cause stuff um and that's what Ben Horn's doing right he's trying to like carve out a glorious underdog victory for the Confederacy right he's doing this lost cause bit which I think is very revealing for his character right because what what his his entire character right he's kind of the Robert E Lee of his family and twin px right he's this mid dude who just is not really good at his job who who keeps bungling himself and into shenanigans that cause greater failures around him like he's kind of like the like as the eternal loser um we're hating on the Confederacy today and horror Vanguard absolutely so what do you what do you make of this then and it's historical revisionism right he's trying to rewrite his own story um but like he's a loser he's a massive loser so like obviously he's drawn to the Confederacy uh with its proud noble tradition of taking a fat fucking out and and and and I gotta say I gotta say twin px went on longer than the Confederacy twin px is more of a cornerstone of American society than the Confederacy you're right it's very revealing of like uh this character's self conception um this idea of like trying to uh place your own shitty pathetic behavior into some grand historical narrative of destiny um but it's like it's at and in a way I suppose my reaction of like uh this is boring and not very funny and I think it's slowing the pace down it's kind of deliberate I suppose because you want you want the audience to be like oh no this fucking loser again every time he pops up on every time he pops up on screen like with his little uh general Lee figurines that he's carrying around yeah absolutely and again my because like part of the project of historical revisionism is less about arguing over the interpretive frameworks with which we look at history and more about laundering the frameworks with which we guide and shape the world in which we live our current material conditions right and so like you know people who don't want to talk about slavery and the south and the Confederacy like it's isn't it weird how they're really often rich racist white people who are very loud about that who may perhaps have you know or are currently uh the inheritors and benefactors of material system that's kind of structured on you know like those historic forces and I think we again we see a little microcosm of this been horn right like he wants to see himself as as you were saying some kind of historic figure but he needs to do revisionism for his own history right we'll see that we'll see this play out as Jacob he gets involved and this becomes like a thing but like rather than having like an opportunity to face taking an L Ben horn is about to double down on revisionist mythologies that forever guide and shape his character and it's like let's let like let's be clear he is he is a uh vinyl corrupt liar cheat like it's like this is a person who would drastically need to change in order to turn around uh like his his life um but this like he kind of vanishes into fantasy to preserve his own ego right and and furthermore he has the material conditions to do this too right like yeah you know like like like like some of a lesser standing wouldn't be able to like walk through these fantasies quite as easily and even like we we see kind of like a mirror a parallel play out with me Dean you know like like me Dean is doing this but like the longer the longer me Dean stays in her fugues state the more the more her relationship with Ed deteriorates the more there are consequences in her world right like like the more like like Ed is her sole source of material support and the longer she stays in in that kind of fugue the the more decayed that's becoming versus Ben horn like who is legally structured as the empire of his little kingdom you know he could take time to have his little fugue problem he could spend money buying a bunch of cool action figures to facilitate it you know like it's going to take a long time for that to fully deteriorate and before it ever deteriorates they'll just shuffle the deck as to who's in charge of the white water enough a white lodge oh my god the hotel absolutely it's a kind of finish up talking about this episode should we very quickly talk about uh poor uh Shelley and Leo yes let's uh so this news by now uh we get honestly a scene that feels like it's something out of Friday the 13th where Leo comes back to life and he's got an axe and he's stalking Shelley through their half finished home in the woods it's very slasher killer oh yeah yeah yeah deeply so Bobby also ever the scumbag has pretty much left Shelley at this point and now he's pursuing Audrey Horn as he's seen he's seeing himself move up in the world as a businessman of crime and so now he can't be slumming it with these petty fraud schemes with Shelley yeah it says a lot that Bobby's role model is ban horn yeah it's not falling out of like at all listeners yeah uh yeah well it's it's really it's an expertly choreographed scene it's as you say it's like straight out of a slasher um and once again it's like there's there is a deep concern in the show I think for the ways in which the uh the the kind of like well the the patriarchal system of male behavior that ignores domestic labor and reproductive labor that um that that seeks to confine women to the home perpetuate systems of violence done upon women absolutely and we see like classic men women in chainsaws final girl plot structure with Shelley here right like you know there's a scuffle with axe wielding killer Leo uh uh knife falls to the floor Shelley grabs the phallic weapon of death and stabs Leo and he runs off into the night and I think this this carries us on to uh what I would I would I believe will be a quicker discussion episode 21 double play yeah where so Shelley Shelley good Shelley vindicated Shelley we love Shelley where where has uh Leo run off to John uh well he is wandered off to the woods he is lost he's lost in the woods uh and he is found by he is you know think think of the opening of of Dante's inferno he loses he loses the path he's lost in the woods and he is found by uh a virtual figure a guy if you will um we have the introduction of the great nemesis windum Earl I really like this sequence I really like windum Earl popping up right like when the merrill has been a very like mythological figure up until this point right he's the only person who could get the better of Cooper right like we have a very very classic narrative structure going on and I think introducing him here in in the woods right where everything strange in Twin Peaks is out of windum Earl is quite literally an accountor fit lodge in the woods which I think importantly situates him philosophically and in throughout the context of Twin Peaks between the white lodge and the black lodge that he's in some kind of counterfeit human lodge dwelling right and having him kind of emergent of the show this way both as like both with how grimy and real and sudden it is but also with how it's still nevertheless part of like the mythological structuring of Twin Peaks and I think it's like it's the it's the best way to stick that landing for including him back into the show oh absolutely um and you you finally like it's very it's very strange or kind of like quite satisfying that we'd move from this chess game at a distance uh that's been done through the newspapers uh and then suddenly like he's here he's here now and it's like the the stakes escalate so expertly yes yes I I really like that framing and some exciting things are going to happen to Leo over the next few episodes uh his his fun and games aren't quite over yet and listeners I very much look forward to discussing oh my god um oh actually anything anything left to say on this episode John oh we have not yet talked about James and Evelyn oh yes let's let's so what what is set us up here what's going on with James and Evelyn so our classic haunted bad boy has gone out of town and has met the mysterious beautiful Evelyn and has volunteered to help fix her car um um Evelyn it seems as also a bit of a troubled soul yeah and is in an unhappy marriage um and it all gets very gothic it all gets very gothic very quickly uh so uh there's also Evelyn's brother Malcolm and Malcolm tells James that Evelyn is being uh being abused and she's damaged his prize car in retaliation um James and Evelyn end up having sex um what do you think about this kind of gothic try had because in the very next episode in slaves and masters um there's a reveal of poor James um who once again finds himself in so much trouble but we will get to that but what do you think about about that whole setup going back to my comments on James from a few episode a good a few episodes ago the thing I find to be intriguing enchanting summoning provocative definitely not compelling um about how he's being positioned with Evelyn and Malcolm is that like he's literally James Dean right you know he's he's the rebel he's the bad boy right you know in other narratives he'd be like the peak of the trouble pyramid he'd be so edgy and no one could catch him but James keeps finding himself in situations where he's actually on the back foot all the time because like in in reality James Dean is a troubled teenager right and a lot of those movies like these are teen splotation films about the dangers of wayward youth biking around and and that's who that's who James is you know like he kind of like the the kind of narrative of cinema wants us to see him as the rebel without a cause right we want to see him as that classic biker rogue you know the someone's the pseudo carolac figure you know who's so worldly and wise and dangerous but like that's a relic of teen splotation this guy's a kid you know he's he's a teen so he's he's actually on the back foot all the time and when they're doing they're kind of like you know a Nancy Drew boxcar boys style you know solve the mystery of our friend's death kind of situation you know like they keep getting themselves and increasingly horrific trouble and have to get bailed out by the adults and now you know James is again we're having one of these situations where this like combined and uneven apocalyptic revelation right like James has fled twin piques you know and like as an all proper journey is right he's gone in search of himself and his soul and not something out there in the world and like as he actually encounters something like it's as yeah exactly as you said as we will find out is way more he's bit he's again bit off way more than he can chew but perhaps that's something that's best kind of fully unpacked on our next installment yes listeners we will be back next week with episode 22 slaves and masters episode 23 the condemned woman and episode 24 wounds and scars we look forward to talking about shock collars and chess the newest way to cheat at one of the world's oldest games next week on horror vanguard diet is that we have more questions than we have answers a new episode new episode a plan time it's time you're gonna kick on it this one if the long history of the reception of owls reveals one thing is that we have more questions than we have answers.
Because because he is the thing that I think is really important and very revealing.
Yeah, and I think this is, this is so important too, because this is less true about Andy, Andy, because it's Trimane that brings little Nikki into the world of Twin Px, right?
What do you think about about the owl as like symbol for the show?
I find that the owl to be really interesting because the owl has had like a second life as it kind of metaphysical cryptid in a way associated with UFO encounters, right?
Really, really podcasting is all about clapping.
Do you want to lead us in ash because and perhaps we can do this with our dear friend, our companion, our guiding anchor through the hermeneutic mysteries of twin peaks, the log lady.
This is something that you brought up pretty frequently actually.
That like, you know, like to hear the log lady present at this way, it's like, it almost lets you naturalize some of these discourses a little bit more because it's like, no, everything here is super weird.
We just, uh, and listen to this, I think the episode is out now actually.

