Volume 11, Issue 2

Guest Editors’ Introduction, by Franck Boulègue and Marisa C. Hayes (5-7)

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In and around Twin Peaks, part introduction by Franck Boulègue (9-10)

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Murder at Teal’s Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery that Inspired Twin Peaks, by David Bushman and Mark T. Givens with Mark Frost (11-22)

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Abstract: The following is an excerpt from David Bushman and Mark T. Givens’ book Murder at Teal's Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery that Inspired Twin Peaks, published in 2022 by Thomas & Mercer. It opens with a foreword by Mark Frost, co-creator of Twin Peaks, and is followed by the authors’ introduction.

“Our Air, Our Water, Our Earth”: Trans-corporeality and Toxic Bodies in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Mark Yates (23-43)

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Abstract: This essay offers an ecocritical reading of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). Within The Return, Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) claims that “our air, our water, our Earth—the very soil itself—our food, [and] our bodies [are] poisoned,” and audiences accordingly witness a variety of vomiting, infected, and irritated bodies throughout the series. These toxic bodies highlight the contamination of trans-corporeal networks, indicating that the town of Twin Peaks has been affected by a series of environmental crises which—within The Return—are symbolized collectively through the development and fallout of nuclear weapons. By offering a reading of how man-made contaminants enter, poison, and pass through the trans-corporeal bodies of Twin Peaks, this essay demonstrates the ways in which The Return encourages an appreciation of the trans-corporeality of all life on earth.

Keywords: ecocriticism, trans-corporeality, toxic bodies, anthropocene

The Roadhouse and Mindful Alienation: On Fearlessly Losing Hope in Twin Peaks’ House Away from Home, by Matthew C. Halteman (44-54)

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Abstract: The Roadhouse scenes in Twin Peaks: The Return resolutely defy the conventions of serial television drama. From showcasing interminable bouts of floor-sweeping, to featuring lengthy music videos by little-known acts, to lavishing attention on the trivial conversations of seemingly random people, these scenes give significant time and space to stuff you just don’t usually see in a tightly plotted series. I suggest that these unconventional scenes are a feature rather than a bug. I argue that the Roadhouse scenes in The Return offer a therapeutic opportunity for viewers to become well-practiced at coping mindfully with feelings of alienation that arise from thwarted expectations—a skill as valuable for everyday life as for appreciating Twin Peaks.

Keywords: Roadhouse, mindfulness, alienation, hope, social hope

Magic and Mythology, part introduction by Miranda Corcoran (55-56)

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“My grandson does magic!”: The Legacy of Conjuring in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott (57-70)

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Abstract: Performance magic and sleight of hand have haunted the town of Twin Peaks since its original inception. The theatricality of Laura Palmer’s posed hands in the Black Lodge; Donna’s visit to Mrs Tremond, and her grandson; the ‘Between Two Worlds’ poetic refrain repeated through the original series and The Return—this is the background of magic in Lynch and Frost’s already surrealist world. The Return makes use of many of the traditional elements of conjuring: clear boxes, playing cards, doubles, disappearances and reappearances, Las Vegas, and, especially, the tense coin trick scene between Richard Horne and the drug dealer Red. Taking the coin trick scene as its focus, this essay explores the variety of allusions to stage magic and conjuring in The Return and their origins in the show’s previous seasons and Fire Walk With Me.

Keywords: magic, conjuring, tricks, theatricality

The Scarlet Woman: Diane, Cameron, and Sex Magick, by Jeremiah Beaver (71-91)

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Abstract: One of the more dark and confusing moments of Twin Peaks: The Return is the sex scene between Diane Evans and Dale Cooper in the series finale. Though disturbing and awkward, this moment of coitus is essential to the plot and can be viewed as part of a plan to rid Twin Peaks of the negative energy that seems to have permeated it. Speculations of sex magick and comparisons of Diane to the historical painter Marjorie Cameron immediately appeared in online discourse following the airing of the series. Indeed, by analyzing the sex scenes in The Return, the events in Part 8 and a sublot in the apocryphal The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Diane can be connected to Cameron—and by extension the occult concept known as the “Scarlet Woman.” This research explores the parallels between Cameron as the Scarlet Woman in occult history, and Diane Evans as the same avatar in The Return.

