0:00Hello creeps, I'll be your ghost. I mean, host. As we delve the crypts of spooky movies and even spooky your theory, welcome to horror vanguard. Woo! Alright, we are going to have some fun two day. Would you like to lead us in to the one-armed man? You know what? I can, uh, lead us in. I've got my tape recorder, I've got my little dictaphone. Hello, horror vanguard listeners. It's special investigative podcaster, John, otherwise known as the lit-quick guy here. I am continuing the ongoing investigation into the cultural phenomenon occurring in small town America called Twin Peaks.
0:58Joining me is ever my different co-host of the show Ash, how are you? I am doing fantastic today mainly because we get to talk about I think one of the more exciting episodes. Really some episode that I've always really loved, what are the one-armed man? I think this is a super exciting episode. I think this is a really exciting episode. And I think this is where the show, this is on the formal level, this is where the show starts to kind of experiment with some differences. It has a new director. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Other than Lynch.
1:39And it's not written by Lynch either. It's a series to be written by Robert Engels, which is an amazing, an amazing name for Robert Bruss. Yeah, perfect, Bruss. Directed by Tim Hunter. What do you think about this on the formal level? Well, 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? There's a lot of fallen angel in this, there's a lot of the fugitive inside of this episode of Twin Peaks.
2:17And I think one of the reasons I find this episode to be really exciting is that not only from the scripting and the writing, but also visually like this is a new episode, this is something very new inside of Twin Peaks. Yes, absolutely. Do you want to maybe explain a little bit about the connection to full and angel? Yeah. So, a fallen angel is a movie from the 40s, I think 45, question mark, 45. And it used a lot of small sets, but it also used a lot of, it played around with depth of field in a really interesting way, right?
2:57Changing how certain items and shots were focalized, shifting the depth of field back and forth to highlight different characters. And we see that going on a lot in here, especially when we get to the parole hearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the scene, and in the diner as well. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of, there's some really interesting use of split diopters here where you can keep multiple figures in the frame, in focus, even if they're at different lengths. Yeah. What is that kind of stylistic, semiotic, supposed to communicate then, do you think?
3:42So what I find to be really interesting in this one is when we're in the parole hearing. But so when we're in the parole hearing, right, we've got Norma in the far background, we've got Hank in the foreground by the parole board. And we're able to shift the depth of field back and forth with these characters. But it lets us visually see how isolated they actually are from each other. And how despite the fact being in a separate room, despite the fact that they're married, that they are fundamentally, they're as disconnected as two people could be.
4:13They're not in each other's lives in a way that's coherent or connected. And, you know, like, and we already, at this point in the show, we know that Norma and Ed have a deep and loving relationship, but they're both stuck married to people who aren't good for them. And this just really, it's just a beautiful and simple way to use the visual language of cinema to convey this even further. What are your thoughts on a split diopter? I think what's interesting, particularly about the connection to auto-premger, is that this place is twin peaks within a new kind of genre, a little more explicitly, which is like the
4:55American tradition of film noir. Yeah. What's super interesting about film noir is that it emerges out of German expressionism, a lot of those, you know, the classic, Vyma era piece of filmmaking, Dr. Calgary, and a lot of those directors obviously go to America to get away from Europe in the 30s and 40s, but like, they take those techniques with them and film noir shifts from having camera angles which show the world as being distorted and kind of strange and alienated to you, that alienation is a mode of subjectification.
5:34So it's about the kind of internal psychological crisis of being a person at this given time. Right? And it's not a surprise that that emerges at the points of crisis for America, but politically and historically. You know, it's, so twin peaks has been playing around with like Meladrama. It's been playing around with soap opera and now it starts to play around with like film noir and it's, and it's all done through the language of cinema. And I think, I think like one of the great strengths of twin peaks is that it doesn't have the, it doesn't take a monster of the weak approach to this cinematic diversity.
6:10You know, everything is still fluidly interconnected and there isn't a jarring break between one style and the other. You know, I think we have the film noir episode of twin peaks and then the soap opera episode of twin peaks. You know, everything just kind of emerges naturally from like the, I don't know like pulsating chaos that is the bed that twin peaks rests on. Yeah. I mean, like this episode even ends with a Dutch angle which according to Tim Hunter, he is the director, that shot was forbidden. Like, then Lynch, like, no, you know how to do that, right?
