0:00Hello listeners, welcome to the long awaited conclusion of season 2 of horror vanguards Twin Peaks Retrospective. I am the so entitled log lady of podcasting Ashley Dero joined as always by John Ikeh the liquor guy and Kyle Kern. How is it going, John and Kyle? It's good. I am coming to you live from the burial place of King Arthur, which is in England. Just in case people were wondering, I know there's maybe some confusion on that school but I'm here in my podcasting, Bauer, sheltered by sycamore trees, and super excited to be here.
1:10Grand theft. Oh, no, log lady, storm my truck.
1:2068 Dodge pickup. I'm peaking on my audio. I'm so happy. Good. Good. The low five hip-hop sound is in. So we'll keep those peaks. That was first thing in Cana Mine. Hello from King Arthur. Hello. I'm changed to a pipe in the spooky room along with several people who are cutting my neighbor's grass right now, who are also now a part of the podcast. I mean podcasting is it's it's community, right? That's why we do this. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if like the actual grave site for King Arthur would be located in like Phoenix, Arizona, or something having been transplanted by some crazed American millionaire and like the latest reverse track. Come see the world's largest corn cob and the actual shroud of Turin off off of the turnbikes.
2:26It's in Ohio. Now, you know, the thing about the roadside attraction is that it has to it has to portray some sort of extreme sign power, which is why it's I every year I pilgrimage to the Christardema deemore replica in Ohio to pay my respects to sign value and American capital. I mean, if there's anything that sums up Ohio, it's it's the immoral science semiotics and
3:07oh my god. I think this is a good way to lead into our discussion of the last two episodes of season two or Twin Peaks. And I think this for reasons I can't articulate yet, but I can't articulate them in like a sophisticated lynchian way, not in a raw confusion kind of way.
3:28Then perhaps perhaps what you could do then is as is as is tradition as is customary. Maybe you can begin with talking about the log ladies introduction to miss Twin Peaks. Yes, episode 28, the penultimate and the series. It's for me like this was maybe the most emigmatic of all of the log ladies introductions. Like this is the one I found to be the most like cryptic the the one that was kind of like the log lady just like I don't know being as urbanomic as as she possibly can. And I kind of like that it's sort of for me like I felt that this log lady introduction was like a little intractable. And like I I enjoyed that right like we we have this kind of I think there's a persistent desire to find like and or rather not find it but to a fixed meaning to every little thing that passes by rather than let some things be these like feverage generators of further questioning. And I don't know that's that's that's that's my approach to the second to the last log lady introduction here. Okay, so like I get I get I get very sort of like pedantic about when people talk about Twin Peaks being surreal because that's often just used as a sort of shorthand for it. But oh it's it's weird and 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 is if you if you go back to people who are very influential on on David Lynch and I'm talking here about like Andre Britton or Lenore Carrington.
5:27So, realism is is about these psychic and subjective fusion of of of Marx and Freud to be like as blunt and productive as possible. Like surrealism is about the physical articulation of mental phenomena in a way that kind of reconceptualizes both of 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 circle of interpretation. That's like that's that's imposing an arbitrary finitude on subjectivity. Whereas like surrealism is about the kind of branching forest, the wood of possibility that is like a constant like surrealism is this active alive thing and it's not just a kind of quick and easy way of going oh isn't it strange right. It's trying to be more than that. Absolutely. Absolutely.
6:30And I think the other thing I would I would add to that too is like and I think this is something that you even brought up like so surrealism is like this historically always been actively political and has never kind of been this this this this naval gazing strangeness which I think people use the adjective lynchian to kind of like reflexively mean like like as you're suggesting like a very like pointless oddity right almost like pulp in a way you know where it's like oh the manifest content of this thing is weird it's full of all kinds of strange strange objects but I'm thinking of like oh my god what is that China. Mabel book last days me Paris. Yes last is so I'm thinking like of like last days a new Paris right when the protagonist has to like he's he's being tested to see if he's a competent surrealist before joining like these surrealist art paramilitary organization in in kind of like post apocalyptic new Paris. And he's shown like a bunch of objects and it's stuff like there's like a hammer in a suitcase and a clock that's upside down and stuff like that and he has to determine which is surrealist and which is just an object. And and I feel like that same kind of like like even like Lenore Carrington's life is also a good example of this right like from like you know like fleeing you know gendered and political persecution and all of that being so alive in her artwork to have to have surrealism be conceptually reduced to just like this is goofy and not something that's like expressly political with political intent I think does a disservice to the entire discursive framework we could be using here.
