Making Sense of The Absurd

Making Sense of the Absurd
A Comparative Study of the Works of David Lynch

and Luigi Pirandello
Cynthia Vandenbruaene
Student number: 01607829
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Chiara Nannicini

Co-supervisor: Lennart Soberon
A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
of Master of Arts in Comparative Modern Literature
Academic year: 2020 – 2021

Index
General introduction
1. Lynch and Pirandello, a matrix of their creative production
1.1. Liquid Modernity
1.1.1. Luigi Pirandello, a child of the Chaos
1.1.2. New age nostalgia: On David Lynch and postmodernity
1.2. Poetic influence
1.2.1. Luigi Pirandello’s poetic manifesto
1.2.2. David Lynch, a neo surrealist dreamer
1.3. Masters of the medium
1.3.1. Pirandello, a conflicted theatre maker
1.3.2. Behind the making of label Lynch
A comparative analysis of Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore and Sogno
(Ma Forse No)
Introduction to the capita selecta and cyberspaces
2. Show, don’t tell: A visual exploration of meaning
2.1. Motives and meanings
2.1.1. For the lack and love of light
2.1.2. The room, a spatial odyssey
2.1.3. Objects of contradiction
2.2. Estrangement of reality
2.2.1. Visual distortion of reality
2.2.2. Eternal contradiction, the father of all things
2.2.3. The melting of time
2.3. Parallel worlds and metanarratives
2.3.1. Metafiction as a mirror
2.3.2. In between the dreamers dream
2.3.3. Memory of the past or predicament
2
Conclusion
Bibliography
Filmography
Discography
Artworks cited
3
General introduction
Time and time again people have turned to the visual and performative arts to find themselves staring back at
them, looking for a fleeting moment or a frozen image which reflects and matches up with their deepest
emotions. This mirror bouncing back reality in David Lynch’ and Luigi Pirandello’s distinct microcosmos is a
distorted one. A possibly discomforting and shattered effect is brought about by their specific set of artistic
devices and leads to confront the spectator with the continuously evolving modernity and its social corollaries.
While Pirandello and Lynch have paved a way for themselves, acquaintances or strangers to their works have
responded with either great admiration or utmost aversion, which cannot be said to be a mere coincidence.
General reluctance at first arises for many mainly by association of the artists’ peculiarity rooted in the bizarre.
With this thesis I intend to focus on bridging the gap between understanding and knowing, and most of all
removing a certain threshold it would take to appreciate the works of David Lynch and Luigi Pirandello due to
an initial response of confusion. Therefore I will try to emphasize how confusion can be productive as an
interpretation in itself. Confusion, the ambiguous, the multiple and unlimited are part of the freedom which the
artistic medium of theatre and cinema has to offer. In this aspect, the discourse of a broad range of
interpretations and the embracing of liquid perceptions could become a way of queering the analysis.
Before the words of this research found their way into the blank pages, tackling the enigma of resemblance
between an Italian modernist writer and an American postmodernist director, I had previously been dropping
my future ambitions of discussion of Lynch into conversation. Whereas instinctive cries of enthusiasm came
my way, namedropping the counterpart of my thesis, the Sicilian born Luigi Pirandello, caused a reaction of
glistering eyes and radio silence marking a fair distinction in familiarity. Inevitably most people around me have
grown up in a globalized world centered around English as a common denominator not only for communication
purposes but also for film, music and literature. Having been occupied throughout my bachelor years with
Italian literature, pointing my finger to the negligence of his works’ relevance to that of Lynch’s—I do realize—
is peak privilege. However, Pirandello’s interest in eternal contradiction at the center of our very human
existence, subliminal spaces and a critical mindset towards linear lives make his works a semiotically dense
maze which only seems profitable to deconstruct through a comparative research with the works of David
Lynch. Separated in time and space, both masters of the medium remarkably enough find themselves working
with the same tools and concepts. To my conviction, the following comparative analysis allows an individual
understanding of their works which, in turn, will only add to the understanding of both authors.
The first part of this thesis will take into account the accumulation of people, places and fundamental art
movements that have seeped into their creative production. To fully understand the selection of works in the
analysis, this thesis will undertake a short overview of what both Lynch and Pirandello have become, partly
because of their influential surroundings. As for Luigi Pirandello, the conscious decision of opting for two plays
called Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore (1921) and Sogno (Ma Forse No) (1929) is influenced by their
relevance in the light of metatheatre and density in symbolic imagery. Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and
Inland Empire (2006) have been selected on the basis of interconnectedness with the unconscious and the
world of dreams, concealing an existential thread in line with that of Pirandello. With an extensive amount of
works produced both by Pirandello and Lynch, the final cut of four works (two each) is of course a limitation to
the heterogeneity of their opus. On the other hand, this narrow selection allows this thesis to dwell upon the
visual and philosophical aspects of each work individually to a greater extent. The second part will focus on
the manifestation of meaning through visual characteristics shown in the films of Lynch and plays of Pirandello.
In both writers’ aesthetic worlds, peculiar parallel realities trigger the mind’s eye. For the repetition of motives,
the characteristic choice of aesthetics and fragmented narratives, sense is made through the decoding of
symbols. Nevertheless, in opposition to recognizability, confusion and estrangement are, at the same time,
made equally significant. As this thesis will assert, a thought-provoking Italian theatre maker and obstinate
American film director happen to share much more than the disposition to stir some chaos and debate.
Furthermore, this thesis will continue to peel off the final layers of meaning behind the use of surrealist imagery
and lay bare the existential grounds of the capita selecta in connection to theories rooted in epistemology and
psychoanalysis.
In other words this thesis, touching upon the unique poetic power of two controversial writers, will try to answer
the following question most adequately:
How do Lynch’s works of absurdity relate to those of Pirandello in terms of the visual and the existential?
4
1. Lynch and Pirandello, a matrix of their creative production
1.1. Liquid Modernity
1.1.1. Luigi Pirandello, a child of the Chaos
On 28 June 1867, the Italian modernist writer Luigi Pirandello was born in a suburb of Agrigento into a small
town called Caos. Its name seems surprisingly odd for a picturesque little town located at the seashore,
liberated from the overwhelming human presence in the bigger cities on the mainland. Nonetheless, this
uneventful name in particular has never seemed more in place for a man who will turn out to craft words of
wisdom and wit about the turning of a century and the vast struggle of fluid modernity.
A me la coscienza moderna dà l’immagine di un sogno angoscioso attraversato da rapide larve or tristi or

