David Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker: David Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles

Release Date: February 6, 2025

In this poignant episode of Critics at Large from The New Yorker, hosts Vincent Cunningham, Nomi Fry, and Alex Schwartz engage in an in-depth exploration of the enigmatic filmmaker David Lynch. Released shortly after Lynch's passing at the age of 78, the episode serves as both a tribute and a critical analysis of his enduring impact on culture, film, television, and beyond.

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A Personal Journey Through Lynch’s Cinematic Universe

The discussion kicks off with the hosts sharing their personal experiences revisiting Lynch's seminal works. Nomi Fry recounts her recent viewing of Eraserhead and the visceral reaction it elicited:

Nomi Fry [06:19]: "I was watching this very disturbing, grotesque, extremely body horror, gross movie, I started feeling ill... my life became one with a Lynch movie, basically."

Alex Schwartz complements this by delving into his immersive journey with Twin Peaks:

Alex Schwartz [13:15]: "I've been in concentrated form these past couple of weeks, the whole world really does become Lynchian to me."

Their shared experiences set the stage for a deeper analysis of Lynch’s unique narrative and visual style.

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Decoding Lynch: Themes and Aesthetics

The trio delves into the recurring motifs that define Lynch’s oeuvre. Vincent Cunningham offers a vivid description of Lynch’s portrayal of Americana:

Vincent Cunningham [01:02]: "The image for me is of a white picket fence seen from the vantage of the ground. Americana with a hint of menace."

This juxtaposition of idyllic American imagery with underlying darkness becomes a central theme. Nomi Fry further explores this idea:

Nomi Fry [05:04]: "We're gonna be revisiting some of these very important landmark works of Lynch's career to understand how his very specific, very unique blend of Americana and the macabre has shaped the culture."

The hosts discuss how Lynch’s work often reveals the sinister beneath the surface of everyday life, creating a sense of unease and mystery.

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Influence on Contemporary Culture

David Lynch's impact extends beyond film into various facets of modern culture. Alex Schwartz highlights Lynch's profound influence on the realm of television, citing Severance as a contemporary work indebted to Lynchian themes:

Alex Schwartz [35:35]: "Severance is a show that also begins with a big mystery... There's plenty of like funny Lynchian esque things like a room full of goats."

Vincent Cunningham emphasizes Lynch’s influence on American photography, noting how his aesthetic has shaped photographers' portrayal of American suburbs as battlegrounds for deeper societal issues:

Vincent Cunningham [36:40]: "American photographers from the end of the 20th century through to now are absolutely in love with David Lynch."

The discussion also touches on Lynch's unexpected contributions to fashion, with collections directly inspired by his films, demonstrating the pervasive reach of his artistic vision.

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The Lynchian Today: A Reflection on Society

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to contemplating whether contemporary society mirrors the Lynchian world—where the mundane coexists with the grotesque. Alex Schwartz asserts:

Alex Schwartz [40:11]: "Lynch is very interested in that and he focuses a lot on that... I feel like we're living in a Lynchian time."

The hosts draw parallels between Lynch's depiction of internal and external chaos and the current political and social climate, suggesting that modern America exhibits many of the unsettling characteristics found in Lynch’s narratives.

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Hope Amidst the Haunting

Despite the often dark and unsettling themes, the hosts find a thread of hope within Lynch’s work. Alex Schwartz remarks on the moments of normalcy that offer comfort:

Alex Schwartz [46:28]: "These moments in the works are so terrifying. But they're there to kind of make you want to push further... it's generous and beautiful."

Vincent Cunningham adds a philosophical layer, interpreting Lynch’s emphasis on individual interpretation as a form of personal freedom:

Vincent Cunningham [47:26]: "A call to interpretation is actually a call to freedom. That always gives me hope."

This perspective suggests that Lynch’s films encourage viewers to find their own meanings and truths, fostering a sense of empowerment amidst ambiguity.

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Legacy of an Auteur

As the episode draws to a close, the hosts reflect on David Lynch's enduring legacy. Through their analysis, it becomes clear that Lynch's work transcends traditional storytelling, offering a complex tapestry of images and themes that continue to resonate and inspire. His ability to blend the ordinary with the extraordinary challenges audiences to confront the hidden layers of reality, ensuring his place as a pivotal figure in the landscape of modern art and culture.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Nomi Fry [06:19]: "I started feeling ill... my life became one with a Lynch movie, basically."

• Alex Schwartz [13:15]: "I've been in concentrated form these past couple of weeks, the whole world really does become Lynchian to me."

• Vincent Cunningham [01:02]: "The image for me is of a white picket fence seen from the vantage of the ground. Americana with a hint of menace."

• Alex Schwartz [35:35]: "Severance is a show that also begins with a big mystery... There's plenty of like funny Lynchian esque things like a room full of goats."

• Vincent Cunningham [36:40]: "American photographers... are absolutely in love with David Lynch."

• Alex Schwartz [40:11]: "I feel like we're living in a Lynchian time."