8:06That's why it's important to situate like David Lynch is so uh profoundly historic hit like you get distracted by the imagination and you forget how profoundly historically situated he's in because through this alternative imagination he situates time and such and that's more evident in this like two episodes of television then and you know in a lot of other places it's pretty much stated clearly like the relationship between space and time are being abstracted or disrupted in some capacity and he does that from this like you know the sort of the the the the the the the lynchian aesthetic is in conversation with the expressions of the United States after the golden age of the 1950s as this the 1950s as this
9:10perhaps true and also imagined and symbolic high watermark in American history as the post war the sort of like glow of the post war period and bringing it into the like it's very you're both exactly right because you can't be all you know so when she's like a sound effect sound the fact ash was used you used a sound effect to describe it which I love that's both really funny and kind of true right it's this just kind of squishy like kind of like like what like people substitute um deconstructive or surprising or symbolic or abstract elements for whimsie which is like they're just two different things um there's nothing whimsie cool uh uh inherently but it's brought in like there is a lot of whimsy and David Lynch as a human being and but like it's like it's not this sort of like empty performance I guess is what I'm trying to say yeah yeah the exact same thing that everyone else has already said so it's I mean I think it's really correct and I think like his his whimsy and his surrealism are two distinct creative streams within his like greater body of work that he often fuses together with great effect right like like and I think like you're absolutely correct it's like it's uh yeah I think there's this impulse to like just make surrealism out to be its content like surrealism is just a melting clock or surrealism is just like oh what if a person had a bird for a face or something like that rather than it being like uh the medium right rather than being like they've the kind of like some greater forces of what is being communicated here rather than just like kind of like the simple symbology and now I'm kind of repeating what Kyle was saying so now when now we're in a locking groove no but you're right and like so I'm not European John but you're the person who's closest to Europe is there anything that was going on during the high periods of surrealism and dadaism it's it's one of his big influencer in the situation is there any historical events that were influenced oh yeah any of these movements we return out to the europe whisperer on vacation everyone like yeah it's yeah it's you're completely correct right it's it's you know uh uh britain wrote of the need for a new myth to combat as he called it the myth of odin which is like which is fascism he talked about the necessity of the of a new flag part red part black um yes there's this this this this this idea of like yeah if you pay attention to especially the the uh the first and second um surrealist manifestos they are like explicitly burningly anti-fascist um and i've i've there they're also modernists right and modernities it is in a way the aesthetics of futurity which is why as Kyle points out they're able to kind of do things with the relationship between uh time and space and what's interesting to me is that i think um in lynch you see uh a kind of american modernism right and an american modernism that's aware of the latent unexpressed and perhaps even like pre-linguistic tension and horror beneath the kind of perfect surface of you know i mean he talks about he talks about growing up in like the 50s and 60s where you had these kind of the perfect post war boom and at the same time there's the start of like american surrealism which culminates in like famously jackson Pollock um but like there there is already the veneer feels paper thin right you can all we're already kind of like push your fingers through it and there's the thing that's so genuinely terrifying in in these two episodes is the moment where nature fought nature kind of folds in on itself america becomes literally quite porous psychically spiritually and you pass through into uh into a kind of negativity into an absence and it's like there's there's people don't take lynch in a way people take lynch too seriously but at the same time not seriously enough if you know what i mean yeah yeah i think they're taken for granted in a way and i think i think a weird weirder pivot we can make into into episode 28 specifically as there's a scene in episode 28 which like i have i have twink peek season two on i think it's a blueray copy it might be a DVD um and there's a scene where ben horn is getting into philosophy because he still he's still on his like long arc to become a quote unquote good person and i kept i paused it and i went frame by frame and on my copy um none of the books were legible i could not figure out what he was reading uh which which i think like for a philosophically minded podcast such as ours this represents a certain uh a generator of unspeakable lovecraftian madness that i can't know which which books of philosophy that ben horn thinks will purify his evil wicked capitalist soul i just i desperately want to know what what he's getting piled on um but like i think in a way to like build on our surrealism conversation i think the not knowing here is is i don't want to say more important or more nor do i want to say more interesting but i think it is like it has a 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 because he's reading like i i don't i don't know what he what is he reading he's a heightaker her soul marks the skinner like surprise me like like the idea that like reading any esoteric bit of philosophy will like like a like a disney movie fairy turn him from a pumpkin into like a purehearted citizen is as i think a bit like like that's that's the whimsy right like the the the whimsy is the man who has everything who could become a good person tomorrow morning when he wakes up and says no one in this town will ever be hungry or unclothed again i dissolve my power like instead he's like oh i have to become a master of like continental philosophy before i can call myself a good boy