331 - Twin Peaks Retrospective Season 2 Finaly!

10,522 words in transcript

About what Ben Horn thinks is good right because he's trying to get the truth out there you know if the truth means destroying.
It's like no actually surrealism means something like surrealism is a discursive machine for the generation of like hermeneusex strategies. Yes. Right. So, surrealism.
A lot like a lot like doppelcoup you need to smash that paywall to get at the truth.
Certain like utility for our conversation right because like the the the the idea of like purifying the guy who owns the town's soul.
Town suddenly you suddenly you go oh yeah financial capital yeah remember remember that because we're no longer talking about like the logging industry.
Yeah that's best by joking answer I think actually my series one there's always this kind of you know because like there's not.
Follow me for years um and I don't even remember what I'm gonna say now because I said the phrase synchronized gesticulation and now.
To what we're talking about here because like instead of the trite heroism of of Cooper being like you're doing what would have been.
These things, right. So, you're completely right to talk about the whole point is never to arrive at the answer, right, because that's closing.
The entire discursive framework we could be using here. That's why it's important to situate like David Lynch is so uh profoundly historic hit.

242 - Twin Peaks Retrospective "Episode 5 Cooper's Dream" Review!

8,002 words in transcript

See I love this reading of what's going on specifically in this episode because I think that this is this is an episode where kind of the production of the truths of twin peaks really start to emerge.
Last night, I actually slept better than I ever have in my entire life.
Instead he's, he's trying to return to a community, but it's a community that he, as he's discovering does not actually exist for him.
Look, we've said always that the show is about the three important things in life, which is communism, friendship.
Are we forgetting that we've done this or are we remembering something that we're about to do?
We are remembering events that have yet to come.
The concept of dreaming is going to be very central to how we approach.
I think more broadly, the episode title is really evocative for me because what is Koopa's dream?
I think, I think a good way of contrasting the show is to think about something like Christopher Nolan.
The big one is inception because it's about when Christopher Nolan dreams, what does Christopher Nolan see?

236 - Twin Peaks Retrospective - Episode 3 - "Rest in Pain"

7,675 words in transcript

Because if you're going to fight something that's like a human that lives kind of outside and beyond us, you need to generate something that is equally abhuman, right?
We'll be back next time with the next episode or maybe this episode again because something that you should grapple with is that it could be you trapped in the time loop of the lodge.
Yeah, because like what, what's the point of interpretation?
The mystery is that we remember doing.
What's worse, the idea that you might have a doppelganger or realizing that you are the copy?
My weird out of pocket theory is that for Twin Peaks, actually for so much of Lynch's work, hermeneutics is the ultimate aim, right?
I think code is quite a kind of cold way of putting it, but dreams are symbolic invitations into the into the act of interpretation itself.
The point of interpretation is not to prove anything, but is to allow someone to know themselves.
He says, you know, you should be careful.
He's not really a disjarring of the kind of systems that Major Briggs represents.

#10

224 - Twin Peaks Retrospective - Pilot Northwest Passage

6,726 words in transcript

This is actually a really important point.
Obviously, you can go, there is a degree to which that's true because that's the way that a lot of contemporary culture just talks about the police, but the show complicates it in very important ways.
What it means and what it represents.
We are both extremely excited because for whatever you can say about Twin Peaks, at least we're not talking about Resident Evil again.
What's impressive to me, actually, is just how deliberate everything in Twin Peaks.
Because this is what the show is about, right?
Of course, Lynch is a super important influence.
Because this is a Lynch Frost production, right?
That's very interesting because I would disagree about what Twin Peaks.
Because I like Angela Bottle-Demantie and Julie Cruz are just phenomenal.

