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Home  2021  March  25  Spoiler Warning: It’s a Strange World – “Blue Velvet”

ARTS & CULTURE

Spoiler Warning: It’s a Strange World – “Blue Velvet”

 MAR 25 '21  ALICE

By Alice McIntyre
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Blue Velvet (1986) is the fourth feature lm directed by David Lynch, and a new favorite of mine.
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It follows Je rey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a college student returning to his hometown of
Lumberton, NC in the wake of his father’s near-fatal stroke. During his visit, he nds a severed ear in an Sustainer Subscription
abandoned lot and takes it to local detective John Williams (George Dickerson). Je rey is soon informed
that he can’t learn anything more about the investigation as it’s now an o cial police matter. His
curiosity about the ear spurs him to team up with Williams’ daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) to nd out
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more in secret. 

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Je rey soon learns that the husband and son of lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) have 1.
been kidnapped by a sadistic drug dealer named Frank (Dennis Hopper). Frank forces Dorothy to
perform a variety of sex acts, with the safety of her husband and son at stake. Je rey soon becomes
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not just an interested party but an involved one. 2. Resident of Olympia

The lm quickly gets characteristically “Lynchian,” which is to say, weird. Frank frequently inhales an
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unknown gas, and when under its in uence exhibits a sexual duality between the “daddy” and “baby”
aspects of his personality, compounding his already-erratic behavior. Within mere moments, Frank can
3. Change That

switch between these dual aspects, between cruel dominance and infantile regression—and in both
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cases feels a deep shame and self-consciousness, violently objecting to Dorothy looking at him. Frank
also su ers from a paraphilic obsession with Dorothy’s blue velvet robe (hence the title): he stu s it
4.
into his mouth as well as hers, compels her to wear it when taking her and Je rey on a joyride, cuts o
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a piece to gag Dorothy’s husband with before he kills him, and more. One can’t help but wonder how
Frank happened, what created such a character. 
5. Center

The strangeness of Blue Velvet isn’t limited to a single character’s Freudian impulses, but permeates the
atmosphere Lynch creates. The world of the lm is both dreamlike and neurotic, drowning the viewer
in its haunting score and sound e ects, oft-repeating motifs, and excellent visuals. Archives

What I see in Blue Velvet is in some sense an inversion of the themes found in the slasher lms popular Select Month
during the same period. Whereas Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees were forces of nature visiting
vengeance upon deviant teenagers for drug use and promiscuity, Frank Booth is the rot underlying
seemingly idyllic American life. He is aided by the “Yellow Man” Tom Gordon (Fred Pickler), the partner
of Detective Williams, who had been providing him with con scated narcotics to sell. This collaboration
between institutions and criminal elements would be echoed in real events two short months after Blue
Velvet made its debut, in the form of the Iran-Contra a air being made public. The Reagan
administration had facilitated the clandestine sale of arms to Iran in order to fund the anti-communist
“Contra” insurgents in Nicaragua, a number of whom engaged in drug tra cking to fund their activities.
Those activities included “a distinct pattern” of of murders, kidnapings, assaults and torture of civilians,
according to a 1985 report by human rights lawyer Reed Brody. 

Lynch once said that Blue Velvet was a “ lm about things that are hidden—within a small city and within
people.” In this Lynch achieves a key aim of Surrealism, to “resolve the previously contradictory
conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.” By means of the unsettling
and unreal, Blue Velvet conveys a deeply human story about evil, personal growth, and power.

It certainly is a strange world. 

Verdict: Damn Good/10.

Have a movie or other piece of media you’d like to see reviewed? Email us with your suggestions at
cooperpointjournal@gmail.com! 

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