• Vincent Cunningham [47:26]: "A call to interpretation is actually a call to freedom. That always gives me hope."

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This episode of Critics at Large offers a comprehensive and nuanced examination of David Lynch’s multifaceted contributions to culture and the arts. By intertwining personal anecdotes with critical analysis, the hosts provide listeners with a deeper understanding of Lynch's work and its relevance in today's world.

Transcript

[Nomi Fry]

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[Vincent Cunningham]

We the people shape our country's story. America250 is gearing up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of America's democracy by collecting and preserving diverse stories from across the nation. Nominate any living person you think has a story to be preserved and celebrated for generations to come. Help tell our American story, every unique version of it. Visit america250.org nominate to submit what comes.

[Nomi Fry]

To mind when you hear the words David Lynch?

[Vincent Cunningham]

The image for me is of a white picket fence seen from the vantage of the ground. Americana with a hint of menace.

[Nomi Fry]

And then what lies beyond that picket fence?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Somewhere beneath, beyond, near? It is, of course, an ear poking up from the ground.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes, it sure is. Riddled with vermin, maggots and flies. How about you, Alex?

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, so many things. And especially when I've been watching lynch, which I have been in concentrated form these past couple of weeks, the whole world really does become Lynchian to me this morning as I was walking to the studio. Yeah, I was emerging into the Oculus, this kind of dinosaur fossil of architecture that the three of us walk to a mall in. In name only, this soaring piece of bone over our heads as we and.

[Nomi Fry]

The dying empire of America.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right. As we prepare to ascend at One World Trade. And there was a blinking light everywhere in the Oculus, flashing lights. And a garbled voice came over a loudspeaker to explain that an alarm in one of the World Trade center buildings had gone off. But it was almost impossible to understand the voice because it was bouncing off the marble. And as I walked in this eerie, almost empty environment, I passed a grand piano.

[Nomi Fry]

The piano.

[Alex Schwartz]

And a man sitting at it playing a fun, upbeat jazz piece. Absolutely indifferent to the menace everywhere. And that, to me, was extremely Lynchian.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hi, I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Fry]

And I'm Nomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Yes, dear listeners, if you haven't guessed it yet, today's episode is about. Drumroll, please. The great David Lynch. David lynch is the director behind the series Twin Peaks Films. Like Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive. And he died about three weeks ago at the age of 78. He is one of these figures whose imprint on our culture is just enormous.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. Part of it, at least for me, is even before I had seen something by David Lynch, I was already exposed to artists who talked about him as an influence. And that sort of. That kind of authority that breeds followers is always something that's, you know, interesting because. Especially if you want to learn about how art is made. But then once I started to get to know about Lynch, I started to be interested in him insofar as I was interested in America. He's very interested in the country and its myths and its mythologies and its surfaces. And he, especially through images, through kind of photography, punctures a hole in those surfaces. Alex, do you have one, too? What's your.

[Alex Schwartz]

I just think that David lynch was and is absolutely monumental. And the more of him I watch, the more and less I feel that I understand what he's after. In some ways, it just reminds me, you know, the Tom Waits song, what's he Building?

[D]

What's he building in there?

[Alex Schwartz]

It's just Tom Waits going, what's he building in there? What's he building in there?

[Nomi Fry]

What's he building in there?

[Alex Schwartz]

That's kind of how I think of David Lynch. What's he doing in there? What's he gonna come out with from there? What's he building? What's in his mind? And so the idea that that mind is not going to produce anything else, I think that is one of the things that has led to this really sorrowful feeling in the public, which we've seen and which I right now, like, that's my feeling.

[Nomi Fry]

No, totally. I couldn't agree more. And despite the fact that his work has mostly existed somewhat outside of the mainstream, this is not a famously, his would be blockbuster. Dune was not one. You still see his influence absolutely everywhere. So today, yes, we're gonna be revisiting some of these very important landmark works of Lynch's career to understand how his very specific, very unique blend of Americana and the macabre has shaped the culture since he started working. And one of the things I've been thinking about is whether we're living through a moment that lines up especially well with the way lynch himself presented the world as a place where the kind of the mundane, proper surface of things can suddenly be torn away to reveal something much more ominous and even hellish underneath. So that's today on Critics at Large. Are we living In David Lynch's let's Dive in, into the Lynchverse.

[Alex Schwartz]

Take us under.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, we're gonna go under. And I should start by saying that we were supposed to do the Lynchpod a week ago. However, the day before, I went to see Eraserhead from 1977, and as I was watching this very disturbing, grotesque, extremely body horror, gross movie, I started feeling ill. And I thought it was because of the movie where there's a mewling mutant baby covered in sores. And that's just. That's not even the half of it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Enough to make you ill.

[Nomi Fry]

Enough to make you ill. And my stomach really hurt. And I was like, wow, this movie is really like body horror. You know, Talk about body horror.

[Alex Schwartz]

Visceral.