#11

274 - Twin Peaks Retrospective! Season 2, Episode 9 "Coma"

6,516 words in transcript

Ordry is simply young you know like she just doesn't have the years and the experience yet to to better correlate her intent with her action and and so it appears to be chaotic but it's really just an experience and I think like we're we're we're kind of like fleshing that distinction out much more clearly as we go into this you know in like it's it's Audrey who is able to like stay at one hijacks longer to kind of like pull the crime tether out of that one to draw out her father's involvement to do these things whereas like Laura was kind of just swept up in it for a brief moment and then her own chaos swept her away and I think the distinction between the the two of them and this is something that I think appears in a lot of like classic gothic literature too is there's this kind of like paradoxical agency to a lot of gothic heroines that they are heavily confined confined into appropriately enough a metaphoric or literal patriarchal labyrinth but they have a a strange agency within that and I think we're we're seeing a contemporary riff on that with Audrey yeah and again I think the the show is super interesting for a a kind of serious engagement with like I kind of a psychological horror often often does treat women particularly incredibly especially young women very very simplistically and very very kind of condescendingly and I think what's really what's really good about the show is Audrey I'm very fond of Audrey's character particularly because I think it's just she's one of the most interesting interesting and complex and conflicted people in the show um but there was something else that happens in this episode which I thought you particularly would have some interesting things to say about is like we start talking about Tibet again ancient Tibetan history let's go this this is like we start to get some exciting stuff Albert's character is is becoming increasingly awesome you're awesome I don't know that's a bit too finished increasingly interesting well it's a double act there's a double act that's starting to happen yes yes so so in this in this episode we we see the first kind of like a real blossoming of of that tree that's been nurtured between Albert and coop and and coop is talking about events of to Tibetan history that occurred thousands of years ago and and to which Albert responds we're like oh I prefer what does he say it was um you see says something like I prefer to focus what's going on in our own century and then Cooper is like ah you you may be surprised at how much they have to do with each other you know like doing the standard kind of Cooper Cooper Rai commentary but I I really really love this as a juxtaposition of of two two entirely separate ways of engaging with the world and the kind of like very interesting criticisms and utilities we can kind of pull out of each of them yeah so for example uh for for example they're both they're both correct like like like what you like in any good duality right like the real answer isn't one of them has a better position than the other it's it's synthesizing the two together right like like like Cooper Cooper is correct there is so much we can pull from learning from the past is literally all we have you know but like you know like his his counterpart is also correct Albert's also right if all we did is kick the can of the past back and forth we would be nothing more than like um actually if Archduke France for Dan would have been assassinated two months later um this blip blip blip blip blip blip blip blip blip and it would have been nothing more than like comic book fanboy commentary about the the machinations destroying our planet I mean isn't the point though so all right a slightly left field take hit it the show treats the investigation of crime as essentially an investigation of historiography yes the point is to try and it's not to find out guilt because there is no such thing as individual guilt really not really but actually to understand something of the kind of processes of immediate lived experience history history is something that is made lived and then died through by ordinary people right so really what they're having a debate about is modes of historiography uh and this it's the kind of conflict between presentism and a sort of mystic historicism and you're completely right the obvious answer is to is to see those things as kind of constantly informing one another but this is the this is the big the big kind of like driving force between Alfred and Cooper is that they're fundamentally distinct epistemologies so so you are one absolutely right as always and two you wrote something really interesting in our notes that i'm very excited for you to to crack into and that's the question of madness well at a certain point right this is something that that comes up with these characters like Alfred who have like more traditional modes of knowing the question becomes what does it mean to know something right so what's interesting is like the way that a lot of the town treats the log lady for example this is someone who who clearly has like major breaks has visions people have visions they report visions to the police and it's like none of this is ever dismissed none of this is there's no kind of like arch rationalist who goes well actually Neil degrass Tyson has not filtered into the consciousness of twin peaks right and so like at at what point and the the person that i'm thinking of here is like um uh i'm just making sure which which um uh while you're looking that up Neil degrass Tyson voice um actually the owls are what they seem because they're just birds well yeah it's his it's Cooper's ex partner right Cooper's ex partner has gone mad has gone mad right has been institutionalized and it's like hang on in the world of twin peaks what does that mean and secondly the other question seems to be what kind of knowledge does that give you access to because it isn't necessarily pathologized right existing on a slightly different plane of reality it doesn't seem to be pathologized in in this show so it's really interesting that Cooper actually seems quite nervous by the idea that like his ex partner might be in the mix somehow um what do you think about that oh i have tics i think i think the show uh that this particular aspect of the show offers a secret approach to like mad liberation because we like not not only do we have characters like the log lady right in a character who will be introduced to shortly who has like severe agoraphobia but like in these people are treated very normally you know like like there there is difference uh but there there is not negation or criminality or discrediting embedded into that difference right you know like like like the log like you know like people people react strangely to the presence of the log lady carrying a log at first but it's the kind of strangeness where you would react strangely to like i don't know a juggler walking up and talking to you it's just kind of not common it's quite literally strange but everyone takes her seriously everyone recognizes that there's something to be had in her account of the world you know like there there there there is like a deeper social value held within the log lady that only she can express and then we also see with major brygues that these phenomena happen in degrees but are very common you know if we widen the field of that degree that even people who are a high ranking government officials can have these kinds of idiosyncratic perceptions these visions yeah and i think the fact that you know like a coup's former partner is you know like incarcerated for his insanity it has has crossed some kind of line what what that kind of like to me expresses and like the thing that i kind of like pull out of that is not a distinction in kind but a distinction in proximity you know like his his insanity is no longer useful or is running contra to the mechanizations of state and power therefore it needs to be incarcerated and held away right it is it is running against the grain of the direction in which capital points when all of these other people are like like you said reporting their their visions to the police and well this is a little problematic in the context of twin peaks because of how they code good and evil but i think it is it does kind of like flush out a good introduction to a discourse well let's kind of dig into this and let's talk about let's talk about things be not being what they seem particularly owls yes so this is one of the clues that the Cooper is given by the the giant that appears in the first episode of the second season the owls are not what they seem um how do how do you interpret this so so i think um just really quickly though you just brought to my mind the one of the other clues of the giant gives him is without chemicals he points which which is you know like we have the one