Keywords: sex, occult, magick, mysticism, apotheosis, gateway

Looking Back: Twin Peaks: The Return and the Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, by Karla Lončar (92-106)

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Abstract: This essay explores the connections between Twin Peaks, especially The Return, and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and looks for deeper meaning behind Lynch and Frost’s use of this mythic motif, applying feminist, feminist-inspired, and psychoanalytic scholarship in addition to the work of scholars dedicated to Twin Peaks. Special attention will be given to the analysis of the relationship between Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer, which, I will show, mirrors the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, albeit in quite a subversive way.

Keywords: Orpheus, Eurydice, mythology, feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory

Ten Is the Number of Completion: Laura Palmer as the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu, by John Thorne (107-121)

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Abstract: This essay shows how David Lynch has continually revised Laura Palmer’s role throughout the Twin Peaks narrative and argues that in Twin Peaks: The Return, Lynch revises Laura’s role again, likening her to the Hindu avatar, Kalki, who was sent to Earth by divine beings to end the current dark age and restart the cycle of ages. Hindu philosophy informs Lynch’s work and worldview. This paper shows how Lynch incorporates this philosophy into The Return. At its core, The Return is about the Hindu concept of the Kali Yuga, a “dark age” of suffering, and burgeoning evil. At the end of the Kali Yuga, the Hindu deity Vishnu sends to Earth his tenth (and final) avatar, Kalki, who ends the dark age and restarts the cycle of time with the Krita Yuga, an age of purity and creativity (what Lynch refers to as the “golden age”). This Hindu cycle is at play in The Return. The character known as The Fireman occupies the role of Vishnu. When he is alerted to the final years of the dark age (an atomic explosion and the release of the demonic entity, “BOB,” into the world), he generates his most powerful avatar, Laura Palmer, to bring an end to the dark age. The essay discusses how Lynch connects Laura to imagery of a white horse (Kalki’s symbol), and how she is distinctly connected to the number ten (referred to in the narrative as the “number of completion”). Finally, the essay discusses Dale Cooper’s potential role as Vishnu’s ninth avatar, Buddha, and his task to prepare the world for the coming of Laura (Kalki).

Keywords: Laura Palmer, Dale Cooper, The Fireman, Hinduism, Vishnu, Buddha, Vedic

Cinema, Television, and Screens, part introduction by Franck Boulègue (123-125)

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Between Two Worlds: Twin Peaks: The Return and the Undefinable Assemblage, by Kyle Barrett (126-144)

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Abstract: David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return has baffled, enthralled and mystified viewers since its release in 2017. After 25 years, the cult television phenomenon Twin Peaks (1990-1991) returned with most of the main cast in an epic narrative that depicts FBI Agent Dale Cooper’s odyssey back to the titular town. One central debate in scholarship that has yet to be resolved is how to categorize the text: is it film or television? It reached numerous Top Ten film and television lists that year, perplexing audiences and further mystifying what Lynch had created. This essay will discuss The Return as a Deleuzian/Guattarian assemblage rife with interconnected elements that present a unique and distinctive audiovisual experience.

Keywords: Deleuze and Guattari, assemblage, rhizomes, politics of editing

Twenty-Five Year Shrine: The Screen in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Thomas Britt (145-157)

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Abstract: This essay builds on classical screen theory, particularly as conceived of and advanced by Christian Metz, to examine how Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) encourages viewers to respond to projections and screens. In The Return, David Lynch and Mark Frost create a screen story world in which submitting to projections and screens (and sometimes associated sounds) creates a more coherent meaning and development than attempting to shape that content. Contemporary versions of existing Twin Peaks characters, such as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), illustrate divergent perspectives and positions on responding to the substance of the screen, which provides contrasting pathways for the viewers (also as subjects) to follow. I conclude with references to other television series that similarly treat the screen within the frame as having the power to envelop the spectator and efface and reconstitute material reality.

