0:00Hello listeners, we are back with another episode of the Twin Peaks Retrospective. I am one of your other dimensional podcasting topos. My name is Ashley Dero joined as always by the one the only agent at the Lickric guy. How's it going, John? You know what, it's good. I've been getting outside more. Getting into spelunking. Things are good. I can't complain. You know, in many ways, you know, caving and spelunking is really the natural like sport of the podcaster as we are these kind of like subterranean, troglotidic, more like figures who modern do our computers and scary about in the darkness.
1:04It's very fitting. I mean, isn't that how we want to live generally? And yeah, we're we're we're made to be sort of like cave dwelling, nocturnal creatures that enjoy the dank. And yet we are forced to to podcast. Born to more like forced podcast. It didn't happens to us all in time. The struggle is real. The struggle is very real. So let's kick kick off today. Today we're discussing episode 25, The Wings of Love, episode 26 of Variations on Relations and episode 27, path to the black large. This is the penultimate episode of our season two of the Twin Peaks retrospective.
1:53We've got one more after this, dear listeners. I mean, that's that's one more in the season two retrospective, but the overall Twin Peaks retrospective has quite some road to go. We up next listeners you can expect, maybe in this order, firewalk with me, missing pieces. And then we begin our six episode dive into season three Twin Peaks, the return. All of this before ultimately, I don't know, Amazon buys the rights to Twin Peaks and we get the like, I don't know, James Hurley spinoff that absolutely no one is clamoring for.
2:33If you James Hurley like solving the supernatural crime somewhere. I'm here for, I'm here for supernatural crime, James Hurley. So give me a, yeah, really, sorry, go ahead. Okay, never mind, we're not, we're not going to do my fanfic for an absolutely rancid Amazon straight to Amazon Prime season four of Twin Peaks. We are not going to, that Doug Pa is remaining chained up and unable to amass greater evil dear listeners. This is a white lodge podcast and we are not channeling that kind of evil. This 100% is a white lodge podcast.
3:12I like, there's no, there's no two ways or two. There's no way around that we have to accept it. And I hope everyone's okay with that. So let's, let's start as we always do the top of episode 25, Wings of Love, and no, we are not talking about the Kentucky Fried Chicken Romance novel. But we are talking about the log lady. Yeah. This, what would you like to start with the, with the log lady? So this log lady introduction, I think it's been one of the more, I think these three episodes have very interesting log lady introductions.
3:47Not to say that they're not always interesting, but still. Today the log lady is talking about treasure. And she mentions how, you know, I think we all know it exists and that treasure is inside us, but wouldn't it be really weird if there was a treasure inside of you? I was listening to this. I'm like, oh, this is like a, or this can be read rather as a very fun and very playful subversion of like neoliberal messaging about our intrinsic value, right? Like under under kind of like neoliberal capitalism, there's so much messaging about our value as individuals as like, I don't know, like, oh, being unique, being special, but then like that's absolutely subverted by a system that grinds us into homogenized cogs, right?
4:30Like it's the set dressing to a world of sorrow. And I think here the log lady is really, this is a very challenging introduction from the log lady, right? Like wouldn't it be weird if that was actually true? Like 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? And this is perfectly in keeping with what this episode is basically about, right? Yes. The kind of beauty and sort of sweet romance of being loved and being known.
5:12Alan Baudu, did you guess right? Wings of love. I mean, maybe Benjamin, like I could see any of them having a hand in this one. Also for certain scenes involving Sheriff Truman, Sylvia Federici. Oh yeah, definitely. And we should probably talk about a very sad boy. Yeah, let's talk about what happens to Sheriff Truman and how twin peaks is in this episode, weirdly attempting to like validate Valerie Salonis. So do you want to maybe give a little bit of context for that one? No. So a woman named Jones is in town. She's a bit of an enigmatic figure.
5:58And I find her to be like, we've discussed this a lot. How like James Hurley is kind of the horrible real equivalent of your James Dean kind of bad boy figure, right? He's kind of like the terrible underpinning of what that is outside of the team's PlayStation context. And I feel that like Audrey gets talked about as being like a femme fatale, femme noir figure. But Audrey again, like is a teen, Audrey just has that as a set dressing, right? Like Audrey is a teen working her first job, working through very some very horrible shit that's happened to her in the last several months.