armed man ceasing to take his medication and then gaining a much more powerful a site that he was repressing which again fits into a lot of like mad liberation discourse and i think that slots in really well to the owls are not what they seem in that discourse but rather than following that line i'm gonna pivot to talk about funco pops again uh because like the thing the thing that really sticks out to me is that the owls are not what they seem is one of the most popular lines from twin peaks it has become to be its own signifier for the show right like like along with the zigzag stripy pattern and and you know like damn fine like it it has become to embody aspects of the show that supersede the limitations of the show itself and i think it's interesting it's how that's come to happen right there's a kind of hollowness to the owls are not what they seem right there's a kind of like funcified degradation that has happened to that term to that like entry point into a mystic discussion is now just like something printed on the side of a mug from an etsy shop there's a kind of reduction happening here what are your what are some of your thoughts well i think that's a good kind of matter point about the wider cultural discourse about the show um but there's there's there's there's a couple of ways that we can read this right so like we can read it almost cosmologically because major briggs comes along and part of his job is to he is that the gal you know the the spy of the galaxy uh and he reports that their radio telescopes are picked up on this message the owls are not what they seem something is trying to get in touch um secondly we can kind of read this in the context of kind of the natural world right the the idyllic mountains and forests and waterfalls of twin peaks um when do the owls appear they mostly appear at dusk in the show um and there is a sort of like there's a kind of liminality to them as creatures right in this space and at that time they appear on the kind of edge of things it's a very common idea to use birds as omens of things right so i think it's interesting to think about how it how it has become a kind of like cultural shorthand but i also think that maybe it's p this is going to make me sound very very very uh kind of pretentious i think but like i love i love whatever you're about to say i think people miss the fact that twin peaks isn't some ways very straightforward right it has it has a very distinct aesthetic and it has a very kind of um uh it has a very uh deliberate way of constructing its stories and that's true of all david lynch projects but it's also it is also very clear about its its themes and the ideas that it's trying to explore it's very clear about all of that um but i think a lot of people like to just take the kind of weird moments and actually just remove them from the wider aesthetic frames it gives them meaning which is you know this is exactly what you were kind of critiquing and so i'm like can we not just see it as a sort of warning right it's a warning it's a warning about something it could be and like any good bit of imaginative writing you can read it on multiple levels between not being kind of just taken in by the adiallic picture of nature that you're surrounded by to seeing these hours kind of harbingers as omens as representatives of something to seeing them as a kind of like marker of a kind of cosmological disturbance well i think i i think your reading is perfect because the owl as a symbol fits into a broader like set of american cosmological signifiers and and the owl is is often mapped back onto the alien gray right like it and this and this appears in a whole host of novels and movies and like ufology right like the the connection between whether you want to read like sightings of alien grays as people misinterpreting seeing an owl which owls can often be very large and they have the kind of oval shaped head if you will with the large reflective eyes or you know kind of more spooky connections therein and i think it's this is a very inviting phrase right like it's it's not only it has that seller door quality it's just pleasurable to say the owls are not what they seem and and you're absolutely right it is inviting us to kind of step beyond the natural right like to to step beyond reductionist readings and simplistic things into kind of attain a wider sight and speaking of attaining a wider sight which is like to talk about musicals yes can we can we talk about just you and I can we talk about that we have just you and I are talking hey zing who's on third well i i i i thought there's been a lot of music in these opening two episodes and i was curious to know what do you think about that that song particularly so this this i think this is one of those things where now because we have twin peaks the return it kind of fundamentally changed how i see that forever because twin peaks the return is almost in a way like return to american bandstand it's american bandstand for fucked america you know like it's we have this like pageantry of american excess decay and collapse and then you get a band performing you know then trend resonant pops up on stage and hits you with the number like and we're we kind of see the the the predecessors of that it twin peaks is a deeply mutual musical show you know a geolo angelo bottle of mentees score it defines a whole aspect of twin peaks and twin peaks would arguably so much weaker without it and now we have like the show is kind of like we have these like diogenic music sources emerging from the show like i just think this is like phenomenal where what are some of your thoughts on this one yeah i think i think there's this super interesting use of diogenetic and non-diogenetic music in the show and i it's it's like it's genuinely like haunting little moment between the three donno donno james and maddie and it's a great way of actually it's called just you and i and there are three of them you know it's just like it's just like what a what a lovely moment of just like a visual narrative right setting up all these intense like emotional psychological pressures and fracture points between the three of them and unsurprisingly this all blows up particularly in the next episode um so i love it i think is a great it's a sort of a really great enhancement of the um constant use of music and yet bad lamentees kind of noirish jazz touches in a lot of the school i just still remain just like unbeatably good and i think i think i think also uh just you and i ties into a lot of your your comments unlike the gothic and doppelgangers within twin peaks because who whose you know maddie is it's the same actresses laurea palmer it's literally Laura's double in the show and we have like again that's another layer of this kind of like gothic doubling that's going on here we have we have james hurley falling who wasn't love with Laura now falling in love with Laura's doppelganger and in so many ways like the whole town is a doppelganger of laurea palmer and the song is just like i you know it's meant to be a love song but in so many ways it's a dirge to twin peaks oh what a great point what a great point um should we i mean we've gone over half an hour again should we should we wrap it there let's let's let's do oh thank you everyone we're joining us for season two episode nine coma of our twin peaks retrospective uh we look forward to joining you tomorrow for season two episode three episode ten episode i don't remember uh the man behind the glass you die it is that we have more questions than we have answers a new episode new episode you're going to kick out of this one if the long history of the reception of owls or reveals one thing it is that we have more questions than we have answers.
The show itself has two numbering systems, technically three numbering systems because there are total number of episodes of which this is episode 10.
That means wacky sound effects here.
I think it's really interesting to just, just oppose these two characters because the log lady is a true mystic in the sense of the word, right?
Pride does obscure, you know, the joy you should have in your accomplishments to a certain degree, you know, depending on how pride is expressed, right?
You don't really know what a lot of the clues that Cooper is working out from being given by the giant really means.
They have this, like honestly, it's wild because it's basically an incredibly Marxist point, which is that the transformation of a natural resource into an asset does all kinds of like weird, occult stuff.
What color crime and quotes there because it is the far worse type of crime in terms of damage to society.
It's a fun scene because like the thing about Ben and Jerry is that they they love scheming they they like middle-aged men in Twin Peaks love to do crime.
Audrey Audrey has ended up there because Audrey is trying to get involved in the investigation and find out what's happened to Laura.