Keywords: television studies, screen theory, Agent Dale Cooper, spectatorship, The Wizard of Oz

Between Two Superimposed Worlds: André Bazin, Spatial (Dis)unity, and the Otherworldly ‘Screens’ of Twin Peaks: The Return, by Garrett Strpko (158-175)

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Abstract: In this essay, I draw on French film theorist André Bazin’s “The Life and Death of Superimposition” to analyze the different uses of superimposition in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). Whereas the technique was formerly used to create the illusion of ghosts or phantoms or to create abstract meaning from the juxtaposition of images, The Return instead subverts both of these typical uses of superimposition. First, rather than merely depicting actors or objects as spectral entities within a given frame, The Return consistently superimposes entire frames of action over a given shot in a way that implies that frame—or ‘screen,’ as I refer to it—exists within the space of action itself. Second, those frame-over-frame superimpositions that do not appear to inhabit the same physical space of the film world upset the characteristics of simultaneous juxtaposition that would usually render them meaningful. Therefore, The Return defies both Bazin’s call for spatial unity and the methods of montage which he criticizes.

Keywords: superimposition, classical film theory, realism, special effects, montage, cinematic space

Gender and Sexuality, part introduction by Marisa C. Hayes (177-178)

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Mothers and Daughters in Liminality: Sarah Palmer in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Courtenay Stallings (179-192)

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Abstract: In Twin Peaks: The Return, places and characters exist in liminal spaces. The mother, Sarah Palmer, and the daughter, Laura Palmer, are no longer the same entities they were in the original series of Twin Peaks. Both characters have crossed thresholds involving a radical transformation. The in-between, transitional spaces of liminality are important, but so are the human reactions to liminal spaces because they can show how people are shaped by agency and thought and experience in the liminal. Sarah and Laura are shaped by the liminal and changed by crossing the threshold, an ambiguous process that can cause disorientation for the viewer because the cultural illusion of stability dissolves away. However, this transformation shows how David Lynch uses this instability to reveal that which has been hidden—the powerful bond and inescapable trauma between mother and daughter—allowing an experience of transcendence.

Keywords: Laura Palmer, Sarah Palmer, liminality, threshold, trauma, transcendence, Hinduism, illusion of the marketplace

Evil Erotic: Sexual Negativity in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Bernhard Winkler (193-207)

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Abstract: Love and evil are linked in many ways in the Twin Peaks universe, creating an ambivalent aesthetics of erotic evil. This ambiguity seems to be one of the driving forces in the story, leading to a spectator attitude oscillating between fascination and terror. By watching Twin Peaks, we are seduced to enjoy repressed and forbidden parts of our conscience that are often connected to sexual taboos and transgressions. The dark drives of desire and erotic negativity are therefore the aesthetic central points in Twin Peaks: The Return. In The Return we can find a specific aesthetics of evil based on structures of evil like transgressions, repetitions/returns and sudden hits of intensity. This essay will link this aesthetics of evil to erotic and sexual motives and structures in The Return and the Twin Peaks universe more broadly.

Keywords: evil, erotic, intensity, transgression, repetition

Intertextualities, part introduction by Franck Boulègue (209-211)

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“What year is this?”: Time, the Nuclear, and Trauma in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Simon Bowie (212-234)

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Abstract: Twin Peaks: The Return dramatically introduces the nuclear into the narrative of Twin Peaks and specifically ties it to a depiction of linear time being disrupted. This article explores how The Return makes the image of nuclear destruction central to Twin Peaks’ representation of trauma by reading The Return through the work of Hayashi Kyōko and Karen Barad to highlight the prevalent cultural association between the nuclear and disruptions to the flow of time and to show how this association parallels the way that personal and cultural trauma disrupts the victims’ sense of linear time.