minacciose, d’una battaglia notturna, d’una mischia disperata, in cui s’agitino per un momento e subito
scompajano, per riapparirne delle altre, mille bandiere, in cui le parti avversarie si sian confuse e mischiate,
e ognuno lotti per sé per la sua difesa, contro all’amico e contro al nemico. Mi par che tutto in lei tremi e
tentenni.1
[Modern consciousness appears to me as a distressful dream traversed by swift shadows, now sad, now
threatening; a night battle, a desperate melée in which thousands of flags flutter for a moment and
immediately disappear to be replaced by others, in which the enemies are confused and mixed, and
everyone fights for himself, for his own defence, against both friend and foe. It seems as if everything in it
trembles and wavers.]
Since the very beginning in 1893, in an essay called Arte e coscienza d’oggi, Pirandello’s main impression of
a modernity, which is full of chaos, inconsistency, confusion and desperation, seeps quite deeply through his
writing. By growing up in an affluent family occupied in the sulfur mine business and being granted a proper
education, Pirandello did seem to find himself in pretty wealthy circumstances. Nevertheless, a general feeling
of spleen cannot seem to let go of him. Turn-taking of the mal d’être modernists, more precisely the death of
Baudelaire in the same year of Pirandello’s birth, is another striking coincidence. The Italian writer continues
some of the traditions of one of the most iconic decadent French poets, which will be discussed in more depth
in the further course of this thesis.
Chaos of the modern age comes at lightspeed and easily devours them who fall from grace. For the people
surrounding Luigi Pirandello, this has become a close reality. After a period of horrendous flooding, the parental
sulfur mine business winds up in a state of crisis. Financial ruination follows and leads to overbearing
psychological distress in the family. Also his wife Antonietta has had a hard time dealing with mental health
and eventually withdraws in an asylum. To stay sane as “un figlio del Caos” [a child of the Chaos], as Pirandello
has once affirmed himself, he finds a comforting retreat in writing. By escaping to a safe haven of paper and
pen, he could create himself an extensive visible mind. Making (non)sense of his own existence has become
part of mental survival through the writing of a large number of plays and novels dealing with the struggle of
existence.
Modernity is a process of constant change and adaptation to the rapidly evolving outer and inner world of the
conflicted individual. These are a few of Pirandello’s favourite things. As for the progress in technologies and
advanced attitudes, “he was constantly both attracted to and repulsed by those novelties that forever
transformed our lives”2. This reaction of both fear and intrigue reminds us of “mysterium tremendum et
fascinosum”, an expression coined by Rudolf Otto 3. In similar ways fluctuating parts of modernity are both
appealing as they are frightening. They are malleable too, manipulable one might say.
1
Pirandello, Luigi, Arte e coscienza d'oggi, Milano: Mondadori, 1993, p. 880.
2
Gieri, Manuela, Of Thresholds and Boundaries: Luigi Pirandello between Modernity and Modernism, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004, p. 295.
3
Rudolf, Otto, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen,
Munich: Biederstein Verlag, 1917.
5
La realtà, io dico, siamo noi che ce la creiamo: ed è indispensabile che sia così. Ma guai a fermarti in una
sola realtà; in essa si finisce per soffocare, per atrofizzarsi, per morire. Bisogna invece variarla, mutarla
continuamente, continuamente mutare e variare la nostra illusione.4
[Reality, I say, it is we who create it. But beware of attaching yourself to only one reality; for you end up
suffocating in it, wasting away, dying. So we must vary it and change it continually, continually change and
vary our illusion.]
The French symbolist poet Paul Valéry also captures this constant desire of human beings who cannot be
entirely fulfilled anymore and proposes the perforce solution of fluidity. “We can no longer bear anything that
lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit” 5, Valéry says. Zygmunt Bauman amply builds on
this concept of constant renewal and construction/deconstruction of our “selves” and “others”. For the Polish
sociologist liquidity means being light and weightless, thus mobile in our actions and life paths. In the positive
sense, we can choose how and who we become. More pragmatically, melting powers of modernity make sure
“configurations, constellations, patterns of dependency and interaction were all thrown into the melting pot, to
be subsequently recast and refashioned” 6. Instead of our malleability being completely in our own hands,
socially preshaped molds are being held right in front of us. In that way, human originality is ever illusional.
If we think about identity as a performance, a poststructuralist point of view avant la lettre, ideology is
insurmountably part of this constructedness. Politics, however, could be said to be a more fluid manifestation
of a concrete ideology brought into motion. It predicts a change, for better or for worse. In the light of Bauman’s
liquidity, it makes sense assuming that adopting politics is something which can shift during time. The same
thing counts for Pirandello in his ambiguous relation to the Fascist Party. “Pirandello shared with fascism a
profound antagonism toward the liberalist ideology of the particular”7. According to Argenteri8 this
antibourgeois, more revolutionary undertone had been stressed by Mussolini at the early stage of fascism.
Precisely this has partly lured the writer to adhere to the movement. Surprisingly though, as artists and writers
were often invited to ceremonies of the Party, using their popularity to boost the regime, Pirandello declined
and stayed remarkably passive about his political affiliations. Up until his deathbed, he claimed to be a fascist,
though that didn’t mean he particularly agreed with every aspect of it. The at that time renowned enfant terrible
would not mind slipping in a subtle critical note on fascism in plays like Come tu mi vuoi (1930) and C’è
qualcuno che ride (1936). However, criticism is also a two-way street. When in 1934, Pirandello received the
Nobel Prize for literature, many hard-core fascists did not approve of the theatre maker and his success. Other
statements of the Italian provocateur such as, “I am apolitical. I simply feel like a man on earth” 9, helped stir
the debate for literary scholars about his political belief. What wraps it up most accurately in the words of
Argenteri: “Although there was indeed a marriage between Pirandello and fascism, as in all long-standing
marriages, it was not without certain compromises, conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguities”10.
1.1.2. New age nostalgia: On David Lynch and postmodernity
In order to understand postmodernity or even modernity, we inevitably have to turn to the past. As for Lynch,
likewise we should go back to the very beginning of his life so we can fully grasp his reputation of a postmodern
cinema icon. Born on 20 January 1946 into the heart of small-town America, Lynch grew up with a sense of
carelessness and uncomplicated gaiety pervading his early memories of life in Montana. Time and place have
been significantly linked to Lynch as one of the most recognizable aspects in his work. More strikingly, they
resemble that of his own childhood during the fifties. White picket fences in his feature film Blue Velvet (1986)
or a freshly baked cherry pie in the television series Twin Peaks (1990) are not only remnants of the prototypical
American Dream but bring about personal nostalgia to the screen. When moving to Philadelphia, a new era
started for Lynch, which significantly has stirred a change both in his outlook on and portrayal of the world. Old
fashioned neatness and naivety of the American artist fairly contrasts with elements of chaos of the bigger city.
The city as a muse hasn’t been a new phenomenon to postmodernist art, given that artistic and literary
productivity arose from encountering the idea of fantasy being fed by friction of the urbanized world. A raw and
4
Dombroski, Robert S, Luigi Pirandello: Epistemology and Pure Subjectivity, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1995, p. 70.
5
Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000, p. 1.
6
Ibidem, p. 6.
7
Dombroski, Robert S, Luigi Pirandello: Epistemology and Pure Subjectivity, op. cit., p. 90.
8
Argenteri, Letizia, Pirandello and Fascism, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 1996, p. 130.
9
Pirandello, Luigi, Colloqui con Pirandello, Interview by Giuseppe Villaroel, Il Giornale d’Italia, May 1924.
10
Argenteri, Letizia, Pirandello and Fascism, op. cit., p. 135.
6
confronting grittiness is traceable in his early paintings, when studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts. Notably, its clash in reality did not paralyze but rather stimulate the creative mind of the American
artist. As McKenna puts it, “the chaos of Philadelphia was in direct opposition to the abundance and optimism
of the world he’d grown up in, and reconciling these two extremes was to become one of the enduring themes
in his art”11. Painting has always been most dear to him, but even though Lynch never thought about becoming
a director, as is the case with modernity, one thing easily starts growing out of the other and evolves into
something else. Modernity and creativity—both important and accurate for Lynch entering the world of film
indeliberately—share this element of surprise.
It is precisely the realization of modernity being an era full of contrast, which is laid out in the characters that
Lynch paints, whether it be on canvas or the big screen. As McGowan suggests, we could go on and say that
the real element of shock or subversiveness lies in the actual normality of the characters. He continues to
claim that “Lynch’s films disconcert us precisely because they confront us with normality, and normality seems
completely foreign”12. In the modern age, our social perceptions of what is considered usual or unusual are
ever liquid and always shifting. We could notice how Lynch relies on nostalgia —having a more conservative
liking to the past—to bring about a postmodern effect of estrangement. The conflicted nature of his works on
the same level reflects the inner and outer ambiguity of David Lynch himself. As Combs also detects, there’s
an element of discordance surrounding the director:
It is absurd, of course, to expect any author to “look like” his work, but the discrepancy between Lynch’s
apparent straightness, cleanliness and innocence, and the oozingly diseased world of his films must be so
striking as to outrage the sense of the natural order of things.13
Precisely this contrast in oozy behaviour and buttoned-up clean-cut fashion is by many seen as outrageous,
which makes sense if we reconnect this with the effect of normality in Lynch’s films. Žižek mentions the enigma
of this coincidence of opposites, which is, in a way, “the enigma of postmodernity itself”14. Connecting the dots
to our previous discussion about Pirandello’s influence by Bauman’s fluidity in personal and societal behaviour,
we can also notice a similar thing for Lynch. In many of the recurring themes, we notice the protagonist living
with dualities, desperately trying to reconcile them. Moreover, Lynch gets referred to by Žižek as a
New Age dualistic gnostic whose universe is the battlefield between two opposed hidden spiritual forces, the
force of destructive darkness (embodied in evil figures like Bob in “Twin Peaks”) and the opposing force of
spiritual calm and beatitude.15
A moral compass for these characters can be said to be winding up like a clockwork orange. Burgess has
eagerly used this metaphor to describe the inner friction of the modern individual, which is bound to make
choices of morally good and morally evil. So he continues, “it is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be
totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice
may operate”16. This is apparently similar to what often seems to characterize the protagonists of Lynch: the
coexistence of both evil and good. Rather than a moral reminder, this serves us to confront ourselves with our
true and frightening dual nature.
Lastly, as ambiguous as it appears for Pirandello, Lynch is likewise not an open book when it comes down to
an ideological thread throughout his works. Detaching himself from any clear viewpoints on current
movements, in an interview with The Guardian he exclaimed that “I am not really a political person, but I really
like the freedom to do what you want to do”17. Reading his works as apolitical could either be a way to
completely focus on his stylistic approach. Secondly, looking at his films from this stance might stir a self-
critical response, rather than a society-critical one. On the other hand, as Jameson would suggest, following
his method of the “political unconscious”, we could never be able to separate the artwork from its political
context. Similar to recurring themes of fantasy and eroticism perpetrating into Lynch’s body of work, ideology
11
Lynch, David and McKenna, Kristine, Room to Dream, Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2018, p. 73.
12
McGowan, Todd, The Impossible David Lynch, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 20.
13
Combs, Richard, Crude Thoughts and Fierce Forces, London: Monthly Film Bulletin, 1987.
14
Žižek, Slavoj, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway, Washington: University of
Washington Press, 2000, p. 8.
15
Ibidem, p. 25.
16
Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986, ix.
17
Lynch, David, David Lynch: “You gotta be selfish. It's a terrible thing”, Interview by Rory Carroll, The Guardian,
June 2018.
7
as well revolves around the structuring of desire. As McGowan notices, “fantasy (these days), provides [...] a
solution to the enigma of desire (albeit an imaginary one), a resolution of uncertainties”18. Eroticism and sex
are conventionally interpreted as a metaphor of fulfilment of desire. However, this too could be said about
ideology, which appeals to the people by wanting to resolve persisting uncertainties and desires. Though
interesting as it might be to read Lynch in a Jameson manner, revealing the unconscious political inside his
work will not be discussed to a larger extent in this thesis. Spiritualism, on the other hand, is vastly intrinsic to
both Lynch’s films and his personal life and will therefore be further touched upon in the next chapter on artistic
intertextuality and other poetic seeds.
1.2. Poetic influence
1.2.1. Luigi Pirandello’s poetic manifesto
Whereas Luigi Pirandello’s relation with ideology and politics might have been slightly more obscure and
debatable, his literary aesthetics and the philosophical backdrop of his works are made fairly lucid. Perhaps
his clear cut style and characteristic ideas stem from his urge to be as structured and rational—what he
considers conscious—about his own thought process. In 1908 a manifesto is published called L’Umorismo
[On Humour]19, an insight into Pirandello’s reflection about the use and meaning of humour. As Needler
notices, “Among the many intellectual means for coping with images he perceived, Pirandello found irony and
humor the most fruitful and consequential” 20. Continuing this argument, he distinguishes clear influence in
Pirandello’s oeuvre by works like that of Lipps’ Komik Und Humor (1898) and Bergson’s Du Rire (1900). While
the word humour itself brings to mind laughter and lightness, Pirandello’s definition on the contrary is closely
related to a more tragicomic connotation. To make sense of the world, in particular human emotions, we need
to be confronted with opposites so we can grasp its meaning by contradiction. According to Pirandello, humour
is in no way different from this. “Il sentimento del contrario” [the feeling of opposition] makes sure we
understand “l’umorismo” in terms of relativism. This links back to what the French modernist precursor
Baudelaire has said in De l’essence du rire (1868) about absolute comedy being connected to “l’existence
d’une dualité permanente, la puissance d’être à la fois soi et un autre” [the existence of a permanent duality,
the possibility of being oneself and another at the same time] 21. Though laughter may be provoked, Pirandello
does prefer to distinguish himself of “la figura del comico”, not to confuse “l’umorista” with a mere comedian:
Badate, io non mi propongo di farvi ridere facendo sgambettar le parole. E più d’uno, per non passar da
buffone, per non esser confuso coi centomila umoristi da strapazzo, ha voluto buttar via la parola sciupata,
abbandonarla al volgo, e adottarne un’altra: ironismo, ironista. 22
[Beware, I do not intend to make you laugh by joking around with words. It is more than just one thing, in
order not to be confused with the hundred thousands of humorists, I have wanted to throw away this
sickening word, leave it up to vulgarity and adopt another one: ironism, ironist.]
The use of irony to deal with the human spirits is a typical modern tendency and distances Pirandello from his
affiliation with the late 19th century naturalist movement. Though the focalization on characters of the lower
class in rural areas plays a significant role in his earlier novels and the assembled opus of Novelle per un anno
