A Trip Down Human Sexuality: An Analytical Study of David Lynch’s

Blue Velvet

BA English Language and Literature

University of Kerala

2021
A Trip Down Human Sexuality: An Analytical Study of David Lynch’s

Blue Velvet

Project

Submitted to the University of Kerala in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of the Bachelor of Arts in

English Language and Literature

by

Candidate Code :

Subject Code : EN 1645

Programme Code : 130

College Code :

B.A. English Language and Literature

University of Kerala

2020
 Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction 01-06

Chapter 2 Unmasking of Voyeurism and Human Sexuality in 07-21

Blue Velvet

Chapter 3 Conclusion 22-25

 Preface
The Project titled A Trip Down Human Sexuality: An Analytical Study of David

Lynch’s Blue Velvet is an attempt of the analysis of the film, Blue Velvet. It analyses the

voyeurism human sexuality and dark psychology within the film. With the exit from the

darkness in the end, Blue Velvet suggests that the innocent can wake up from even this

darkest of dreams.

The project is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1, Introduction deals with the

theoretical support and basic details about the film. It points out what the genre neo-noir

is all about. Chapter 2, Unmasking of Voyeurism and Human Sexuality in Blue Velvet,

provides with the entire plot in a nutshell, along with the analysis of the dark psychology

and sexuality presented within the film. The film deals with the sheepish worlds of

voyeurism and resultant sexuality. Chapter 3, Conclusion, encompasses the entire

analysis in a nutshell, along with the symbolic view of the film. The novelty of Blue

Velvet transcends between genres, this is explained in the conclusion.

 Chapter One

Introduction

The film noir refers to mystery or crime dramas produced from early 1940 to late 1950.

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime,

dramas, particularly those emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940 and

1950 generally regarded as the classical period of American film noir. The term film noir,

French for 'black film' (literal) or 'dark film' (closer meaning), was first applied to

Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most

American film industry professionals of that era. Cinema historians and critics defined

the category retrospectively. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of

the classic films noir were referred to as "melodramas". Film noir of this era is associated

with a low key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist

Cinematography Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir

derive from the hard boiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States

during the Great Depression.

Film Noir, style of filmmaking characterized by such elements as cynical heroes, stark

lighting effects, frequent use of flashbacks, intricate plots, and an underlying existentialist

philosophy. The genre was prevalent mostly in American crime dramas of the Post World

War era.

Neo-noir can be considered as the sub-genre of film noir. Neo-Noir is a revival of the

genre of film noir. The term film noir was popularized in 1955 by French critics
 2

Raymond and Étienne Chaumeton. It was applied to crime films of the 1940s and 1950s,

mostly produced in the United States. The English translation is dark movie, indicating

something sinister and shadowy, but also expressing a cinematographic style. The film

noir genre includes stylish Hollywood crime dramas, often with a twisted dark wit. Neo-

noir has a similar style but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements and

media.

The film noir’s seductively moody style and dark, cynical edge have continued to inspire

most recent filmmakers who have freed from the constraints of the production code to put

their own, often subversive stamps on the genre. It featured the unforgettable femme

fatales who were often seductive and charming, and brought in innumerable dangers to

the male protagonist. American crime dramas or psychological thrillers, film noir had

almost same plot and story line. The characters of the genre was often conflicted

antiheroes, trapped in conflicting situations, desperate and plunged into dark depression.

They often had a nihilistic moral system. The use of visual devices like low key lighting,

smoke screen, shadow and unusual camera angles along with sound effects created a

mood of seductive, moody, and paranoic nostalgia. Neo noir assumed global character

and impact when filmmakers began drawing elements from films in the global market.

For instance, Quentin Tarantino’s works have been influenced by Ringo Lam’s City On

Fire This was particularly the case for the noir-inflected Reservoir Dogs, which was

instrumental in establishing Tarantino in October 1992.

Blue Velvet is a 1986 neo-noir mystery thriller film written and directed by David Lynch.

Blending psychological horror with film noir, the film stars Kyle MacLachlan , Isabella
 3

Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, and Laura Dern, and is named after the song of the same

name. The film concerns of a young college student who, returning home to visit his ill

father , discovers a severed human ear in a field that leads to him uncovering a vast

criminal conspiracy and entering a romantic and sexual relationship with a troubled

lounge singer.

The screenplay of Blue Velvet has been passed around multiple times, with several major

studios rejecting the movie due to its strong sexual and violent content. Blue Velvet

initially received a divided critical response, with many stating that its objectionable

content served little artistic purpose. Nevertheless, the film earned David Lynch his

second Academic Award nomination for Best Director, and came to achieve cult status.

Although the film became a huge controversy internationally, was deemed as

pornography and was at the centre of a national firestorm, yet years later, the film is widely

regarded to be an American classic, one of the greatest cinematic achievements.