Keywords: Hayashi Kyōko, nuclear power, time, trauma

BOB, the Bomb, and Bill Burroughs: Notes on Lynchian Demonology, by Tommy P. Cowan (235-255)

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Abstract: This essay argues that the American author William S. Burroughs had an influence on the Twin Peaks saga created by Mark Frost and David Lynch, and that demonic/archontic possession is an important concept in both Burroughs’s and Lynch’s oeuvres. Burroughs’s impact was insinuated from the beginning of Twin Peaks’ production due to rumors that Burroughs was considered for the role of either Twin Peaks’ Mayor Dwayne Milford or his brother Dougie Milford. Premiering twenty years after Burroughs’s death, Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) intensifies the Burroughsian elements of the original installments through an exploration of the metaphysical consequences of atomic weapons (something that Burroughs was concerned with). The atomic bomb as a trope of postwar American culture facilitates a Burroughsian reading of Twin Peaks, particularly regarding the third season’s portrayal of the bomb’s role in creating viral, pathogenic demons and/or gods. Such a reading will utilize several Burroughs texts, including Exterminator! and Cities of the Red Night, in addition to identifying references to Burroughs in Twin Peaks. In light of the fact that demonic possession makes numerous appearances throughout the span of Lynch’s filmmaking career, we can see Lynch as an expression of esoteric spirituality in the Burroughsian tradition.

Keywords: William Burroughs, Mark Frost, Wilhelm Reich, demonology, magic, radiation, ecocriticism, 23 enigma

“It’s a Strange Carnival”: Tensions between Camusian and Nagelian Absurdity in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Ethan Warren (256-269)

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Abstract: David Lynch’s work has long been concerned with what he’s termed the absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence. This interest aligns him with the playwrights surveyed in Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd, a book built on the philosophical foundation laid by Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus’ is one of two major 20th century philosophical explorations of life’s absurdity; the second, included in Thomas Nagel’s Mortal Questions, is aligned in some ways with Camus but differs meaningfully. These two divergent perspectives are expressed both individually and in tandem throughout Twin Peaks: The Return. The series is ultimately illustrative of Esslin’s argument that absurdist drama represents writers reckoning with the overwhelming horrors of the 20th century, as Lynch and Mark Frost extend Esslin’s trajectory into the absurdist dread of 21st-century American life.

Keywords: theatre of the absurd, absurdism, Albert Camus, Thomas Nagel

How the West Was Lost, part introduction by Adam Daniel (271-272)

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Paradise Lost: Incinerating the American Myth in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Michail Zontos (273-288)

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Abstract: In his classic study The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx explores the interruption of the American pastoral scenery by technology, an essential trope in nineteenth-century American literature. The conflict between the pastoral and the industrial has informed American culture ever since: Frederick Jackson Turner’s proclamation of the frontier thesis in 1893, the Western myth, the white flight into the suburbs in the 1960s and the 1970s, and the portrayal of the countryside as a lost Arcadia belong in the same tradition which locates the essence of Americanism in peaceful coexistence with nature while ignoring the contributions of technology and industrialism in the development of the American imperium. Several examples of the above can be found in the original two seasons of Twin Peaks: the town itself represents an idyllic paradise, as Dale Cooper constantly reminds us, threatened by mild interruptions of modernity. The nostalgia for the 1950s small-town optimism remains in the viewer’s memory despite the crimes committed in the town and the ominous finale of Season 2. Not so much in Twin Peaks: The Return. There is no romantic evocation of the American past anymore. The show underlines the invention of the atomic bomb as the catalyst that solidifies pure evil in America. The destructive force of nature, released by the explosion, disrupts not only the natural landscape but also time and memory itself. The distortion unleashed by the bomb represents a betrayal of the foundational myths of America, threatening the efforts of its purest citizens to retain the moral imperatives of a country which has declared that all humans are created equal.

Keywords: technology, garden myth, America, Arcadia, atomic bomb

“There's a sort of evil out there”: Uncanny Secularity in Twin Peaks: The Return, by Robert Sinnerbrink (289-308)

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Abstract: Critics have described David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return as the boldest, most experimental work ever screened on television. In this essay, I examine how The Return is characterized by its explicit intertwining of this-worldly and otherworldly features and how Lynch’s experimental aesthetic articulates a tension between these contrary dimensions of American culture. I describe this ambiguous Lynchian universe via the concept of ‘uncanny secularity,’ a term that aims to capture Lynch’s peculiar combination of secular and non-secular elements. The uncanny secularity characterizing the Twin Peaks universe reflects Franz Kafka’s fascination with the allegorical and theological dimensions of modern social institutions. Examining Part 8, I consider how the ecumenical pluralism of these religious, mythological, and esoteric threads finds expression in the strikingly dualist nature of the Lynchian Twin Peaks universe, exemplified in the dual nature of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and his evil doppelgänger.