6:37And like this contrast with a character who comes on set in the last three episodes, Jones who is there to resolve some financial issues and attempt to kill Sheriff Truman. And she is actually the femme fatale, right? She's a hit woman. She's involved in crime. She almost gets the better of Sheriff Truman after you know, drugging him and having sex with him and attempting to strangle him. And a scene that reads intensely brutally for the tone of the rest of this episode. What are your, what are some of your texts on it?
7:10I mean, I think this is actually very true. It's very like, yeah, there's something deeply uncomfortable about it. 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. As is most things on this show, yes. So the big problem that Sheriff Truman is is having is grief. Actually we could take this all the way back to like Shakespeare. He's grieving. Josie is dead. As we talked about in the last episode. And he has not been dealing with this well.
7:55He is drunk. He's angry. He is uncommunicative. And the reason that I bring up particularly late 18th, early 19th century literature is because this is the era of sensibility. Benevolent patriarch who is in touch with his feelings as it were. Castle of a Tranto opens this way really quite clearly. And it's like actually there's a certain level of emotional response that is appropriate for particularly patriarchal men to show, right? In the Gothic melodrama style of which Twin Peaks is apart. So his responses are actually quite, you know, Josie becomes a kind of lost grief object.
8:50But his responses are perfectly in keeping with that kind of broader tradition. Oh, absolutely, right? He is kind of following that script as a wrote as it is. And I think in the fight with Jones, I think a lot of that reveals itself, right? As Jones has the better of him in so many ways. And ultimately he triumphs. And this kind of course corrects his character. This is what snaps him out of his little fugue. And I find that to be very interesting, right? Because much in the same way that the fascist requires the kind of like ideological framing of their cultural enemy as a group who is simultaneously in control of everything and has enough power to be single handedly destroying the world, but is also like degenerate, immoral, corrupt, and weak.
9:38So too, does the patriarch require the castration anxiety, right? Like it's not, the castration anxiety isn't something that the patriarch wants to get rid of or wants to escape. It's something that they desperately need to remain in close orbit with, right? They need the double bind of having that constant agitating, needling fear that can never really be fixed because the thing it's fixed to is their power structure. But at the same time, it has to be something that they're always able to subordinate through their own ideological apparatuses.
10:11And so Truman's kind of like a victory here is such a good reflection of that. And here I thought I was the one who ends up always being like, I'm not psychoanalyst, but look, one of us, one of us has to do the psychoanalysis bit. One of us has to be the psychoanalyst. Oh, listen, listen, I've had a lot of dental work over the last couple of days. My ability to speak has been hampered by much drilling, which is a phrase people have uttered in other contexts as well. I'm only assuming. But to continue your point about castration fantasy, Cooper is, he is now an FBI agent.
10:55Again, he's reinstated. He's no longer wearing his delightful plature. He's back in the dark suit. And Gordon is in town. And Gordon gives him a brand new weapon. It's very medieval, isn't it? It's very medieval. It's very, very returned to the King's service. He gets the new sword blessed. And of course, it's deeply Freudian. You know, he gets it's much bigger. It's much bigger. It's more efficient. It's more effective. It's more accurate. And it's a shame. I sort of liked, I liked outdozy Cooper, where he's just wearing his, wearing his plaid shirts and his, you know, he seems very happy.
11:48But there's something else that happens in this episode, which I think we will get into if we want to pick up on this theme of the role of fantasy and castration anxiety specifically. Are we going to talk about the scene where Gordon says, oh my ghat, and then he becomes the Rizzler? David Lynch dropping some insane game in this episode. There's a meek cute. There's a straight up. Yeah, go on, go on. It's like a door meet. It's a go on. It's a meek cute in this. And given that we're talking, this is an episode about being treasured and the strange kind of fatigianist thrill that comes when you meet somebody and there's a shared reciprocal connection, that happens.
12:42And it's, it's just, everyone's like, oh David Lynch, it's dark and it's like a sexual and it's weird. But actually the majority of these two episodes are like people having cute conversations over pie. Well, I think this, I think this contrasts really nicely to what's going on with Truman and Jones, right? Like something that is like deeply fraught from every angle, right? Like the obvious read, the one that we've served up, right? The read that's kind of in critique of Patrice and Trisik power. And then like, you know, like others with that, but then we have what I think is like a really genuine short romance, right?