16:11i i think uh god there's been a good arc for ben horn uh i will admit i found Confederate ben horn not my favorite i disagree i thought that was amazing but like in the context of like a lynchian politics isn't isn't that arc just incredibly sort of revealing if you take it as a meta-tax about the american businessman yes right and the and the development of american capitalism because where does it where does it like it goes through just basic repatius capitalist accumulation it goes through historical revisionism self-mythologizing and it ends up at this kind of like neoliberal um you know it's very jazekian right it's jazek it's jazek's capital capital with a human face right the the the the co-option of all of this spiritual and philosophical um knowledge in order to be a quote-unquote good person but it's like it's ethical capitalism now and it's like oh we've arrived at neoliberalism into impeaks
17:27i mean that's the the broad conflicts that like that that what why twin peaks are so good is because there's this sincere and genuine uh economic questions centered in a place where you don't often think of them as such i mean there's the i'm trying to think about the emphasis on this idea of like the the good right as a um as a as a locust for happiness and virtue or um as a um found it like the play to in a playtonian sense right as a foundation for being in knowledge while emanating from nothing can cut it like everything comes from it yet nothing is without it or whatever um
18:28within the context of twin peaks like pacific north-west location i don't know i'd like to try i guess i guess i'm trying i guess i'm getting lost in like novels about logging um in my brain well but there's like the thing that i would add to what you're saying is like isn't this the episode where ordry finds comes in and is like hey should we talk about this bank this bank's doing some weird stuff and suddenly it's like yeah what is in terms of the economics of the 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 like the opening the opening sequence right all of the all of the industry all of the factories all of the the lumber mills now what is the primary mode uh is economic speculation on um property as an asset right so it immediately becomes abstracted so it's it's it's in a way i was sort of like at first i went oh it's kind of strange that they're introducing we're like two episodes from the end and was now we're talking about banking again but it actually makes complete sense that you you kind of go throughout the whole thing it's like been been all about you know pay no attention to the man behind the curtain uh but it's always it's it's always been about um the kind of spectral absent presence of finance right absolutely and i mean like we're really going to get into this when we talk talk about what happens at at the the uh it's a wonderful life bank located in twin peaks in the last episode um but before before jumping to this uh who wants to talk about the the speech that Annie works up with coop that ultimately wins her the miss twin peaks contest
20:29um at Annie red braiding sweetgrass uh why you having me haha i mean i i i found this i found this moment of the of the show to be really interesting in terms of like a left political discussion yeah because i was i was thinking like oh breadings we get so sweet grass but i was also thinking like like like a land back acknowledgement before the super bowl like that's kind of where where my mind was going during this speech because like here's like here's here's like a woman dating an FBI agent winning a mini miss america pageant in every town
21:10USA doing a land acknowledgement before continuing on with everything she was doing beforehand and i think it was it felt like everything about the miss twin peaks context feels really sculpturally culturally scathing it feels very Eurovision for our current cultural moment right like it's it's got it's got oh it's got these like delicious notes right it's got um this is the mouthfeel of the collapsing Roman Empire you know like like this is this is what are like horrid kingdom is doing and it's waning days right because like here here she's like you know like saying all these things and like you would we could critique the the content effort message we can critique a lot about it but at the end of the day like it's it's kind of just lip service it's it's naval gazing it's a bit of a circle jerk and then we're back to things as the status quote even like in the context of the show like the context of the show like like that is what it is for the show and for us as viewers and for like political analysis it's like this like triple trap of discourse yeah there are some serious things going on in twin peaks