(1922), there does seem to be a distinctive trait of Pirandello’s writing which takes the Italian Verismo a step
further. Where he differs in from say—one of the most well-known Italian naturalist writers—Giovanni Verga,
with whom he shares interest in discussing themes such as social class, problematic relations and small town
drama, he crawls deeper inside the inner world of the characters to try and grasp their completed actions. For
this reason, he can be considered much of a psychologist writer too.
As Pirandello tries to dissect the human mind in his written works, on stage these take shape in a visibly chaotic
and confusing performance. Estrangement is thus one of the key concepts which plays a central role in
Pirandello’s Theatre of the Absurd. According to Sarode 23, this characteristic style in theatre relates to Albert
18
McGowan, Todd, The Impossible David Lynch, op. cit., p. 16.
19
Pirandello, Luigi, L’umorismo, Lanciano: Rocco Carabba, 1908.
20
Needler, Howard I, On the Art of Pirandello: Theory and Praxis, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974, p.
737.
21
Baudelaire, Charles, De l’essence du rire et généralement du comique dans les arts plastiques, Paris: Michel
Lévy Frères, 1868, p. 387.
22
Pirandello, Luigi, L’umorismo, op. cit., p. 14.
23
Sarode, Rani Somnath, Post-modern Approaches in English Literature, Kozhikode: AIIRJ, 2018, p. 131.
8
Camus's concept of the absurd. The term was first coined by Martin Esslin in the eponymous 1960 essay The
Theatre of the Absurd, in which he tackled playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. For this
reason Luigi Pirandello can be seen as one of the precursors of the concept. The imposed social order in
Theatre of the Absurd is often ignored or, more violently, attacked by boundary-pushing behaviour on the
stage. Van der Voort24 recognizes this lucid manifestation of estrangement in Pirandello’s characters, whose
words seem to dismiss the purpose of creating an understanding between one and another. The character’s
inability of communication is similarly intrinsic to the theatre of Maeterlinck and Strindberg. While Pirandello’s
theatre and literature consist of brilliant wit and humourous absurdity, another typically absurdist feature of
style adds to this: As Van der Voort notices, dialogue is far more absent than monologue, both in the
performative as written texts of Luigi Pirandello. For this reason, we could notice analogies of his works with
that of Chekhov and Ibsen. Reflecting on the totality of this feature, we could draw parallels between the
problematic communicative behaviour and our current modern society. From this certain point of view,
Pirandello’s work can be seen as the classic paradoxical outcome of the digital age. Although technological
innovations and advanced tools seem to boost faster communication around the globe, the quality of those
transmissions seem to decrease in quality. The more that is shared, the higher the chances of
miscommunication penetrating our conversations. Another risk accompanied with this overload of advanced
communication tools and sudden ubiquity of speech can, conversely, lead to speech paralysis. Pirandello’s
work can thus be read as a delineation of the social individual that cannot seem to keep up with the speed of
information and conversation of its persistently accelerating modernity.
Besides communication, construction of the “self” and identity are likewise in crisis nowadays. As we continue
living in a greater state of freedom, shopping for identities has become commonplace and even stimulated in
our ever evolving modernity. Who we really are and where we belong, these are questions which Pirandello
puts forward with the philosophical tendencies permeating his work. His approach to the sense of “self” leans
towards Heidegger’s concept of Dasein.
The reality of Dasein depends on its constant appropriation by and for the Other and vice versa. No one is
oneself, and everyone is the Other. The relativism of interchangeable perspectives intensifies the control
exercised by the They: I am as you see and judge me, but, conversely, you are as I see and judge you. “I
can become you” translates into “Dasein can become the They.” The fact that I exist with the other means
that my “being-there” is, as Heidegger puts it, my being of the “Others”.25
The splitted self and endless plurality, as seen by Heidegger, will become one of the most intrinsic qualities
that Pirandello infuses his characters with. Eventually this distinct quality leads us as readers or viewers of the
spectacle to the conclusion that the stories we witness are ours too. The people on the stage performing are
questioning our own individuality. There’s a thin line between us and them.
1.2.2. David Lynch, a neo surrealist dreamer
Staying on philosophical grounds, we could notice how closely related Pirandello’s take on identity, adhering
to Hegel’s concept of Dasein, resembles that of David Lynch. Whereas we already touched upon the
characters’ eternal ambiguity, we could now look at the relation between that of us as spectators and these
performed identities. McGowan recognizes the presence of Hegel’s notion of “speculative identity” manifested
in Lynch’s cinematic world. In short this means that through the exposure of the characters’ desires inside his
films, which we wouldn’t be able to encounter in real life, we grow conscious of that of our own. “Our very
investment in the fantasies that his films offer reveals our unconscious: we experience a familiarity in what is
completely unfamiliar”26. This also links back to what Freud suggests in Das Unheimliche [The Uncanny]
(1919): a strange feeling of familiarity when confronted with the uncommon, the bizarre. However simplifying
to solely define “speculative identity” as such, “pure self-recognition in absolute otherness”27 reminds very well
of Pirandello’s belief in Dasein as well as his political tendency towards socialism.
Laying bare these sorts of unconscious parts of ourselves, Lynch’s works mirror a sort of enlightening
experience. This doesn’t come as a surprise for the director being a frequent and determined practitioner of
transcendental meditation. In his first feature film Eraserhead (1977) emblematic use of spiritualism refers to
this state of awakening and revelation encouraged by David Lynch during many of his lectures on
24
Van der Voort, Cok, Een schrijver op zoek naar de waarheid, Den Haag: BZZTôH, 1986.
25
26
27
Ibidem, p. 23.
9
transcendental meditation. McKenna notices the recurring pattern of a circle referring to karma and even more
explicitly in the end scene, a dancing figure reaching for a golden egg. This is firmly related to the interpretation
of the universe in sacred Hindu texts which state that “the material universe, which emerged from the mind of
Brahma, is a golden egg that floats like a dream in the waters of divine consciousness” 28. Absolute
consciousness is a gift according to Lynch; for oneself, one’s surroundings and the creative spirit. The last-
mentioned takes place in one of Lynch’s favourite metaphors about consciousness: that of catching the big
fish. In the eponymous booklet he explains himself:
Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch
the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge
and abstract. And they’re very beautiful. I look for a certain kind of fish that is important to me, one that can
translate to cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down here.29
Clearly the influence of meditation and looking into the consciousness is of major importance in and around
the creations of Lynch. For Pirandello it is only the presence of consciousness inside his works and not the
active adherence to awareness stimulating practices which is traceable.
The actual outcome of these “divine ideas” took shape in what soon became part of the New Hollywood
cinema. Around the turn of the late 1960s, early 1970s, a new generation of American filmmakers jump-started
the era with a different approach to cinema: a radical turn against the classical Hollywood film. Although
thought-provoking, a fairly positive response followed from a more mature and openminded public. And so it
goes that America welcomed a new era and tradition of revolutionary film making. As Todd affirms, the group
of makers under which Lynch is often categorized, with their educated surroundings though rebellious vision,
goes by the name Movie Brats30. Because of a more experimental and visually brutal cinema associated with
Lynch, his films show similar concepts of the underground movement, which starkly contrasts popular
Hollywood cinema as it was known before. The First Statement of the New American Cinema Group (1960)
states it loud and clear:
We are not joining together to make money. We are joining together to make films. We are joining together
to build the New American Cinema. [...] Our colleagues in France, Italy, Russia, Poland or England can
depend on our determination. As they, we have had enough of the Big Lie in life and the arts. As they, we
are not only for the new cinema: we are also for the New Man [sic]. As they, we are for art, but not at the
expense of life. We don’t want false, polished, slick films—we prefer them rough, unpolished, but alive; we
don’t want rosy films—we want them the color of blood.31
Besides tendencies of French New Wave cinema, Europe has been influential for Lynch through art
movements such as surrealism, Dada and expressionism seeping right through his works. Nonetheless, as
European-influenced his works might seem, the neo surrealist nostalgic dreamer didn’t retract from
appropriating cinematic genres of his own subcontinent such as crime thriller, horror and melodrama. Most
importantly, he makes art without a compromise and this is precisely what makes him execute the same tactics
of Pirandello’s Theatre of the Grotesque: boundary pushing behaviour which doesn’t lean itself towards the
spectators but instead makes them come to grips with things.
1.3. Masters of the medium
1.3.1. Pirandello, a conflicted theatre maker
Now that we have come to realize that Pirandello has always been fascinated by the double, the plural i.e., his
involvement in theatre and literature as creative modes of perception seem most adequate to reflect his own
duality. As Dombroski puts it: “With this new definition of the Self as the Other, of the “one” as “a hundred
thousand” and, therefore, as “none”, Pirandello questions the certitude of the subject as conceived by modern
metaphysics. The truth of Being exists not in its reality but in its possibility”32. Turning to Pirandello’s two most
28
Lynch, David and McKenna, Kristine, Room to Dream, op. cit., p. 140.
29
Lynch, David, Catching the big fish: Meditation, consciousness, and creativity, New York: Penguin Random
House, 2007, p. 1.
30
Todd, Antony, Authorship and the Films of David Lynch: Aesthetic receptions in contemporary Hollywood,
London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2012, p. 1.
31
Mekas, Jonas, The first statement of the New American Cinema Group, Film culture reader, 1961.
32
10
fruitful media, we can claim his take on existence of the individual is not only reflected on the stage or on paper,
but gets contested in its general consensus. The meta reflective world he creates through his characters offer
an alternative perspective on what living life means. It opens up the possibility to wake up from a long slumber
and see the “self” from a bird’s-eye view. Turning to theories of the subconsciousness and relativism, the Italian
writer stands out amongst his peers in late 19th century Italy. Van der Voort calls his work “one of the first and
most important witnesses of the disintegration of a positivist society and the thereby resulting identity crisis of
the individual around the turn of a century”33.
By opting for the tools of theatre and literature to translate Pirandello’s creative mind, we could notice a
deviation of the more classical conventions of both media. As Pirandello implements novels into plays and vice
versa, there is only a vague barrier left between both carriers of existential dread. We could talk about genre
shifts, as Van der Voort poses:
De geijkte criteria om een verhalende tekst van een toneelstuk te onderscheiden worden door Pirandello,
en zijn tijdgenoten, niet meer gehandhaafd, en we zien dan ook dat zijn novellen, door het veelvuldig gebruik
van dialogen en monologen, een specifiek toneelelement vertonen.34
[The conventional criteria for distinguishing a narrative text from a play are no longer maintained by
Pirandello and his contemporaries, and we see, therefore, that his novels, through the frequent use of
dialogues and monologues, exhibit a specific theatrical element.]
Though his literature and theatre seem almost intertwined with each other, remarkably, it appears that
Pirandello’s relation towards the world of theatre is one of ambiguous affection. In multiple interviews and letter
exchanges he voices his initial reticence towards theatre. “’If God will help me,’ he wrote to Munzone in
December 1909, ’I will never write plays. The theatre [...] for me, is the same as the vignette to the book it
illustrates, or like a translation compared with the original: a reproduction which either spoils or diminishes the
original”35. Perhaps its close-up, simultaneous character resembles ours too much and becomes less of a
possible world but more of an immediate reflection. This could explain Pirandello’s reappropriation of the
medium theatre, “vulgarization” as some opponents, “innovation” as some admirers would call it. Furthermore
he removes himself from theatre’s common connotation of entertainment for the broad public.
Whereas the Italian playwright seems less praising about the format of theatre, his repertoire does contain
similar roots of Greek theatre. Juggling between both tragedy and comedy, his works usually imply a social
critique or reveal the character’s genuine behaviour and desires, stripped of the regulated social rules. The
title of his early 20th century compilation of plays, Maschere Nude [Naked Masks], hints at the revelation of
these human traits. The masks worn in Greek theatre are transformed into a metaphor, implying a deeper
understanding of what it means to play a certain role in society.
In the Greek universe, theatre thereby represents the place where the free people of Athens, that is to say
the historically contingent, might, for an instant, encounter the eternal unknowable. The shudder caused by
such an encounter was the true and only substance of catharsis.36
From this excerpt we could deduce that Pirandello with his plays likewise confronts the spectator with the
“eternal unknowable” or rather the persisting chaos of our “selves” in society. The shock that arrives from the
public comes as a logical response to the liberating act of staging these feelings of modern anxiety. The
reception of perhaps Pirandello’s most known and controversial play, Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore (1921),
stirs a series of insults and incomprehension. A possible explanation for the prevailing dissatisfaction would
be the non-colliding expectations about a pleasant night to the theatre. However, we could also argue this
reaction to be due to the strong cathartic emotions (albeit negative) that are provoked by the play. In this
aspect, part of the unique quality of his theatre lies in the impossibility to stay impartial or indifferent.
33
Van der Voort, Cok, Een schrijver op zoek naar de waarheid, op. cit.
34
Ibidem, p. 27. The following section is translated by Cynthia Vandenbruaene and is reproduced without
permission and without any further alterations from Een schrijver op zoek naar de waarheid. The original
copyright is held by, and all other rights are reserved by Cok Van der Voort.
35
Giudice, Gaspare, Luigi Pirandello, Milano: UTET, 1963, p. 105.
36
Sinicropi, Giovanni, The Metaphysical Dimension and Pirandello's Theatre, Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1977, p. 360.
11
Lastly, great strength of Pirandello’s work lies in the awareness of the characters in the written text. The
growing consciousness of the protagonist’s state of being is a perpetual thread through Pirandello’s novels.
His work is distinguishable for its vast array of symbols and the recurrence of certain literary characters.
Giovanni Macchia37 talks about the Pirandellian concept of the decomposable character who can be recycled
and reused according to need. Uno, Nessuno, Centomila (1926) for instance demonstrates the escalating
identity crisis of the main character, which is set in motion after a comment of his wife about his nose. Il Fu
Mattia Pascal (1904) tackles escapist behaviour of the individual and the vast consequences of not having any
responsibilities as an invisible citizen to the state. Just to name a few, these characters already strike us with
the increasing realization of their roles in society that they are bound to keep up. In Pirandello’s plays, this
aspect of consciousness translates not only in self-awareness of the character within society but also within
the stage. Through breaking of the fourth wall, meta-theatricality is used as a transformative tool which
dismantles the usual distance between the performer and the spectator.
1.3.2. Behind the making of label Lynch
Reason for confirmation that David Lynch has established himself in the history of New Hollywood film, is the
fact that “Lynchesque” as well as “Lynchian” entered the filmic vernacular as a generic signifier in its own, as
