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This particular lyric underscores one of the two main concerns of American filmmaker David Lynch. It is an ethereal, haunting, almost chilling song that appears a third of the way through his 1976 film Erasurehead. These concerns would later become more fully realised in Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart.
It is these three films which are arguably the director's best work.
Of the three, Blue Velvet is the more fully realised. It has been both lauded and denigrated by critics and public alike. Yet this is exactly the kind of polarisation a postmodernist work should aspire to. It doesn't hurt box office returns either.
Although Blue Velvet is a Hollywood film its uniqueness sits uneasily with Hollywood's more mainstream offerings. But does it constitute a break from the conventional cinema of Hollywood to what has been termed post-classical film?
Classical film is the stock and trade of Hollywood. It is the codes and practices promulgated by the industry which have shaped both auteur and genre film. The classical Hollywood film is its most dominant expression. These films follow a generic plot progression to an inevitable conclusion. In essence the classical film follows a cause and effect trajectory that leaves narrative resolution until the last minute. Strong opening expositions are interrupted by a narrative development from which all-subsequent developments flow. Essentially, the narratives are circular: progressing from initial equilibrium, to disruption, to resolution (or more precisely, returning once more to equilibrium). Within the conventions of Hollywood film there are also 'classical narrative devices' (Bordwell 442), like fade-outs and cutting on action etc, which increase the formulaic nature of American cinema.
Blue Velvet is unique because of its treatment of narrative elements outside the conventions of classical cinema. While many of these elements, such as the resolution of the allegorical Oedipal moment, are conventional in the Hollywood sense it is more the manner in which David Lynch, as script writer and director, has realised these elements within the context of the film's mis-en-scene that lends to its overall uniqueness. In a sense, Jeffrey Beumont, as protagonist, is no different from many other protagonists of classical film. He is the archetypal sheriff/detective, found within most genres, who must make choices and resolve conflict to restore equilibrium.
But beyond the obvious adherence to classical film convention, Blue Velvet is a difficult film to read - its postmodern aesthetic alludes not only to Freudian psychoanalysis but cultural signifiers that are juxtaposed in the most alarming way. Using pastiche and parody Lynch divorces signifiers from the safety and familiarity of the past positioning them in an uneasy and uncertain present - the endemically corrupt saw-milling town of Lumberton USA. The film itself is steeped in the industrial zeitgeist of the 1980's - aside from the cinema the director, along with his musical director Angelo Badalamenti, made several excursions into industrial music. This is reflected in the ominous industrial rumbling and throbbing of the Lumberton itself.
It is this rumbling undercurrent which lies at the heart of the film for along with an almost spiritual search for happiness there is an overpowering sense of decay which seems to be a part of the very fabric of Lumberton. 'What Jeffrey learns by the end of the movie and what the allegory teaches is…that this neighbourhood is made of nothing more than fragmentary images that were once meaningfully distinct and motivated but which continually lose their those meanings because they are always in the process of decaying into sameness' (Corrigan 74).A concern also preoccupying British auteur Peter Greenaway. Blue Velvet exists within the tension of these two aspects of the Hollywood narrative.
Blue Velvet's narrative begins with pastiche shots alluding to a comforting past - circa 1950 (this in itself is an interesting point: is Lynch saying the more restrictive morality of that time tended less toward anomie than today and so were for all intents and purposes America's golden days - or is it nothing more than parody?). These opening scenes offer a glimpse of equilibrium, it is the chance find of a human ear which disrupts the equilibrium increasingly exposing Jeffrey to the dark heart of Lumberton. The severed ear is a classical narrative device from which all-else follows. Moreover, the protagonist, in keeping with convention, must choose between the darkness and the light. It is only when those choices have been made that there can be a return to equilibrium and closure.
In the end I don't think Blue Velvet can be termed a post-classical film. There is no doubt that it is a postmodern work: its use of pastiche and parody and its concern with the breakdown of ideology (signified here by the corruption within the Lumberton Police) testify to this. But for all its innovative use of inserts, of soundtrack and one-dimensional dialogue, the auteur has still chosen to adhere to the classical film conventions of Hollywood. I doubt that it would have been such a box office success if it had not. Audiences need that familiarity - perhaps it was a trade off to make the more unpleasant aspects of the film more palatable to domestic audiences. Either way it is one of my favourite films I have watched it and analysed it countless times and still find new layers of signification; and in a way, I think that the films and television that David Lynch made after Blue Velvet are but imitations of this fine film.
David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet deals, at different levels, with the central protagonist's first stirrings of unconscious. The film is directed by Lynch from his original screenplay. And although considered an 'Art House' film it still nevertheless adheres to the classic Hollywood formula. The narrative charts Jeffrey Beaumont's allegorical entry into the Oedipal phase of the development of his persona. And true to formula the narrative is circular, a chance find sets Jeffery in search of his self - a search which leads him away from the suburban safety of home and into the dark, dangerous, and fertile realm of the unconscious.