22:22well like I guess that's where the dialogue is right there's like I like a pageant as the kind of perfect atmosphere for this one the sort of pageantry of the universe that we're in and also its role as this kind of this like this sort of like Americana sign thing that he's able to play with as always there's yeah it's I mean as always as always we discussed it at the jump because it's the most important aspect of like twin peaks of the body of work that it's in is this porousness between these realms of impactful subjective experience that exists on a broader social plane so there's going to be so there's economic conflict and there's political conflict all intertwined in you know really honestly really held together by sex and violence right like I think that's the that's one of the centers of like those those are some of the breaking the points of breaking through so to speak that it are in periods of sex violence or sexual violence if we're like I mean if we're talking blue velvet is what I sort of I center all of this argument back on blue velvet not because it's the best depiction necessarily I mean I think it probably is or the only depiction of this this this this this in out sort of description like I guess I guess it would be like this sort of like in out conscious unconscious this like subcutaneous the subterranean kind of view of the lynchians cinematic world um and uh and trying to figure out my metaphor I got I lost my chair thought um so yeah I'm going to just I'm going to stop talking oh my god never never apologize my the indirectly the most beautiful statement ever made about an exploited song but don't sex and violence jokes everyone so john and I know you had something you wanted to say about camp and I think that I think it's actually like a good thing to pick up off the back of what Kyle was just saying it's more of a question really which is uh in watching the watching the frankly incredible opening dance number for the missed when peaks pageant um it's two and peaks can okay I take just came to mind we've just through the ather as most takes are but I think I think at least for me at least by my analysis twin peaks is camp and in the moments where where we're at the R&R diner and koop is talking about pie right like you know where did twin peaks is camp and kind of like these moments I think everything with the miss twin peak stuff I think it kind of undershoots camp and squarely hits satire what what does everyone else feel I think the town of twin peaks in twin peaks is camp that's yes that's but it's it's can't it's the the camp is in universe so there's always this degree of like 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 an exclusive I don't know I guess when I guess it gets into the intent conversation which in general actually find kind of boring I find one I find more compelling are the the demonstrations of the aesthetics of camp not aesthetics and like you know just appear like a like a like fashion or as a like a particular kind of cultural expression but as the like camp as a artistic mode I guess which moves this which which by default complicates questions of artistic or authorial intent so which is good in my opinion so we find ourselves instead dealing with discourse which is is in general to like where I think camp find so I camp is so I'm making a I'm making a I'm making a like a I'm making a motion with my fingers right now that is unfortunately showing up on the microphone it had it has like it's not a kind of one for one expression of artistic tent but it's mission match up in all of this sort of like discourse that
27:35complicates your perspective on it and see I can't even talk about it in a clear way or whatever I I don't know I think how do we like how do we that the follow-up question I guess is how do we center your lynches or the sort of lynchian universe's intent when it comes to the the the the the the garish or the unintentionally funny or the big and the gaudy or whatever do we I don't know I don't know how do we how do we process that so I think I go on going on going on going on well one day we're gonna do a whole joke episode where it's just three of us going actually wait no you you go first no no go ahead it's the three of us trying to exit a burning podcast encrypt but we're just like oh no no please after you I really should go first we'll just stuck in the same dual like this like this dude just oh okay okay okay I'll go thank you thank you I'll go first but you're going next time oh no it's like I think I think I like the thing that you just got me thinking I was like it's like like okay what's like a good example of this in this episode that we could build off of at least at least for me by my like analysis right and so in this episode we get windom Earl and drag like wind windom Earl does a crossplay does drag is the log lady does like this like bizarrely metatextual thing where he's just like he's just windom Earl who does a really quick log lady costume and sneaks into the mistwined peaks contest to to to wreak havoc and ultimately steal mistwined peaks right as part of his occultic ritual and like I think that's like a wonderful moment of camp right because because somehow it works because somehow what is what is obviously windom Earl in in a hastily dashed together log lady costume like what is very obviously some some poor girls tired boyfriend having to hustle together a comic con costume like it works it works for him he magically sneaks in and he gets the he gets the kidnap not just any woman from mistwined peaks but like detective Dale Cooper is now girlfriend it just just pulls the rug out from everyone and it's like like camp at least for me should embody a kind of queerness right and like windom Earl is very much a lavender villain like it like I think he's playing with those like coatings or maybe it's just like the kind of cultural factor that is the lavender villain that's coming back into the text to inform my reading of windom Earl but like like just just seeing him in that outfit and watching him get away with this while like the entire who's who of not just the town but like the cast of twin peaks is helpless is it's the most like it's the most like lavender villain does just heinous camp crime and none of these like cis hat people can stop him I really like that point and I think it completely reinforces what Kyle said that intra its own world yes that that definitely is a part of twin peaks like every time the extremely old but horny mayor is on screen and it's yes exactly and you basically hear like the Benny Hill theme tune um yeah so there's obviously in the context of
