Blue Velvet

As a film student David lynch is one of the great film makers of all time. He ranks up there with the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Jean Luc Godard. He pushes the boundaries of film making by making his films some of the weirdest things ever to be put up on the silver screen. I mean you don't even have to watch 5 minutes before realizing that Blue Velvet is going to be a bumpy ride and your out a seat belt.

One of my favorite things about this film was the postmodernism style used by Lynch to play with the time period you were actually in in the film. On the outside Lumberton is the perfect all American town. Some of the first images you see in the film are the smiling fireman on the 1950's style truck with the spotted dog, the cross guard waving skipping children across the street, and the WHITE picket fence with the RED roses and the bright, sunny BLUE sky. RED WHIT AND BLUE! AMERICA! Lynch shows us all this picture perfect 50's esq. town where it seems as though the American dream is alive and well, but then the film takes a drastic turn and the man tending his lawn in suburbia collapses in pain as a little toddler giggles up to him, super creepy. Then we have the push into the grass which shows the beetles crawling all over one another and the sounds of them moving carries over into the next scene making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. This is Lynch postmodernism at full swing. Lynch shows us this perfect 50's looking American small town with American values and the American Dream,  but underneath the perfect is the truth. There is a dark, ugliness to this place called Lumberton and this way of thinking about a perfect America. Lynch is showing us his skeptical interpretations of the culture and philosophy at this time period.

The reading goes in depth with Lynch using the artifice of the 1950's to screw with his audience's heads. "... closer scrutiny reveals that things are not what they seem. The slick, picture-perfect surface of the American Dream in icons that are as one dimensional as Hollywood movie sets, Lynch begins to weave a thread of ambiguity through the tightly woven web of America's self understanding." The idea of the American dream is just a mask from preventing others to truly see what America really is, a dark place. Look at the town of Lumbertown and Dorthy's apartment building. Much like the shots previous in the film the town and buildings look normal or almost too perfect, but upon a closer look into Dorthy's apartment we seem the elevator is busted, there are flickering lights, and her apartment is very unsettling. It feels fake and unsettling like the forced ideal of the American Dream. The rooms color scheme doesn't make sense, where everything is laid out in the room makes zero sense, and it's dark and ominous. Like we were discussing in class it feels like we are looking at a painting or a set in a sitcom on late night television.

The ambiguity is not only in the town, but also with its residents. Look at Jeffrey for example. He is by all accounts a boy scout in superman proportion. He's a college lad who comes home to help his sick dad out at the local small town hardware store. He is at first glimpse a perfect individual, but then like Lynch does we get a closer look at Jeffrey much like the lawn in the beginning with the beetles there is something dark underneath. After Jeffrey discovers the ear he changes and you see his true nature. "With these incidents, Lynch propels the viewer into the menacing, nightmarish underworld of Lumberton which coexists with the world of white picket fences." He goes from a good proper boy to a pervert watching Dorthy change because he wants to solve some sick mystery he has no right to solve. This leads him into a world that is terrifyingly strange, but he likes it, he craves it. That is why he keeps coming back for more of Dorthy, why he hits her when she asks, why after Frank kidnaps him and makes out with him listening to Candy Colored Clown he just rolls with it because like the small town he has a darkness hidden inside him that is kept from the real world. The same goes for almost every other character in the film.

I really enjoyed this film and I absolutely loved what Lynch created in order to take a look at the falsity of what we as American's think is the golden age of our country. The idea of the American Dream and the happy small town is a lie because underneath there is always a darkness we don't see. And also this may be my new favorite film quote of all time so thank you David Lynch.