6:49No, but he was the only person who got away with using a Dutch angle. And it's like, of course, because it's a, this is a classic film noir technique, right? So of course, should be called a Dutch angle, you know, it's a German at my end. It's called a Dutch angle because of its, because of the, it's translation. It's cool. This is, this is the only time it gets used, right? Yeah, yeah. I think that's part of the things it makes the episode so special and so exciting. Trog, there's also the development of this idea of duality, which is a big, thematic concern.
7:27I think introduction of Maddie who strangely looks very similar to another key character. Hmm. What do you think about how this, how this kind of, somatic of duality is being pushed forward? So, so this is, depending on how we're counting, the first or the second of the many doppelgangers in the world of Twin Peaks that we encounter. Laura Palmer either had a doppelganger that we met in the lodge earlier or that was a dream or that was completely unrelated. But in any of the, this is like the first major doppelganger that pops up in the series.
8:12Common, common recurring thematic. And what I find so interesting about Maddie's character is that she's kind of the pure inverse of Laura Palmer. You know, like Laura Palmer, you know, like in a parlance of Twin Peaks itself, very troubled. And here we have Maddie who is like the most quintessential down to earth, small town American girl you could imagine. Yeah, a pad opposite, right? Contradictions embodied into subjectivity itself. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think what makes it really interesting too is that a lot of the doppelgangers in Twin Peaks aren't just total inversions. You know, they're, they're, they're variants on a theme, right? Like Laura Palmer was also the quintessential, you know, like small town
9:01American teenage girl. She was just a variation on the theme. You know, by the time, by the time we get to Twin Peaks the return and we have evil Cooper, you know, he's not the pure inversion of detective Dale Cooper. He's a variation on a theme. You know, he's Cooper in a different key. Oh, that's a great way of putting it. I really like that. That's a great way of putting it. Why thank you. And you know, another great way of putting it would have been for me to say horror van card patreon, please subscribe patreon.com never screw one up so bad.
9:39No, patreon.com. I think we have, I think we have this is, I mean, as as segues go into getting people to think that was rough, getting us to some people to think about supporting us on patreon.com slash horror van god. I think that was pretty much that's as good as we've gotten at doing this. And you know, you know, honestly, that wasn't a mistake. I should rephrase that. That was a variation on a theme. That was my delivery of the patreon plug in a different key. And if you want to hear things in a different key, you can get early access to our episodes at patreon.com slash horror van garden. As well as other little fun bonus content access to the discord. And who knows, maybe we'll even show up and walk a llama in between you and someone during a very important conversation in your life. We have to talk about the llama. I love this as kind of like emblematic for how the lynchian as an aesthetic expresses surreal, expresses the surreal, right? Surreality.
10:45Because like isn't this just the way it goes? You know, like one day, you're a listener, you will be having one of the most important conversations in your life. And like, I don't know, in the background will be a guy making balloon animals. And that'll get burned into your mind for the rest of your life. Or maybe you won't even see it. You know, like the world in which we live is just like so odd and fluidic and chaotic. Like the llama thing really reminds me of, there's like that classic psychology experiment where it's you watch a short like five minute video of people passing a basketball back and forth. And your goal as the participant is to count how many times they pass the basketball. And then of course, at the end of the experiment, you're asked how many times was the basketball passed? And did you see the man in the gorilla costume walk into center frame dance and walk out? And most people don't wind up seeing the gorilla.