The themes in the film are rich and complex. Blue Velvet introduced several common

elements of Lynch's work, including distorted characters, a polarized world, debilitating

damage to the skull or brain and the dark underbelly of large cities, or in this case, small

towns. Much of the cinematography and shots bear similarities to surrealistic paintings. In

David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet the director attempts to explore the psyche of a young man

named Jeffrey Beaumont, most notably the clash between his darker side and "good" side

for the first time in his life. Using themes that sharply contrast one another, Lynch provides

insight into the character of Jeffrey and the struggle that he is faced with. David Lynch

successfully paints the clash between the hidden human feelings and desires exceptionally
 4

well in the movie. Blue Velvet is a mystery thriller of the genre neo-noir.

Despite Blue Velvet’s initial appearance as a mystery, the film operates on a number of

thematic levels. The film owes a large debt to 1950s film noir, containing and exploring

ideas like that of femme fatale, a seemingly un stoppable antiheroes and a hero whose

moral outlook is pretty much questionable. Also the unusual shadowy darkness clouding

the film all along bringing a kind of evil presence, arousing the paranoia and nostalgia

among the audience. Perhaps the most significant Lynchian trademark in the film is the

depiction of unearthing a dark underbelly in a seemingly idealized small town. The film

has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho because of its stark treatment of

psychotic evil. The premise of both film is curiosity, leading to an investigation that

draws the lead characters into a hidden, voyeuristic underworld of crime.

The film’s thematic framework hearkens back to Poe James, and early gothic fiction.

Although it initially gained a relatively small theatrical audience in North America and

was met with controversy over its artistic merit, Blue Velvet soon became the centre of a

"national firestorm" in 1986, and over time became an American classic. In the late

1980s, and early 1990s, after its release on videotape, the film became a widely

recognized cult film for its dark Symbolism is used heavily in Blue Velvet. The most

consistent symbolism in the film is an insect motif introduced at the end of the first scene,

when the camera zooms in on a well-kept suburban lawn until it unearths a swarming

underground nest of bugs. This is generally recognized as a metaphor for the seedy

underworld that Jeffrey will soon discover under the surface of his own suburban, of a

suburban America. The themes of the movie is rich and has more than one theme the
 5

themes of the film is rich and complex. The film is sprinkled with a large number of

thematic devices. The presence of symbols is also very much. The symbolism is one of

the trademark of David Lynch.

The subconscious psyche is one of the most fascinating and almost completely inexplicable

aspects of human behaviour. Even more intriguing than merely the subconscious is the

notion of a darker, more repressed side that many individuals refuse to acknowledge exists

within them. The film "Blue Velvet," the director attempts to explore the psyche of a young

man named Jeffrey Beaumont, most notably the clash between his darker side and "good"

side for the first time in his life. Using themes that sharply contrast one another, Lynch

provides insight into the character of Jeffrey and the struggle that he is faced with. Lynch

chooses to use such stark contrast in an effort to establish not only the differences in one's

perception, but of the psyche as well. The opening sequence is used by Lynch as a

metaphor for Jeffrey's state of mind throughout the entire film, as Jeffrey realizes he has a

dark side yet is trying (most of the time) to suppress it. The town of Lumberton, like

Jeffrey, is an idealized version of what America and Americans should be like and yet,

much like Jeffrey's mind, it is full of dark secrets and contradictions. One aspect of Jeffrey's

psyche being explored is the notion of his battle between innocent love for a young girl and

the animalistic lust he possesses for an older, more mature woman. The "good" or innocent

side of Jeffrey is personified in the character of Sandy. While being in love with Sandy

who stood by his side all along, Jeffrey indulges in a romantic relationship with a older

woman which results in questioning the morale of Jeffrey. Here Lynch tries to portray the

desires and darkness hidden deep within Jeffrey, which even he wasn’t aware of. Lynch
 6

tried to paint the darkness hidden within man’s heart deep within himself. He was

successful in his attempts. In the film, Blue Velvet, Jeffrey the protagonist is trying to solve

a crime while at the same time he is really exploring this other world of explicit sexuality

that is opened by his new-found desire towards Dorothy Vallen, a mysterious and

interesting woman that has ties to the crime. This new desire that Jeffrey has towards

Dorothy is noted throughout the film as he slowly loses a grip on who he is.
 Chapter Two

Unmasking of Voyeurism and Human Sexuality in Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet falls under the twin genres of neo noir and mystery. While, both the genres

somehow satisfy the central theme of the movie, it is not at all just about darkness and

unsolved riddles, the film provides a good mirror to look into the finer details about

human voyeurism and sexuality. It unearths the darker aspects of masculinity. Be it the

central character Jeffrey Beaumont or the sadistic Frank Booth, there are enough reasons

to believe that both of them represent some sort of twisted masculinity. Blue Velvet

attracted its cult following not by exposing a sordid reality but by staging a terrifying yet

seductive fantasy.