[Nomi Fry]

I stumbled out and it turned out to be a bad case of norovirus.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

I had to go Lynchian turn in a Lynchian turn. I spent the night on. Sorry if this is tmi on the bathroom floor. Snatches of wild dreams careening through my head as I writhed around on the floor. Had to go to the er not to. This is not about me. But just to say my life became one with a Lynch movie, basically, which.

[Alex Schwartz]

Is very Lynching, the idea that something would jump out of a screen and come to infect the real world and enter your body. Yes, In a number of lynch works.

[Nomi Fry]

I myself was a severed ear crawling with maggots.

[Alex Schwartz]

And nothing short of that, listeners, would have kept us from you.

[Nomi Fry]

I know this is true.

[Alex Schwartz]

Now you know the truth.

[Nomi Fry]

We're here now.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Back.

[Nomi Fry]

We're back, baby. And my co hosts, I believe, had a happier experience than me in their lynch revisitation. What did you watch and what were your feelings?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, among some other things, I rewatched Blue Velvet.

[Nomi Fry]

I love that movie, which is like.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think, arguably Twin Peaks, of course, is a monument. But Blue Velvet might just be the. The one gem of a masterpiece. 1986. After you earlier mentioned the sort of wild experiment that was Dune, a commercial failure that sort of tosses lynch into the outer reaches of Hollywood, he comes back with Blue Velvet, a movie for which he has final cut. And it shows the sort of auteurist control over every image and situation. It's a mystery thriller, perhaps a murder mystery, perhaps a.

[Nomi Fry]

Who can tell?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Who can tell? But it's about. The first thing to say before you even get into plot is that like many works by David lynch, It stars Kyle MacLachlan, who. Let's talk about. Okay, Lynchian, a guy who looks like an American everyman. On some surface level, you know, a baby faced guy with dark hair, but also has in his face elements of total malice and psychopathy. I don't know what it is about Colin McLaughlin but his gaze is like good boy pervert. And he is in his hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina. Early on there is a whole lot.

[Alex Schwartz]

Of wood waiting out there.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So let's idyllic scene, roses, picket fences. And the first situation in the movie is we see this kind of everyday American suburban lawn. And then Geoffrey's father is stricken by some ailment, falls into the grass. And then from there on, you know, Geoffrey finds it, famously a rotting, sort of obviously severed ear in the grass near this idyllic fence. And Laura Dern is the innocent, beautiful, high school, almost John Hughes esque blonde who accompanies Jeffrey on his investigation into this potential murder. It's a mystery whose deep, deep nature is never totally revealed. But it is resolved in this very sort of odd, off kilter again, American again, crucially photographic way. Photographs play a big part in this movie. I won't go too much more into the rest of the plot, but I will say, okay, number one, Kyle McLaughlin, number two, key to sort of Lynchian mythology. It's called Lumberton. And all through the movie there are these huge truck carrying bundles of tree trunks all over the place. This lumber, wood. David lynch loves lumber in Twin Peaks. Huge, huge. The sort of a lumber manufacturing plant or whatever is part of. He loves the logging northwest. He loves logging.

[Nomi Fry]

Log lady.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He loves wood. And you know, coming off of the back of our recent episode about the pioneer moment, the Western expansion, I kept on thinking like he's interested in an America that's not the Northeast. Places that are still kind of under some sort of expansionist construction frontier. A lot of the houses are explicitly very. The interiors are wood interiors. It's like everything feels kind of provisional, propped up. It's not just a white suburbia, it's a white suburbia that sits atop a very recent history and can like, just like the houses look like sets. Everything is very art, the lighting red hot, artificial. He's interested in this America that's just like sitting on top of a bunch of bones and blood. Absolutely. And so blue velvet is evidence. Like everything that happens in it seems evidentiary of a prior crime. Right. So it's so chock full. What's good about it is images, you know, a blue velvet robe being stuffed into somebody's mouth again, the picket fence with the big roses. You could go on and on. A woman undressing as glimpsed through the slats of a closet. To me, he is such a filmmaker of images and the sort of. So many people that I know talk about Blue Velvet as the moment of their artistic deflowering. And I felt that anew watching it.

[Nomi Fry]

Alex, I know you also have revisited. What do you have for us?

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm gonna drop something shocking on you right now. I'm about to drop a bomb.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

My revisit was not a re. It was a visit. Oh, for. Never before had I been. Well, I had been a little bit. But never before had I fully been to Twin Peaks.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

I know.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, I'm jealous, guys.

[Alex Schwartz]

I am so deep into the pixaverse right now that I don't think I'll ever come out. Like, I'm so deep that I kind of. The more I watch, the more continues to stretch before me. Lynch revisited the world of Twin Peaks in the film Twin Fire Walk With Me. And later in 2017, Twin the Return. I just say, leave me in the Black Lodge. Give me more if I can, you know, Please. The Roadhouse. I'll be there. Meet me there with a beer. So, I mean, ask me something, guys. I don't know what to say. I'm in the Peaks. Okay, so I've seen Fire Walk With Me. I'm desperate to get back to the Return, which I think I just wanna be there. The Return, I think is genius.