31:08American aesthetic criticism the canonical text is Susan Sontag's notes on camp from against interpretation so I looked it up and there's this great quote um the song there's this great Christopher issue with novel that Sontag mentions called the world and the evening and in the world and the evening two characters talk about the nature of camp and one of them says high camp always has an underlying seriousness you can't camp about something you don't take seriously you're not making fun of it you'll making fun out of it you're expressing what is basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance um and I think that's a really uh the elegance uh maybe is a slightly more debatable but I think that's absolutely part of the aesthetic makeup of twin peaks right
32:08I think that I think that that narrows it so is it is it finally time to move on to episode 29 beyond life and death after what is now years of the twin peaks retrospective it's it's it's only taken as when it when it when it was start doing this I mean you know it's a large time girl math we started this when we started it and it continues until it's finished uh indeed it does but I I think it's time I think it's time somewhere around the Carter you know I have I have my original notes for the first episode of the twin peaks retrospective on the back of my I like I like uh posters so yeah yeah the the very first uh uh harvangod was um developed uh just after 1953
33:09oh oh dear well as um I actually I have the I have the way to get us into it which is to obligatory the obligatory getting it out of the way um so this was an episode of television that was aired on ABC uh like all of twin peaks this show was on a major television network and I know that it's very uh trite um to probably point that out like I do every time uh I watch it but it's just worth getting it out of the way um an episode that was the vast majority of it was recorded uh backward um or performed backward um was on a major television network um and I think that's very interesting I don't know about anybody else I mean and it got it got 12 percent of the total television viewership in America when it premiered like that's that's that's that's that's those are good numbers
34:14I can't just talk about the fact that like one of the most tiresome trends in contemporary media criticism is to do the oh you couldn't make X today right uh because it's like oh you couldn't make twin peaks uh because of woke when in fact it's because of the complete collapse in any sort of like funding to allow artists to do good work on a major television stations and and with it oh gone great no I was I was just just stimulating oh my god we have to we have to we have to we have to practice like like synchronized gesticulation later oh there's a phrase there's a phrase I never thought I'd have to say out loud that one's gonna 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 that my mind is like a perfectly flat blasted plane smooth like some horrible glass so someone please save me uh I think you want to talk about a doppelgangers and of course your own your own psychic doppelganger the log lady do do do do yeah so what I think is so in this log lady introduction is all about doppelgangers and the one thing she says is is there now two or has there always been two and I think like in a previous episode I think actually the last episode I was talking about the kind of like the horrifying symmetry of coop and windum url like like the fact that we they aren't doppelgangers proper in the kind of like mythology of the lodge and how doppelgangers function as their own like mythos inside of twin peaks but they are doppelgangers or perhaps even like more like a janeous figure in terms of who they are what they're doing their origin their beliefs their goals like you know it you require two people to play a chess game and and I think like the the log lady introduction here is really challenging us to like move outside of what twin peaks is just big because the kind of the content of this is like coop has an evil doppelganger that lives in the black lodge and so does everyone else and your evil doppelganger can escape and get inhabited by bob and do bad things and it's like okay well like what else what what's next after that and what comes next after that dear listeners is going to patreon.com slash horror vanguard slash doppelgangers where you can support the doppel pod for just two doppel bucks some for some amount of doppel money less than the cost of a cup of doppel coffee yeah a couple of go look in the mirror and then scream backwards and then go to horror vanguard.com because there's bonus episodes and the paywall you know you know you know and a lot like a lot like doppelcoup you need to smash that paywall to get at the truth to get at the bonus episodes so like the black the black lodge what hit me patreon.com slash horror vanguard. deep deep so if you're if you're sick free like all of us who if we if we if we were given an invitation into the black lodge I don't I don't mean to speak for everybody but I know that I would personally say absolutely let's do it then you should head over there and yeah go scream backwards with your friends on this court yeah I mean that's every bonus episode you have to listen to it backwards and and of course you know if you send us if you send us you know whatever outrageous number