The most common reading of Lynch’s eerie crime reverie is that it uncovers the rot which

is festering away behind America’s shiny facade. Lynch meets the conventions of

Hollywood cinema within Blue Velvet, but transforms them all to discover new truths. In

what could have been a tired Hollywood cliché, the opening sequence becomes a mutated

vision of America with illness, insects, haunting noises, and a soundtrack exploited of its

innocence. A straightforward detective story, which could’ve been mistaken for 1950’s

film-noir, becomes a perverted exploration in which the detectives become participants in

the sordid underworld. As most of David Lynch’s films are gigantic metaphors for the

darker side of American ideals, it’s no surprise that almost all of his films are met with a

collective reservation from audiences. Lynch himself called Blue Velvet “a dream of

strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story,” signalling that much of what occurs in

Blue Velvet isn’t reality, but a desire a pure nostalgia for the past. It’s this key motif of
 8

focusing on nostalgia that gives emotional weight to all of the element viewers believe

are drawbacks about the film: the portrayal of women, the bluntness of violence, and the

radical portraits of American life from both ends of the space.

Blue Velvet has been hailed as a masterpiece because of its raw emotional energy.

College student Jeffrey Beaumont returns home to Lumberton after his father Tom

suffers a near-fatal stroke. Walking home from the hospital, he cuts through a vacant lot

and discovers a severed human ear. Jeffrey takes the ear to police detective John

Williams and becomes reacquainted with his daughter, Sandy, who tells him that the ear

somehow relates to a lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens. Intrigued, Jeffrey enters

Dorothy's apartment by posing as an exterminator and steals a spare key while she is

distracted by a man in a distinctive yellow sport coat, whom Jeffrey nicknames the

"Yellow Man."

Jeffrey and Sandy attend Dorothy's nightclub act, in which she sings “Blue Velvet” and

leave early so Jeffrey can infiltrate her apartment. When Dorothy returns home, she finds

him hiding in a closet and forces him to undress at knifepoint. Jeffrey retreats to the

closet when Frank Booth arrives and interrupts their encounter.

After learning that Frank has abducted Dorothy's husband Don and son Donnie to force

her into sex slavery, Jeffrey suspects Frank cut off Don's ear to warn her to stay alive for

her family's sake. Jeffrey relays the experience to Sandy—without revealing his sexual

encounter with Dorothy—who urges him to tell her father what he knows about the case,

but he refuses, unwilling to land Sandy or himself in trouble and also fearing what Frank,

a goon might do.

 9

While continuing to see Sandy simultaneously, Jeffrey also starts an illicit sexual

relationship in which Dorothy encourages him to beat her. Jeffrey sees Frank attending

Dorothy's show and later observes him drug dealing and meeting with the Yellow Man.

When Frank catches Jeffrey leaving Dorothy's apartment, he abducts them and brings

them to the lair of Ben, a criminal associate who is holding both Don and Donnie

hostage. Frank permits Dorothy to see her family. Afterwards, he and his gang take the

pair on a high-speed joyride to a sawmill yard, where he attempts to sexually abuse

Dorothy. When Jeffrey intervenes and punches him in the face, an enraged Frank and his

gang pull him out of the car, and Frank violently kisses him all over his face with red

lipstick, before savagely beating him unconscious. Jeffrey awakes the next morning

bruised and bloodied.

Visiting the police station, Jeffrey realizes that Detective Williams's partner Tom Gordon

is the Yellow Man, who has been murdering Frank's rival drug dealers and stealing

confiscated narcotics from the evidence room for Frank to sell. After he and Sandy attend

a party, they are pursued by a car which they assume belongs to Frank. As they arrive at

Jeffrey's home, Sandy realizes the car belongs to her by now ex-boyfriend Mike Shaw.

After Mike threatens to beat Jeffrey for stealing his girlfriend, Dorothy appears on

Jeffrey's porch naked, beaten and confused. Mike backs down as Jeffrey and Sandy whisk

Dorothy to Sandy's house to summon medical attention.

When Dorothy calls Jeffrey "my secret lover", a distraught Sandy slaps him for deceiving

her. Jeffrey asks Sandy to tell her father everything and Detective Williams then leads a

police raid on Frank's headquarters, killing his men and crippling his criminal empire.
 10

Jeffrey returns alone to Dorothy's apartment, where he discovers her husband dead and

the Yellow Man mortally wounded. As Jeffrey leaves the apartment, Frank arrives, sees

him in the stairs and chases him back inside. Jeffrey re-uses the Yellow Man's walkie-

talkie to lie about his precise location in the apartment and hides in a closet. When Frank

arrives, Jeffrey ambushes and kills him with the Yellow Man's gun, moments before

Sandy and Detective Williams arrive for help. Jeffrey and Sandy continue their

relationship and Dorothy is reunited with her son. Sandy forgives Jeffrey and they

continue their relationship while Dorothy re unites with her son, and Frank dies from

Jeffrey’s hand.