13:23With between like Gordon and Shelley. Because the thing is like, Shelley has been treated really badly, like consistently treated horrendously by Leo. Bobby has just kind of ignored her and taken her deeply for granted. And then everybody in, yeah, go on, go on. Gordon walks into the diner and it's again, it's straight out of like classic romantic cinema tropes. I lock eyes, but there's a lovely detail, which is that obviously Gordon can't hear very well, he uses a hearing aid. And frequently that's been played for laughs.
14:09Talking to Shelley, Gordon can suddenly hear perfectly. Well, before we get onto the other half of the kind of dynamic that's unfolding, what do you think of the, this kind of these early scenes between Shelley and Gordon? I really enjoy how this plays out because I think in the same way that you were talking about the kind of like, we can, we can discuss what happens to Truman in this episode through like a very old, very literary lens. I think we could do the same thing here with Gordon, you know, because like, in this contrast, again, also with Shelley's other relationships, which are nothing short of abusive.
14:45And then you have Gordon come on to the scene here. And I think this is the first time in a relationship with Shelley that we've seen on screen in Twin Peaks that like Shelley, Gordon is the one who's like, absolutely captivated and receiving something from this. And like, you know, he is the one who's kind of like, you bisett under some kind of magic spell. And then there's the other ones that that has been true for Shelley, but in the darkest way, you can interpret that. Yeah. And now that like, you know, Gordon can hear Shelley even when she could because Shelley's very soft spoken, right, which again, like we can read that directly into her abuse, right?
15:22And how a lot of people are abused to develop that as a character trait and response to that abuse. And the fact that like her being soft spoken is not just not a problem for Gordon, because it was hearing it's like a hearing aid issue, like it is for everyone else, but it's actually a miracle for him, right? The fact that Shelley can whisper and Gordon can hear it clear across the room is the strange miracle. And the fact that it's being delivered and what Gordon perceives as being like this angelic figure. And for the fact that like, it's like, it's very clear that there's not going to be in love forever that this is something that's kind of destined to be very short lived.
16:01This is, it's less of a runaway romance and more of again, like an encounter with like a divine being for Gordon. Yeah. I mean, after all, what is Gordon say to her, which is like, you don't, you don't know your worth. You know, because he's like, she, because at one point she says, I'm just a waitress to nobody's ever said, nobody's ever said that to me before. And he's like, they should have done. You simply don't, you've not been told accurately just how incredible you are. It's, yeah, as you say, it's, it's clearly just a fleeting thing.
16:38It's never, it's never going to be something that's kind of long term. But there's something very sweet and heartfelt at the center of it. And while this is going on, John, how do you feel about penguin-based humor? I, again, this is this episode is just lovely. Because Cooper's, Cooper's fallen hard for Annie, who's a normal sister. Normal sister, who was in a con, a convent. And so if we thought David Lynch had some insane game, it's nothing to that calm, a glock and res. Oh, we have a couple of listeners. I hope you're enjoying us say.
17:28Giat Rizzler from Ohio, Skibbity, we're like some horrible AI-generated meme now. This is a nightmare for us. No, no, I was hoping that they'd be really genuine. They're, they're a little relationship and their connection. And we'll get on in a bit here to how the giant feels about their connection, I guess. Oh, yes. Some ominous, ominous foreshadowings about their relationship. But I like the way that like, Gordon really has, or not Gordon, rather, Cooper, rather, hasn't really met his match in Twin Peaks yet in terms of like a romantic partner, you know, like because Cooper's bringing something worldly and very complicated and strange that nevertheless appreciates this small town living in quotes there.
18:19But then you've got like Annie who also has like the way, like the thing that they bond over is their dark background, the kind of recent traumas that they've been through. And this isn't like, do not take this as like therapy speech, deeply individualized, like oh, they're trauma bonding hashtag. But no, like they open up to each other and realize that they have so much in common. And like it is really like, it's refreshing to see romances that are so genuine and so like capable of navigating what would be fraught within them, especially in a world where you've got like everybody who's got a relationship in Twin Peaks is either like five layers of a crime related affairs deep.
19:01Yeah. Or there, there's the adopted son of Satan involved like it's so complicated with everybody else and then with like Cooper and Annie, like it's about to get very complicated. But for now, we can kind of like enjoy the lazy river of penguin jokes and boats and picnics. I, what I really love, what I really love about it is, there's often like these cultural expectations of, you know, there's a lot of like complaint about unrealistic standards in media. And David Lynch is like, oh, do you want to, do you want to like fall for maybe the most beautiful woman who's ever lived?