11:41Yeah, do you think people, do you think people don't miss the llama? But it's almost impossible because I think the show is deliberately, it's a kind of barrow your analogy. It's like the show is deliberately breaking the counting to draw your attention to what's quite literally foregrounded it. Yeah, it literally bumps our two characters out of the way to pass a llama through the shot. Oh, that is so that is because that would have been a perfectly serviceable and fine shot without the introduction of a llama. It would have accomplished everything it needed to do and we could have moved on. But bypassing a llama through the shot, all of a sudden gives it so many more angles. It changes the texture and the shape of what's going on here. And I think this is part of the magic of of kind of like these projects that David Lynch works on and gets to be the creator of is that you could strip out these elements and you'd have something that this would have been a perfectly serviceable detective drama from the 90s. But then you get all this other stuff in here. And that adds so much dimensionality that changes the shape of things. It reintroduces this kind of wonder. You know, it's it's it's almost a very subtle and very humble little rupture asking us to kind of like go like wait, why the hell did a llama just walk through the shot? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I think we should talk about your your favorite character, the one that you all kind of spiritually connected to. Yeah, when you talk about my Twin Peaks starple gang or the log lady,
13:16I'm kidding, I would be so lucky. No, I do firmly believe that you are the you are the log lady of this podcast. I accept the massive responsibility of this charge. I must now go get a log that will talk for me on the show. I mean, well, I mean, you handle the toolkit obviously, but the the log is true. The log is just that. I I've always assumed I've always assumed that you've had a log next to you. I mean, did you just so okay, last night, I woke up at like 2 a.m. just in a frenzy, because I had I had the most vivid and horrific and weird dream wherein I wrote an essay about animatronic apes in cinema and simulacra and the spectacle. And it would be par for the course, would it not if I also had, I don't know, an inanimate log that I commute with to get my film takes?
14:16Well, I mean, the whole point is that there is no such thing as the inanimate, right? Yep. There is like to be lynchian is to be in a sense a kind of pan-psychist to think that all matter is consciousness at least on some level. Oh, absolutely, right? And the fact that the log you know communicates with the log lady and they have some interconnected relationship, you know, like on a very surface level that that can just trouble our relationship to trees broadly. You know, like there was there was that article that came out a few days ago about a city cutting down all the trees in their town square in order to deter homeless people from resting there.
15:02You know, like our relationship with trees does not respect the tree as a thing with its own needs and wants. It's a prop. It's like a vase. Yes, absolutely. And having the log lady, like log comes first, she's defined by the presence of the log. You know, her identity is interwoven into this thing. And I think on a much more interesting level, like the same thing happens to all the all of us all the time. Right? How many of us are like smartphone ladies or like car ladies, right? How many of us have this thing that we perceive as an adamant that winds up inadvertently defining and restructuring massive parts of our existence? Well, how do you how do you feel about how do you feel about the log ladies self other distinction as it were in this episode? So I really love the log ladies praise you for this episode. The quote that I pulled from that is, are we being introduced against our will? And this is in reference to encountering the other that is the self when you look into the mirror, right?
16:09You know, like when we're forced to engage with with not just other people, but with ourselves, right? Like what is what does that mean to for that to be with or against our own agency? You know, the the fact that we exist means a necessary collision between the unknown, right? The these kind of limit experiences, this frontier that's that's caked around us. I mean, and oh gone. I think this is this is kind of reminiscent of the classic psychoanalytic idea of the barg to subject, right? Yep. We don't know ourselves. This is this is precisely the point of
16:48Freud, right? And in fact, the entire point of the show is that we don't know ourselves at all. You know, 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. Hmm. This episode is such a good kind of vehicle for that discussion, right? Because we're we're going to get on to the one armed man in a bit here. And his presence is another doppelganger that we encounter another attempt to know the self, another necessary literal splitting of the self. But before before we do that, we should talk about another man who's necessarily split.
17:31And perhaps the most apt character for this doctor, doctor fun glasses, Jacobi. Yes, Dr. Jacobi. What do we think about Jacobi? He's a super interesting character. So 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. You know, and like Jacobi is in a certain respect, kind of like a quintessential fool of a character. You know, he's he's outside of the structures of a lot of what's happening in Twin Peaks.
18:19But nevertheless, like he's also defined by his relationship to these other characters. You know, tying it back to the barred subject, right? Like, you know, Jacobi is known for what? His his funky red and blue multicolored glasses, you know, you know, constantly filtering the world through a given literal in this case framework, right? And with a guiding, you know, like analysis, it's just such a clever character design. What are your thoughts on Dr. Jacobi? Well, he's a kind of worrying question, right? Um, he's he's a he has a conversation with Cooper at the beginning about Laura's cocaine addiction.