Blue Velvet in ways more than one is representative of the decomposition of the family

space. Jeffrey is an archetypal character – young, carefree and idealistic. While

investigating about the ear, he gets into an investigation that reveals the dark components

of the typical American dream. There are multiple moments of physical intimacy in the

movie, moments that continue to pose uncomfortable questions. It is important that we

make an effort to dissect those moments in order to get a clearer grasp of what is going

on. There are multiple points in the movie that clearly shake the very foundations what

we considered sacred the family space and the body. Blue Velvet’ can also be recognized

subject to its ingrained intensity and instability. Always a chaos and tension mark the

relationship between the characters in the movie. A process of churning is always on,

something that is always recognizable on the surface of the movie. Throughout the

movie, there is not a single point when things have settled down, something that is

deliberate to the core. Lynch wants that tension to run throughout the course of the
 11

movie.

The movie is also a representation of changeability of the human nature. The movie

disturbs not because it has bad people doing bad things. It inherently disturbs because it

has good people doing bad things. It depicts the ugly underbelly of the civilized human

society. The movie is like a mirror. It actually shows what we are capable of albeit in the

negative direction. Psychologically, we always try to distance ourselves from undesirable

human deeds. However, here we are with a movie like ‘Blue Velvet’ that suddenly shows

us as monsters, as human beings who are just as bad as the next one on the street. It is

important to understand that the movie offers a very stark contrast, a contrast that is

manifested in everyday life. On one end of the spectrum, we have rich people who enjoy

an enviable life. On the other hand, dark secrets tumble out of the closed closets of

people. All of us are aware about this duplicity. In this dog-eat-dog world the rich always

remains rich and the poor poor.

Blue Velvet is a cinematic brilliance. Its brilliance can be well seen throughout the movie.

Blue Velvet’ is also a cinematic painting, a painting that stands tall even if some of the

elements are taken away. Starting with the opening sequence to the last scene, the movie

is about identifying the right elements at the right place. However, the painting here is not

an abstract one. The fact that it is not abstract is the biggest enigma.

Velvet’ is a significant piece of work subject to multiple reasons. One of the reasons why

the movie has established a place for itself, is the presence of the Lynchian askew vision.

Askew vision distorts everything and makes us look at known subjects from an unknown

perspective. Lynch also introduced some of his most important cinematic elements
 12

through this movie. Some such elements include the presence of skewed characters, a

diabolical world and damage to the brain. However, one thing that stands out is the

reanalysis of what is normal and what is abnormal. The general contrast between light

and dark remains consistent throughout Blue Velvet. Even cinematography provides a

stark contrast with deep blacks challenged by vivid lighting. A few interludes show a

flame buffeted in the wind which mimics the way Jeffrey is at once drawn to Sandy, a

character embodying pure, unadulterated goodness, and Dorothy, representing

Beaumont’s dark desires such as sadomasochism.

Although it’s not a horror film, Blue Velvet, oozes a nightmarish quality. At times, the

violence and sexual content is tough to watch but not because it’s gratuitous or poorly

executed. Rather, the movie intentionally makes the viewer uncomfortable by putting

them into the perspective of Jeffrey as he explores his dark fantasies. Often, the camera

assumes a first-person perspective, peering through the slatted closet door in Vallens’s

apartment, other times presenting as a detached observer. Blue Velvet, at times almost

rewards voyeurism.

While the severed ear, found at the beginning of the movie, serves as the primary

intention behind Jeffrey’s initial rendezvous, it metamorphoses into something more

carnal towards the later part, as could be seen from multiple shots and scenes. A careful

analysis could unearth the fact that Dorothy represents the motherly form of lust for the

young Jeffrey. Although he is romantically inclined to Sandy Williams, he cannot ignore

the obvious yet sinful charms of Dorothy. While Dorothy gets aroused by

sadomasochism and almost pleads Jeffrey to hit her during multiple sexual encounters, it
 13

in a way represents female repression and abusive relationships as well. Although there is

an undercurrent of love and care for Jeffrey that permeates through Dorothy’s

characterization, there is an ingrained sense of guilt that flows through her for having

continually seduced him. Jeffrey, on the other hand, seems to enjoy all the attention that

Dorothy gives him. While both the parties understand that the relationship is not really

endowed with a future, an uncontrollable passion drives both of them to continue along

the trajectory. In stricter sense of the term, Jeffrey is nothing compared to the sadistic

Frank Booth. However, both of them are unified by their inner desire to have complete

hold over Dorothy, their ultimate object of desire. What separates them, however, is the

way they pursue to that end. It is another thing though that by pursuing Dorothy, Jeffrey

actually pursues his own darker self and becomes voyeuristic by nature. This voyeurism,

in turn, stems from deep sexual underpinnings and an innate desire to taste the water from

the forbidden fountain. By pursuing Dorothy and having a relationship with her amidst

his relationship with Sandy, Jeffrey seeks a kind of thrill from this illicit relation. He is

also pursuing his own dark deep desires which were suppressed deep within him. This

relation with Dorothy has taken him to a point where he almost lost himself. The noir

themes provide a much-needed anchor to reality in the film Blue Velvet.