38:08I can't think of in this split second we will send you your own supply of weird viscosity hv coffee oh okay do you think we're drawing out just for patrons I'm actually attempting to drink a sip right now but it takes a few decades for the first drop to spill out so I'm I'm patient waiting yeah yeah a final final patreon bit here how's Annie how's Annie and he's actually doing really well because she subscribed to horror vanguard on patreon and she's enjoying the bonus episodes right now not only is she getting to hear more fun riffs about her favorite horror movies but she might be learning something about left political theory along the way that's the one yeah that's okay
38:53I'm sorry this entire time I've had alien ant farms a cover of smooth criminal stuck in my head so in the back of my head just like Annie are you okay are you okay Annie I mean there's gotta be a real life death slash smooth criminal match up video out there somewhere it's a very a very hot AMV who's just born into existence right now yes yes smooth criminal slowed in revert set to the the season two finale of twin pigs yeah we get we get to the slowed in revert one and the way we have to we have to do the sped up version that for some reason no one calls nightcore so how far are all the rails can we say I know this I'm gonna bring it back on because I have a question about fun houses um uh and you know strange rooms and that sort of thing um they are they have us have any opinions on fun houses and how do we see them it has see this sort of like lowercase c carnival less at least from my interpretation of a lot of how the red room has function they're in general the um you know how does that how does that track with our experience of the black lodge in this town uh actually you want to take this one yeah yeah yeah so I mean like I think the fun house has like because like often on this show for reasons that should be painfully obvious we we kind of focus and read things through the context of the haunted house and I think the fun house is the fun cousin of the haunted house it's the one that has a motorcycle is in a band and smokes weird um and has cool stories about their college years even though they're now in their 40s and it's getting a little weird um so like I think looking at it because like like what does it look like kind of like experience of the fun house in a way right it's it's to have this kind of like separated space meant meant to shock and twist the limits of of traditional reality of reality outside of the of the fun house but it is in and of itself like given this like codified safeness right like it is expressly limited as as a thing you are not meant to stay in the fun house right like it is not fore dwelling in and I think a lot of the black lodge is like okay what if like fun house logic persisted you know like what if what if fun house logic continued and and just how how increasingly uncomfortable that is and how increasingly like I guess like proximate to our lived lives that becomes because like the the thing about the fun house is not that the fun house is in and of itself whoa so twisted this mirror makes me look wavy it's that like the second you get out of the fun house lingering somewhere in your psyche is the idea that like no we've structured the entirety of our events at a single flat perspective of a normal quote unquote normal mirror normalized mirror yeah okay so I have slightly I have slightly strange answer to your question Kyle which revolves around a monastery in Europe in 1327 okay so I've been traveling traveling quite a lot this last week so I just reread on butto echoes the name of the rose okay so here's my take which is that the the fun house is to late 20th century the American mass culture as the labyrinth is to antiquity an early modern history right so the whole point of the labyrinth is in the name of the rose if you never read it it's an incredible book by the philosopher and semiotic genius and butto echo and it basically draws an equivalent between labyrinths and libraries labyrinths are places of destabilization right the places in which the constitutive stuff of subjectivity which is language and which we on a kind of pragmatic day-to-day level takes to be just a kind of like phenomenological given gets revealed to be organized in systems which are inherently destabilizing so if language fails then so do we and we become something that we don't recognize but it is at the same time familiar right there's a great moment in the name of the rose where they come across what is a very early fun house mirror and they recoil back to the characters because they think they've seen a demon right they think they've entered the black lodge to go into the labyrinth or to go into the fun house is in in quantitatively different ways but in qualitatively similar ways about an encounter with your own finitude or a recognition of the of the inevitable fact that you're going to die right and and the fact that subjectivity is not this permanent fixed state and to be honest i think it's very easy to read this episode of the show in very