On one level Lynch's film is about the corruption of white middle-class values as embodied by Jeffrey Beaumont and Sandy Williams: that is, educated, white-collar, and heterosexual. On another level, or more precisely, from a Freudian perspective, Jeffrey revisits the Oedipal phase of his individual development toward becoming a complete, or to use a Jungian term, 'individuated' person. Fundamentally, this involves the creation of and integration with the unconscious.
Blue Velvet's mis en scene is the heightened unreality of the dream. This quality is enhanced by the director's skilful positioning of the spectator within the scopophilic field: so that like Jeffrey, the spectator also takes an almost eerily voyeuristic pleasure in looking. The use of fast film stock helps to create the dark texture of the narrative while at the same time enhancing the creation of what Baudry terms a state of artificial regression (Dept 19) in which the spectator is artificially positioned in a pre-Oedipal state: that is, as a more, constructed, and unified, individual.
The narrative unfolds its dream-work (Dept 13) in the following manner: condensation, Dorothy symbolically re-presents the unconscious, sexuality (including deviance), motherhood, and crime; displacement, in the form of the child's party hat which comes to represent the possible horrors being imposed upon him by his captors; conditions of representability, such as the highly symbolic Dept 3) inserts (the candle in the wind, animal noises, etc); and finally, secondary revision, which imposes a logical, in the case of Blue Velvet, linear narrative. The text is one that is particularly suited to psychoanalytic deconstruction as at its core it 'describes the ways in which the small human being [Jeffrey Beaumont] comes to develop a specific personality and sexual identity'(Dept 10). Moreover, if as Flitterman-Lewis suggests Freud's theories of the human mind equate to human culture (Dept 11) then Jeffrey would during the unfolding story essentially be struggling to fulfil the role of the ideal ego - as Dorothy's knight in shining armour.
From the point of view of semiotics the severed ear must symbolise the Imaginary (Dept 14) or as Lacan would have it, the moment when Jeffrey acquires language. This can be understood more in terms of hearing language. The language that he hears must be the language he was initially socialised with: and the fact that he has been away and all his old friends have moved on from him lends more validity to this.
However, the oedipal moment does not occur until Sandy Williams steps out of the darkness for the first time. For it is Sandy who introduces Jeffrey to Dorothy Vallens and it is through her that sexual differentiation (Dept 1) is initiated. Until Sandy, Jeffrey seems almost intellectually immature; which according to Freud, is a complication toward further development as the child or individual is then afraid of their own fantasies. Of these two characters, Sandy and Dorothy, Sandy is the more complete: this is borne out symbolically as she steps out of the darkness, the spectator, and Jeffrey, then see all of her (unified (Dept 2)); this is in contrast to Dorothy who first appears with one half (interestingly the left side which is commonly associated with the unconcious) of herself in darkness. Thus the unified image of Sandy is that which Jeffrey sees as a superior self or ideal ego (Dept 2).
But it is Dorothy who gives both Jeffrey and the narrative their meaning. She is being controlled by a gang of sadistic criminals who have killed her husband and hold her young son captive. Thus Dorothy's castration (Dept 53), both symbolic and within the narrative's framework (in the form of her complete subjugation to the gang), lends more emphasis to the phallocentrism (Dept 53) which lies at the heart of the text's discourse - being a traditional film it foregrounds hegemony in the form of patriarchal ideology. Returning to the spectator again, Dorothy's role as a bearer of meaning (Dept 55) is reinforced by her character being the axis for the scopophilic gaze of the spectator, Jeffrey, and the gang; this is in contrast to Jeffery, who by this stage of the narrative is identified with the Law of the Father (Dept 1) or society's law; which is represented by Sandy's father, Detective Williams, who is in charge of the investigation.
In some respects Sandy and Dorothy are different sides of the one figure (reflecting the ingrained stereotype of the Madonna/whore complex). Making Jeffrey's subsequent identification (Dept 2) process more problematic: in the sense that, Sandy not only re-presents the ego (the socially acceptable aspect of persona) but the superego (that which inhibits the instinctual drives) as well; while Dorothy re-presents the id (the seat of those drives). In fact by the middle of the film Dorothy has come to terms with being a masochist and effectively gives herself over completely to the pleasure principle (Dept 110); in contradistinction to Sandy who embodies the reality principle (Dept 10).
In summation, Blue Velvet uses the fictional vehicle of a tale of kidnapping and murder to tell the story of the creation of protagonist's unconscious and the formation of his ego. As we have seen, it is Sandy as the mirror that gives rise to those desires (embodied by Dorothy) which he then sets about repressing so that he may identify with an ideal ego. And it is the fear of castration (embodied by the missing phallus of Sandy) that causes his identification with the Law of the Father. Then finally, in true Hollywood fashion, the narrative comes full circle and equilibrium is restored.
Bordwell, D. and Kristin Thompson. (1993). Film Art: An introduction, 4th ed., McGraw-Hill.
Department of Media Studies. "Psychoanalysis, Film And TV." Gender and the Media. Palmerston North: Massey University.
Corrigan, T. (1991). A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and culture after Vietnam, Routledge.