19:06And he says, well, it's like it was medicating something. It was medicating something, right? A dysfunction that is usually that it's usually sexual. And like, here's the worrying question, is Dr. Jacobi one of the people who understands the town of Twin Peaks the best? Or the most so or not even not the best than the most clearly? Um, so I think I think I think like one of the troubling things that we encounter with Dr. Jacobi is he's not a very pleasant character. No, no, he's he's a he's an awful. He's a yeah. Um, an incredibly terrible person. But in terms of how he sees the town of Twin Peaks, yeah, he he has a crystal clarity for a lot of the kind of like underlying tensions and trauma that move everything in this town, right? Like the way he plays Bobby Briggs, like a fiddle. Yeah, absolutely. Later in this episode, especially like I just you're I think there's a there's a subset of characters that have kind of a in understanding of Twin Peaks, both as a town full of human citizens with real world worries and needs and as kind of this like interstitial metaphysical space that sits between these lodges. That's that's kind of a nexus for cosmic activity. Uh, and Jacobi's one of them, right? Right? Jacobi doesn't necessarily have insight into the kind of metaphysical nature of Twin Peaks, but he does have insight into the the psychological machinations that are driving so much of what goes on here. Yes. And this is sort of what I mean, right? Uh, because Jacobi is the one who in a way this raises some really interesting questions about what this show thinks about the role of psychiatry, right? What what what what is that for? And in a way, it's about it's a kind of it's it's a regularity of discourse, right? It's there to ensure that the kind of institutions of the towns, the towns kind of projected fantasy about itself manages to sustain, you know, I feel like I feel like there's a kind of anti-psychiatry edge to to to a lot of what's going on in the show. You know, Jacobi's talking about rhizomes at one point. Like there's is like if he has a if he has a picture, a copy of anti-edipus on his bookcase, I am not going to be surprised. Well, I think you're completely correct about because Dr Jacobi is a horrible scumbag and he utilizes, you know, if he's if he's utilizing his relationship with Bobby Briggs as someone who should be his healer, it to manipulate him, you know, to to cause him greater pain because that will help Dr.
22:02Jacobi in his own goals. God knows what he was doing with Laura Palmer. Yeah, yeah, he's more hints about that later on, but he is he is this this is what I mean by the regularity of discourse, right? So the disciplinary discourse, the whole point of psychiatry is ostensibly about the enabling of agency. But you know, is any good for Koei and with tell us is any good delusion with tell us like this kind of model of psychiatry is about is about discipline, the overriding of agency, like the the policing of the boundary of normativity, and to do that, it requires someone to be like interested in exercising their own power. Yes, yes, right? Like like psychology and therapy and psychiatry can be wonderful tools that are very helpful for people. However, like all things in the world in which we find ourselves they're entirely beholden to capital. Like like capital comes first when it comes to your health and that includes mental health. And I think like a lot of Jacobi, a lot of what what he's trying to do, he doesn't really care. Yeah, he's like the pure manifestation of the the ultimate cynical expression of this, right? He doesn't care how people are doing mentally.
23:19You know, he just cares that a certain system stays sustained, a system that's incredibly beneficial for him and his desire. Yeah, I mean, exactly. This is like it's it's who coves both as a clinic, right? Yep. It's it's it's it's madness and civilization, right? It's the one I present. It's this idea that there's a kind of there is there is political power here that can be that is exercised in the cynical weaponization, the domination of others agency. Oh absolutely, and I think it's really telling that to twin, twin peaks does not flinch and showing that Dr. Jacobi actually has no ability to heal anyone. You know, he's he's he's he's just manipulative. He's he's just orchestrating his own desires. And then we look at like how people are healed in Twin Peaks and how that healing actually comes across. And it's like it's it's through Cooper's dream divinations. You know, it's it's through these it's through these other potential systems of finding a psychological or spiritual wellbeing. It's outside of the apparatus of psychiatry. Yeah, exactly. This is a really good point jumping off point, right? To because the episode really is about the advancement of the investigation in lots of ways. But it's like, how do we investigate? Do we investigate in the same way as Jacobi, which is which is about the productivity of a certain kind of biopolitical power, a bio bio biopharmacological power. And all do we do this in the notes for this episode. I just call it investigation via coincidence. And it's like this is this is how knowledge is discovered. It's discovered through breaks in normative epistemology. Oh totally totally totally totally totally. I think these are really good points. But since we're we're getting a little late in the episode and we're talking about the investigation, should we talk more about parole hearings and gun violence? Oh yeah, absolutely. So I know I know you had some things you wanted to say about parole and systems of policing. Well, I mean, if we we're talking about show, which is about the failure of institutions. And in a sense, for for Norma, having her husband go to prison has sort of liberated her, right? She's found another person that she has a very deep connection with. She's able to have kind of agency control of her own life. And like, but the prison industrial complex is not just about prisoners, it's about what is the effect of prison on the wider social field? And that's what you see at that parole hearing because everything that that distance gave her is about to be taken away. Yes, 100%. And I think it's it's a really troubling sequence like the whole parole hearing, right? And especially like what's going on with Ed and Norma and their respective spouses, like like this episode in a way, the one armed man, it's about a society that can't take care of itself.
