David Lynch

’s Blue Velvet Essay, Research Paper

David Lynch’s Blue Velvet

David Lynch s Blue Velvet is an exploration of things above and below the surface. This surface is really a borderline between not only idyllic suburban America and the dark, perverted corruption that lies underneath but also between good and evil, conscious and subconscious, dream and reality. Although this division seems quite rigid and clean-cut some of the most important implications of the film stem from the transgressions of these borderlines.

In the initial scenes of the film Lynch introduces Lumberton, the typical small town in Middle America where the fireman waves at you, the children are well protected, the lawns are green and there is a smile on everybody s face. Naturally, the most important clich is also included we see the white picket fence with ruby red roses against a bright blue sky, making out the colors of the American flag.

There is, however, trouble in Paradise. First we witness a man who later turns out to be Jeffrey s father suffer a stroke and, after showing his helpless agony, the camera burrows into the grass revealing insects in a ferocious, predatory, and cannibalistic fight for life (Dirks, Blue Velvet (1984) , http://www.filmsite.org/blue.html). These pictures, made even more terrifying by the extreme close-up and the accompanying sounds, provide the first visual clue of the dive we are about to make into the subterranean world under the pastoral life of normalcy.

Our guide through this hell below and within is Jeffrey; an all-American boy who comes home from college to help out in the family business while his father is in the hospital. His finding a severed human ear is what sends him out on a journey to solve a mystery and eventually leads him to find out more about the world, and also about himself, than what he bargained for. As the main focalizing agent of the film Jeffrey becomes the central character, the hero on a quest. He has to solve the mystery, help a lady in distress, fight villains and find love and happiness. During his adventures he also has to face and defeat the greatest evil of all the evil within himself.

Jeffrey s journey into the underworld of Lumberton may also be seen as a journey into the subconscious of the human mind, into the Freudian id. This may be supported by the scene in which the camera zooms in on the severed ear and, going down the rabbit hole, it leads us inside like we were traveling into someone s mind. This is how the journey begins and when it comes to a close we leave the underworld through Jeffrey s ear by a reversal shot of that earlier one. Accepting this interpretation we may consider the normalcy of Lumberton to be Jeffrey s superego and the underworld, and particularly Frank, to be his id surfacing and trying to take control of his ego. The censor who struggles to keep the id suppressed is Jeffrey himself who finally succeeds by killing Frank and thus killing his evil, instinctive self putting his id back where it belongs. Sandy may also be seen as a censor-like figure for she is firmly rooted in the superego Lumberton world and represents all the purity and innocence and love that is missing from the underworld. According to Antulov Sandy s role in the film is to be the voice of reason and the only link to the normal world for Jeffrey ( Review for Blue Velvet , http://reviews.imdb/Reviews/155/15529). She, however, also embodies essential goodness, making the counterpoint to the forces of evil which are luring Jeffrey away from his secure position above the surface. Moreover, she is a source of love and as such, a possible source of deliverance.

There are other Freudian elements in the film as well; most of which are connected to Frank. Lost in his perverted sexual fantasies he relates to Dorothy both as her father and as her child. In her sexual connection to Frank Dorothy may be seen to represent the Female being assaulted by all the Male figures getting raped by the Husband who is also the Father and the Son. Jeffrey witnesses this abuse hiding in Dorothy s closet. According to Tim Dirks in a symbolic sense, Jeffrey as a child illicitly spies on the scene of seduction that his parents are having sexual intercourse Dorothy ( Mommy ) and Frank ( Daddy or Baby ) ( Blue Velvet (1986) , http://www.filmsite.org/blue.html). If we accept Dirks suggestion then we need to consider Jeffrey s sexual attraction towards Dorothy as a sign of a hidden Oedipus complex.

Frank s obsession with the song In Dreams may also have a Freudian significance, however, it may also be seen to imply that Jeffrey s journey is not into reality but into his dreams, which belong to the realm of the subconscious. The latter possibility is also suggested by the way Lynch shows us Jeffrey leaving Dorothy s apartment house after the first unsettling night then cuts straight to him waking up in his bed, his mind filled with random, distorted flashbacks. The night of the joyride ends in a similar fashion. Returning home after being brutally beaten by Frank reciting In Dreams , Jeffrey sits on his bed crying like someone who has just woken up from a nightmare. Yet again, the flashbacks appear so as to resemble the way the mind processes images in a dream.

However, it is important to note that while in the first set of flashbacks it is Frank who is brutalizing Dorothy in the second set it is Jeffrey doi