An overall masterpiece, Blue Velvet, is unlike any other film. Brimming with symbolism,

there’s a ton to unpack, thus lending ample replay value. At times, David Lynch’s neo-

noir romp is tough to watch, a testament to its prowess and cinematic excellence. The

role played by Sandy is vital. Sandy is Jeffrey’s window to sanity, his path back to the

normal folds. Sandy sees the world in clear black and white and there are no shades of
 14

grey. She tries to make some sense out of Jeffrey’s inconsistent behaviour in her pursuit

to understand if he is actually a detective or simply a pervert. From the moment Sandy

and Jeffrey decides to investigate the matter, there is an intended moral haze in

deciphering the character of Jeffrey. Frank essentially represents a deranged form of

masculinity. He constitutes the ultimate fear any woman would have of any man.

However, there is also an oedipal tendency that is at work during his sexual encounters

with Dorothy. He keeps on referring to himself as either the “Baby” or the “Daddy” while

calling Dorothy “Mommy”. While for Jeffrey, the oedipal tendency acts on a

subconscious level, for Frank, it is clear and obvious. In addition, Frank, given the

character that he is, does not care a fig as to how that affects other characters in the

movie.Laura Mulvey, the renowned feminist film theorist, powerfully contends that ‘Blue

Velvet’ aptly represent the true Oedipal family and compares Jeffrey to the child,

Dorothy to the mother and Frank to the father. A renowned film critic Michael Atkinson

tries to analyse the movie using the Freudian perspective. He likens Dorothy to the

mother figure while associating Jeffrey’s obsession to that of the infantile impulses.

Whatever it is, there is hardly any doubt about the fact that healthy and normal sexuality

hardly plays its part. One of the key symbolisms in the movie is that of the severed

human ear. When Jeffrey finds it towards the beginning of the film, the camera zooms in

inside the canal of the ear and does not zoom out until the end of the movie. This

establishes the parallel world that Lynch tries to create through the movie. Blue Velvet

isn’t a tale of morality or a preachy proclamation, but instead a very real depiction
 15

of the danger in attaching oneself to nostalgic dreams. Utilizing Jeffrey’s shift through

experiencing such nostalgia firsthand evokes what David Lynch does best: taking our

deepest fears and weaknesses and putting them on display through a system that doesn’t

feel sprawling, but instead constricting, suffocating, and altogether encompassing in the

most honest and humane ways possible. The opening scene of Blue Velvet features

several shots of the American Dream at work, cycling through the 1950s up to the 1980s.

Each shot represents a different extremity of its respective decade, featuring various car

models and television shows, and each shot is bathed in red roses and white picket

fences. It gives the melancholic color of blue a striking presence in Jeffrey’s journey,

offsetting the nostalgia of the American Dream in the subtlest way amongst Lynch’s

giant metaphor.

The desire for such a dream is rewarded to Jeffrey and Sandy in the end, but it comes at

the cost of their innocence. For its clear that no person can exist in this world without

living through its faults and horrors, and such an abandonment of reality leads to the

blissful ignorance on display in the final shot. As Jeffrey smiles we believe he is truly

happy, but accompanied with the gruesome images from Frank’s world and what Jeffrey

succumbed to, we surely recognize the taste of bittersweetness lying beneath such blind

acceptance. The sexual material in "Blue Velvet" is so disturbing, and the performance by

Rosellini is so convincing and courageous, that it demands a movie that deserves it.

American movies have been using satire for years to take the edge off sex and violence.

Occasionally, perhaps sex and violence should be treated with the seriousness they

deserve. Given the power of the darker scenes in this movie, we're all the more frustrated
 16

that the director is unwilling to follow through to the consequences of his insights.

Lynch’s Blue Velvet film is cyclical, it ends the same way it begins, added is the

reconciliation of Dorothy and her son. Throughout the film, there is a plot revolving

around an absent centre. Lynch gives us this de-centred, de-stabilized universe while

keeping the main themes circling around this absent centre; this is the vortex that Jeffery

finds himself pulled down into the more he discovers about Dorothy and her situation.

