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‘The thing is about secrets.’
David Lynch has achieved a curious blend of notoriety and fame as one of the most eccentric yet innovative artists today. His films are evocative and known for their kinky, grotesque, violent and just plain weird themes. He has been called the ‘czar of the bizarre’ and a ‘pornographic fabulist’. Lynch's films are disturbing and disorientating as they revel in the portrayal of violence, perversion, deformity and insanity.
In the created world of David Lynch, things are never what they appear to be. He inverts the ‘American dream’—the idealised vision of a comfortable, orderly, secure and moral life—and shows that behind the thin veneer of normality lurks an underworld permeated by evil, corruption and disorder. In sum, Lynch undermines the illusion of goodness that bolsters one's security and comfort.
An interesting facet of Lynch's films concerns the ways in which the viewer becomes implicated in the corrupt underworld that he uncovers. The unfolding of the story and the use of cinematographic images and techniques, for example, shape the viewer's experience, participation in the film, fantasies and identification with its characters. Throughout his films, Lynch employs sounds and visual images to advance the story and to engage the viewer's voyeuristic and associative processes, making the experience of watching his films more interactive than merely passive. In this essay, we shall attempt to explain the appeal and power of Lynch's work and, in particular, his ability to simultaneously excite and unsettle the viewer, by focusing on what we consider to be his best and certainly his most evocative film, Blue Velvet.
Blue Velvet is a coming-of-age story that centres on the efforts of its central character, Jeffrey Beaumont, to solve the mystery of a crime he uncovers. Jeffrey is first seen after visiting his father who is hospitalised, having been incapacitated in a freak accident. While wandering aimlessly, Jeffrey discovers a decomposing s