[Nomi Fry]

So why is it fascinating to you? How do you feel? It is particularly quote, unquote, Lynchian.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay, thank you, Nomi. Cause I'm just living it right now. You know what strikes me about the show is it starts as a mystery. It's the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Harry, let's roll her over.

[Alex Schwartz]

This high school senior who is found in the very first episode as a body wrapped in a bag who floats up on shore.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's not much normal.

[Nomi Fry]

Laura Palmer.

[Alex Schwartz]

So this is the driving force of the show. Who killed Laura Palmer? And there is an answer. But the search for the answer takes you to all these dark corners of the town and reveals that Laura Palmer was much more than perhaps initially met the eye. And the show to do that combines all these different tropes of, you know, soap opera. There's a lot that, including paranormal stuff, which is very important to Twin Peaks. Weird stuff happening. Even the acting is soap opera esque. It's larger than life. You actually like. I think if you're also really inclined towards realism, as I am, it's a big adjustment. And if you can make that Adjustment. It's extremely rewarding and exciting to just go to a zone of performance that is not about naturalism, that is about communicating something beyond that. And it can seem really hokey and weird until you click in, and then it's great. The entire show is about fear and the uncanny. And I think the entire lynch world is really about those things, too. And, yes, it's about how it coexists with normality and what's underneath, so to speak. But from the very first moments of Twin Peaks, there is nothing that is truly nothing in the world of Twin Peaks. This town in the Pacific Northwest, this logging town, is really segregated from any other part of that world. So, you know, the diner that. The kind of happy space, the coffee, the pie, the police station, which represents integrity and justice. Okay, yes, it's a police station, but it does represent that in Twin Peaks. And the search for justice as an ordering force in the world is right there, along with all kinds of malice and evil and violence, and particularly violence against women, which is really the heart of the show and I would argue at the heart of Lynch's view of the world also. Yeah, yeah. I could and probably shouldn't go on, but I'm in the Peaks. I'm deep in the Peaks.

[Nomi Fry]

I want to revisit the Peaks too, you know, for me. So. Okay, my rewatch.

[Alex Schwartz]

Let's hear it.

[Nomi Fry]

Let's hear it. Okay, so Eraserhead was just kind of a supplementary rewatch. My main rewatch was Mulholland Drive, which came out in 2001, and it stars Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Herring. And I'm just gonna be upfront here. I find that it will be impossible for me to synopsize this movie. Like many lynch works. It's really hard narratively to kind of grasp exactly and explain exactly what is happening. So I'll just say that we have brunette amnesiac in LA who doesn't know her own story. She emerges from a car crash. She meets up through a series of occurrences with a kind of like her counterpart, a blonde, sweet, sort of America's sweetheart type aspiring actress played by Naomi Watts. And both of them are trying to understand what happened to this woman that has led her to kind of like crawl out of the crash and go walking out into the Hollywood night. Maybe it happened so late. It's not in today's paper. There's nothing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Not that I can see. That's okay.

[Nomi Fry]

There's a core moment for me in the movie. It's a marginal scene, but it still feels significant in A way two characters which appear and then disappear, never to be scene again. In the movie, two men, an older man and a younger man who sit in a diner. Winkies on sunset. And the younger man tells the older man about a recurring dream he has. There's a man.

[Vincent Cunningham]

In back of this place. He's the one who's doing it. I can see him through the wall. I can see his face. I hope that I never see that face ever outside of a dream.

[Nomi Fry]

And then the two men walk, you know, kind of walk behind the diner to the place that the younger guy has seen in his dream. And then this face actually appears in quote, unquote, real life.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

And the man staggers back. You know, he is basically, like, blown away and cannot deal with the reality of this, like, sort of goblin figure in real life. That moment is so effective to me because it's such a. It's such a deep truth.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

About how the uncanny works in real.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Life and the correspondence between it and.

[Nomi Fry]

The correspondence between dream and reality.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And it's like I haven't watched it in a long time too, but my memory of it is Mulholland. Jive is the taps into another strain of lynch, which is like the necessity of interpretation. That images and occurrences exist in patterns that can only be resolved by, like, the viewer sort of taking the reins and interpreting. It's like I might not know everything that happened, but I know how I'm. By the end of it, I know how I'm supposed to remember what I've seen. I know how I'm supposed to go about arranging these happenings.

[Nomi Fry]

Right. Satisfying, interpretively, but also essentially unsatisfying because it's a puzzle box that will never be arranged. There's always going to be a piece missing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Nomi Fry]

When we're back, the long, long shadow of David Lynch. This is critics at large from the New York.

[D]

Hi, I'm David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker. I'm proud to share that the magazine's film Incident has been nominated for Best Documentary Short at this year's Academy Awards. This gripping film examines how perceptions of a police shooting develop afterward with cops and body cameras telling very different stories. It's a powerful exploration of truth, accountability and the complex ways in which narratives around justice are shaped. I hope you'll watch incident [e-mail] video.