#12

HV239_S1E4_The-One-Armed-Man

6,155 words in transcript

We should talk about Hunter's directing, I think first, because he's clearly drawing inspiration from a genre that hasn't pressed its weight into the world Twin Peaks yet, right?
It lets us visually see how isolated they actually are from each other.
It's like, of course, because it's a, this is a classic film noir technique, right?
What do you think about how this, how this kind of, somatic of duality is being pushed forward?
It's almost impossible because I think the show is deliberately, it's a kind of barrow your analogy.
Oh, that is so that is because that would have been a perfectly serviceable and fine shot without the introduction of a llama.
The the fact that we exist means a necessary collision between the unknown, right?
This is this is precisely the point of Freud, right?
The the visions of community of the small town of Americana or of like, I've even like subjective coherence, all illusions that we believe and enact simply because to face the alternative is too stressful.
I I find Jacobi's character to be incredibly fascinating because there are a few characters in the world of Twin Peaks that have kind of a heightened awareness about the mechanations going on around them.

#13

232 - Twin Peaks Retrospective - Episode 2 - "Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer"

6,012 words in transcript

Is a one thing one thing that I really love here is that like it kind of occurs to me now in conversation with you that the log lady is offering us a religious ecchi and analysis of what's going on here because what is not a dream that can take the form of a man other than ideology you know like the the horns are not just a family they're they're a fictitious construct right they're they are the pillar of capitalistic ideology in real form so something that it is completely internally how hollowed out by its own rusting corrosion but externally is meant to be revered to the point of worship and and I think that that that's another uninterrogated dream right that's this kind of collective unconscious shared dream state that we all live in right what walking around to kind of deferring to our social better's whether that's literally in the case of when you have to take your bosses shit just to keep your job or that's figuratively in the sense that you know like we live in a society that's that's willing to let that that's willing to strip mine mountains in Kentucky to perpetuate flooding eternal that that lets COVID run rampant you know we we can come up with examples of this eternal yeah precisely precisely but what that to kind of undo this kind of ideological mystification what you need is kind of ways of thinking that will help break you out of it and given given what you just said maybe that sheds more light on uh on the role and function of dreaming specifically in this episode yes here we go um so oh gone what are your thoughts about Tibet well allow me to pull down a an extremely large and comically oversized map so I can point to you where Tibet is located um well Dale Dale Dale Cooper uh agent coop has has some very poignant ideas about the politics of Tibet as they relate to China um but I think that's that's a separate issue from our focus on the dream state here so through the course of this episode uh Cooper realizes in a dream how to find the killer he has this elaborate ritual that involves writing writing names on a chalkboard having the sheriff say the names to him then he throws a rocket a bottle and then based on how hard the rock hits the bottle it determines the proximity of an individual to the murder yes yes um it says this is a little hard to describe what do you what do you think about this what do you think about this how do how do we make sense of this so um I think there's kind of like several things that I sacked in this um the thing the thing that I would want to look at in relation to that scene is kind of it's it's to bring that in context with the rest of the episode like what is Dale doing yeah we're what is coop doing on like a very material level like like kind of like what is happening here and that's he's he's bringing the dream back into reality right he's he's the the first of the characters in the show that's willing to like openly interrogate the the kind of material seriousness of the dream space and not dismiss it as something of femoral and other and kind of outside of the balance of normal society he just unflinchingly brings it in and I think that that that's extremely poignant in in a show or in an episode specifically where the B plot is the psychic heat death of the family that owns most of the town I mean what are your thoughts there's there's something else to work here which I think is important which is about a certain kind of way of knowing or way of understanding what crime is so in typical modes of detection you identify the one a gentle party you identify the guilty person the coop doesn't seem particularly well it doesn't seem particularly interested in just doing that because that's not what this method is designed to do right this method is designed to uncover the kind of psychic reality of the town itself crime is symptomatic of something right crime itself or oh it's such a good point murder is murder itself is is is obviously horrific and horrible and yes you have to find the person who committed crime but actually murder is symptomatic of something it's symptomatic of kind of like a deeper myosematic field through which the entire social formation of the town moves and so the way that you tap into that is through dream logic is through kind of revelatory knowledge right because you're not just trying to understand you're not just trying to solve the you know solve the equation to find the acting agent who did X trying to understand how X was even produced in the first place yeah oh absolutely that is such a brilliant way of analyzing agent coops mystic definition for the killer like like to recognize the inherently interconnected nature of this as well as the kind of networked revelatory potential of dreams because dreams are never like isolated right like they are they are free associations done by parts of our mind that that you know for better for worse stay away from our conscious aspects is that there's a disinhibition with that this probably brings us on to talking about the dream sequence yeah okay so let's let's talk about the lodge because if if you unless you watch the version of the pilot that was actually made for TV movie that contains extra scenes which includes the lodge this is the first time where we really get to meet the lodge in our lodge citizens yes so how would you how would you describe this so this is this I think is part of the beauty of twin peaks right because so so like like Lynch as as kind of a creative right loves to be open to kind of open ended metaphors in the dream and not having to pin himself down to singular meanings and you know like in a first episode on this you know we talked all about this how this isn't a prescriptive we're not here to solve twin peaks we're here to get lost just like everyone else and I think that when I watch this when I watch this dream sequence right I'm I'm I'm drawn in to the how do I say this there there's a direct reality of the dream sequence that is extremely like like almost like anti-real it's not it's not weird in the sense that love crafty and weird fiction it's emphatic confront us with this erupting strangeness that that can't be ignored this is this is like outstandingly subtle outstandingly calm but at the same time everything is just shifted just a little bit in one direction and that I think is kind of the beauty of using like because again in this episode we've got like this little like tri-phasic thing with dreams going on by the time we get to the end we have we have the horn family hiding behind the dream that is ideology we've got Cooper using this kind of you know like dream hermeneutic to to realize that crime is like socially constructed and socially bound in a network and then you get this passage into a like dream dimension into a total dream state that that is nevertheless like the thing that is needed to to solve the immediate material problems that Cooper is facing.
I think it's because people don't necessarily want to take seriously the idea of the multiplicity of subjectivity right.
This is episode two which is episode three if you count the pilot which is actually episode one it's twin peaks is staying confusing.
I think for me, you know, I always want to start with the log ladies, presee before each episode because I feel a natural connection there.
I think is something really interesting is going on there because her or dialogue is stressing this interesting boundary.
This is Ernst Bloch's famous book The Principle of Hope was originally going to be titled Dreams of a Better Life.
How much which because there there's a there's an interesting contrast that we can draw right.
What do you think about that that introductory scene?
I think it's a super interesting idea but and it's again something super old in the American cultural imagination which is just like the vigilante gang right the law itself in certain spots in America doesn't operate in an explicit way right because so much of America socially politically philosophically depends upon these things which you never spoken about right there is yeah if if America is a place there is evil in the woods right there is there is there is evil in all of it and it's an evil it's never spoken about it's never acknowledged and so like there are certain places where the law just doesn't or not even doesn't go but can't go and that's why you have things like the the outlaw gang or you have the vigilante hero who arrives into town or you have like the you know the posse you'll you round up a posse and you kind of solve the problem yourself because the external law capital L law can't deal with it what what do you think I think that this is one of the most interesting things that's going on here because I think that this is the episode where lynching frost kind of put their foot down and they're not put their foot down that that's a bit too dramatic but but this is the episode where they really make a statement about this show as it relates to Copaganda because I think I think Twin Peaks up until this point ran the risk of hero cops hero sheriff you know wrangling the criminals of their town you know and in a very like cliched almost western way but with with this I think we see like like there's like a founding tension to the cultural project that is the United States of America and that is simultaneously a total reverence and honest direct worship of you know the state's unilateral access to violence right hero cops praising the military at every possible public event being unable to to lower police or military funding in the slightest because that is borderline blasts for me but at the same time it also inherent to to a lot of these founding mythologies is a total rejection of of governance and capital L law and centralized power and all of these other things that creates this total discordance and here we see that in Twin Peaks you know we we we even have the law officers themselves recognizing that their their trade and profession is insufficient for solving the world's problems yeah you you have to have the kind of revealed knowledge of your free associative psychic powers rather than any kind of like it's very notable that you know what the character who comes up the worst in this opening sections of the show is like the really if he FBI science guy who hates them all and thinks they're all kind of like backward yo-kills and you know he's the one who's there to provide the answers but the longer he's on screen the more you realize he can't provide any answers really oh absolutely and I think you know you know with his character I was thinking so much of Carol Clover's analysis of I spit on your grave and specifically the idea that there is this kind of the city has an impulse to enact violence on the the kind of metaphysic entity that is the countryside you know like like he he is very much this kind of emblematic figure for the the concentration of class signifiers that comes with like you know the the elite individual from the urban core you know being totally dismissive and and load some of the suburbs he's he's the he's the equivalent of like those liberal politicians on Twitter that post things like oh well if southerners didn't want to be beaten to death regularly they would vote blue no matter who yeah absolutely absolutely uh the very least he deserves a punch in the face the very least and I think I think again because now now agent coup has to resist the machinations of the central office right because now he's he's in conflict with this guy who's kind of in emblem of the the the centralized access to violence that is law enforcement and I think that this show doesn't come down on a on a clean answer right coup never says a cab but it does start to stress and strain against the boundaries it does provide openings to have these conversations well let's recognize the inherent okay it exposes limitations of like what what what do the police do what does it mean to try and what does it mean to try and solve a crime and you go well you arrest the person yeah the show is like well that's completely insufficient that's that's in fact that's maybe worse than doing nothing because even it because even if you're not there communities can organize their own ways of trying to deal with the the the the the psychic metaphysical evil that dwells within the ontological incompleteness of all human subjectivity that is the that's the best way I've ever heard that phrase that was fantastic uh but we we are we are past past the limit of our mortal powers on this the third episode of our twin peaks retrospective the first season of our twin peaks retrospective future seasons forthcoming uh do you have any closing thoughts or commentary for our audience it's a great this is a great episode this really feels like the show kind of like it's established itself now and it starts making some just massive swings and I think all of them pay off this is this is maybe in terms of just everything really starting to sing I think this is the best episode so far oh I totally agree I think my only my only outgoing comment would be kind of an open any question for our listeners and that's this this is the episode where we really start to see sex work become a a prominent kind of like tent pole feature of the twin peaks landscape and I would say I would ask how how is it being represented right here what is what is its representation with and against to the presence of law enforcement specifically and wealth as well as that uh things we didn't have time to get to today but are definitely extent in this episode and thanks for listening to the third installment of our twin peaks retrospective we'll be back next week with episode three resting pain we hope you've enjoyed the dread discourse until next week today's boogie.
How are you doing on this fine day?