19:47You just got to be a little goofy. You just, you just, you just got to, like you just got to be a, you just got to be a, a, a goofy little guy. Um, and it'll, it'll, and you know, listen to when she talks to you. Oh, it's great. So it's great. Where, where do you want to take our conversation from there? Well, like, from the Twin Peaks, she let me hit because I'm goofy standpoint. Well, I actually think there's two kind of important points here, which is one. Again, people have this kind of image of Lynch as like some, this, this, a surrealist, they're kind of like darks, like a sexual cinematic author.
20:26David Lynch is a romantic, right? 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. Um, and it, which implies risk, but with a sense of humor and with good grace and with, uh, social attention and, you know, penguin jokes, it pays off, right? So there's, I feel like a lot of the time in this retrospective I've been talking about, how like actually the show is not that weird. It's not that, so, and now I'm like, Lynch is just a romantic.
21:02He's just a sweet art. I, but I feel like it's a romance which takes into account the kind of totality of someone, right? Which is like not just the kind of surface appearance, but also the elements of like, maybe even the unconscious form, form the unity of this other that you're drawn to. Yeah. I think, I'll go on. No, no, go on, go on. I was, I think what Twin Peaks and what kind of lynchie and romance is bringing for us is a kind of romance that's like stripped of its ideologies. This is a very like, you know, like, would you love me if I'm, I was a worm?
21:41Would you love me if I was a direct encounter with the jazaki and real? And David Lynch has the strength of character to be like, yeah, we could. Yes. Which I think is, is not only beautiful, but that reflects a coming, like, you know, Twin Peaks, this is an older show. And it does reflect like kind of like a coming sea change in the space of the world, right? Like the, the ability to shield our, like, you know, like our frayed nerves with the mylon sheath of ideology has been kind of burnt off to a certain degree.
22:12What with climate change? Just, just got every other possible thing you could imagine. Yeah, and I guess my sort of semi-serious take is
22:28Twin Peaks is very attuned to the kind of dark sexual politics of heterosexuality and heteronormativity particularly. Yes. But also, I think, if there is a positive vision of what does heterosexuality look like, you can find it here.
22:54Right? Because these, there's sort of, there's something very deeply respectful about both Cooper and Gordon. But also very sincere and straightforward in the fact that it's like, I'm not just, I'm not trying to just be a friend. I am romantically drawn to you. And it's such a kind of council, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, the whole thing with Laura is about possession, right? It's, but here you have this idea of like, you're drawn to the other two in order to kind of, you give of yourself of that, which is infinite, right? You give away that was never, that which was never really yours to begin with, which is oneself.
23:43So yeah, my sort of semi-serious point is that actually a linch, kind of thinks there's, there's something positive there as well.
23:54Love can be more than just control, possession, and kind of like domination, not in the fun way. Yeah. Beautifully said. And now I would love to hear you connect that to your point about bonsai trees. Okay, yes. So, uh, Windamurl sends them a bonsai tree. And they assume it's, it's labeled as a gift from Josie. But there is, there's a kind of naivety to how Harry and Cooper receive it. And it's just left on the desk and it turns out that there's a bug in it. And it feels very like, yes, Windamurl is a American intelligence agency.
24:42Yeah, doing some, doing some James, doing some James Bond shit.
24:48What do you, I do, I do love how like a lot of horror media, right? Like a lot of Gothic media. And like, you know, we could say this about the Gothic in a way that kind of predates the contemporary structures of policing. But this is something we've talked about policing in a horror context a lot, as it kind of reveals to us the social function of police, right? The protection of property and social control, right? Not the, not to serve and protect as it says on so many cop cars. And in here, we kind of get like, and that, of course, it shows up in these much more important, much larger issues, right? Like talk about Black Lives Matter, we could talk about like, you know, like prison abolition. But it also like, it's not, it's to the core, right? It's to the very heart of these things. And so we get Cooper and Gordon and Truman, three, three lawmen who are supposed to be like at the top of their game, well respected, good at what they do. And none of them questioned the bonsai tree from the dead woman, the dead woman who Cooper watched vanished in a magical scene.
