By Maisie Jennings
Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault.
Laura Palmer’s body is found on the shore: blue-mouthed, blue-eyed, blonde. Her naked corpse is shrouded in plastic, as if gift-wrapped for the male gaze. David Lynch and Mark Frost’s cult classic television series Twin Peaks (1991) is distinct in its strangeness. What begins as a fairly conventional whodunit is stretched and contorted by dream visions, interdimensional spirits, and the imposition of the supernatural onto seedy, corporeal, small-town America. The charming and unusual narrative structure is characteristic of Lynch, the surrealist auteur. Overlooked, however, is his remarkable use of female victimhood – identifying Twin Peaks and his wider cinematic oeuvre as a lexicon of male violence.
The elusive nature of Twin Peaks’ plot does not obscure the fact that it hinges entirely upon the debasement and death of a teenage girl. Aligning with classic Lynchian themes, gender-based violence is the evil used to untangle darker threads enmeshed within kitschy Americana. In Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer is homecoming-queen-turned-perfect-dead-girl, and her murder investigation, led by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman, unveils the town’s criminal underbelly. The post-mortem shattering of her ‘good girl’ image reveals Laura’s secret life as a cocaine addict and teenage sex worker.
On one hand, I think Lynch and Frost attempt to critique white masculine hegemonic power: the town’s most important male figures are implicated within the sex and drug trafficking ring that underpins Twin Peaks’ business and industry. On the other hand, it can be argued that the discovery of Laura’s secret diary and the scandalous revelations that fester, or flirt with, in some ways, a moral justification of her death. Her tragic abuse, exploitation, criminal connections, and drug use essentially groom her for this inevitable, logical end. Moreover, her death catalyses a grander, metaphysical battle between forces of good and evil; though she haunts the original series’ narrative in all her pain and beauty, the significance of her death becomes markedly less focused on her own suffering. Nevertheless, Laura’s murder is unequivocally propagated by the patriarchal structures and male dominance that constitute Twin Peaks. In Episode Four, Laura’s funeral is interrupted by her ex-boyfriend, Bobby Briggs – “All you ‘good’ people – you wanna know who killed Laura? You did! We all did…”.
During the course of the series, it is revealed that Laura was killed by her father, Leland, who had been possessed by an evil spirit named BOB. Leland, while possessed by BOB, had also subjected Laura to years of sexual abuse. BOB, I think, is best understood as a symbolic representation of earthly male violence, rather than a demonic, supernatural entity. In the series, whether BOB is real or not is debated by Cooper and Truman; they decide, however, that he is “the evil that men do”. I believe this statement explicitly refers to how men hurt women, rather than a wider meditation on humanity’s primordial capacity for evil. The terrible violence enacted by BOB belongs far more tangibly in the world of Twin Peaks, than the mythologised Black Lodge: the extra-dimensional stem of all evil and darkness.
Like Laura, virtually all the other female characters in Twin Peaks are subject to male violence. It occurs so frequently and so intensely, yet it seems to function as little more than a thematic device or motif. In the very first episode, simultaneous with Laura’s murder, the character Ronette Pulaski is beaten and raped with such brutality that it leaves her comatose – after a few episodes, she is omitted from the plot. Although the 1992 feature film and prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me clarifies the violent details of her death, its significance is presented as purely incidental, making the investigation of Laura’s murder a federal case, and prompting the arrival of Cooper.
The treatment of gender-based violence in Twin Peaks demonstrates a troubling dichotomy. Male violence appears as an integral theme, but the female suffering and trauma that pervades the series is seemingly subsumed by larger points about corruption and morality. It is this latter theme in which Lynch and Frost invest heavily through the antidotes of white masculinity and ‘good’ male characters. When Audrey Horne, the daughter of business magnate and brothel owner Ben Horne, is captured whilst undercover as a teenage prostitute, the series is quick to brush over her drugging and assault: instead, she is used to demonstrate the overwhelming goodness of her male rescuers. Indeed, Audrey’s character is constantly fetishised by a voyeuristic, sexualised gaze. The surveillance of her age, allure, and purity as an 18 year old schoolgirl more or less reduces her to “jailbait” – the forbidden object of Cooper’s desires.
I’d like to further problematise the depictions of sex work and exploited women in Twin Peaks through the character of Josie Packard, the only woman of colour presented as a main character in the series. As the narrative progresses, it transpires that Josie, the widow of wealthy mill owner Andrew Packard, had been involved in prostitution, gang warfare, and prostitution in Hong Kong (she is also revealed to have orchestrated her husband’s fatal boat accident). Josie embodies the racialised fetishisation of East Asian women, in particular the stereotypical ‘dragon lady’ – an alluring mistress of deceit and deception. Demonstrative of Lynch and Frost’s unforgiving attitude towards sex work, Josie’s death in the second season seems to act as a suitable punishment for her crimes.
Twin Peaks is indicative of wider examples of how male violence and female subjugation is used across David Lynch’s filmography. Blue Velvet (1986) is focused on a masochistic female sex worker and her various assaults and entrapments, a foil to the innocent high-school love interest of Kyle MacLachlan’s protagonist. Wild at Heart (1990) features the rape of another female character. There is the femme fatale of Lost Highway (1997). Even Lynch’s adaptation of Dune (1984) portrays femininity as a destabilising force. Although, in classic Lynchian fashion, there is thematic significance to his use of gender-based violence, there are enduring problematic aspects found in his ceaselessly brutalised female characters.