#14

271 - Twin Peaks Retrospective! Season 2, Episode 8 - May The Giant Be With You

5,890 words in transcript

Obviously, if you are starting a new season, you need to bring people back up to speed.
I think that this is something that is kind of a uniform quality of stuff that David Lynch works on because he has this kind of grotesque realism that he he's very interested in as an artist.
I hung up the phone for you because it kept ringing.
What do you think about the choice to have all of these kind of exposition delivered to Cooper rather than showing us what happens?
There's a bit of me that found this kind of difficult to sort of latch onto it first because I did.
You and so I don't know there's a bit of me that found found this opening kind of kind of weird to to get back into because you're right.
It is time at last for the return.
This year is season two of Twin Peaks, our Twin Peaks retrospective.
We are back in the beautiful town of Twin Peaks.
We are talking about the first season of episode two.

#15

244 - Twin Peaks Retrospective: Episode 6 "Realization Time"

5,609 words in transcript

Meanwhile, Audrey is also there because she has work to do, but it is expressly through a libidinal means.
I think it's so important too because like, again, this whole, this whole first season is ways of knowing.
Also, but also like goes, no, you can go out into the world, you can exert your agency on circumstances, you can actually try to solve something to try and make the world a better place.
Oh, and the line is actually a bit of cut dialogue that was data mined out of the game, but is not in the release itself.
I do see what you mean, especially because this is an episode which has a really interesting line, a kind of like line of flight or thought about the human animal relationships.
It's reminding us, I think that there is a lot of information in the areas where we are that we wholly disregard because of how colonialism teaches us to see the land that we're.
There's something interesting here when like, not only the modes of knowledge get rearticulated, but actually systems of law are necessarily like a kind of they have an ecology to them.
What the act of violence is actually to try and re-inscribe the domination of quantification.
Weirdly, I actually think the commonality is a lot closer.
Yeah, this idea that actually, you know, again, this is, this is why I like Lynch a lot, which is that he very much respects the agential capacity of young, young people.

#16

277 - Twin Peaks Retrospective! Season 2, Episode 11 "Laura's Secret Diary"

5,456 words in transcript

I think we're both pretty excited for this one because this is really where, at least in my opinion, this is where season two starts to become season two.
This log lady introduction is talking all about anger.
I think that this is really interesting from a left discursive standpoint, especially when we're dealing with horror media and Gothic media, because anger is like the hidden emotion of the Gothic.
We're focused on suffering, which are all important things to study critique and move through.
I just, I just sort of love this plot beat because everybody goes, oh, Twin Peaks is a dark, noir, psychosexual thriller.
Yeah, it is also, they're doing like classic comedy bits of like rushing people out the back door before the big important guest comes.
Even there, like, this is interconnectedness that I really love in Twin Peaks, right, because we've got everyone at the diner on the surface level.
There's so much more in this episode as well, because there is, there are two other really big stories that we have to talk about.
Let's let's pick up our deputy Andy because because this episode is kind of one of the many peaks of deputy Andy's masculinity in crisis hijinks.
It's almost like there's almost a there's so much like Andy is such a such a great like court gesture figure because like there's so much like paythos to his comedy.

#17

279 - Twin Peaks Retrospective! Season 2, Episode 12 "The Orchid's Curse"