25:58Like, you know, the, the, the recently deceased woman who was impossibly light for her weight, none of none of the mystery to Truman was just almost assassinated over this, over this love. And no one cares to like inspect the bonsai tree, they, they just take it for granted. And I find that to be like, I don't know, deeply revealing. I think we can extend that, which is not just the subservience for police to the protection of capital, but the police as an, as an essentially, kind of superfluous appendage to American intelligence agencies. Because Earl, of course, has done some classified work with the US Air Force. What is it? The, the blue book,
26:51Operation Blue Book. Project Blue Book. Project Blue Book, which is actually a real thing. Listeners, if you were wondering if that was a Twin Peaks innovation, no, Project Blue Book was real. Which of course, the major is very involved with. And I think it shows the extent to which the institutions of the American state are, there's a sort of paranoia within American intelligence that even, even the police, even the police, you can't trust them. You can't trust them. You have to, and you have to utilize techniques that you know they're not going to pick up on.
27:28It is very cold water, like you mentioned. And I think another interesting thing about it too is like, yeah, we can talk about Gordon's prosthesis again, right, his hearing aid, right, this, this kind of pseudo ear, this cybernetic enhancement to his cyborg flesh that has restored his hearing to a degree, almost saves them from the listening device in the bonsai tree, right? Because, because Gordon, you know, like because of his, his, near, near deafness or his hearing issues, screams bonsai into the tree, right? Because he's got no gauge for like socially appropriate volume.
28:11And this nearly deafens windom url on the receiving end. And again, like while watching that, like I was thinking about like an old, an old thing I talked about, hundreds of episodes now, but like curb cutaways, which were originally created as an accessibility way to transition from the street side to the sidewalk in the UK. But people quickly realize that like, oh, that's great. If you're like pushing a pram or if you've got a cart full of packages or groceries or you've got like a moving truck in your hauling boxes, you know, it's like, it's not just got that narrow utility you originally thought you had it for. It's actually for a much wider set of utilities. And here we see like a little like a little way of remembering that, a little spark of that coming back to us in an unexpected way. I think there's one final thing we should talk about with this episode. But maybe we can roll it into the next one because we're going to have to bring it back up. I need to know your feelings about caves. Caves are my feelings about caves are the kind of image macro that goes around. That's the juxtaposition of the map of disappearances in the
29:17United States with the map of cave systems. And the overlap between the two, which is terrifying. Caves, I think are appropriately horrific. And I think there's a kind of like necessary unknowability to the cave structure in a way because like even now with like, smartphones and technology and wow, smartphones and technology, I sound like everyone's grandparent right now. No, but like I think like even with like the kind of like proliferation of the panopticon right everything has a recording eye in it now. The space of the underworld is still very obscure to us.
29:52It's still very occulted. And even when it is presented outside, you know, its own context right when it's recycled. Like there's very little in the way of like super chill caving content if you will use the modern parlance to fit the modern panopticon. It's all horrible caving accidents. It's all these brief clips of frustrated and and devilish moments of people nearly captured underground or people who look like they're in flooding caves. Regardless of how safe or professional or how successful the operation was or how happy they were with it. And I can trust this a lot with rock climbing.
30:31You know, like like caving is still dark, dank, and dangerous whereas like rock climbing, which is also ludicrously dangerous depending on like skill level and where you're doing it and all kinds of things like it's kind of universally presented as like brave and heroic, which of course we can extend that back to like like Germanic mountain nearing culture. But I think that even goes to highlight the depth of the metaphor for the I guess the spooky qualities, the theoretical importance, the the potent, if you will, of the cave. What about you? What about the cave as a door the cave as a doorway, right? The cave as a door traditionally to the underworld. So I mean,
31:21mountains have a kind of I think there is a distinction. Mountains have a sort of almost divine like Olympus is the home of the gods, right? Underground is the home of the dead and and or Satan and or both. Right. Caves have caves have kind of metaphysical opacity. Which which becomes increasingly important, especially in the next two episodes. And let's let's let's do that. Let's get on to variations on relations. I know we went we went long on wings of love, but I mean, you had to you had to wings of love. Well, once again, there's another super interesting log lady introduction, which I know you have thoughts about log, log lady, do you read ergonomic books? I know you do.