26:31It's about a society that is completely in a sense dysfunctional, right? Like we we we have a system where two people in love can't connect with each other because of a massive concrete wall of violence that there's nothing that they can do about because there's no there's no alternative, right? Like the this episode is like very I don't want to say grim, but this is this is also one of the more brutal episodes of Twin Peaks. I think I think you're completely right. I think you're completely right. And there's something sort of so kind of crushing for Norma, realizing that like again, it's about those boundaries of normativity, right? If you're going to perform the role that these institutions prison your job, you know, heteronormative relationships are kind of laid out for you, it's kind of crushing, it's crushing and they don't work, but you're forced into them.
27:40You know, you're boxed in like the mise en sienne, right? You're it's inescapable. Oh, oh, absolutely. And I think like this is a so we have we have a lot of guns in this episode. There's a lot of gunplay going on. And it's just that we're not going to have time for all of this, but the gun discourse in this episode is like dialed to 11. You know, we've got Andy a character that we've already established is playing on the periphery of accepted expressions of kind of heteronormative masculinity. Yeah, you know, like there's through there's some very subtle queerings happening with
28:20Andy's character and how it's expressed and how he moves through the world. And in this episode, fumbles a gun which goes off when it hits the ground and nearly, you know, fucks up their ability to go interrogate the one armored man, but that precipitates all our three main cops or four main cops, rather deputy hawk, sheriff Truman, coupe and Andy going into the basement of the police station to do some basic firearms training. And what's the thing that they're talking about while they're shooting their six guns, you know, like the thing the thing that they're talking about is love and their relationship history. And like like hawk is is talking about the the beauty of finding the one person in a lifetime that can truly show you wonder, you know, and like you know, his lover has a PhD. And like it's like this complex weird little conversation while they're training to extradudishially murder citizens of the United States. Well, I mean, it's like what guns, guns are not just tools, right? Guns have a libidinal charge. You only need to look at the way that guns are spoken about in American right wing political discourse to see there's a certain eroticism to them. They are deliberately eroticized, right? So they're wondering is they're wondering that's what they're talking about. If anything, the only thing that's kind of surprising about that conversation is that they're relatively kind of restrained, right? It's actually quite delicate. It's actually, you know, the I would you sort of you sort of like there's a bit of me that expected it to be a lot more crude a lot more direct. Yes, because that's what a gun is. It's a very crude and direct tool for the exercise of a certain kind of libidinal charge sovereignty as it were.
30:13And I think I think like there's so much going on in that firing range sequence, right? We have we have this kind of homosocial bonding that that's happening, right? It's literally men firing firing their guns with all the symbolic weight that goes behind that together, right? While talking about what they want in relationships, what their current dating status is. But the fact that one is viewers, we're expecting them to be like, oh, Andy, is your problem in the bedroom or or something much more crass than that? But their conversation stays focused on their emotions, their appreciation of love, what they kind of think about falling in love and having relationships more broadly. So it's this weird kind of like three three part balancing act of American conservative gun culture and the little bit of the bit in all nature and heteronormativity of firearms in television language with homosocial bonding and then with dudes talking about falling in love with their sweethearts. So it's like, gathers too much going on and to impeaks have a supposed for 30 minute podcast reviews sometimes. Yeah, I mean, yes, we're going to we're going to have to wrap it up here, but like still the discourse unfolds, still the mystery is still to come.
31:38We hope you've enjoyed the dread discourse. Until next week, stay spooky.