[Nomi Fry]

Before we get back into lynch, we've got a favor to ask. Next week. Our episode is all about the genre known as romantasy. That's romance plus fantasy. Yeah, it's a new thing for me too.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh yes. And as a reminder, we want an actual need your help for this one.

[Vincent Cunningham]

If you have ventured into this genre, send us a voicemail telling us about your favorite Romantasy read and a little bit about why you think it grabbed you. Email it to us with the subject line critics. Themailewyorker.com that's themailewyorker.com thanks so much.

[Nomi Fry]

And now back to today's episode. Okay, so we've been talking about three of the iconic works of David Lynch's career. What do we think ties them together? What are the unifying themes? This is a tall order, I realize, but if we can just start teasing out some of the strands.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I think you were just getting at some of it, Nomi, when you were talking about Mulholland Drive. The permeability of the so called real world and the dream world. Things can leak back and forth and affect each other. And that permeability, I think comes through a lot in different motifs in Lynch's work. Like there's split personalities everywhere in Lynch's work. People are not who they seem, maybe even to themselves. You know, people are inhabited by spirits very often. This is particularly the case in Twin Peaks where don't wanna spoil anything, but evil comes in the form of an inhabiting spirit. And that's really scary because that means that anyone could be inhabited by an evil spirit.

[Nomi Fry]

Like what if I'm inhabited by an evil spirit?

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly. You know, we may. So I think that's a big part of it. I think violence is huge in the world of lynch and the spectacle of violence is very big. But there is a real question beneath it of why, where does violence come from? And the thing about the lynch world is that even if you got a satisfying answer, even if you found the guy red handed or whatever it was, that does not even begin to get to the heart of that question. And so to me, violence and its origins and its effects is a huge lynch theme, but explored in a. That is the opposite of social realism. Just completely on a much deeper psychological level.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, and another thing that I would say Lynchian follows on from that. Right there is this violence and about its after effects, it's sort of echoes and then there's this attention to how the everyday aesthetics of middle class American life have been on some level retrofitted against that violence. It exists to fit around that violence and make it seem normal. So part of it is just the emphasis on a certain kind of hunky dory Syntax. I know earlier I said that this is an artist foremost of images, and I believe that. But the way that he talks also has this weird, like, gee whiz, shellacked, gee whiz veneer over the truth of things. So, for example, in the pilot of Twin Peaks, there's a moment where the FBI agent, played by again, Kyle McLaughlin, is looking around, he's called a town meeting and he's looking around at the people of the town, trying to sort of like, you know, exercise his suspicions of them.

[D]

Last year, Andrew Packard practically built this town. Brought her over from Hong Kong six years ago, left her everything, which didn't.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Exactly please his sister. That's her right there, the original deep freeze.

[Nomi Fry]

Who's the glad handing dandy?

[D]

Benjamin Horn, local big wig.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He owns half the town. And who's that glad handing dandy? Glad handing dandy. And you know, so, okay, here's another artist who I think might be a little bit Lynchian, who I think does the same thing with that kind of language is Norm MacDonald. Oh, yeah, Canadian, of course. But similarly, his, especially Norm's standup comedy is a way of saying gee whiz things around brutal. The way that he talked syntactically about O.J. simpson and Nicole Brown. Right.

[D]

O.J. simpson's lawyers have decided to skip hearings on DNA evidence and go right to trial. Asked why they did this, the lawyers.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Replied, we want to get OJ Acquitted.

[D]

As speedily as possible so he can get back to doing what he does best, killing people.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A kind of plain American befuddlement over the darkest possible things. That to me is like the mix of David Lynch.

[Nomi Fry]

Uh, totally. Yeah. I mean, you know, Vincent, you earlier in the episode you were talking about sets, right? About the idea of lumber and the idea of a sort of like prefab, fake kind of like environment that has cropped up over the dust and bones and blood of the American frontier. And that really struck me. I think it's so true, you know, how old western towns, that kind of came up really quickly, right. And they would have false fronts, Right. They would pretend to have two stories. So it's like there would be the first story, there would be like a feed store or whatever, I don't know. And then there would be like a false front. Like there would be like a second story that was just like a wall. Yeah, right. And there's something about the false front that I think is really, when you think about lynch, is true about the actual built environments, you know, the way the environments look. But also this Sort of gee whiz, everything is hunky dory thing. Like in Mulholland Drive, there are these two elderly, seemingly kindly people, like a man and a woman who Naomi Watts, the aspiring actress who's coming to Hollywood to make it big, meets on her way. And they're like, dear, so nice to meet you. You know, take care. This is the very beginning of the movie. And then later we see this couple going from the airport, like in the back of a cab. And they're like holding hands and they both have these like grins on their faces. And it's like the most bone chilling image. And it's not explained, but that idea of a false front is like. Is really central, I think, to the Lynchian.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You know, what's so great about lynch is that there are so many things that characterize him that so many different aesthetics can fall under the umbrella. Just like casting people with weird faces that hold facial expressions for a long time. So, like, I think about the Safdie brothers and how their casting, to me, not their narrative mode, not their photography, but their casting is very Lynchian to me.