32:30So and this one, the log lady is talking about clues, right? And how often it is we we mistake clues for the wrong interpretation? And I mean, like my point will just be rather brief with this despite the I guess over gesturing towards complexity, but like I think the log lady's summarizes so nicely what is strange and difficult and hard to deal with when it comes to both hyperstition and false consciousness. You know, the the the fact that we can mistake these clues for signs that point us in different directions. And of course, because we're like a left political podcast, right? Like we have our explanations for how to avoid that, right? The use of Marxism, these Gothic interpretations, these theoretical standpoints. But nevertheless, like I do think the log lady so cleanly lays it down with like everybody seeing clues, just whether or not you can see whether they're pointing or you're misguided by them or misguided by I guess like an ideologically informed interpretation of where not pointing. And again, people people often assume the log lady is quite opaque and it's just it's just kind but honestly, or I've always found the introductions to be incredibly clarifying of of the stakes and the storytelling of the particular episode that she appears at the beginning of. It's owl cave. Yeah, let us kind of connect these these two things up. What is owl cave pointing towards in your opinion? What is how we've started to broach this more as it's become more explicit in the show. But what is the kind of undergirding metaphysics of play here?
34:21I mean, like I was thinking so much during this episode with the exploration of owl cave. And one of the things I was thinking was the line from space balls where dark helmet is like no, I'm going to win because good is stupid and evil is smart. And you've got all of the heroes in owl cave right in front of the mystery. And then they're like, oh gee, Willikers, this is a puzzler. We're going to leave. And then Windom Earl shows up and he's like, I'm going to push the evil button that makes evil happen now that everyone overlooked, even though it's literally jutting out of the wall. And it now is just like, oh, there is just something like a yeah, it's that naive. You've got two levens. You've got two
35:07Cooper represents. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's the two levens in front of you. It's a solid problem.
35:23So there's something quite, there's something, there's sort of niche in metaphysics here, right? This this is the slide between the white and the black lodge between good as a non-self-interested deontology versus evil as an active, willed force pursuing it. Basically, it's like paradise versus the Santa bites. Like that's that's the so this is maybe the episode where we get the most explicit. Windom Earl gives a big kind of speech about the various lodges. This is maybe the most explicit the show has been and the most kind of straightforward and direct. I guess the question is how do we go further than just seeing this as kind of like reductive, dynisus versus a polo, right? How do we go further than seeing this as solely like a good versus evil metaphysics that under like a
36:38Manichian division that underpins existence? Well, I think one of the interesting things about this, right about the kind of dichotomous opposition of the black lodge and the white lodge and windom Earl and Cooper is that like there has been all of this talk of doppelgangers in the show, right? All of this imagery of doubling all of these juxtapositions, right? David Lynch himself deeply inspired by this like Buddhist and Eastern thought, right? And like what is what is one of like the core tenets of all of these streams of thought? It's that like you are not severed from your polar opposite, right? You are bound together by the pathway that creates two poles, right? Cooper and windom Earl aren't total in total opposition, right? They don't face a wave, they don't face towards each other in opposition, they more accurately face a wave from each other in opposition.
37:36And I think that that's what the kind of like the fact that both lodges are kind of entered through these caves with polar different emotions, right? Like you enter the black lodge through fear and the white lodge through love as we will come to find out in the coming episodes. And the fact that like Cooper and windom Earl are incredibly the same. They do have a lot of scary similarities with their character. They already each other so closely that that does kind of shake a little bit of the like the distance between what we're being set up here as pure evil and pure good, right? I think
38:11I think the reading of Cooper as a force of like pure and total good is a little misleading. I think yes, I agree, though, I think the way to explain the mediation between them is something that you can really only do with metaphor, which is what the chess game serves as, right? You know, chess is the mirrored balanced forces opposing one another. Yeah. Also, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure chess isn't not, isn't chess Indian originally? Oh, I wish I knew. I enjoy the game very casually, and my knowledge doesn't extend beyond that.
38:58Yes, I was right. I was right actually. Sorry, I wasn't quite right, but the origin of chess is from the seventh century, and it's Persian. There's some Persian documents written about chess, and there's some documents written in Sanskrit. So again, connecting it back to Lynch's overall interests in sort of like Eastern Buddhist, esoteric religion and spirituality, I think that the chess is the kind of anchoring point, the mediating metaphor that kind of sutures together these two complementary dialectically opposed forces. Speaking of anchoring metaphors of Twin Peaks,
39:44I think we should talk about how Barbie gets cucked, and today is episode. Yes, let us do that. It's very funny. It's very funny. Absolutely, absolutely incredible move here from Shurana director and actor David Lynch. So David Lynch, Gordon and Shelley and Koop and Annie are sitting in a booth at the diner, and there is this, again, it's a genuinely very sincere moment where Gordon says to Shelley that if he doesn't kiss her now, he's going to regret it for the rest of his life because he's leaving town. And it's quite a romantic moment.