McGowan38 puts it. On one hand, this move has surely caused accordance of the term with certain
expectations which go hand in hand with the words “written and directed by David Lynch”. Surrealist features,
surprising elements of the dark animalesque, muffled conversations and riddles melt together with the nostalgic
image of the American Dream. One which easily turns into a nightmare instead. Lynch is never stuck with the
same medium concerning his creative output. Besides his ventures in cinema, there is an extensive list of
other occupations that lend themselves to his creative vision. During the years he has worked as a painter,
sculptor, photographer, writer and director of theatrical productions, furniture designer, music composer,
animator and so on. One of his most striking border occupations is that of collaborating with major brands for
a series of television commercials. It is not very common for any film director to eagerly participate in the world
of commercials, purely because they would not fit the anti-capitalist mentality of postmodernist filmmakers.
Lynch, on the other hand, doesn’t refrain from this and instead caters to these opportunities outside film. In a
way, the rebellious director himself builds on this concept of brand Lynch, dissociating himself from the
expectations and persistent rules of avant-garde filmmaking. Then again, both the commercial and cinematic
world aren’t that different from each other. In similar ways they reveal our unconscious desires.
Although Lynch’s passion initially went out to painting instead of film, similar to Pirandello who preferred the
medium of literature over theatre, his occupation in the seventh art emerged naturally and successfully. The
films’ subversiveness was received by an audience whom in itself had grown and found a new way of dealing
with the images it was presented. Laura Mulvey points out a new phenomenon called “passionate detachment”
or a state of cinema which “destroys the satisfaction, pleasure and privilege of the ‘invisible guest’, and
highlights how film has depended on voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms” 39. The spectator is aware of the
fantastic and safely distanced nature of the image one is seeing. That is to say, identification and recognition
become less central in the cinema of Lynch. Being free from a usually imposed discourse of empathy, viewers
are able to dig deeper and detect a layered frame of symbolism behind the estranged reality they are
witnessing on the screen. What facilitates this semiotic, critical eye, is the often strict delineation of fantasy
and reality inside his films. Separate spaces such as the Red Room in Twin Peaks (1990) or the stage of the
Lady in the Radiator in Eraserhead (1977) mark and even warn the spectator for the beginning of a new type
of logic. Dream logic or “dream-work” as Freud would call it, is one of many Lynchian features which in latter
chapters will be elaborated on more extensively. Crucial to pin down is the importance that Lynch attaches to
the use of fantasy in order to understand our reality. Following McGowan’s point of view, “without fantasy, our
reality would be bizarre, mysterious, and ultimately incoherent” 40. In compliance with Pirandello, there’s a need
for opposites to grasp the truth and essence of our life. Moreover, we could say both in their art confront the
outside world and shape its meaning through adaptation of Hegelian dialectics. The need for opposites and
awareness of our paradoxical nature will become a crucial leitmotif of existentialism for Lynch and Pirandello,
which the subsequent analysis of selected films and plays will continue to lay bare.
37
Pirandello, Luigi, Tutti romanzi, a cura di Giovanni Macchia con la collaborazione di Mario Costanzo.
Introduzione di Giovanni Macchia, Milano: A. Mondadori, 1973.
38
39
Mulvey, Laura, Visual pleasure and narrative cinema, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 18.
40
12
A comparative analysis of Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, Sei
Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore and Sogno (Ma Forse No)
An introduction to the capita selecta and cyberspaces
Four stories have been written and shaped, transported from the private creative headspace of Luigi Pirandello
and David Lynch to the public stage in third and fourth dimension. Stirring the audience to a mixed response
of marvel and confusion, they portray a dream that yet resembles reality. Or is it reality which resembles that
dream? Although almost a century lies in between the creation of these works and the writers’ personal lives,
the apple does not seem to fall far from the surrealist tree.
Pirandello’s story of Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore (1921), a pinnacle of metatheatricality, shows stark
resistance to the conventional conception of characters as fictional and we, humans of hybris, as more genuine
or real. Serving the play with a sauce of provocation, Pirandello comically opposes the anthropocentric belief
of our superior reality. This core thought is centred around six characters, each ascribed a different tragedy
and social incompetence. A director has lost its authority, a lady is speaking a strange linguistic variant and
the first and second actors get hold of far less stage time than their roles make out to be. Another set of pre-
established logics Pirandello tries to escape is that of time. In the one-act play of Sogno (Ma Forse No) (1929),
chronology in narrative is disturbed and questioned by the dream sequence of a young lady. In the safe
manifestation of her subconsciousness, fear and desire seem to bade more unrestrictedly. The lady fears most
admitting to her lover she has lost that loving feeling. Meanwhile the material desire of a precious necklace
and passionate death pervade what appears to be a dream, but can readily be interpreted as a memory in the
past. A familiar plot occurs in Lynch’s surrealist crime drama Mulholland Drive (2001). A traumatic car accident
urges a young lady to shelter at a freshly arrived actress’ place in Los Angeles. Confused and seemingly
afflicted, she does not seem to remember who she is. This initial hiatus of identity drives the two ladies towards
further investigation. While a more intimate bond grows between them, a shift in temporal dimension is
suddenly unlocked by a tiny blue box. The assumed reality of both identities affronted with in the beginning
seems to be more and more up for speculation. This effortlessly brings us to Lynch’s considerably dense and
lengthy feature film Inland Empire (2006). A haunted gypsy tale is bound for a remake and professional actress
Nikki takes up the lead together with her presumably womanizer colleague. Recurring interruption by a short
experimental film called Rabbits (2002) and a young Polish woman, watching the whole scene on an old
television in a hotel room, add to the metatheatrical story laying bare a repressed fear of adultery and death.
Lynch and Pirandello send us off to alternative spaces, so-called “cyberspaces” as Žižek would suggest. Born
from the womb of possible realities, these places are ought “to externalize our innermost fantasies in all their
inconsistency”41. Layer by layer these carefully curated cyberspaces will unravel parts of the chaos which do
not look that detached from our own reality anymore. Lynch and Pirandello’s works are intrinsically dealing
with the ultrahuman, touching upon interlaced topics such as identity crisis, social incapability of humankind
and comical coping mechanisms following the “Theatre of the Absurd”. In the first part of analysis, we will
wander about these cyberspaces with our eyes kept wide open and attentive to the smaller objects and striking
dimensions. This section of research will try to deconstruct the multiplicity of meanings of the visual in a curious
but also conscious manner. For the latter part, this thesis relies on theories such as passionate detachment,
dream-work, estrangement and others dealt with in the first chapter “Lynch and Pirandello, a matrix of their
creative production”. To jump into these discussions, the next questions pervade the structure of each of these
visual curiosities that both artists have opted for: What do we see? Why do we see it? And what could this
mean?
41
Žižek, Slavoj, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway, op. cit., p. 46.
13
2. Show, don’t tell: A visual exploration of meaning
2.1. Motives and meanings
2.1.1. For the lack and love of light
We all have at least two sides. The world we live in is a world of opposites. And the trick is to reconcile
those opposing things. I've always liked both sides. In order to appreciate one you have to know the
other. The more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see too. 42
The core of these words—which would easily pass as some Tibetan verse of wisdom—form the core of
the next section on the reconciliation between darkness and light. A lifelong muse to the seven arts,
among which the painters who have eagerly drawn inspiration from it through their claire-obscure. In the
same trend, it has fed the creative mind of David Lynch, who exclaimed these words himself, and Luigi
Pirandello. As Olson notices, “Lynch’s art has always centred on the battle and the dance between
darkness and light”43. However, Pirandello too has played around with notions of light and lightness in
his theatrical works.
One of the assets of the opposition dark versus light is its capacity of mediation of darkness. The latter
taking shape in the gritty and alarming for Lynch and the tense and serious for Pirandello. In Inland
Empire, we can see this most plainly when Nikki ends up in a room with all the women who have
presumably had sexual intercourse with her colleague and lead actor Devon. Sadness and smoke fill
up the room until these similar looking women start busting moves on Little Eva’s sixties tune Locomotion
(1962). Their performance is joined by the flashing of pale white lights, leading to a cheery yet inevitably
grim shot.
Lynch, David, Inland Empire, 01:28:57.
In Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore on the other hand, the darkness represents the seriousness of the
situation. In the context of the rehearsal of a play, the director while entering the room immediately
exclaims: “Oh qua non ci si vede. Per piacere, faccia dare un po’ di luce.” [Oh, I can't see a thing in here.
Give me some light please]44. From an ironic perspective this demand can be seen as an almost pitiable
move, given that continuation of the plot lays bare the complete loss of authority and control of the
42
Rodley, Chris, Lynch on Lynch, London: Faber & Faber, 1997, p. 23.
43
Olson, Greg, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, Lanham: Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2008.
44
Pirandello, Luigi, Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore, Firenze: R. Bemporad & figlio, 1921, p. 23.
14
director. It is remarkable how Pirandello makes lightness and laughter often invade the serious drama
of the characters. This affirms his belief in effective ways of humour through opposition, as he
establishes in the manifesto L’Umorismo45. In Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore these uncontainable
bursts of laughter are mostly coming from la figliastra [the daughter] and gli attori [the actors], reacting
to the tragedy of others. Lynch also applies these sudden spurts of laughter in the meta-drama Rabbits,
however unrelated to the discourse being held.
Darkness and light as a visual representation of evil and good is largely absent from the discussed works
of Pirandello. Lynch, on the other hand, does not skip the opportunity to use this device. The opening
shot of Mulholland Drive shows the superposition of several lindy hopping couples to a purple screen
backdrop and black shadow image that goes with it. Not much later we are following a lone car on the
road during a pitch black night. The pale white fog lights and gloomy red ones in the back add to these
frames drenched with ominosity. We can reconnect the good and the bad, the bright and the drab to
what has yet been speculated about our own dual nature in chapter one, “On David Lynch and
postmodernity”. The coexistence of both sides is at best embodied by the aspiring actrice Betty, whose
initial naivety stands in stark contrast with the darker emotions unraveling of her doppelgänger Diane
towards the end of Mulholland Drive.
Light has always been connected to a higher power, an elevated quality or state of mind. Encompassing
both fictional and historical narratives, light as a metaphor has lived a long life ever since. The age of
enlightenment, centred around the freedom of speech and thoughts, or the carrying of fire by the unlucky
rebel Prometheus have the following in common: the pursuit of a mind which is knowledgeable and
critical about itself. This emblematic interpretation of light resembles that of consciousness, which is
both key to Lynch and Pirandello’s works. For Lynch, consciousness is directly related to the outcome
of transcendental meditation, an inner light waiting to be shone. The recurring appearance of lights —
which seems to be a protagonist in itself in Lynch’s cinematic repertoire—could thus be read as a state
of spiritual awakening. The more present the lights, the deeper the character descends into its own
consciousness, discovering its desires which are often tucked away from society. For Pirandello,
likewise, light appears as a significant reminder of the awakening consciousness.
Nulla in principio, si discerne bene, perché la stanza è stenebrata appena da un lume innaturale che
emana dal tappetino verde prato davanti al divano. Questo lume par debba da un momento all’altro
sparire a un lieve moto nel sonno della giovane signora dormente. Difatti, è proprio il lume d’un
sogno.46
[At first, nothing appears to be very visible, because the room is faintly illuminated by an unnatural
light emerging from the grass-green carpet in front of the sofa. This light seems to disappear at any
moment at a slight movement during the sleep of the dormant young lady. In fact, it is the light of a
dream.]
In Sogno (Ma Forse No), Pirandello accentuates the light as an indicative for a dream. Following Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory, this state of dreaming—similar to transcendental meditation—brings about
disclosure of the unconscious mind. Materialistic longing and romantic doubts will soon be pervading
the woman’s slumber. In conclusion, we can say that Lynch and Pirandello’s brilliant playfulness with
light and darkness serves as a prophetic symbol. Contradictory as it may sound, there might be
something consoling in the darkness and preoccupying in the light.
2.1.2. The room, a spatial odyssey
Shedding light on yet another abstract protagonist, the following section of “Motives and meanings” will
focus on the specificity of spatial dimensions inside Lynch and Pirandello’s works. While actions and
elements at the foreground happen to steal our attention more quickly, we should not disregard the
amount of significance and symbolic density behind the aesthetic backdrop in Lynch’s films and
Pirandello’s plays. Similar particularities about place and space will be discussed in their more explicit
discernibility to be winding up in different directions of sense-making.
45
Pirandello, Luigi, L’umorismo, Lanciano: Rocco Carabba, 1908.
46
Pirandello, Luigi, Sogno (Ma Forse No), Milano: La Lettura, 1929, p. 89.
15
While Inland Empire takes us on a true trip of the spirits, what’s striking is how the general ominosity
and buzzing presence of the room—what Lynch calls “room tone”47—takes over the scene and becomes
very central itself. What adds to this, other than the spatial oddities or general grimness of these rooms,
is Lynch’s choice of camera placement. Sudden cuts into bird’s eye perspective help out emphasizing
the presence of the room. Scenes such as that of the blurred Polish couple in a hotel room and Nicki
dancing together with the other women specifically draw attention to this. The latter ends abruptly by
removal of all dancers and unrelenting focus on the room and only the room itself.
Pirandello’s Sogno (Ma Forse No) does not wait as long to introduce this underrated protagonist and
starts off with the words “Una camera: ma forse no: un salotto” [A room: but maybe not: a saloon]”48.
Floating around the room, what follows is a dense description about its physical attributes and character.
It is hard not to notice the immaculate care and refinedness which goes into Pirandello’s account of the
room, putting together parts of its appearance as if indeed it was a person.
The room is a symbolic figure which as well exudes a certain authority. Difficulty of escape and forced
catharsis accompanies the room both in Lynch and Pirandello’s works. Stuck between four walls, the
actors are bound to play their role and follow the script. This easily translates in the way Pirandello
introduces the play Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore as the Commedia da fare [the play that has to be
played]. Lynch implements the same coercion in the narrative of Inland Empire, throughout the remake
of a haunted gypsy script that no matter what circumstances has to be executed. Whether the leading
actress Nicki has a mental breakdown or gets physically hurt during the shot is irrelevant to the makers.
The show must go on. In Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore, an attempt to go against these constraints