5,418 words in transcript

Pinkle sells medical supplies right he he's he is going to retrofit the Leo Shelley homestead with all of the equipment they need to take care of the now comatose Leo um and uh he's he's he's trying he's trying to hook them on the sale for some apparatus and he says he says the outstanding line a woman is like a machine which which I only assume that that was a complicated if fumbled reference to the cyborg manifesto yeah yeah and really interesting politics on gender and living cybernetics yes absolutely that's that's exactly what it has to be okay yeah I that that couldn't just be a throw away a bit of misogyny that had to be a 3d chess left political theory commentary uh but that does like I I really like his interactions with Shelley and Bobby and and the Leo right because she Shelley Shelley and Bobby are like oh we've got this cash cow we're gonna get $5,000 a month from the health insurance payouts and and they never take a moment to sit down and think that oh no we're in a mirror yeah it's like Shelley and Bobby you know where you live right you must see you you must know that that is not happening that that is getting hoovered up by by every every medical apparatus dealer in the tri-state area uh which again without spoiling too much is exactly what happens I think the other thing uh that we should kind of connect this to is the bail hearing um because again you know you have like the arguments around Leo and like legal capacity but what do you think about that hearing and as I put it in the notes how you get how to avoid jail so this I think I think for for me the thing that stands out here is a lot of what I talked about in a previous episode about American crime drama television you know because like what watching this episode I was just thinking a lot about your own comments on twin the what is the genre of twin peaks what kind of a show are we watching yeah and when we get these crime drama moments like I think about like criminal minds and CIS the the kind of like you know like new the the new like high water marks for American crime fantasy or even true crime shows right it's heavily pro cop heavily pro law enforcement it is just there's almost wall to wall cop again uh and here we've got like this prosecutor trying to argue that Leo can stand trial and Leo Leo is comatose there's no Leo there to stand trial okay even the judge is like what can we also talk about the the cocktail that they all decide to drink oh yeah yeah but what do you got what do you got mostly that that just seems to be the worst to drink in existence and how many other how many other like a terrible fictional cocktails have you found um so I I I once went to a three day twin peaks season three the return uh like episode premiere party um and there were many bad twin peaks themed cocktails a lot a lot of a lot of people have this bizarre temptation to make the fish in the percolator work as a cocktail yeah and okay yeah you can't do it so this is this is the black eucon sucka punch I was just looking up the um I was just looking up the uh uh the name for it and it oh let's let's let's do let's do some mixology here how how would I make one of these yeah it's uh it almost pretty immediately um kind of turns me off the recipe that I found because it involves one of my least favorite things to put in a cocktail which are egg whites um I just mmm just don't think you should do it I just don't think you should do it so I I just pulled up because I want to agree with your statement completely but also uh two ounces bourbon one ounce sweet vermouth preferably coffee infused one teaspoon uh cremdick a cow and then uh uh blue whipped cream you know what you know what I'm you know no no no we're not making no we're never going to make the way the way what yeah had me for a second there um yeah and there's a there's a there's a line there's a line where there is this kind of argument about what justice is where it's they say here's as deserving of a trial as this community is of a sense of revolution of resolution rather mm-hmm and I'm like this is what this is what the trial is right the trial is not really an objective for justice it's a it's a kind of narrative prosthesis it's a way of trying to neatly resolve the contradictions and problems of the death of Laura Palmer without actually resolving them in all of that cosmic weirdness that they get into we which is incredibly damning of our real world lived condition right like if this is true in the goofy mysterious and sometimes spooky world of twin peaks like oh I got I got bad news I got bad news about the world literally everybody else if you like fixing problems you are not going to like this system that we have no indeed because we have the system of global capital which which of course brings us to Mr.
Or Icelandic Icelandic I'm sorry sorry to our sweet Swedish listeners out there in the audience I know we are the 42nd most popular film and television podcast in in northern europe which which which got a got a shout out got to apologize pretty pretty stiff competition because the media and culture criticism podcasts since we didn't they're pretty good fire just pure paradoxically they're pure fire even though it's very cold again we we apologize to our Swedish listener and we should move on oh yes fun of bounds here in the town of twin peaks so well wouldn't it wouldn't be a twin peaks retrospective episode without having to talk about some kind of fellow centristism so how do you feel about cigars man Ben Benhorn and his enormous phallic cigar that he is constantly putting in his mouth there is there is this just checking some detail yeah it's it's really just that the cigar is the symbol of power right you know there's the old Freudian joke a cigar sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and you have to go well no it isn't it's never just a cigar because of everything that it represents the way that the function of this cigar absolutely I was gonna say the cigar is least a cigar for someone who insists it is just a cigar correct um yeah and what do you what do you think then about Benhorn and perhaps we can think about him in relation to Audrey and Cooper in this episode and in the next episode as well I so this this episode we're about to get into Cooper's daring rescue of Audrey in the Gothic catacombs that is Canada but we you know Benhorn is the perfect Gothic patriarch hundreds of years of Gothic fiction and it wasn't until Frost and Lynch that this guy was really hammered out yeah thank you Horus Walpole thank you Van Radcliffe thank you uh Frost and Lynch but his his focus on this I think this is such a this is such an important feature of the classic Gothic patriarch too is not only or the this kind of then not only are they a patriarchal tyrant but it is that it is that patricentricity that effectively shuts off their ability to see and connect with the rest of the world around him he literally does not know that he almost did it sexually assault his daughter right because he was so bound up in his own patricentric logics yeah and here he is like deep-throating a cigar in a in a long and detailed shot for our amusement while all of this is still happening while a business that he ostensibly owns has imprisoned his daughter literally yes yeah yeah and you know there's this there's this question really of like do you this is this this gets expressed most clearly in the in the stuff around the diary but there's this question of like do you really want to know what the ultimate secret is do you really want to have all of this stuff come out you know uh Ben Horton's relationship with Audrey the real truth of what's in Laura's diary um and I think this is the show not only just commenting on its own storylines and its own kind of character motivations but also the kind of central problem of genre television which is the desire for the the kind of tension between there's always more mystery that has to be unfolded but at a certain point things have to resolve yes so what do you think about that particularly in the in the in the in the context of how this episode ends as well I I was going to say there's a certain part of the ending of this episode that I think is an a perfect example of like oh you want your mysteries unraveled well I will show you what what an absence of satisfaction feels like and that's and that's Cooper's daring rescue of Audrey Horton you know because because so Cooper Cooper and Sheriff Truman go to one hijacks to rescue all Cooper has finally found the night that Audrey left yes and so so they're up there on on an elite secret stealth mission I and you know like there's a lot of good like you know like kind of like spy action stuff that's happening there there's a good shootout you know the rescue Audrey and the right at the end the bad guys get the drop on Cooper he's he's gunned down you know like it's it's curtains for our detective and then Hawk shows up and like throws a knife through the dude and I forget what he says but it's something along lines of walk a walka invite me to the party next time and then like a sick guitar riff kicks in right yeah then there's an explosion in the background and they jet ski away but no and I think that's such a good example of like like here here's this amazingly tense moment that they set up right like like you know Cooper has just like there's a lot of great tension in the rescue they just make it through black he is dead you know genre no has escaped there's there's so much like like oh who's around like they're splitting up at certain points they're looking around corners they're they're like there's some party at one hijacks going on that they're trying to slip through and then like right at the end it's just like the it's just like getting a bunch of cold water dumped on you right like it it's just like snuffs snuffs out all of the tension and the excitement with a little gag and of course and it's this kind of the same thing happens to Donor and Marty but from the opposite point of view right because they end up in serious trouble right at the end but it once again there is no resolution for them because that's that's sort of like the show giving you the giving you the hook of like the tune in next time for more of the incredible exploits absolutely and and I think that this really fits with a lot of like lynches sensibilities as an artist right you know like nothing ends there is no resolution you know like we're not a book you never turn the page the chapter never ends the story goes on forever every every moment of you builds into the next every part of your past weaves into the future you know like like you you can never you know isolate parts of yourself you can never truly cancel out something that you've been and like twin Twin Peaks is like okay wrestle with that so sometimes it's funny sometimes it's important other times it sucks but it is it is in fact the way we exist in this world that's our exit line right now twin Peaks well that was a really good way of summing up oh thank you well listeners I hope you enjoyed our discussion of episode 12 the orchids curse and we'll be back next week for episode 13 demons diet is that we have more questions than we have answers a new episode new episode and you're gonna kick out of this one if the long history of the reception of owls reveals one thing it is that we have more questions than we have answers.
Harold where do you want to start with this one because Harold features prominently in this episode.
I like that he's I think but again even in the midst of all that when people go oh the show so weird it's really goofy because it opens with Cooper talking about a weird dream he had.
Where would you like to kind of start with this because we have to talk about we have to talk about Harold.
They're not asking like what is the state of your psyche and how does that change how you perceive the world you know like they don't care about the one-armed man they don't care about Harold when they're asking that they're attempting to place Harold or the one-armed man into like these del legitimized psychic taxa so that they can then be oppressed by the state in some way so then you can strap the one-armed man to a table for the rest of his life until you meet him then you can break into Harold's home and steal his stuff if he's crazy he has no rights and his meanings don't matter yeah yeah and I think this ties into how Leo is treated as well right if you become yes if you if you are suddenly I mean this is this is a kind of like very basic point and is is played out in a lot of different socially constructed categories but if you become if you are or you become something that can be placed outside of the category of the normative however that is enforced in in in sconstant kind of police then you are it kind of robbed of any moral agency as well right you you don't get to be agential right this is this is exactly the point because the discourse around schizophrenia and crime is about culpability and specifically responsibility and the same thing happens to Leo Leo who is now in I suppose what we would call kind of coma of sorts yeah or a or a or a vegetative state for now or I think coma is a better word yeah he becomes a kind of he becomes a kind of pop it and in fairness the way that he gets treated I'm not wild about I think it's I think it's it's interesting what happens to Leo as another way in which you know the right outcome the just outcome is often a kind of predicate for like no actual justice right but really is sort of in your sort of punishment yes like that's let's like I think it's worth really unpacking what's going on with Leo because Leo Leo's a huge scumbag oh an awful person yeah yeah just just just just just just an absolute monster of a human being right he abuses his partner he's engaged in all the all the non-good kinds of crime you know he's he's not out there robin hooding he's not out there supplying cannabis to consenting adults he's doing he's doing murders yes he's doing financial arsons yeah he's not a fun guy he's not he's he is he is he is a pretty unambiguously bad guy yeah it's a safe to say we can call him bad but I think it's I think you're absolutely right what happens to him is incredibly complicated and I think the person that the show is attempting to it or the show is effectively inditing here as us the viewer because we we kind of join uh Shelley and Bobby and they're kind of like sick tormenting of of the now comatose Leo but but of course Shelley only keeps him around because there's a health insurance policy so she's kind of like very she's both financially vulnerable and very dependent and I think it's which I think yeah in the next episode we will I think it's an except is in demons yes I think it's I think it's so I think it's so yeah we find out just how kind of deep that goes and the kind of but Bobby is interested in revenge right Bobby's interested in is it interest here is in is in punishment is in and you go I kind of see it but this doesn't vote well if you Bobby like like like it's it's easy to sympathize with the kind of like like libidinal desires here right like the household libidinal libidinal economy of Shelley Bobby and Leo why they're doing this to him yeah like like this vindictive desire to punish but like yeah as we see in the court case that runs parallel to this you you can't punish Leo anymore you know like Leo Leo Leo isn't home to punish right this is like sentencing someone in absensia right yeah he's he's he's not the one being so this is why it's I say it's like it has nothing to do with justice Leo's not being punished here yeah right because as you pointed out Leo is is not really registering what's happening to him as punishment so there are some really interesting theories of justice around over it's kind of like sloshing around into in peaks and again it's this idea of like you you you can't change anything without reciprocal recognition of the past and it's various kinds of violence right you can't change anything um oh yeah I like in the you know notes you just mentioned the cyborg manifesto and maybe maybe you could explain why okay uh so there uh there's a huge Donna Hurrow we call out in this in this episode uh uh that is that's that's a bit by the way I don't think that's intentional on the slightest but there's a character named Mr.
I am ash one of the co-ghosts and we are joined by scout john aka the liquor guys cat.
We are doing pretty well with them pretty well.
Scout is a big fan of season two of twin peaks.
Yeah, we are we are now a this is like a a guys on a couch personality driven podcast but you and I are slowly leaving the show and being replaced by our cats.