40:33And Shelley quite understandably kisses him back and Bobby walks in, and there's like it genuinely kind of soy faces. What he sees, it's very much a, it's just very funny, it's a very funny moment. But there's one line that Gordon has for Cooper that I would like to talk about. Hit it where he sort of, he sort of yells to Cooper this world of Twin Peaks seems to be filled with beautiful women. And what do you think? What do you think about this? I mean, it's true. Gordon is not incorrect in his observation here. And I think like,
41:28there are so many directions we could take this. I think one of the interesting things is that there's like this weird like homosocial rhomboid that has kind of creed it around to Bobby, with Bobby and Leo, Bobby and Ben Horn, Bobby now in Gordon. But yeah, like so Bobby isn't like this homosocial rhomboid. And the thing that like, he keeps chasing, the thing that he keeps identifying, like you could see early on when Bobby is most closely associated with Leo, he adopts everything that Leo has, including Shelley. Right. And then Bobby graphs himself back on to Ben Horn. And he starts adopting everything Ben Horn has, including Audrey. And then now, like it's happened again for Bobby, right. He is in so many ways the castration anxiety, cucked, wannabe patriarch.
42:19You know, the thing that he's chasing after is the sense of respect that he feels he's due. And here is Gordon. And it should not be lost on us. And the sequence that Gordon is like an older man with a disability is just like absolutely just like casually strolling over Bobby in this scene. And I think it really like, I don't know, like the scene is funny, but like like a lot of things in Twin Peaks, it's funny by way of its tragedies. And I think the same thing we can bring up about that line. Like there are so many beautiful women in Twin Peaks. But what happens to most of them? Look at the lives that they lead. Like this is so tragic. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.
42:59I think I've mentioned it before, but there's this great, the great interview of Laura Dern, Patricia, our cat, Naomi Watts, talking about working with David Lynch specifically. And my favorite is like all of them basically talk about him like they've fallen in love with him. And it's like, this is someone who, again, this goes back to something we were talking about right in the beginning of season one, which is like, I think this, I think Lynch particularly is, I don't know if Lynch would describe himself as a feminist, but I think he makes, if not feminist, at least deeply sympathetic to feminist cinema and female characters. And my favorite line from that interview is where
43:48Naomi Watts calls him up about doing the King Kong reboot. It says, Naomi, anyone who sits in the hand of King Kong will be a movie star for life. Which is just a great line. But yeah, I, you know, you're right. It's a town, as I said on Twitter the other day, I was like, one of my favorite things about Twin Peaks is every woman is this like a theory, all God-s. And every guy is just a goofy little dude. But it's like, you're completely right that a lot of them go through awful experiences. I've treated very badly, but I'm never, like, and that's never done in so horror particularly has a really bad habit of making the suffering of women particularly something that is like exploitative and kind of exploitatively titlating for the audience. There's a kind of libidinal charge in it. And thought of the kind of darkness and sadism and undercurrents of like sexual obsession and violence that can run throughout Twin Peaks. There's never the sense, or at least very rarely the sense that this is done at the expense of the women who are involved, right? In terms of making them into an object that is supposed to be like humiliated for the sake of the audience.
45:24Oh yeah, I agree. I agree. I think maybe the exception of how Josie is handled, but even in our discussion of that, we kind of pushed that one a little bit further as well. Yeah, I wouldn't say that's a universal thing, but I do think it's something that's quite notable about the show specifically. I agree. I agree. So how do you feel about small touring musicians or rather regular-sized musicians who have small tours, not like a Tom Thumb musician? Also, can we talk about the fact this is Sam Raimi's brother? I know, right? Isn't that great? So Windemail has kidnapped like the local... Like someone who's just like a... This guy came up to me and promised me some beer, so I wandered after him, and he ends up being killed and encased in a giant chess piece.
46:22But he's targeted because he's in a band or he's following a band that was supposed to be doing a gig somewhere else, but their shitty van broke down in the middle of nowhere and they ended up in Twin Peaks. And I'm like, it's just one of those... It's a really kind of throwaway detail, but it just made me reflect on the fact that the economics of musicians or the economic reality of being a touring band kind of puts you in such a vulnerable position where all it takes is if you have vanned to blow a tire one day and you end up in Windemail's forest-based murder spectacular roobe goldberg machine. Yeah, you get sawtrapped. You get put in the device. You get put in the device because a strange man with a deep obsession with Kyle McLaughlin promises you some beer.