The last shot of the film suggests that even though we see Dorothy with her son, the film

remains cyclical in the sense that there will always be corruption and horror beneath the

surface of things and that even though there may be these outsiders that invade these

small towns – invaders that come in and try to help the ideological small town open their

eyes to the “real” world – there is no point, there will always be that corruption and

horror, and America will forever remain deaf to the cries of the Dorothy’s of America. In

film noir ordinary people find out that evil lurks just beneath the surfaces of their lives;

they inevitably get caught up in the shadow worlds, they find themselves capable of

committing unspeakable acts. A proper film noir is, contrary to the limitations of genre

labelling, not usually a gangster or crime film, but the story of how evil enters everyday

lives. The genre is profoundly pessimistic; it does not show bad people doing bad things,

but average people doing bad things. This complicates things and makes it all the more

ambiguous because the implication is that we are all capable of evil. Jeffrey’s

investigation of these mysteries parallels his love story with Sandy. To love Sandy fully,

Jeffrey has to know this dark world first, to become intimate with darkness. Frank tells

Jeffrey “You’re like me.” And this is Jeffrey’s epiphany: the darkness that he believed he
 17

was observing at a safe distance is in him, too. He senses it first when he hits Dorothy; in

this scene, the candle flame signalling Frank’s arrival becomes a roaring fire. Even the

film’s soundscape changes: it slows, grows louder, becoming both industrial and

demonic, like the sound of Frank breathing into his mask interrupted by a woman’s

scream. When Jeffrey finally kills Frank, he exorcises his own demon.

Evil, in Blue Velvet, has no explanation, doesn’t offer the depth of meaning. It’s

incarnated by Frank, centre of several Freudian concepts, from the Oedipus complex to

the need to reduce everything. Around him you can see different elements pushing into

the dreamlike, unconscious sphere: Dorothy is the mommy who wants to sleep with him,

he doesn’t want to be looked into the deep and he is surrounded by weird characters, with

the peak coinciding with Ben, a partner with an androgynous aspect, able to perform an

absurd musical performance in a house with typical Lynchian atmospheres. Lynchian is

the term that will begin to spread just after Blue velvet, to represent those surreal

atmospheres that carry a non-explicit symbolism, which offer a disturbing fascination

mixed with a certain difficulty in understanding the meanings. Although it is less

complex than his other films (it still remains a noir with a possible story), Blue

Velvet already has one of the fundamental traits of the Lynchian aesthetics: everything

hides a meaning that often resides in the unconscious dimension, and David Lynch

doesn’t care about explaining that content. The object is represented through a dedicated,

symbolic language, conceived to mark the message behind the conscious perception.

That’s why when you try to explain a Lynch movie, inevitably you ruin its beauty, in

some way revealing the trick. The Lynchian symbols work with the unconscious mind,
 18

and raising them in a rational level means jus touching the surface. But the real message

behind those symbols can be caught only on an irrational level. he fact that, so often, the

characters of Blue Velvet stop at a superficial dimension, like they are just symbols of

something and not characters with a history and a range of experiences that made them

like that, is exactly something intentional. Like allegorical representations of human

characteristics interacting with each other. Like a tango of dreamlike images from

unconscious contents. The peculiarity of Blue Velvet is precisely this: while it’s still a

thriller story with real characters, it looks like a concert of symbolisms that try to interact

with each other. Causing often disharmonic reactions.

Frank Booth, antihero of the film is a sadomasochist. Throughout the film he involves

and indulges in many sadomasochistic activities. Essentially, Blue Velvet is a story about

transitioning into adulthood. The protagonist, Jeffrey, is initially a naive, innocent young

man, until he wilfully exposes himself to the darkness of the world around him. This is

brilliantly foreshadowed in the film’s opening sequence, in which after a series of shots

depicting the beauty of mundane day-to-day life, we see a mass of cockroaches

underground, signifying the filth beneath the surface of the town.

To make the plot more digestible to audiences, Lynch presents the complex narrative as a

simple love story. Jeffrey finds himself attracted to Sandy, the innocent virgin archetype

of the film. Throughout the film, the potential of this relationship is tested as Jeffrey

continues to embrace the sexuality and violence that come with being a man.

The flip side of this complex narrative makes the most sense when viewed through a

Freudian lens. Jeffrey’s wants and desires are unravelled when he discovers the severed
 19

ear in the field. Because of David Lynch’s avant garde surrealism, his films are often

difficult to make sense of. Detracting critics of Blue Velvet often note the shocking

imagery and disconcerting story as the main reasons for their disliking, but these elements

are necessary. They are necessary because not everything we know about ourselves is

comforting. The voice of Lynch is vital, and his provocative declarations about our nature

will ensure that Blue Velvet will be argued about for years to come. Blue Velvet depicts

normality as an illusion that limits aggression by forbidding knowledge and vision.

Frank knows only the base lower depths of the subconscious. Jeffrey gains vision, by

going through the depths to a larger receptive knowledge.