Keywords: theology, mythology, esotericism, religion, dualism

Textes en français, part introduction by Dick Tomasovic (309-312)

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Motel Room, le noir et le non-lieu, by Alain Hertay (313-326)

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Abstract: Twin Peaks: The Return affiche ostensiblement sa segmentation en microrécits, incitant à une analyse par fragments et scènes autonomes. Par cette contribution, c’est une approche de ce type que nous souhaitons appliquer à une séquence située dans le deuxième épisode. Mr. C arrive dans un motel à la nuit tombante. Il y retrouve Darya qui doit le tuer, mais c’est Mr. C qui la tue. Cette séquence, longue de treize minutes, offre une riche intertextualité aux nombreux enjeux référentiels: comment s’inscrit-elle dans une symbolique des chambres de motels qui jalonnent l’œuvre de David Lynch? Quelles références ce moment entretient-il avec les nombreuses chambres d’hôtel du film noir? Que représente cette séquence dans l’économie narrative de la série Twin Peaks, de ce motel initial jusqu’à l’étrange motel de l’ultime épisode où se réveille l’agent Cooper après y avoir passé la nuit avec Diane?

Keywords: motel, film noir, microrécit, non-lieu

Sexe, backlash et délivrance, by Louise Van Brabant (327-342)

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Abstract: Audrey Horne et Annie Blackburn sont les grandes absentes de la troisième saison de Twin Peaks. La première est à peine mentionnée, la seconde est coincée dans un espace étrange qui semble exister sur un plan narratif parallèle. L’inscription de ces deux personnages dans l’espace traduit une évolution des codes de représentation des corps féminins entre les deux premières saisons de Twin Peaks et The Return, mettant au jour des enjeux esthétiques et dramatiques qui traversent l’ensemble que forme la série et le film Fire Walk with Me.

Audrey Horne and Annie Blackburn are largely missing from Twin Peaks’ third season. The latter is barely mentioned, while the former is trapped in a strange space that seems to exist on a parallel narrative plane. The inscription of these two characters in space reflects an evolution in the codes of representation of female bodies between the first two seasons of Twin Peaks and The Return, bringing to light aesthetic and dramatic themes that run through the whole of the series and the film Fire Walk with Me.

Keywords: film aesthetics, male gaze, representation, embodiment

Expansion et métamorphoses du sycomore dans Twin Peaks: The Return, by Victor Inisan (343-356)

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Abstract: Dans Twin Peaks, le sycomore—qu’il soit physique, dans la ville éponyme ou plus métaphorique dans Twin Peaks: The Return—signale, à chaque fois, un passage magique vers un autre monde (la Red Room, le monde du Fireman, la Black Lodge et la White Lodge). Mais le sycomore est un arbre trompeur: tout comme il ne faut pas confondre figuier, érable et platane, le sycomore de David Lynch et Mark Frost, qui joue avec une historicité symbolique, ne promet pas la régénération et l’immortalité, mais bien plutôt la destruction et l’enfermement. De même, il n’est pas seulement un lieu surnaturel, mais également un sentiment diffus qui ronge les personnages et la ville de Twin Peaks.

Mots-clés: histoire des symboles, sycomore, mondes naturels et artificiels, botanique.

In Twin Peaks, the sycamore tree—physical, in the eponymous town, or metaphorical in Twin Peaks: The Return—signals, each time, a magical passage to another world (the Red Room, the world of the Fireman, the Black Lodge and the White Lodge). But the sycamore is a deceptive tree: just as the fig, the maple, and the plane tree should not be confused, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s tree, which plays with symbolic historicity, does not promise regeneration or immortality, but rather destruction and imprisonment. Likewise, it is not only a supernatural place, but also a diffuse feeling that damages the characters and the city of Twin Peaks.

Keywords: history of symbols; sycamore; natural and artificial worlds; botany