of the stage is most plainly visible when il figlio [the son] refuses to take part in the play, yet fails.
Il Figlio resterà proteso verso la scaletta, ma, come legato da un potere occulto, non potrà scenderne
gli scalini; poi, tra lo stupore e lo sgomento ansioso degli Attori, si moverà lentamente lungo la ribalta,
diretto all’altra scaletta del palcoscenico; ma, giuntovi, resterà anche lí proteso, senza poter
discendere. La Figliastra, che lo avrà seguito con gli occhi in atteggiamento di sfida, scoppierà a
ridere.
— Non può, vede? Non può! Deve restar qui, per forza, legato alla catena, indissolubilmente. 49
47
Rodley, Chris, Lynch on Lynch, op. cit., p. 72.
48
Pirandello, Luigi, Sogno (Ma Forse No). op cit., p. 89.
49
Pirandello, Luigi, Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore, Firenze: R. Bemporad & figlio, 1921, p. 114-115.
16
[The Son remained reaching towards the staircase, but, as if bound by an occult power, he will not
be able to descend the steps; then, amidst the amazement and anxious dismay of the Actors, he will
move slowly along the proscenium, heading for the other staircase of the stage; but, having reached
it, he will remain there too, without being able to descend. The stepdaughter, who followed him with
defiant eyes, will burst out laughing.
- He can't, you see? He can't! He must remain here, of necessity, tied to the chain, inseparably.]
It is no coincidence that the word room can signify the visual place, as well as the headspace. Santeramo
illustrates this, talking about “Pirandello's attempt to find "another stage”, that of the mind in Sogno (Ma
Forse No)”50. Turning to a psychoanalytical perspective, the room can be read as a mental state of
constraint. It can serve as a metaphor that lays bare the very fixedness of the actors and that of our own
lives and roles in society. Accompanied with a feeling of anxiety, the room exhales a certain fear of
immobility. The fear of being captured in a premolded pattern, which opposes Bauman’s concept of
liquidity that both Pirandello’s and Lynch’ works are prone to.
Making the characters tied to the room, some of the scenes we are witnessing in Lynch’s films resemble
a play more than a film scene. While the room is often transformed into a stage, the stage itself, however,
never seems far away in a production by the American film director. In Inland Empire, he embeds several
excerpts of the play The Rabbits. In addition to this, “Lynch’s on-screen stages, which heavily depend
upon cinematic features, such as thick curtains, intense darkness and shafts of light, bleed into the
conventional surroundings of the movie theatre” 51. In Mulholland Drive, Lynch manages to put us as
spectators right next to the seats of Betty and Rita in theatre Silencio, watching the surrealist
performance on stage with shared dismay and confusion. What happens then—and what happens often
when Lynch brings the spectator up-close to the performer—is a slowly fading disappearance between
barriers: “The concept of dissolving borders between the public and private spaces seeps into his
interiors where the tension between different levels, on staircases, in corridors and bedrooms transforms
familiar spaces into particularly vulnerable locations — “uncanny frontiers”52. We could notice that
Pirandello does the same thing, however, on a different level. Focusing on the spatial transgression
between the spectator and the performer, Bassanese notices his works “tear down conventions, spatial
barriers, and the walls separating action and audience, characters and people” 53. In Lynch’s case, the
extra layer of dimension through the medium of cinema, by use of visual effects, allows the characters
to transgress in place too. Nonetheless, what connects both Lynch and Pirandello’s works is the ability
to give the audience the chance of entering the characters’ lives, living rooms and bedrooms and not
only do we get a peek into their way of living and coping, we are simultaneously being exposed to our
own behavior and desires: namely that of voyeurism.
The blatant crawling into the private space, the eye that safely discerns from a distant perspective,
brings us to the ultimate room directly connected to the notion of voyeurism: the bedroom. As for Lynch,
both Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire dedicate important screen time to this place. Following the
internal logic of Lynch’s story worlds, we notice the bedroom to cause major difficulty of the characters
distinguishing between the private and the public in Inland Empire, reality and fiction in Mulholland Drive.
The latter relates to Pirandello’s Sogno (Ma Forse No) where we are affronted with a bedroom, not in
the strictly tangible sense but in the vivid imagination of the young lady sleeping: “quel salotto è una
camera da letto soltanto nel sogno della giovane signora: e un letto, quel divano” [that living room
appears to be a bedroom only in the young lady's dream: and the sofa, a bed] 54. It matters to recognize
this recurrent centrality of space, because the room ties together elements of sex, dreams and
imagination, and maybe even vice versa. The ultimate stage of voyeurism is reached not by having a
peek into the daily rotation of physical activities of a person, but by witnessing their unconscious desires
and vulnerabilities unfolding between four walls. By using the bedroom as the backdrop of a narrative,
Lynch and Pirandello bring the spectators closer to the private and human vulnerability of the character
50
Santeramo, Donato, Pirandello's meta-theatrical plays beyond the trilogy, Toronto: University of Toronto,
1998, p. 4.
51
Martin, Richard, The Architecture of David Lynch, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, p. 135.
52
Grozdanic, Lidija, Beyond the Red Room: "The Architecture of David Lynch" by Richard Martin, New York City:
Architizer.
53
Bassanese, Fiora A., Understanding Luigi Pirandello, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997, p.
117.
54
17
and give rise to breaking of the fourth wall. However, while boundaries are being broken in the rooms
of cinema and theatre, Mulvey’s theorem of “passionate detachment” (cf. “Behind the making of label
Lynch”) ensures the safekeeping of our voyeuristic privileges by staying aware of the actual distance.
2.1.3. Objects of contradiction
Departing from the discussion of motifs and meanings through the vast dimensions of light and space,
this last section will instead turn to the compact and the concrete: the reoccurrence of the physical
object. I opted for the following threefold of objects: the key, the mask and the wig, taking on a semiotic
point of view. As Peirce states in Three trichotomies of Signs (1902), “A Symbol is a sign which refers
to the Object that it denotes by virtue of law, usually an association of general ideas” 55. The key, the
mask and the wig can thus not only be understood as a fictional representation limited to its reference
to the outside world object, but more interestingly, we could rest our eyes a bit longer on its broad
spectrum of associations.
One of Lynch’ and Pirandello’s most visually intriguing symbols, is that of the key. In Sogno (Ma Forse
No) a mysterious man in a tailcoat carries a key, “una piccola lucida chiave inglese”56, to the apartment
of a young woman sleeping. The l’uomo in frak walks in and pervades her private space, which—in
connection to the previous excerpt on space and the bedroom—can transform the key into an
emblematic device to personify human intrusiveness. Gradually, we find out about their romantic
relationship troubled by doubts, imbalance and miscommunication. In this aspect the man’s key could
be interpreted as an offer to reconcile, to solve dissent. Yet, the problem is that dream and reality seem
to overlap, which makes us doubt the reality of this attempt of resolution. Contrary to the expected nature
of the key as a metaphor, instead of answers we only encounter more questions. Eventually, the plot
does not get resolved but rather leads to more mystery and ambiguity, which brings us to the significant
appearance of the blue key in Mulholland Drive.
Lynch, David, Mulholland Drive, 01:55:36.
As privileged spectators at a distance we follow Betty and Rita’s expectations of this key to ultimately
reveal Rita’s true identity. As it opens up the coordinated blue box, we are suddenly confronted with a
parallel plot which presents a double identity of both characters. Although offering this plot twist, we as
viewers are still confused: does the key open the gate to reality or are we confronted with a dream-in-a-
dream, or rather, a nightmare-in-a-nightmare? Perhaps Lynch and Pirandello through the use of the key
imply—deliberately or indeliberately—a critique on the attempt to reveal such thing as the ultimate truth.
55
Buchler, Justus, Philosophical writings of Peirce, New York: Dover Publications, 1955, p. 102.
56
18
Connecting Lynch and Pirandello’s symbolic use of the key to the “epistemic fallacy”, a concept which
is rooted in Critical Realism57, we can conclude that one might never really know a deeper or single
“truth” but one can only speculate.
In the light of knowing and not knowing, we can turn to a central existential question of us humans of
the modern age: that of our identity. Returning to Bauman’s concept of fluidity as discussed in
“Pirandello, a child of the chaos”, the nature of our malleability does not lie in our own hands but directly
and indirectly in that of society. As Mariani affirms:
The relentless pressure of the group on the individual to conform usually succeeds. Because the
conflict would be unendurable, the individual accepts, however reluctantly, the ideas, ideals, values,
forms and behavior defined and proposed by society. But they constitute a mask, imposed and
accepted under duress.58
Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore is no exception to most of Pirandello’s plays which hold out these
prescriptive molds of society reflected in his preferred use of masks. Remarkably enough, the play’s
characters are not granted a proper name but are simply referred to as Mother, Father, Stepdaughter,
etc. Through this, the Italian playwright seems to accentuate that they are us and we are them. The
masks they are wearing constitute a typology “costruita per arte e fissata ciascuna immutabilmente”
[constructed by art and each one immutably fixed in the expression of its fundamental sentiment] 59. On
one hand they resemble a tribute to Greek theatre, which through similar use of masks introduced its
tragicomedy by stark and striking ways of emotional opposition of the characters. On the other hand we
sense the idea of ridicule coming from the one-dimensional portrayal of these characters. There is the
underlying sense of an attack on the fixedness of our identity, the disapproval of humans living life like
a puppet on a string pulled by society. In Lynch’s films however this critique shines through less, yet he
does show transparency about the fluid nature of ourselves, displaying the effortless interchangeability
of our own constructed individuality through the use of wigs instead of masks. What Chapple notices is
that
Wigs are detachable, portable, transferable, kind of free-floating signifiers that attach multiple
meanings to the wearer. They provide a prosthetic and mobile identity, part disguise, part
performance. Wigs can be styled before being put on and so effect a kind of sculpting of self,
performed at a distance from one’s body.60
In the case of Mulholland Drive, Rita puts on an ash blonde wig which, as Chapple61 implies, also refers
to the typical Hollywood blonde starlet. More explicitly, in Inland Empire a lady on the street praises the
looks of a friend who is wearing a blond wig, saying it makes the woman appear like some famous
Hollywood star. Lynch’s recurring use of the wig can be said to reconnect to the appropriation of different
visual identities, or even beauty ideals. However ambiguously, the mask would either lead to walking in
the footsteps of society’s commonly accepted and praised identities or to a form of agency. We could
connect the latter to Mariani’s assumption that
The individual may refuse the mask, only to create another, personal one, in order to survive, to fight
society with its own weapons, to function in it, or in spite of it, to communicate to others one’s
perception of oneself, to seek in others a confirmation of one’s perception of oneself, of one’s
identity.62
Whereas Lynch’s use of wigs demonstrate the shapeshift capacity of the individual, Pirandello’s masks
do tend to focus more strongly on the shapeshift restraint of humans to perform a certain identity. I have
chosen to refer to the objects covered in this self-contained analysis as objects of contradiction, given
57
Bhaskar, Roy, A Realist Theory of Science, Leeds: Leeds Books, 1975.
58
Mariani, Umberto, Living Masks: The Achievement of Pirandello, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008,
p. 8.
59
60
Chapple, Lynda, In threads and tatters: Costume, identification and female subjectivity in Mulholland Dr.,
Melbourne : Monash University, 2011, p. 332.
61
Chapple, Lynda, In threads and tatters: Costume, identification and female subjectivity in Mulholland Dr., op.
cit., p. 331.
62
Mariani, Umberto, Living Masks: The Achievement of Pirandello, op. cit., p. 8.
19
their paradoxical nature. This conflicting nature of knowledge, the puzzling effect of recognizable objects
and dimensions circulating inside the world of Luigi Pirandello and David Lynch will be scrutinized the
more in the following chapter on estrangement.
2.2. Estrangement of reality
Taking a closer look at the visual idiosyncrasy of Lynch and Pirandello, we could say there is something
beyond beauty and expectations to it—like a big fish as Lynch would say —than meets the eye. We
would need to turn to unbounded imagination, “sous les pavés, la plage” [underneath the cobblestones
the beach], which Laffite63 understands as a key element of surrealism. Father of the movement, André
Bréton, highlights its underlying mechanism which at first perplexing sight might seem rather
paradoxical:
A certain immediate ambiguity contained in the word surrealism, is, in fact, capable of leading one to
suppose that it designates I know not what transcendental attitude, while, on the contrary it
expresses—and always has expressed for us—a desire to deepen the foundations of the real, to
bring about an even clearer and at the same time ever more passionate consciousness of the world
perceived by the senses.64
In the following part on estrangement of reality, Lynch and Pirandello’s revealing of the consciousness
as well as interconnectedness to human liquidity will be revisited through a surrealist lens. Picking up
on optical ostranenie and distorted dimensions, we will gradually collect the surrealism that bleeds
through the works of Lynch and Pirandello and find out where they will clash or where they will collide.
2.2.1. Visual distortion of reality
In 1987, BBC Arena took David Lynch on board as their host of Ruth, Roses and Revolver, a surrealist
cinema documentary borrowing its name from a Man Ray film. Including the works of Cocteau, Vertov,
Dalí and Buñuel, Lynch reflects and reconnects with his own cinematic properties. Lynch speaks out
about his works being commonly associated with surrealism in its visual and philosophical specificity:
If surrealism is the subconscious speaking then I think I identify with it and I am somewhat surrealistic.
I think that films have a surface story but underneath it there should be some things happening that
are abstract. There are things that resonate in areas that words can’t help you find out about and
these are subconscious areas.65
What words cannot describe will be captured on the big screen in Lynch’s playful malleability of faces
that strike us as unrecognizable and often frightening to the core. As Hughes affirms, “Lynch routinely
distorts heads by lens (Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway) and by make up (Eraserhead,
The Elephant Man), indulging his obsession with facial disfigurement as a visual representation of
interior anguish”66. In Mulholland Drive, both Diane and Dan are confronted with the character of a
homeless man whose gruesome face and menacing facial expressions constitute a mask of evil itself.
In Empire Island too, main character Nikki is confronted with a decayed, rotten version of herself,
reflected in the face of a psychotic Polish man called the Phantom. Witnessing these frightful
appearances of facial disfigurement mirrors back the sense of fear, anxiety and crisis that the characters
of Lynch seem to endure at a certain stage. Another distortion of reality manifests itself in Mulholland
Drive through the counterintuitive working of size which trickles into Bobby’s nightmare. Her parents
have turned into the miniature version of themselves and cheerfully follow Bobby who has quickly turned
hysterical by this ominous sight. While a downscaling in size would rationally be considered less scary,
Lynch makes this twist lead to enormous dread. It follows the paradoxical nature of logic inside his
works, as discussed in the previous part on “Objects of contradiction”. Lynch acknowledges that
“Anything that looks human but isn’t, is frightening. It goes back to this tremendous fear of the
63
Laffitte, Maryse, Le surréalisme d’André Breton: Un dépassement du politique, Københavns Universitet:
Romansk Instituts Duplikerede Småskrifter, p. 20.
64
Breton, André, et al., What is surrealism?, London: Faber & Faber, 1936, p. 3.