#18

275 - Twin Peaks Retrospective! Season 2, Episode 10 "The Man Behind The Glass"

5,246 words in transcript

Albert grabs him by the collar and the setup is perfect because up into this point, we would only have known that these two would have ever had an exchange of physical violence.
Because nobody really nobody really believes that the FBI guy is inspired by Martin Luther King.
Because one of your one of your strong points from our tar episode was that Lydia tar is not a person, you know, Lydia, Lydia tar is part of a cinematic text.
I actually think that brings up the other kind of big part of this episode which is the continuing struggles of Audrey.
I think this is the point of which you know the stakes escalate quite quickly.
Yeah so but again this is a story that's actually really tragic right you get to what we get we get to hear Hank's story of how they ended up together.
I think it it allides that the solutions to the problems are in the now right like or even in the future yes yes.
It's so good because it shows he albots having the same experience that Cooper had.
It's like just because we killed Martin Luther King.
Honestly, I think it offers us kind of I think a point of hope and a point of opportunity because it reveals that moral analyses kind of fail.

#19

226 - Twin Peaks Retrospective Episode 2 - Episode 1 Traces To Nowhere Review

4,785 words in transcript

Mostly because if we want to approach this in a kind of psychoanalytic way, we're incapable of actually admitting our desire, right?
Because it's hard not to notice that like, sure, everyone's love with coffee is cute, but why is it cute?
The log lady at the beginning of traces to nowhere is kind of discussing what it means to find meaning in the events of our human lives.
Because this is a show that invites so much.
Yeah, precisely this is the problem of the police procedural, right?
It's because of these little extra elements because without these like little log ladies are very much, you know, tertiary almost background character.
I think the advantage of the advantage of the log lady is to kind of shatter them to go actually know you think you're watching something you think you're watching a predefined easily comprehensible text, right?
You're watching a soap you're watching a police procedural but actually you're being drawn into something which is both of those and at the same time neither.
Is able to control mundanity in such a way that almost it opens us up to the seriality in the mundane which I think is really important, right?
The show is entirely insgraded and this is why this is the kind of theme of the episode really is all of this mundane duplicity because we are phenomenally self-deceiving, right?

#20

284 - Twin Peaks Retrospective Update - Support The SAG-AFTRA Strike!

2,684 words in transcript

The idea, it, it is a classic wedge issue, um, for, um, these big studios, big production companies and streaming services to, to encourage you to focus upon the household names.
Because this is also a, um, app, oh, uh, I was just gonna say this has also happened for martial artists who have their stunts motion captured to be used in the future.
If you are also a podcaster, then all we can do is ask and encourage you to think about your own schedules.
There's an anecdote from Bruce Campell, a famous horror actor that I think about a lot.
Is that, is that a double negative for emphasis or is that a double negative for negation?
This is, as you pointed out, Ashley, this is not an episode of the Twin Peaks Retrospective.
SAG after her have been very clear that they, uh, are encouraging people not to promote, um, productions from struck studios.
Ashley, do you want to, should we kind of talk about what's going to change whilst the strike is ongoing?
Horror is, uh, horror is upset about acts as directives and creatives being exploited by an unfair studio system.
Yes, yes, not only is horror a union cat, but a hacker wants you to know why SAG after is currently striking.