The late great David Lynch has likely entered each of our lives in one way or another. Here is Social Secretary Cassandra Fong’s experience with the iconic director
When I was first told that my creative work contained Lynchian undertones, I confess I had to Google what that was supposed to mean. (In my defense, this happened over half a decade ago. I’m also not all that certain that I am anywhere near his talent, but I digress.) I learned that this adjective referred to David Lynch, an American filmmaker with a daunting catalogue who was widely considered one of the greatest visionaries in cinematic history. That was the first memory I relived upon hearing that “the first populist surrealist” passed away in January. May he rest in peace, and may I one day sit down and write something that is a fitting tribute to his complete oeuvre.
I could acknowledge Lynch’s unfathomable attraction to guitar twang, so at odds with his smoldering idiosyncratic discography
What has not been said about him? I could tell you how I was first introduced to his work: Chris Isaak’s atmospheric music video for rock ballad Wicked Game. A smoky, dreamy throwback sound that so suited Lynch’s style, its moody black-and-white scenes of a reverb-drenched electric guitar being played in slow motion paired with snippets of the 1990 crime comedy-drama Wild at Heart; notably, the video’s scenes are interestingly chosen to avoid showing most of the violence in the actual movie. I could acknowledge Lynch’s unfathomable attraction to guitar twang, so at odds with his smoldering idiosyncratic discography, and then pivot to listing out the numerous references to MGM’s The Wizard of Oz in his filmography. I could reminisce over how I couldn’t find subtitles for Blue Velvet and had to guess what half the dialogue even was. This movie, then, has the dubious honor of being the first one where I actually searched up the script afterwards because the series of shadowy, dark cinematography and symbolic insect motifs could not leave my head until I figured out what had verbally accompanied them. This drama about the criminal underbelly of a small town, with its hypocritical double lives and dreams with violently predatory undertones, is a mercilessly Laingian commentary on 1980s American domesticity. And we could discuss the possibly Freudian undertones of whatever was going on between the main cast (and, on a lighter tone, the gorgeous hairstyles of the actresses), but that is worthy of a dissertation, not an article.
He approached his characters and plots in a way that steeped them in more dream than reality
His compelling visual sensibilities are demonstrated most aptly, I think, in the experimentally unwieldy Inland Empire. A satire of Hollywood melodrama, perhaps, but its women are positioned as agents of witness and recognition and their suffering (all those muddy shadows!) is rightly portrayed as a living nightmare. He approached his characters and plots in a way that steeped them in more dream than reality, and nowhere is that shown more clearly than the scene of an empty room in a perfectly ordinary-looking house of its era. It almost vibrates with palpable dread, a sickening tension interspersed with short bursts of nervous energy, like when you’re creeped out and don’t want to admit that you are. And yet—what an existentially cool mind trip it is!
For many cinephiles Lynch will be a founding father of sorts, whose sincere dreams broke into the mainstream despite being bafflingly impenetrable. With such diverse creative and philosophical interests, perhaps the discursive flashbacks and soap opera twists were to be expected in his string of macabre fairy tales for messed-up adults. It is noteworthy that the announcement of his death was peppered with his idiolect that never did much to hide his ongoing sense of outlier mischief even as he ascended to the status of auteur. You might not have a good time with his work, but you will definitely have an interesting one. And what more do you want these days when we live in such an interesting era?
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