65
Gallagher, Helen, Ruth, roses and revolvers: David Lynch presents the surrealists, BBC Television, Arena
Special, 1987, 00:05:32.
66
Hughes, David, The Complete Lynch, London: Virgin, 2002, p. 257–263.
20
unknown”67. The familiar appears unfamiliar whilst the provoked sentiment—which before its distortion
remained fairly hidden—strikes the viewer as oddly recognizable.
Lynch, David, Mulholland Drive, 02:20:41.
As for Pirandello working the medium of theatre, elements of distortion through ghastly adaptations of
familiar faces are far from prominent in his works. Yet his plays do explicitly comply with the surrealist
mindset through various meta-comments scripted in Sei Personaggi In Cerca d’Autore. Through the
character of il Padre, Pirandello’s own voice tends to sneak in: “Lei sa bene che la vita è piena d’infinite
assurdità, le quali sfacciatamente non han neppure bisogno di parer verosimili ; perché sono vere” [You
know very well that life is full of infinite absurdities, which shamelessly do not even need to be true;
because they are true] 68. These suggestive lines arrive at the core question of surrealism, implying that
it does not matter whether things appear real or not, because those which might seem most improbable
or surreal respond to reality more creatively and critically at the same time.
2.2.2. Eternal contradiction, the father of all things
Something becomes absurd when we do not expect a situation to turn out a certain way as we are
confronted with it. In fact, absurdities or surrealities can be called an incongruity between reality and
previous expectations that are being taught and socialized to arrange our experiences on a scale from
logical to illogical. Throughout decennia, humankind has always tried and has been encouraged to
understand its surroundings in order to make sense of itself. However, we could question how much we
can ultimately understand and how much of ourselves and our lives stay—disappointingly enough to
some—a mysterious mixture of coincidence and fluidity. As Nietzsche would argue "Mere appearance
is the reflection of eternal contradiction, the father of all things" 69. Being as well as appearing seems to
be in endless contradiction, which brings us back to Pirandello’s dearest affection for paradoxical twists
inside his narratives. In Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore paradox pervades the play through the
reversal of roles: a stubborn counterreaction of Pirandello against expectations and conventions. Il
capocomico [the director] himself engages in the play itself, which is dominated by i personaggi, the six
characters disputing the importance of their individual drama. Gli attori della compagnia, the actors
themselves, fade away to the background. Making the actors a sideshow instead of the main spectacle,
Pirandello not only makes traditional narratological rules of theatre collapse but forefronts existential
thought and criticism of the characters, making the drama appear more real than fictionalized. While a
67
Gallagher, Helen, Ruth, roses and revolvers: David Lynch presents the surrealists, op. cit., 1987, 00:15:05.
68
69
Bennett, Benjamin, Modern Drama and German Classicism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979.
21
breakdown of logical conventions leads to shock and even dismay, the subtle yet striking opposition in
facial expressions organizes confusion too. For Pirandello this shows in the unpredictable character of
the man in the tailcoat in Sogno (Ma Forse No). Sudden switches from seriousness to playfulness as
well as his ”espressioni spesso in violento contrasto con quella di prima” [expressions often in violent
contrast to the former] 70 perceived by the lady in her dream, make it hard to predict his behavior.
In similar fashion Lynch embraces and recognizes the power of paradox. In Inland Empire, a sense of
bipolarity arises through the character of the new neighbor arriving at Nickie’s doorstep. Though insisting
on a friendly gesture, her face reveals a hostile and ever threatening presence. Warning the host for her
upcoming role, she seems to know more than would logically be assumed. As for Mulholland Drive, we
could dive into the surrealist density of the dream sequence taking place in Club Silencio. “No hay
banda”, the man on the stage acclaims, “There is no band, it’s all a recording, a tape. It is an illusion.”
While we clearly hear the trumpet playing, we would notice how the jazzy music continues as the man
stops playing. Hudson ascribes Club Silencio the assets of a “non-place”, “filled with contradictions,
where things both are and are not, where il n’y a pas d’orchestre and yet we hear an orchestra” 71.
Comparable to Magritte’s most celebrated tagline, ceci n’est pas une pipe, what we see is true as our
visual or auditory experiences are real. However, the object or spectacle itself are not. This goes hand
in hand with the stance of surrealism that something can be considered true while not being real. While
Lynch’s films are more likely to affirm this belief, Pirandello questions this paradox by voicing these
thoughts through his characters. As il capocomico admits to one of the characters in Sei Personaggi In
Cerca d’Autore, “Lei è più vero e reale di me!” [He is more true and real than me!]72. Whereas the usual
theatrical performance would pose that the people we are witnessing on the stage are fictional of nature,
Pirandello’s plays seem to claim they are as real as the people sitting on the other side of the fourth
wall—which already has been carefully shattered.
2.2.3. The melting of time
Part of our understanding of reality is the conviction that time passes by in a chronological manner. The
ticking of time has become a silent mechanism to keep generation after generation under pressure to
find a job, get a house, get married, get kids, i.e. pursue the ultimate American Dream. Marx too has
recognized humankind’s submissiveness in this matter: “Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at the
most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything; hour for hour, day
for day”73. By contrast the surrealist movement has found ways to disrupt time as a key element of
obligation to the modern human being. Cutting loose from the so often encouraged, rotational lives
according to the consumerist driven rhythm of time, surrealism strives for a deliberation of this. As
established already in the First Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924:
Le temps vienne où elle (la poésie) décrète la fin de l'argent et rompe seule le pain du ciel pour la
terre! ..Adieu les sélections absurdes, les rêves de gouffre, les rivalités, les longues patiences, la
fuite des saisons, l'ordre artificiel des idées, la rampe du danger, le temps pour tout. 74
[The time will come when it (poetry) declares the end of money and only breaks the bread of the sky
for the earth! ... Farewell to the absurd selections, the dreams of abyss, the rivalries, the long waiting,
the flight of the seasons, the artificial order of ideas, the slope of danger, time for everything.]
Both Lynch and Pirandello’s discussed works depart from the same liberating concept of non-linearity,
which the early surrealists have played around with before. In the 1987 BBC Arena documentary75,
Lynch talks about his admiration for the early surrealists who started out from moving paintings to the
altering of time. We could surely notice the American director partaking in “the “experimentations in time
(e.g., non-chronological arrangements of events, reversed or inversed telling, multiple timelines,
70
71
Hudson, Jennifer A.,"No Hay Banda, and yet We Hear a Band”: David Lynch's Reversal of Coherence in
Mulholland Drive, Chicago: University of Illinois, 2004, p. 23.
72
73
Marx, Karl, The poverty of philosophy, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1920, p. 59.
74
Breton, André, Manifeste du surrealisme, Paris : Le Sagittaire, 1924, p. 28.
75
Gallagher, Helen, Ruth, roses and revolvers: David Lynch presents the surrealists, BBC Television, Arena
Special, 1987, 00:20:22.
22
spatiotemporal fragmentation) arising in cinema of the mid-1990s onwards”76. Inland Empire is home to
the boundless play of time, implementing subtle hints and meta-comments about the confusion of time.
A golden wristwatch makes its appearance, clocks start winding up and nobody seems to remember
what day it is. Yesterday, today and tomorrow flow into each other as their demarcation becomes ever
more liquid and easily trespassable. Contrary to the revealing nature of a plot, time and chronology in
the meta-play The Rabbits also completely disintegrates. Provoking laughter from the audience, irony
of time finally pervades the stage when one of the actors mutters, “It had something to do with the telling
of time”. Whereas time and chronology is often used as a tool to guide the viewer and lead them to their
destination, Lynch has made time deliberately incoherent —similarly to the surrealists—to grant us the
freedom of moving our way through his storyworld more unrestrictedly, to imagine the totality of events
more freely.
Pirandello has been a regular enthusiast hinting at the trap of time in his lifelong oeuvre. Works like Il
Fu Mattia Pascal (1904) or Enrico IV (1921) disclose the continuation of time marked by an impossibility
to escape the routine, the rigor, the rules. The Italian playwright recognizes that these ruling mechanisms
keep the people from leading less controllable and broadly heterogeneous liquid lives:
Pirandello perceived life in Bergsonian terms as continuous flux, that is, a flow of constant change,
movement, and uncertainty. One can neither stop the flow nor control its chaotic disorder, so he
counters its perilous motion with fixed forms. Human roles, illusions, belief systems, and institutions
are all attempts at stabilizing the flow, controlling it, fixing it in knowable and determinate forms, so
that it does not overpower the individual or society.77
An explicit move against the trapping device of time is rendered even more explicit in Sei Personaggi in
Cerca d’Autore, offering a total collapse of chronological time. To the audience it is not clear whether
the play has already started or we are witnessing a mere rehearsal. There is a general confusion about
the play’s beginning and ending, going against the logical sequence of the traditional play. What’s more,
unstable chronology can be linked with the intersection of dream sequences which pervade both
Pirandello’s Sogno (Ma Forse No) and Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Dream worlds, as will be elaborated
on in the following section, can be said to follow their own logic and thus evaporate a less economically
and socially bounded relation to time. Disrupting the working mechanism of time which we are grown
used to in the real world, this patch of dreamwork in Pirandello’s Sogno (Ma Forse No) tricks reader and
protagonist alike. In Mulholland Drive too we witness the discontinuity of chronology, letting the dream
precede and seep through the (hypothesized) reality. We could come to say that in the same manner of
Dalí’s iconic deformed clocks in the painting The Persistence of Memory, Lynch and Pirandello’s works
through their melting of time adhere to “a surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed
cosmic order"78.
2.3. Parallel worlds and metanarratives
2.3.1. Metafiction as a mirror
When we turn to the art of metafiction, a big chunk of its power lies in the critical and existentially driven
self-reflexivity. From Shakespeare’s mind-boggling metatheatrical piece The Tempest (1623) to Van
Gogh’s Self-Portrait as a Painter (1888), to an existential reflection about filmmaking in Fellini’s 8 e ½
(1963), artists throughout the centuries have shown their fondness to the magic of meta. Whereas we
witness the scenes being written, painted and shot, we grow conscious of the neatly defined compilation
of elements that portray another reality. The spectacle as a —not mere, yet subtle—behind-the-scenes
deconstructs the artistic product as pure fictionality and eliminates the distance between author and
spectator. This move closer subtly urges us to become aware of art imitating life. In addition to this,
meta-work can function as a mirror for the author to question what it means to be a painter, a writer, a
theatre maker. In Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore, Pirandello shows the rehearsal of a play, exploiting
the device of metatheatricality to its absolute maximum. He allows the actors to rebel against the usual
way of direction of the play, letting their voices be heard and to a certain extent override the director’s
authority. Revolutionary for his time, Pirandello as Santeremo concludes, “moved further and further
76
Willemsen, Steven, and Kiss, Miklós, Last Year at Mulholland Drive: Ambiguous Framings and Framing
Ambiguities, Groningen: University of Groningen, 2019, p. 131.
77
Bassanese, Fiora A., Understanding Luigi Pirandello, op. cit., p. 84.
78
Ades, Dawn, Dalí, London: Thames and Hudson, 1982.
23
away from the major theatrical poetics of the second part of the nineteenth century, naturalism and
symbolism”79. Moreover, the Italian playwright opts for the indispensable use of metatheatricality to
critically reflect upon the relationship between performance–script, performance–director, performance–
actor and eventually performance–audience. Santeremo continues:
At the beginning of the play, with the director's insistence of representing the text ad litteram on the
stage, Pirandello is mimicking the attitude the Naturalists had towards the mise en scène of a written
text. By introducing the six Characters onto the stage, he maps a new possibility for the mise en
scène which can no longer be tyrannized neither by the author's text nor by the actors' techniques.80
Making the solid ground of the conventional stage tremble, naturally this has provoked both outrage and
admiration. The latter brings us to Lynch, which has regularly been found to arouse a similar effect.
Inland Empire brings metafiction to the stage—in its most literal sense—with the Alice in dystopian
wonderland-esque interlude of The Rabbits.
Shifting to a different set of visual aesthetics including a distanced sitcom-like camera perspective and
anthropomorphic rabbits mumbling their incongruent thoughts, Lynch knows well how to evoke feelings
of the uncanny. Rader81 talks about “collage construction” or the assemblage of incoherent bits of film
which would emphasize the disjunction between images—a critical stance towards the ‘natural’ linkage
between images in classical Hollywood cinema. Similar to Pirandello, by implementing the
metatheatrical performance of The Rabbits, Lynch opposes the artistic medium as a way of transferring
reality onto the screen in an unadulterated and coherent way. Another interpretation of Lynch’s use of
metatheatre, is that of a tool for self-reflection. While a Polish woman watches most part of Inland Empire
on television, we find ourselves in the same position looking at the plot evolving with shock, impotence
and even a sense of grief. Her emotional outburst leads to catharsis, one we strangely identify with.
Turning to Hegel’s “speculative identity”, we become aware of our own fears or desires through fictional
others. Lastly, by drawing us nearer to the inner workings of a film, introducing the film-within-a-film,
Lynch enables us to detect the bad and the ugly festering inside the world of Hollywood. In between the
many metanarratives evolving in Inland Empire, that of main character Nicki’s experience in the
production process exposes Hollywood as a magnetic yet morally corrupt place. In Mulholland Drive the
darker side of the scene creeps into the story of Betty who desperately tries to make it as an actress.
79
Santeramo, Donato, Pirandello's meta-theatrical plays beyond the trilogy, op. cit., p. 178.
80
Ibidem, p. 39.
81
Rahder, Jan Bert, The aesthetic potential of self-reflective film: artificiality and alienation in Inland Empire,
Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit, 2016, p. 6.
24
Lynch however makes sure to underline that when the city of angels shines too bright, its light starts
burning the dreamers’ eyes.
2.3.2. In between the dreamers dream
In Lynch’s cinematic universe, susceptible to deformed faces and puzzling phrases, there appears yet
to be a clear delineation of parallel worlds. As McGowan82 notices, Lynch turns to radical differences in
form within each film to separate distinct worlds of desire and fantasy. Inspired by the 1939 classic The
Wizard of Oz, Lynch applies the aesthetic structure of separating his storyworlds by different use of
colors and visual tactics. McGowan notices how “in Mulholland Drive, the fantasmatic world is a coherent
place of bright and vivid colors, while the world of desire is dark and fragmentary”83. The first part, i.e.
the fantasmatic part of the plot, concerns a dream which follows a fairly logical sequence of a car
accident, the hunt after a stranded lady’s identity and innocent Betty’s unfolding desires of loving
(Diane/Rita) and to be loved (as an accomplished Hollywood actress). Later on we assume reality
through the unlocking of a blue box, which makes the previous set of dream logic tumble and fall into a
visually and verbally more chaotic world. Lynch touches upon extreme situations that lie within normalcy,
depicting the real world as more estranged and absurd than the dream world we encounter. Conscious
