America Goes to Art School

David Lynch's Twin Peaks

There has been a lot of television made in the years since David Lynch's series aired—some of it okay, most of it standard fare—but I would argue nothing as creative and current as Twin Peaks was in its time.

What is most striking to me about the series now, is how it transformed the television viewer from a casual consumer of predictable narratives to one engaged by the director's craft. The attention Lynch gave to the interiors and transitions from scene to scene, made them as important as conventional character framing and narrative outline. Viewers grew to process the narrative noise and fake leads with the same intensity as the real clues to Laura Palmer's mysterious death.

David Lynch, who is also a painter, rather quickly had people looking at a television program differently than they had before. The viewer wasn't simply involved in unlocking a mystery that unfolded in the center of their TV screen, they were also scanning the entirety of the screen—foreground, middleground, and background. Viewers were seeing their televisions for what they actually are—two dimensional framing devices—each frame carrying visual information that was either useful to the narrative or not.

The game, and the fun of watching Twin Peaks, was to view it as a crime mystery while simultaneously tracking Lynch's dark humor (and obsessiveness)—from his choice of chotzkes to grand exterior shots—we were delighted with the artifice and fakery of his television.

Updated:
I failed to mention the music Lynch used throughout the series—it was always clear which mood it was designed to set—but that transparency invariably made you doubt the response.

A post-modern puzzle.

Updated again:
Oh why not?