Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet presents a hyperreal “good” and sinister “evil,” showing Lynch’s mockery of 1950s ideals. Yet, it seems as though he brings a more conservative view to the film that shows the need for morals. I don’t necessarily follow the opinions on Lynch’s belief in the innocent. His characters both in the “good” and “bad” worlds both show dynamic characteristics on both sides of the spectrum, showing a how characters and people can easily switch to the other side of the spectrum when a moral system is lost.

This film to me seemed to present an internal struggle to maintain moral ground. I approached this film with a more psychoanalytical approach after seeing a focus on human psyche. The entire emergence of the darker world unseen in the 1950s nostalgic world comes to existence because of Jeffery’s internal desires, causing him to view a scene that could represent a primal or subconscious desire of the character. Frank shows a clear Oedipal complex. As he reverts back to an Id like state, primal and instinctual, Jeffery witnesses an abusive relationship, which begins the sharp focus on morality (Super-Ego) in the film. Had Jeffery properly suppressed his desires, which are not to solve crime but are sexual, the evil would have been avoidable. Jeffery, like many of Lynch’s characters as explained by the reading “The Po-Puritan”, surrenders himself “to the inexplicable forces beyond their conscious control.” Even more terrifying is that these forces exist within him, suppressed into his subconscious and emerge into his Ego when he makes a “bad” decision, lurching him into a world without morals where his pleasure principle comes to the forefront. Sexual perversions would have been an acute interest during the 80s when the film was made, as the AIDs epidemic and resurgence of an intense Christian moral majority altered the more open sexual exploration of the 60s that carried into the 70s. Sandy was justified in her remark to Jeffery about whether he is a detective or a pervert.

Music in the film played an interesting role. It seemed to be a portal allowing good and evil to merge as a relatively safe exploration and portrayal of subconscious desire. When Dorothy sings, Frank is mesmerized and so is Jeffery and for those fleeting moments, they cohesively live on the same plane where “dreams [subconscious] and reality conjoin.” I took Frank’s drugs use represents, another portal to an ulterior perception and existence. His constant use can be seen as Lynch again showing the importance of maintaining a moral code and not letting oneself slip too far into perverse desire. An example of an artist delving too deeply into this state, the Van Gogh reference is even more support of this, offering a physical and visual example of perversion. With his filmmaking, Lynch could himself be exploring his own perversions in a morally “right” way.

I agree with the reading in quoting about Protestantism in relation to Lynch and its “reform of the individual.” Through the use of archetypal characters and the an idealized nostalgic setting, the 1950s back when America was still in its mind relatively a good place where nothing is expected to go wrong, Lynch’s shows how the moral weakness of his characters results in evil. Unlike other 1980s films like Repo Man the critique is not on industry or Reagan era politics but on the individuals struggle, “scoring his individualist’s mark of survival like a scar across the prairie.” References to brands and labels seen in postmodernism appear in this film as well but are consumed at the giving in of the character. Ultimately Blue Velvet on the surface is a narrative about a character seeking truth “in the dark crevices between the material world” and the world of subconscious desire tamed by the moral self. Truth is never found, there is no singular reality, and Lynch ends again with idealized images and subconscious is repressed but not resolved.