44:39Jungian terms but i think that's way too straightforward and i honestly think thinking in terms of semiotics and i think particularly Freud is much gives you much more out of this you know Freud Freud also said that the double is about death right if you see something which is you what does that make who are you then you know to just to encounter one's doppelganger is to actually have the erasure of your own identity you become something that fails to recognize itself right subjectivity again just like language becomes this um it terrifyingly amorphous void um i don't know does that does that answer your question yeah um i think and that's sort of the the like a destabilizing reflection is kind of where my mind went and how you know a surface appears as such in typical from one perspective but then warps as you engage with it and then you realize that in fact you're the fixed perception and so you're constantly measuring yourself in this reflective way but that's instead rather than being sort of constructive of your of what you understand of your subjective position it is destabilizing um and and i think that's what's ultimately being accomplished in a great deal of twin pigs or particularly toward the end um i think they're you know to put more points in the Freudian column too there's always this element of um intense drive that's married between you mentioned the mayor right there's the uh the um simple yeah primarily driven by sex sort of individual that tracks onto the um what am
47:01I trying to say it's like the marks brothers example there's the simple one those extremely horny uh uh and i don't know i just yeah i just i think that i i agree because like the encounter with the funhouse like the the black lodge it's never about the experience right it's about fundamentally the fact that subjectivity your sense of self becomes something else through in the process of going through it right and what that implies is that subjectivity is not this fixed thing um you you are not who you are or you know in the in the vernacular of of america do i contradict myself you know it's yeah yes i contain multitudes you are you are uh this um palimpsest you are this text which is constantly being kind of overwritten um and it's it's very interesting to me the again i'm thinking of the in the name of the rose the problem is language whereas in twin peaks the problem is the mediation of emotion right what is it the coupe says it's like it's about fear what opens the black lodge is fear because uh we finally come back to josey who has been this uh who i think maybe has the the it's it's a very dark in many ways it's such a dark season like it's very it's deeply depressing um so yeah the problem is like what do you do with the the seething libidinal economy the language itself and you know pseudo normativity fails to contain
48:58and i really i really appreciate that reading because as you know like like like you know like the kind of medium of this like as the finale of the second season which followed up is a historic television first series right the first series in a twin peaks historically popular a wildly cool critically successful hidden out of the park in all levels so then you get season two flags a bit around the middle definitely the the later half arguably and then and then for the season finale to be we we have here all of the motions of a season finale right like you know David lynched it a lot of uncredited rewrites on on this one and one of the things he changed is he loaded this episode up with tons of characters that we haven't seen in a long time like maddie's back like there's just tons of people we haven't seen in a while on on this final episode of twin peaks and it's like all of the cast coming back to take a bow but it's mostly not them it's their doppelgangers and they're in pain and they're screaming and like Nadine is back and now it's Nadine again and she she is out of it once more like it is it is like this final horrible look at the world of twin peaks and not the kind of like I think simplified and celebratory like people call this ending a cliffhanger and it is right like formally like this is definitely a cliffhanger but I think it functions much more like a goodbye and in a very sad one if that yeah it's it's deeply sad it's deeply like the this this season end this season finale is just almost unbearably bleak you know it's it has the kind of pathos of tragic fall right mm-hmm like a coup coup it's not even that oh are you gonna kill off coup no it's like are you gonna give away your soul um it's it's yeah it's it's it's so it's such a it's such a downer that I kind of I deeply respect the commitment to the bit yeah no and even even I'm really glad you brought up like a coup so so so so so so so so when the moral has become some kind of dog but right like you know he's now able to exist by some measure in the black lodge really and and he offers a deal we're an exchange for coupe soul he'll free Annie which which coupe kind of like immediately agrees to these terms and then we get the scene where like it is it is it is very fun house right like it's it's it's almost like like a baited hook we've got we've got windemoral stabs Cooper and we think it's over but then like Bob shows up and he's like oh like windemoral can't do this he can't make this offer and he he Bob Bob like it executes windemoral soul through black magic or something does something to just just visually horrific to him that ends short and abruptly and just snuffs out windemurls existence and I think that really like he can't have speaks 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 like a very Greek myth thing to do like oh I'll go down into hell and save save the beautiful perfect former known Annie then like like no like like he's he's not allowed to do that here there are rules he doesn't even begin to understand like the suffering must go on oh this what is what does