reality becomes a riddle or an unsolved enigma, whereas the unconscious mind of the dream —closely
related to transcendental meditation—appears unmystified. Besides the scenes which overtly talk about
a dream, its omnipresence is gathered through metacomments and repetition of the round and round.
The circles and clockwork, the centrality of a screwdriver in Inland Empire all hint at the functioning of
karma84, as well as the circular unfolding of the dream. While the texture of Lynch’s films and the
structure of dreams intersect at the use of narrative loops, another commonality is that of cinematic
montage following what Freud calls “dream-work”. This means we crawl into an imagined storyworld
which passes through time non-chronologically but follows the logic of a story through patches of
association. Precisely its visually associative nature applies to Lynch which turns to dream-work by
montage rhyme, involving a certain playfulness and freedom of time as discussed in the previous bit on
surrealism.
The tools of Pirandello’s theatre lend themselves less to the visual play of dream-work, as they are not
able to match up with the pace of cinema, the speedy montage shifting between scenes and images
back and forth, forth and back. When we turn to his discussed works, we could say that boundaries
between two storyworlds are kept less visually distinctive and develop more gradually compared to
Lynch. In Sogno (Ma Forse No), Pirandello subtly underlines the visual specificity of the dream through
aspects of light, creating a hazy oneiric atmosphere. According to Guercio, “Il suo intento non è quello
di descrivere ‘naturalisticamente’ i sogni dei suoi personaggi, ma di approdare ai luoghi del subliminale
per rivelare i significati ‘ulteriori’ delle vere essenze umane” [His intent is not to describe 'naturalistically'
the dreams of his characters, but to land in the places of the subliminal to reveal the 'further' meanings
of true human essences] 85. Instead of carving separate spaces of the imagination in the tradition of
Lynch, Pirandello offers parallel realities which rather intertwine and overlap. For Sei Personaggi In
Cerca d’Autore this shows in the converging of the first (supposedly real) storyworld, namely that of the
rehearsal of the play, and the second, fictional one, concerning the theatrical performance. Making the
actors question the world they are placed in and the character of fictionality/reality they are ascribed to,
Pirandello breaks away from a certain barrier between these two and instead views them as
interconnected. As Guercio puts it, he offers “uno spazio-tempo vitale i cui convenuti non ritrovano le
separazioni tradizionali tra il mondo della scena (quindi della finzione creativa) e quello della platea
(della realtà umana)” [a vital space-time whose participants do not find the traditional separations
between the world of theatre (therefore of creative fiction) and that of the performance (of human reality)]
86. The same thing goes for Sogno (Ma Forse No). Through transcendence between dream and reality,
Pirandello affirms his critical point of view towards a presupposed fictionality of the world of dreams and
authenticity of reality.
82
83
McGowan, Todd, Lost on Mulholland Drive: Navigating David Lynch's Panegyric to Hollywood, Texas: The
University of Texas Press, 2004, p. 68.
84
Lynch, David and McKenna, Kristine, Room to Dream, op. cit., p. 140.
85
Guercio, Giancarlo, Fenomenologia dell'inconscio: il sogno come limen nella poetica di Luigi Pirandello,
Salerno: Università degli studi di Salerno, 2017, abstract.
86
Ibidem.
25
2.3.3. Memory of the past or predicament
In Sogno (Ma Forse No), we as readers and the lady, most importantly, enter a parallel reality which introduces
a steady portion of new information concerning the struggle of love, fear of death and material desire. A logical
categorization would be to either associate these events in the past as a memory or a predicament for the
future. The sequence of the young lady talking to the man in the tailcoat makes up for the so-assumed present
of the story. Eventually he will be the one to break with these realities by opening the window. By removal of
an invisible wall in between two worlds, this act can readily be interpreted as a symbolic act of temporal
transgression: “Questa finestra di sogno sarà difatti aperta, più tardi, dall’uomo che verrà” [This window of
dreaming will indeed be opened, later on, by the man to come]87.The idea of a predicament has its roots in the
psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams, which accentuates their capability of bringing about new information
which before has been hidden to the surface. Santeramo points out how in previous stories such as La Realtà
del Sogno (1914), “Pirandello clearly took a stance in favor of dreams' ability to reveal intimate and
unspeakable desires. Dreams, the short story suggests, ultimately unveil the true identity of humankind through
an epiphany”88. Through these dream revelations, unconscious facts about the self will start working either as
a positive trigger or a warning for the future actions being taken by the individual. Countering the interpretation
of a dream, on the other hand in Sogno (Ma Forse No), bits of these oneiric events physically seep into the
present, which makes its interpretation as a memory of the past gain in probability. Both of these interpretations
can be said to take place in the array of visual symbols that Pirandello enforces in the structure of the play (cf.
Motives and Meanings). Laying in the sofa, the lady asleep cannot seem to distinguish between a window or
a mirror, reality or a dream—that is, a reflection of reality:
E anche lo specchio per ora sembra piuttosto una finestra. La ragione di quest'inganno è semplice:
nello specchio si riflette la finestra che gli sta di rimpetto, nella parete sinistra: e naturalmente, per
la giovane signora che sogna, la finestra è lì dov’è lo specchio che la riflette.89
[And even the mirror now looks more like a window. The reason for this deception is simple: in the
mirror is reflected the window which faces it, on the left wall: and naturally, for the young lady asleep,
the window is there where the mirror reflects it.]
As Santeremo points out “the sites of creation of truth have become interchangeable and yet undistinguishable
in a play of multiple reflections”90.Our personal memories and memories of a dream are never clear cut and
can never be as lucid or pure as we want them to be, which links back to the “epistemic fallacy” traceable in
the title of the play itself. I’m Dreaming (But Maybe Not) reaffirms the ambiguity of knowledge, the conviction
of Pirandello not to assume a single truth or search for a means of understanding.
We could argue for Pirandello that the deliberate difficulty of distinguishing between memory or a dream lies
in the fact that one or the other is not necessarily granted a bigger assumption of reality. Given that Lynch in
the same manner does not force the spectator to stick to the interpretation of either a dream or memory, we
are inclined to believe both are equally valuable. In Lynch’s works we do notice an additional reason for this
foggy separation between memory or dream: personal trauma and the loss of memory. One of the most
common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder—that of forgetting—pervades the temporally confused
story of Mulholland Drive when the shocking experience of a car incident causes Rita’s loss of memory. This
turn of events however is part of the supposed dream sequence of Diane who, on the other hand, has forcefully
tried to subdue her own inclinedness to dark and twisted acts out of love, insecurities and jealousy. McGowan
recognizes the added value of Lynch’ imaginary parallel worlds as a coping mechanism for trauma: “Fantasy
provides a way of staging an encounter with trauma and an authentic experience of loss that would be
impossible without it”91. In other words, the imagined world, whether this constitutes a dream or a memory —
which is in many ways deceitful and likewise adulterated by imagination—provides a confrontation. Precisely
this can be said to apply to both Pirandello and Lynch as they make out to believe we can ultimately try to
forget our deepest most unwelcome wishes and fears, yet we cannot protect ourselves to escape our dreams
where we face these rejected feelings and thoughts in an unbounded and unprotected atmosphere.
87
88
89
Pirandello, Luigi, Sogno (Ma Forse No), op. cit., p. 89.
90
91
McGowan, Todd, Lost on Mulholland Drive: Navigating David Lynch's Panegyric to Hollywood, op. cit., p. 68.
26
Conclusion
Having touched upon the physical as well as metaphysical in the previous scrutiny of the oeuvre of Lynch and
Pirandello, we can come to a number of conclusions. Carefully spinning together these findings, the final
conclusion of my thesis will set the seal on creating a bigger web of understanding. Inevitably, there will be
certain hiatus left open for other interpretations and insights of encompassing fields of study which this thesis
was not able to fully elaborate on.
The first chapter “Motives and meanings” has tackled the recurrence of striking dimensions and objects in a
gradual manner. Taking our distance at first to gather the bigger picture, dimensions like that of light and space
quickly morphed into the main character of the stage and the big screen. Either as villains or as heroes, they
have helped stir the plot for David Lynch and Luigi Pirandello. In Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore lightness
and light through the use of humour provides an answer to the tense and serious. This paradoxical pattern has
revealed the bottom line of Pirandello’s own established “l’umorismo”. Besides the centrality of light as a
mediation of darkness and heaviness, Lynch in Mulholland Drive twists its presence into a shadow-show of
humankind’s dual nature: that of evil and good. Lastly, both authors have turned light into an omen for the
awakening consciousness. Differently from Lynch, a fervent transcendental meditation enthusiast, Pirandello,
has not expanded on this matter related to his personal life. Nonetheless he did turn to the idea of
consciousness as a vital characteristic to his world of dreams. Floating in between different states of being
aware and being awake, most of the thinking—which is in many ways drawn more attention to than the
actions—takes place in the spatial dimension of the room. Its salience is fairly impossible to ignore, given that
the room’s buzzing presence is frequently highlighted by Lynch’s specific choice of camera placement and
Pirandello’s neatly crafted descriptions. We could even go on and say that, in a way, the elephant in the room
appears to be the room itself. Similar to a silent form of institutional oppression, the room exudes authority
over the people who find themselves in there. Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore as well as Inland Empire
capture the room’s potency of restraint in relation to the characters. Symbolically for the headspace, the room
can likewise demonstrate the immobility of the actors and that of our own lives and roles being performed in
our modern day society. Lastly, both Lynch and Pirandello work around the concept of dissolving borders. By
the very attention which goes out to the room—and the bedroom especially— they clearly capitalize on
humankind’s voyeurism while keeping the spectator safely distanced through “passionate detachment”.
Moving closer and closer now, the consecutive part on motives and meanings has picked up on three elements
of semiotic value: the key, the mask and the wig. Contrary to expectations, emblematic use of the key in Sogno
(Ma Forse No) as well as Mulholland Drive do not comply with the solving of mystery or the providing of any
answers. Its paradoxical nature arrives at the principle of “epistemic fallacy”, which does not assume it is in
our nature or capacity to find a single truth. Secondly, the mask appears as a mutually valuable object of
contradiction in Sei Personaggi In Cerca d’Autore to reflect upon our constructed nature, our curated faces
and expressions taught and encouraged throughout socialization. Lynch’ counterpart of wigs underlines our
fluid nature and shapeshift capacity in stark opposition to Pirandello, who does not seem to believe we as
humans are as free to perform our own identities.
Whereas a mixture of elements up until a certain extent appears to be recognizable in the excerpt on motives
and meanings, the following chapter on estrangement of reality has set its sights on turning the estranged and
deconstructed into something familiar again. Surrealism bleeds into Lynch’ Inland Empire through the
frightening distortion of faces which are made to reflect interior anguish. As for Pirandello, adherence to the
movement shows in distinctively more verbal ways through the various metacomments infused in his
characters in Sei Personaggi In Cerca d’Autore. Strikingly, the eternal contradiction of being and appearing
seems to find its way to the stage in Mulholland Drive and most explicitly in Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore.
This surrealist conviction brings back the idea of truth within fantasy and the imagined, and strongly pleads for
a revalidation of this. Time deconstructed lastly intersects the works of Lynch and Pirandello, who depart from
the same liberating concept of non-linearity. Surrealistically stirred, their works have marked the irony of time
by going against the stream of logical sequence. Whilst plot, time and chronology disintegrate, four of their
discussed works can be said to precisely exude a less economically and socially bounded relationship to time.
By this, Lynch and Pirandello both offer the possibility for the reader and the spectator to make their own
temporal and logical interpretations about the witnessed world.
Ultimately, after familiarization with the bizarre by investigating the works of Pirandello and Lynch through a
surrealist loupe, the last chapter on parallel worlds and metanarratives has aimed at catching a glimpse of self-
reflectivity and social critique hidden underneath the layers. Through the use of metafiction, the capita selecta
of Lynch and Pirandello opened up the possibility of deconstructing the operating mechanisms behind theatre
and film from a bird’s eye perspective. The meta-reflective world created by Pirandello also concerns the reality
27
of the actors, as his characters in Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore seem to be more closely related to the
psychologist writer’s immediate reflections instead of distant fictional beings. Demonstrating art imitating life,
we are growing more aware of its constructed nature—which is why Lynch takes on this opportunity to expose
the magnetic yet morally corrupt place of Hollywood. In short, both authors through the use of metafiction have
seemed to counter the naturalist way of working the medium which tried to transfer reality into the arts in an
unadulterated and more coherent way. By tackling several storyworlds at the same time, we as spectators are
uniquely privileged to get an insight to not just one but multiple perspectives to the plot. Whereas Lynch and
Pirandello often imply two sides to the coin, the conscious and the subconscious side to the story, they do
arrange this duality in a distinct manner. Lynch’ Mulholland Drive par excellence applies different strokes of
aesthetic structure to delineate separate storyworlds. Pirandello’s Sogno (Ma Forse No), on the other hand,
has a liking for a more gradual development from one world into the other. These boundaries are kept less
visually distinctive, given that Pirandello critically opposes the presupposed authenticity of reality and inferior
fictionality of the world of dreams. Whereas Lynch does not verbalize this belief as rigidly, his works do entail
a lot of freedom of interpretation about parallel worlds and their suitable nature. Finishing off the discussion
about these imaginary spheres deconstructing reality, a curious question about the character of these fictional
worlds would be whether they imply a memory or a dream. As for Pirandello, ambivalence of the question
congeals into the symbolic opposition of a mirror / window in Sogno (Ma Forse No). Giving both the option of
a mirror (which stands for the dream) or a window reflected in the mirror (which hints at the memory), Pirandello
returns to the question of ambiguous knowledge. The same thing goes for Lynch who creates a possible maze
of interpretations in Mulholland Drive. Afflicted with personal trauma, his characters show great difficulty in
telling memory and present reality, dream and memory apart.
All in all, tackling the selected works of Lynch and Pirandello in relation to each other, it has been an intriguing
journey to witness the bizarre and the visually triggering unfolding and growing in a broad spectrum of
meanings and associations. Recognizing the early illuminating approach of Pirandello’s theatre in connection
to Lynch has helped to gain understanding of his cinema from a perspective which is not necessarily limited
to the exploration of one single visual specificity. Frankly, I would have wished time and space allowed—in the
same trend of Lynch’ and Pirandello’s borderless imaginary worlds— so both would have been able to have a
drink with each other to discuss the ultimate unknown, and to make inside jokes about the strange ways of the
modern individual.
28
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32