Frank is representative of the usual decay that had set in the American society. He

represents the dark underbelly of the society, an underbelly that people are not very

comfortable dealing. American suburban culture has never been dealt with the way Blue

Velvet deals with it. In a way, Frank becomes the surrogate father of Jeffrey. In some

metaphorical sense, he teaches Jeffrey the pleasures of being an adult, the pleasures of

discovering sexuality in its true form. Frank is like some rogue father who has no idea

about how to treat a child. The subsequent interaction between Frank and Jeffrey towards

the later part of the movie clearly points towards that. However, the beauty of any Lynch

movie is in its capacity to be ambiguous, not in terms of just meaning but in terms of

scope as well. Blue Velvet serves that purpose well. Dorothy is the chord that unites the

two characters, frank Booth and Jeffrey. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to note

that Dorothy is the principal character in the movie. On the surface, Dorothy Vallens is a

Damsel in Dire Distress, a woman whose husband and young son are being held hostage
 20

at the hands of a homicidal maniac. But she is also something of a reframed femme

fatale, one whose sexual involvement with Jeffrey eventually produces disastrous

consequences. Lynch and Isabella Rossellini craft an instantly-recognizable figure in

Dorothy, drawing upon the time-respected textures of those aforementioned archetypes

to show us what is immediately enticing, both to Jeffrey and to us, about this siren, from

her perfectly-coiffed bouffant and heavy, smokey-blue lids to her rouged lips and slinky

black gowns. Rossellini, who, as Ingrid Bergman’s daughter, was endowed with classical

beauty at birth, cuts a hypnotic figure as Dorothy, a nightclub chanteuse who sings old

standards like the film’s title song with an unearthly detachment.

 Dorothy Vallens is the revered femme fatale in the movie Blue Velvet, she uses her

charm to seduce the characters. A femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by

using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, or sexual allure. In many cases, her attitude

towards sexuality is lackadaisical, intriguing, or frivolous. In some cases, she

uses lies or coercion rather than charm. She may also make use of some subduing weapon

such as sleeping gas, a modern analogue of magical powers in older tales. She may also

be a victim, caught in a situation from which she cannot escape. Dorothy is the femme

fatale in the film. Dorothy might as well seek comfort from the young and energetic

Jeffrey, who is very different from any male character that she has met in her life. While

Frank represents brute masculinity and pure sexual urge, Jeffrey is someone who she

could dominate through her sexual charm. Repressed sexually and physically, Dorothy

searches for some viable avenue to escape from the tragedy in her life. Jeffrey offers that

opportunity to her. With his natural charm and boyish demeanour, Dorothy has found
 21

someone who she can instruct and get her desires fulfilled. Although she is overtly aware

about the voyeuristic tendencies of Jeffrey, she lets him continue with it with the hope

that he would offer a way out of her apparently miserable existence. She remains the

driving force for most of the actions in the movie. She is voluptuous, she is luscious and

she is sexy. She represents everything that could be desirable for any man. She is the

epitome of womanly perfection. Since the movie is beset with sexual underpinnings,

Dorothy is the reason why Jeffrey behaves the way he does and Frank acts out the way he

actually does. In fact, it would not be an overstatement if it were to be said that Dorothy

is worth a subject to be voyeuristic about. While Jeffrey and Frank exhibit different

layers of human sexuality, Dorothy is the ultimate enigma that the film creates through its

darkly rich and skewed visuals From the beginning itself, we see that Dorothy has a

strange liking for Jeffrey, it is very difficult to identify the exact nature of the attraction.

Blue Velvet is the movie belonging to the genre of neo-noir, it is a mystery thriller but

also can be known as a mixture of fiction. Blue Velvet is sprinkled abundantly with

symbolism, and a variety of rich and complex themes. Beneath the familiar, peaceful,

'American-dream' cleanliness of the daytime scenes lurks sleaziness, prostitution,

unrestrained violence, and perversity - powerful and potentially-dangerous sexual forces

that may be unleashed if not contained. The plot line of the nightmarish film, a

combination of Marquis De Sade sexual fetishism and a Hardy Boys mystery story, is

fairly sketchy. An innocent, small-town college student (MacLachlan) in a sleepy town

discovers a severed ear, and then finds himself embroiled on the dark side of town

(beyond the white picket fence). He witnesses, first as a voyeur, a sexually-depraved,

 22

blackmailing relationship between a monstrous, loathsome, nitrous-oxide sniffing

kidnapper (Dennis Hopper) and an abused/brutalized mother and fragile nightclub singer

(Isabella Rossellini).

In some ways, the two male leads represent the two dichotomous sides of life (e.g.,

light/dark, normalcy/aberration, attraction/repulsion, innocence/experience,

perversion/love, virtue/base desires, etc.) that struggle for dominance. After the hideous

crime of violated innocence is revealed, the vision of the innocent girl-next-door (Laura

Dern) is restored - the "Blinding Light of Love."

 Chapter Three

Conclusion

Blue Velvet is a movie that perfectly captures a world where normalcy has degraded.

This film is perfectly portraying the unseen and hidden world of the despicable American

dream.Throughout the movie there are countless symbolisms. The movie is also

remarkable for its obvious symbolisms. One of the central motifs of the movie constitute

insects. The insect motif is shown at the opening of the movie itself, which is probably

representative of suburban decay. It could also point towards the emotional decay that

characterizes the subsequent parts of the movie. Jeffrey also enters Dorothy’s apartment

as an insectexterminator. It might be interesting to note that the entire movie is about

removing theseinsets that point towards social decay. While Jeffrey metaphorically enters

the life of Dorothyas an insect exterminator, he himself becomes an inset at multiple

points in the movie. Thecut ear also acts as one of the other motifs in the movie. This ear

starts the entire narrative inthe movie and continues until the end. What it possibly might

mean is the usage of ears insatisfying voyeuristic instincts. The ear also ends the story.