[Nomi Fry]

Great point. Yeah. This sort of like mundane grotesquery or like, you know, the grotesquerie of everyday life brought into focus. There's an essay. It's David Foster Wallace essay, A profile of Lander, kind of. I mean, he visited the set of Lost highway, the blinch movie that came out in 1997. And the piece originally came out in Premier magazine in 1996. There was one quote from this very quite long, in fact, essay that I wanted to bring up and see what you guys thought about it. So he's talking about lynch and what kind of vision he has and so on. And he writes, David Foster Wallace writes, Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer with his victims, various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and shed spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think this is exactly what you guys have been getting at. It's this kind of mixture of the macabre with Americana. I mean, David Foster Wallace said the macabre and the mundane. And I think that's right. So I saw David lynch in the flesh one time, my friends. I did. He was being interviewed by Paul holdengraber at BAM in that. In a huge ballroom. There was a rug set down on the stage. You can watch some clips of it on YouTube. Two armchair and I don't know what I expected.

[Nomi Fry]

When was this?

[Alex Schwartz]

I think this was 2014.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

I don't know. And lynch very rarely did public appearances. And one reason why, you know, Vincent, you were saying before that these movies invite interpretation. They absolutely do. And at the same time, lynch did not want to discuss in words any of his movies really ever. He did not want to, I think, foreclose interpretation, but even kind of damage or in some way impinge upon his works with words. And so basically he was being asked to do some of that by Paul Holden Graeber, who, for those who don't know him, I think now he's based in Los Angeles, but at the time he was working at the New York Public Library and did a lot of really great interviews with various public figures. And he was all about words and all about language and all about psychoanalyzing. Yes. And so the combination of these two people was incredible. But one thing that really came through was one Lynch's absolute love of, for instance, the hamburger franchise, Bob's Big Boy, which I believe is where he wrote the scripts to a number of his films while enjoying coffee, milkshakes, you know, hamburgers and so on. And I think in some ways you might expect these, the macabre and the mundane to be just that really ironic pairing. Oh, you don't expect to see that. But the fact that they're not so easily negated one by the other creates that haunting feeling.

[Nomi Fry]

Absolutely.

[Alex Schwartz]

Did you know that he recorded an ad on behalf of the New York City Sanitation department?

[Nomi Fry]

No.

[Alex Schwartz]

In 1991. I need you guys to see this. Just if you want a sense of some of the outpourings that have been happening upon the death of David Lynch, NYC Sanitation tweeted the following. In 1991, David lynch showed the world the alienation and innate horror of a dirty street, directing this unforgettable anti littering ad for the city of New York. And here it is. So it's a black and white vision of Manhattan. You can hear that the music is very ominous. Something bad is going to happen. We see a man in a suit and from his hand a crumpled piece of paper is tossed to the sidewalk. Here come rats emerging. A little girl with her mother having a popsicle. The popsicle wrapper tossed. The horror, the horror of everyday people. A taxi driver. Again, a man in a suit. People are throwing things willy nilly about the city. Spitting on the ground, drinks flying. This is a world of chaos, a world of litter. This is the Lynchian world we all inhabit.

[Nomi Fry]

On a scale of 1 to 10, how Lynchian would you say the world is right now?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, the thing is I kind of wish it was a 10. I feel like it's a seven. And we need to go full lynch to ever have any chance of returning, you know what I mean?

[Nomi Fry]

Wow. This is Critics at Large from the New Yorker. The Run Through Evogue is where you'll meet all the most exciting people in fashion and culture.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I am Fran Leibowitz, who should be the mayor of New York.

[Alex Schwartz]

We all support that.

[Nomi Fry]

We support that. Very nice, Nikki.

[D]

Yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's been really great being in this beautiful pink room.

[Nomi Fry]

All right, Usher, can you hear us?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I can hear you.

[Nomi Fry]

All right.

[D]

Can you hear me?

[Nomi Fry]

We can, we can.

[Vincent Cunningham]

All right, here we are.

[Nomi Fry]

On the podcast you'll learn how Vogue really works. Sometimes we'll come in for a second or even third run through until we are awok.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can you tell us what awok means?

[Vincent Cunningham]

It means aw. Ok. And I went to ok.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Cho Minardi. And I'm Chloe Mel and we're the hosts of the Run through of Vogue.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Where fashion and culture collide.