Making Sense of The Absurd - A Comparative Study of The Works of David Lynch and Luigi Pirandello

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A Comparative Study of the Works of David Lynch

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Chiara Nannicini

Academic year: 2020 – 2021

1. Lynch and Pirandello, a matrix of their creative production

1.1. Liquid Modernity

1.1.1. Luigi Pirandello, a child of the Chaos

1.1.2. New age nostalgia: On David Lynch and postmodernity

1.2. Poetic influence

1.2.1. Luigi Pirandello’s poetic manifesto

1.2.2. David Lynch, a neo surrealist dreamer

1.3. Masters of the medium

1.3.1. Pirandello, a conflicted theatre maker

1.3.2. Behind the making of label Lynch

Introduction to the capita selecta and cyberspaces

2. Show, don’t tell: A visual exploration of meaning

2.1. Motives and meanings

2.1.1. For the lack and love of light

2.1.2. The room, a spatial odyssey

2.1.3. Objects of contradiction

2.2. Estrangement of reality

2.2.1. Visual distortion of reality

2.2.2. Eternal contradiction, the father of all things

2.2.3. The melting of time

2.3. Parallel worlds and metanarratives

2.3.1. Metafiction as a mirror

2.3.2. In between the dreamers dream

2.3.3. Memory of the past or predicament

1.1.1. Luigi Pirandello, a child of the Chaos

A me la coscienza moderna dà l’immagine di un sogno angoscioso attraversato da rapide larve or tristi or

1.1.2. New age nostalgia: On David Lynch and postmodernity

1.2. Poetic influence

1.2.1. Luigi Pirandello’s poetic manifesto

1.2.2. David Lynch, a neo surrealist dreamer

1.3. Masters of the medium

1.3.1. Pirandello, a conflicted theatre maker

1.3.2. Behind the making of label Lynch

2.1.1. For the lack and love of light

Lynch, David, Inland Empire, 01:28:57.

2.1.2. The room, a spatial odyssey

Lynch, David, Inland Empire, 01:29:15.

2.1.3. Objects of contradiction

Lynch, David, Mulholland Drive, 01:55:36.

2.2. Estrangement of reality

2.2.1. Visual distortion of reality

Lynch, David, Mulholland Drive, 02:20:41.

2.2.2. Eternal contradiction, the father of all things

2.2.3. The melting of time

2.3. Parallel worlds and metanarratives

2.3.1. Metafiction as a mirror

Lynch, David, Inland Empire, 01:32:45.

2.3.2. In between the dreamers dream

Pirandello, Luigi. Come tu mi vuoi. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1930.

Pirandello, Luigi. La realtà del sogno. Roma: Noi e il mondo, 1914.

Pirandello, Luigi. L’umorismo. Lanciano: Rocco Carabba, 1908.

Pirandello, Luigi. Novelle per un anno. Firenze: Enrico Bemporad, 1922.

Pirandello, Luigi. Sogno (Ma Forse No). Milano: La Lettura, 1929.

Pirandello, Luigi. Uno, Nessuno, Centomila. Firenze: R. Bemporad, 1926.

Argenteri, Letizia. “Pirandello and Fascism”. Mediterranean Studies, 6 (1996): 129–136.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.

Bhaskar, Roy. A Realist Theory of Science. Leeds: Leeds Books, 1975.

Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Hogarth Press, 1955, 218-256.

Giudice, Gaspare. Luigi Pirandello. Milano: UTET, 1963.