Invocation to My Demon Brother: Some Thoughts About David Lynch

1.

People of the say about David Lynch that he was “uncompromising”, by which they mean that he followed his own vision, that he never sold out, that he never made movies to appeal to the industry and its standards. This is an obvious point. Whether you like them or not, Lynch’s movies are pretty damned singular. And they’ve influenced countless people, including not just movie directors but also writers, singers etc (one might even argue that he’s been more influential on other arts, perhaps precisely because movies are such a money-dependent enterprise and it’s hard to get adventurous movies made, while it’s cheaper to write a poem). And though I think most would agree that he’s made some of the best, most influential movies of the past 50 years, he’s won few award and his critical reception tended to be mixed at best.

BUT I think his work also complicates notions of “uncompromising” and “selling out.” Because unlike most movies, he did not hide the compromises he had to make in order to get his movies made. The compromises affected the very structure of his movies. We might say that on one hand he was uncompromising, but also that he was incredibly compromising, and in fact that these compromises helped create his singular (or “uncompromising”) work.

2.

Exhibit #1:

Lynch’s adaptation of Herbert’s Dune is often discussed as his greatest failure. I disagree with all the negative feelings about this movie (including Lynch’s own). I think it’s a quite spellbinding movie. He famously made it in order that he could get funding for Blue Velvet. There was a compromise at the heart of the entire enterprise. More importantly, he took on the dramatization of a book that is way too long, too intricate, to turn into a regular length movie (see the new version that is simpler, but still depends on sequels). Instead of paring it down, he decided to include as much as possible. There’s a wonderful tension between striking scenes and details - the castration box, the unplugging of that androgenous boy, the boils that need to be drained etc – that may seem too specific and the sweeping narrative. One might see it as a compromise, but perhaps it’s more accurate to see it as a spectacular failure to comply with the rules of movie making.

Exhibit #2:

Another thing about Dune: the castration box scene is defined by the occult proliferation of voices: we “hear voices” all over the place, estranging the very idea of “voice” as something that belongs “inside” the cinematic figure. Notably this is the moment when arguably Paul Atreides is revealed to be “the one” (the uncompromising one) and castrates him *artistically*. The box creates the illusion of being burned. So in a sense he becomes both one and many in this moment. Proliferation is a key to Lynch’s movies. Voices - fake, excessive, proliferating - play key roles in a lot of his films, often as a result of the narrative overload.

(I’m interested in the way the Dune castration scene is re-staged in Dorothy Valens apartment in Blue Velvet, the movie Lynch was able to make directly as the result of him agreeing to make Dune. The same scene proliferates.)

Exhibit #3:

A similar lyrical hyper-narrative on a very different scale: When Lynch was asked to participate in a project where film makers used the Lumiere Brothers’ original cameras to make short-short films. Almost all the other participants in the project, realizing the limited time and resources of the camera, made very simple films (Spike Lee filming his child sleeping etc), but Lynch packs his film, “Premontions Following An Evil Deed,” full of action (there’s even an alien abduction or something). Lynch uses the time limit and obstructions of the outdated technology to create a little masterpiece. He also makes use of the sound of the outdated camera. So good.

Exhibit #4:

Lynch’s “compromise” with limits provides an aesthetic throughline for most of Lynch’s work. Perhaps it is used with greatest effect in Mullholland Drive, widely considered his best films. It was first conceived of as a serial TV show, but was cancelled, forcing Lynch to re-cut his footage into one single movie. The effect is breathtaking, as it moves beautifully through a myriad of plot lines and shifts in perspective. The climax of the film is paradoxically in the very middle – at Club Silencio, a space very much reminiscent of the Black Lodge of Twin Peaks, where we find the castration box again, and where we find art at its most art-ness, its most occult and most intensive. One might even say that the obstruction of having to fit a whole season into one regular length film pushes him further (even further than Lost Highway) into a kind of occult worldview.

Exhibit #5:

In a weird way, Lynch’s use of montage echoes the montage of another occult film, Kenneth Anger’s “Invocation of My Demon Brother,” which supposedly resulting from Bobby Beausoleil stealing the “real” film (to give to Charlie Manson) and Anger picking up the cut parts of the film from the cutting-room floor and montaging it back together into a film that is explicitly an occult invocation. And honestly this is one of my favorite Anger movie, in part because of the limitation provided by the process – the need to find enough pieces from the cutting room floor – gives an urgency to the movie that some of his other work lacks (though I love most of it).

Exhibit #6:

It is interesting that in The Return, he seems to have finally had all the budget, all the money, all the time to make a movie exactly as he wanted it. But Lynch uses the same narrative structure as in Mulholland Drive – piecing together story-lines without transition, resulting in a multi-pronged narrative that constantly threatens to come apart. He needs the brilliant ending scream from Laura Palmer to sew up the whole anarchic project.

Exhibit #7

It didn’t have to be this way of course. Lynch “wastes” a huge part of the series on the boring Dougie storylines; it’s almost as if he has to waste time in order to justify the rapidity of the narratives when the movie takes off (ie when Dougie finally wakes up by electrocuting himself, electrocuting the narrative, by sticking a fork in an electrical outlet, also reminiscent of the castration box).

Exhibit #8:

As in Mulholland Drive, the climax of The Return- episode 8 - takes place in the middle of the show, not toward the end as expected. I take this sublime moment to be that moment - the occult extreme of art. Yes, it shows nuclear test - and as in Black Lodge, perhaps a moment of extreme Evil - but it’s a bunch of other things for me as well: the film burning down (as in Bergman’s Persona), the art going inside matter itself, a kind of elementary cell psychadelia, the moment where the film consumes itself.

3.

What is the connection between money and the occult in Lynch?

The result of Lynch’s compromised narrative MO is lyrical, proliferative and intensive. It fails to follow standards. It’s a bad fit. It unbalanced. The climax comes too early, the ending has to be sewn up. The characters may be someone they are not. The voices sound strange. There are maybe two compromises: the money compromise and the formal narrative compromise (fitting too much narrative into the space of a movie). But in Lynch, one is another. The money compromise is part of the narrative; the narrative is wasteful, inflationary, too much.

It may seem unusual to speak of an economics of literary judgement, but economics has been a persistent feature of western literary culture for centuries. In his book Language and Money, March Shell shows how “a formal money of the mind informs all discourse.” Shell argues that this economic framework is beset by fears of counterfeits and the loss of value. He notes how “comparisons were made between the way a mere shadow or piece of paper becomes credited as substantial money and the way an artistic appearance is taken for the real thing.” What if a bill is just an imitation, not the real bill? In other words, our economic culture fears mimicry and its generative dynamic; it fears mimetic excess. It tries to reign in inflationary exuberance. And isn’t this inflationary excess what defines these Lynch movies? Whether in the Dune castration scene or the Club Silence, we are asked to trust art, an act that revels in the counterfeit.