[Nomi Fry]

Join us, it's awok. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We've been talking about the various ways that lynch and his work have shaped the culture and I was wondering, where do you see Lynch's influence today? Like in works of art?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I do think a show like Severance is quite indebted to lynch, you know, couldn't be done without Lynch's influence. It's a show that also begins with a big mystery. You know, what is going on in this world where office workers have an innie, an office Persona that is totally cut off from their Audi and the workers themselves are kind of trying to solve the mystery at some point of who the Audi is and what's actually going on at this bizarre opaque company where they work. And there are plenty of like funny Lynchian esque things like a room full of goats and increasing lore, as people like to say, which also is very true of the Twin Peaks world. Lore about what makes up this world and where it comes from. But I just think this, the whole nature of a surreal mystery that gets more and more complex and less resolved the more it goes on and leaves you with more questions even as some answers start to drop in that itself. The fact that that is a television proposition, you don't get that without a show like Twin Peaks.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I would say that the place for me where his influence is most readily seen is in the world of American photography.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, that's so interesting.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think that American photographers from the end of the 20th century through to now are absolutely in love with David Lynch. And it has contributed to a sort of vocabulary of instability, ambivalence, and especially photographers whose focus, for various reasons, is on in America. That has always been exotic to me, city dweller that I am. American suburbs as a place of almost spiritual warfare or something, a place where there is still stakes to be resolved, subterranean battles to be won. I just think that that is such a part of Lynch's legacy. Almost every photo critique that I've ever been a part of, people are bringing up lynch either as a primary reference or, you know, you should check out this movie. You should check out Blue Velvet. You should check out But Aperture, the photography magazine. This is so such a true fact that in the wake of Lynch's death, they put out a piece that's called David Lynch's Outsized Influence on Photography.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, wow.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And this imagery is so contagious. It does what the Uncanny does, which is what? It stays in your mind. It mutates in the mind. And I think that's just so true in American photography.

[Nomi Fry]

Absolutely.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, another place where I've seen it a lot, and this is kind of to that point, is fashion. There was a Comme des Garcons collection in 2016 that was directly inspired by Lynch. And, you know, the soundtrack of Blue Velvet played as the models walk down the Runway. Some of them these kind of ornate, ruffled blue cloaks and coats and dresses. I think a lot of designers have wanted to inhabit those worlds, which makes sense. Like, there was a Prada collection that seemed to be directly inspired by Mulholland Drive, with the Rita character embodied on the Runway.

[Nomi Fry]

That's the amnesiac brunette.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, the amnesiac brunette, exactly. And this kind of. You know, one thing I keep hearing around lynch, now that he's died and that people really loved him, like, this has just been so obvious in outpourings is even though we're describing the horror and the fear of these worlds. And one thing, by the way that's very Lynching to me is horror without just the purpose of scaring you. Like, these images are. And not just images. These moments in the works are so terrifying. But they're not just there to make you feel fear. They're there to kind of make you want to push further, which is distinctive and unique and actually, like, generous and beautiful. And so it kind of makes sense to me that a fashion designer would want to inhabit this world. Because what I keep seeing people say is, oh, I miss the world. Like, I miss the world of twin Peaks. Even though, yeah, high school girls are winding up in body bags. Guys, that's not a place you should be missing. And yet people wanna be there. And so putting on the clothes and hearing the music and walking down the Runway for five minutes is a kind of, you know, kind of way to get back in there.

[Nomi Fry]

So, you know, we're saying that the Lynchian world is not a good world. Is our world currently Lynchian? And is that good? Okay, it's like, would we say, I'm.

[Alex Schwartz]

Ready for this, but, yeah, please.

[Nomi Fry]

Like, what are we thinking? Like, some would say. I would. I would argue. Some would say. Lol. Reality is, like, more Lynchian than ever right now. You know, we have, like, a weirdly orange president who's, you know, it's. It's like, you know, it's the world. And, like, horrifying Technicolor is closer than ever to reaching its apex. But maybe not. Alex, what are we thinking?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, yeah, I mean, we're in a Lynching moment. There's no getting around it. To me, a lot of it does have to do with Lynch's focus on violence against women. To just be real with you guys for a second.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Sure.

[Alex Schwartz]

Lynch is very interested in that and he focuses a lot on that. And, you know, like many horror movie directors, the female body in various stages of decomposition, you know, beautiful death and batterment are all over his movies, but they're there for a reason. And I think he's looking at that in its face. And I think one thing that lynch says again and again in his works is that this is who we are. And, you know, that's a phrase that you hear a lot in connection with current politics, especially like when someone like Trump wins the election. And one of a popular pundit saying is, well, this is who we are. We've just seen who we are. But Lynch's point is, like, no, this actually is who we are. This is out there. And these forces, you can be inhabited by this. I feel like what we are seeing in many ways is an inhabiting. And the fact is that much of it does center on the kind of grotesqueries and furious hatreds and angers that lynch really explored. And so that is, to me, one of the ways that I do think we're living in a Lynchian time. Not just the kind of. Well, I guess, yeah, the ugliness of so much of it, but a sense of a national haunting, which is something I really feel.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, yeah. National haunting.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

Vincent, what do you think?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I just. I kept trying to dissect my responses to certain moments in Lynch's work and put it next to my responses to so much about contemporary politics. Like there are times in the. In the Twin Peaks pilot, for example, where on some level that hour and a half of television is just a kind of. It's like a symphony of screams set to. It's just a bunch of blood curdling. Everybody's hearing about Lara at different times. And it's like, again, the sort of melodrama. And I found myself laughing a lot. Even as it's scary, even as it's terrible. It's like lynch is very funny in moments where it doesn't feel funny. And I was putting that next to. And it's partially because of how recognizable the trope is. Right. It's about. I recognize this response. And it is amped up beyond its usual volume or whatever.