David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is jammed pack with voyeurism, violence and a unique brand

of surrealism. This neo-noirclassic contains numerous motifs and symbols that

communicate the film’s message via itsown cinematic language. During the entire film

Frank is never exposed to the sunlight, he islike the evil always lurking in the darkness,

except for once when Jeffrey stakes out of ofFrank’s business Frank is in the darkness.

The snuffing of the candles flame marks the morallow point of Jeffrey, his attraction
 24

towards darkness. Light and dark, robins and insects, redshoes, and the severed ear are

certainly memorable hallmarks of this 1980’s cult classic. Theneo-noir Lynchian

masterpiece employs these motifs to symbolize the never-ending battle between good and

evil—not just between the people like Jeffrey and Frank but also betweenthe internal

forces struggling within all of us.

The movie disturbs not because it has bad people doing bad things. It inherently disturbs

because it has good people doing bad things. It depicts the ugly underbelly of the

civilized human society. The movie is like a mirror. It actually shows what we are

capable of albeit in the negative direction. Psychologically, we always try to distance

ourselves from undesirable human deeds. However, here we are with a movie like ‘Blue

Velvet’ that suddenly shows us as monsters, as human beings who are just as bad as the

next one on the street. It is important to understand that the movie offers a very stark

contrast, a contrast that is manifested in everyday life. On one end of the spectrum, we

have rich people who enjoy anenviable life. On the other hand, dark secrets tumble out of

the closed closets of people. All of us are aware about this duplicity. However, only a

handful of us are intent on talking about it because we always like to sugarcoat things.

‘Blue Velvet’ is a significant piece of work subject to multiple reasons. One of the

reasons why the movie has established a place for itself, is the presence of the Lynchian

askew vision. Jeffrey tries to find out something that is hidden, something that has been

deliberately been kept away from the human gaze. During multiple points in the movie,

we find uncanny resemblances between the movie and Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’
 25

(1960). Both ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Psycho’ deal with repressed and resultant criminality.

Blue Velvet actually represents a sexual tendency to derive pleasure while others are

indulging in sexual activities. Though the term has transcended sex now. Consequently,

in modern parlance, it is the practice of deriving pleasure by looking at the private acts of

other individuals. Voyeurism is a trait that has marked humanity since the dawn of

civilization. The fact that we watch cinema in itself is indicative of voyeurism. Lynch

takes this to another level altogether and explains voyeurism in the crudest possible

fashion, at times bordering on the implausible. It questions our intent and us. ‘Blue

Velvet’ in many ways is representative of the dark alleys of humanity, those alleys that

people are not comfortable discussing. It paradoxically talks about the inherent fallacies

of the human civilization while attempting at understanding civilization in itself. Lynch

has never reconciled with the idea of absolute rationality and this becomes more than

apparent through this decidedly faulty yet perfectly apt portrayal of repressed sexuality,

masculinity, depravity, voyeurism and violence. Lynch always considered rationality as

being overrated. Not without reason did the audience found it objectionable and

audacious at the time of its release In fact, there were instances when critics have called it

a voyeur’s delight. As they say, facts are stranger than fiction and ‘Blue Velvet’ probably

is a testimony to that.

Blue Velvet isn’t a tale of morality or a preachy proclamation, but instead a very real

depiction of the danger in attaching oneself to nostalgic dreams. The novelty of Blue

Velvet transcends across genre, though its subjective presentation is neo-noir, it is a

surrealist movie because it also deals with dream albeit in some twisted and grotesque

manner.
 Works Cited
E-Source

O’Heir, Andrew “Blue Velvet’s mystery of masculinity: How David Lynch’s masterwork
reshaped American consciousness” Salon, 28 Mar.2016,
https://www.salon.com/2016/03/28/blue_velvets_mystery_of_masculinity_how_david_ly
nchs_masterwork_reshaped_american_consciousness/, 08 May 2021.

Affatigato,Carlo “The evil behind the appearance: explaining David Lynch’s Blue
Velvet” Auralcrave, 24 Sept. 2018 https://auralcrave.com/en/home-en/ 18 Nov. 2020.

Ebert Roger “Blue Velvet” Rogerebert.com 19 Sept. 1986

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blue-velvet-1986, 18 Dec.2020.

Denzin, Norman “Blue Velvet Post-Modern Contradictions” 01 June 1998

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263276488005002015?
journalCode=tcsa&, 06 Jan. 2021.

Book

Atkison, Michael, Blue Velvet. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1998.

Film

Lynch, David. Director. Blue Velvet. De Laurentiis Entertainment Group,1986