52:38Otis have to say about the last episode of Tempux he has a clawing me to say about it it is it is about pain I think I think every one left pain isolation a desire to be like emotionally unknown I think Otis is really hitting at something here yeah he is he is wise beyond the years that's for sure um so John I didn't know you wanted to talk oh go on yes yes what do you what do you have to say about screaming oh just again we don't we don't do we don't do kind of gushing but the last 15 20 minutes of this episode are just incredible and has I think quite probably the best ever horror scream yes genuinely on set on film I I think I think oh my got a camera what I was watching I think it was like an old interview with Linnea quickly and and she was talking about how to do a scream queen scream and she was that this might have been her listeners I could faintly recall this but like she was saying that like most scream queens phone it in and they do they do something that's a bit closer to singing to preserve the voice right it is a theater scream but if you really want to sell it you have to you have to call up the horrifying scream of death and we get that in this episode and it is genuinely nightmareish uh the everything about how the sequences in the black lodge are the sound design is is phenomenal the framing the framing and camera movement and like it means on sand it's relatively simple but is used in such an effective way that when you have these kind of moments of heightened emotion there is there's something kind of deeply uh just bruising about it it's so sonically an emotionally raw that scream particularly um yeah it's incredible and I think it I think it speaks to the tone of the episode too because what else is going on here Nadine Nadine has emerged from her fugues state where a fugues state for the record that while being very I won't say problematic I'll just say weird uh with all caps weird like she was kind of happy and now she's back to normal and she's out of her mind again talking about the drape runners being in total psychic anguish that big Ed and
55:23Norma have kind of started their relationship in a way that can't be walked back for Nadine's sake anymore like uh Audrey Horn probably dead uh blown up during a she she changed herself to the gate of a bank in a completely futile political statement perfect to her position as as as a wealthy girl from the suburbs learning politics for the first time while while the machinations of the actual corporate lords of the city wind up like blowing up the bank and killing a bunch of killed Pete Pete dies due due to his unending like uncritical proximity to those powers and the comfort that affords him like coups coups chained up in the lodge along with a bunch of other people we've come to know and love throughout this scene all the other people live in horror now because they know something's wrong with coop but they can't point it out like it is just just just a Donna Donna just found out her biological dad was Ben Horn and a scene that is genuinely like I find that seem to be very difficult right because like it really reveals a lot 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 Donna's family you know and not like and not you know be like oh Donna you're actually my daughter here's a bunch of money because I'm the richest guy in town it's oh Donna you're my daughter I'm destroying your family now because I'm still violent and then like Donna's dad punches him and he goes flying into the fireplace and like wounded in the head with intimations of death so now Donna's dad has killed Ben Horn which I know he doesn't die canonically but you know from the perspective of watching this as the final episode like Donna's dad just killed Ben Horn like this this is this is a screeching crescendo of terror so what a show more people some more people so watch it two weeks under disgust there's not enough twin p shirts out there I remember I did some some some rage bait post being like oh I don't get the hype about twin peaks there's no satisfying story or character ox in it and I'm like like you haven't watched this television show um because it does all of these it does all of these really interesting things with you know modernism and mass culture and Freud but it is also like just profoundly like it's so exciting this last episode and weird and kind of captivating uh and they just makes they just swing for the fences on every kind of dramatic choice like well
58:12I love these characters like no character to be I love these characters so good like they're they are super like I have feelings and opinions about all of them I have desires for all of them it's like very profoundly moving and also very funny and like it has all of this like charm and humor and self-awareness but ambition and this intelligence that like it does like I've never want you're never want it can be so silly and strange and you're never once talked down to you're all you're given this like um if this unbelievable world the kind of like dig yourself around and explore like it's just so really good it's a really good show really good show yeah and yeah it never never consens to its audience it's never weird for the sake of it um and it's clearly all done out of great love but yeah the the amount of just bold choices in this finale where it's you know coupe staggering through the black lodge bleeding from a stab wound in the gut you know ordry my dad and it's like every like can we make every single final choice the most depressingly dramatic it could be and it just nails it what a great show well it has been a pleasure speaking to you we'll see you all in 25 years
59:50diet it is that we have more questions than we have answers a new and a new and a
1:00:00you're going to kick out of this one if the long history of the reception of owls or reveals the one thing is that we have more questions than we have answers so and pigs