[Nomi Fry]

It's artificially kind of volume is being.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Played with a loaded version of something that I actually recognize from real life. And so there is a comic sort of release. There's like a sort of. Something has to happen in the tension of that. In a similar way. And this is a way of me, like maybe I'm making some admissions here. In a similar way. When Donald Trump. And this maybe is about the aesthetics of fascism. When Donald Trump does his Borscht Belt routine and he's like talking about the whales and the windmills are driving him crazy. The whales. There are things that Donald Trump says. And it's a great time to think about this because these past few weeks is just like, this is a psychopath. And also there are times when he just makes me laugh. And it's because of his control over his mastery over certain tropes, ways of being. Whether it's like Borscht Belt comedy, whether it's 80s New York melodrama, he's in control of certain tropes and can blast them up past their expiration date temporally.

[Nomi Fry]

And like central casting.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, central casting. And outside of the sphere where they actually belong. Right. This, again, this mismatch of valences, one thing cloaking another. Very Lynchian. I think a lot about Geoffrey in Blue Velvet, how he turns into a kind of violent figure that he abhors. And it's kind of about like a self hatred. And it's like watching that movie and then watching politics, I'm like, I feel like Jeffrey sometimes that this malevolence is like. Is within me. And as I'm trying to solve the murder, I can feel the murderer within.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That sense of Implication or whatever is part of that matrix for me.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean it's the classic, it's the sort of like Jim Thompson classic, like 50s Americana, like the killer inside Me, you know?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

It's like I am the sheriff, I am keeping everybody safe. I am also murdering them at night because I have a sickness within me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And what else is. I mean that is one way of describing what it is like to be an American. Right. That your comforts, the things that make you feel coziest, can only exist against the backdrop of so much evil, so much wrong.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, but do you guys think that we. Is there something hopeful about Lynch's work?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, my friends, I'm sorry, I'm like really deep in. I have to tell you, three weeks ago, before we had both our planned and our unplanned break, before I had a minor foot surgery that has had me in bed watching David lynch all day and into the night, you know, I would have said like, eh, David lynch, you know, God bless him. I love his weather reports, you know, which he did during the pandemic, as many people are familiar with on his, you know, his YouTube channel and have loved some of his movies. But fine. And now I'm just like, yeah, it's all there. You can find the whole universe in there. Like I've become an annoying pseudograd student, right? I'm like, I'm doing my dissertation right now on dating.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You've got lunchified?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I've got lunch pills. Well, I got lynch pilled, I got linch pilled. And one of the things that I have to offer you based, you know, in response to your question is exactly what Vincent just said. The man is funny. He's very, very, very funny. And it's such an unexpected off kilter sometimes like seemingly hokey humor, but like you want to live in a world where that's where that's happening. So you'll go through the darkness because.

[Nomi Fry]

Can you think of like an example that you were like, oh, life is worth living?

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, for sure. I mean just when you come into the Twin Peaks police station and you chat with Lucy the kooky receptionist and you realize that all kind different kinds of donuts have been arrayed, you know, out as. And you're investigating this murder, but you got donuts, you got coffee, you appreciate the finer things.

[Nomi Fry]

Damn fine cup of coffee.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's it. That's it.

[Nomi Fry]

How about you Vincent? Do you find hope in the Lynchverse? Lynchaverse?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I mean it's kind of knock on from a lot of what we've been talking about, especially about interpretation, which is that reality too, not just art, offers many unsolvable puzzles, but that there is a way. What lynch says is like, yes. And the way through that is not to let somebody, AKA some authoritarian state or anything else offer pat interpretations or reasons or answers. To leave one's filmography, as Alex was saying, alone and not impose meanings on it is to insist on a kind of democracy is to insist on reality is only truly constituted once everybody just takes a look, goes away and thinks about it themselves. Right? That a call to interpretation is actually a call to freedom. And that always the artist that says, I trust that if I offer you this, you will come out with something, even if it's not something that I programmed in advance. That always gives me hope.

[Nomi Fry]

Thank you, David Lynch. Thank you, Alex and Vincent.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thank you, David Lynch.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Thank you. We're back, baby.

[Nomi Fry]

This has been Critics at Large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Cuadrado composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James he with mixing by Mike Kutschman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] Critics next week, join us for our episode all about the literary phenomenon known as Romantasy. Send us your voicemails. We'll see you then.

[D]

Hi, I'm David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, and I'm pleased to share that the magazine's film I'm Not a Robot has been nominated for best Live Action Short at this year's Academy Awards. In this darkly funny and thought provoking film, a woman insists that she's human, but a captcha test seems to think otherwise. It's an imaginative and striking look at identity technology and what it means to be human. So please watch I'm Not a robot [e-mail] video.

[Nomi Fry]

From PRX.