47:20This, I mean, that's not to be too much of a vulgar Marxist with this reading, but like if everyone was guaranteed the essentials of life, this poor musician would have never been killed by Windemail, right? He wouldn't have been roped into such an easy con. So the musician gets kind of in tomb to live in a giant chess pond and then shot with an arrow by Windemail and then displayed in the town center inside of a gazebo in a park. There's a note for Cooper telling him to open up his little present and Cooper rather than kind of just opening it there because they fear it might be a bomb made by Windemail. He makes his own kind of contraption which I do think it's interesting that he also makes a contraption. He ties some police caution tape to a rock, puts it on a ledge of the gazebo and then shoots it with his gun from a safe distance so that the rock will plummet there by opening the pawn and revealing the victim inside. And I do find it interesting that despite the fact that
48:20Cooper was given this kind of like supremely phallic object, you know, and it's bigger and it's harder now that he's an FBI agent again. His kind of first active branching it is as the detective, right? It's to solve this puzzle in a way that's immediate and safe and again, going back to my previous comments about doppelgangers like Windemail creates a contraption and Cooper unveils its mysteries by creating a counter contraption. I wonder if this is going to be a theme that is going to come to some sort of culmination as season two comes to a close. I wonder.
49:04So are you ready? Are you ready to jump into episode 27 path to the Black Lodge? I am so ready. I know I sort of defer to you a lot on the log lady, but I I feel like I feel like the two of you have a lot in common, an affinity for nature as a starting point. It's a good start for a love of cardigans. You both look you both look amazing at a cardigan. Glasses so tasting glasses is impeccable I gotta say. And as we established both big fans of Urbanomic, I was literally about to say like a kind of slightly enigmatic uses of the philosophy before Urbanomic. Yeah there's that too.
49:56Yeah I believe I believe the log lady endorsed cute accelerationism. Am I right? Oh that would be that would be just absolutely fantastic. That's a good book too. Also cute book which is more important than it being good. It is cute. So this this log lady introduction, I don't have anything smart to say about this because the only like like it's sand blasted my memory because the whole thing is about how wonderful Norma is and how much the log lady wants normal to like her back. And I'm like same. Of all the people. I mean who's the youngest? I think all of us would listen to the log lady and just be like.
50:42Yeah me too. You're not special. Get in line log lady. Yeah make make make what you will about the log lady discussing how wonderful Norma is and how good the pie is at the R&R diner. I'm sure there's some text here. Yeah there's I mean it's just text isn't it. There isn't there isn't subtext you're right. So so moving us moving us slightly beyond beyond that there's also this question that this episode kind of raises about like where we find sorcerers aliens other dimensions. Because we start to unravel a lot of the mysteries of the lodges here.
51:25We we start to find out that like it's the our concern with kind of like intelligences from began the stars are actually in the woods and they're talking about us and they're aware of us. Right and these sorcerers are made here on earth and these aliens are housed here on earth and the doorways to these other dimensions are actually in rather mundane cave systems near a rural town. And I think there's there's something about this that's like enchanting right and enchanting in the sense that it's used in kind of like contemporary left theoretical discussion about that right that we're not so incredibly distant from these things that we consider to be wonderful or mystic or inaccessible that they're actually with us already right they're right here it's just simply it requires kind of like a reorientation that has to happen on both an individual and like a cultural systemic level to allow us to kind of get back in touch with that.
52:22Yeah and also I think another way I completely agree firstly um but I think another way of reading this is to be is again to read it through the military industrial complex. Like what is so what is what is magic or alchemy or sorcery it is a series of um kind of gestures and technologies which depend upon a fundamentally hidden set of knowledge and I'm like oh so military intelligence. Right magic magic magic and sorcery has always always been bound up in military intelligence. It is not a coincidence that the first recorded figure in history to use the phrase
53:18British Empire was the alchemist and sorcerer Dr. John D. Yeah right so that's that's another way that I would read this which is you're dealing with a a political project as well you're not just dealing with a kind of um a sort of like um imminent romanticism but sorcery implies a set of politics and it's historically speaking it's always an empire building politics especially especially in the context that it comes to be here in 20x right the the very much politically descendant of John D. 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
56:26what 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
57:47I 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
59:24Cooper'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
1:00:00Peaks 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
1:01:25I 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
1:02:09yeah 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
1:03:14if the long history of the reception of owls reveals one thing is that we have more questions than we have answers