Transcript Slide 1

ENGL 6310/7310
Popular Culture
Studies
Fall 2011
PH 300
M 240-540
Dr. David Lavery
Twin Peaks
“She’s dead, wrapped in
plastic.”
Twin Peaks
Cooper’s Dream
The famous dream sequence in
Episode 2 of Season 1
Paratext:
“Throughout this book, then, while I will occasionally use
the above terms as context deems appropriate, I will
more frequently refer to paratexts and to paratextuality. I
take these terms from Gerard Genette, who first used
them to discuss the variety of materials that surround a
literary text. A fuller definition of these terms will be
offered in chapter 1, but my attraction to them stems from
the meaning of the prefix "para-," defined by the OED
both as "beside, adjacent to," and "beyond or distinct
from, but analogous to." A "paratext" is both "distinct
from" and alike—or, I will argue, intrinsically part of—the
text. The book's thesis is that paratexts are not simply
add-ons, spinoffs, and also-rans: they create texts, they
manage them, and they fill them with many of the
meanings that we associate with them. Just as we ask
paramedics to save lives rather than leave the job to
others, and just as a parasite feeds off, lives in, and can
affect the running of its host's body, a paratext
constructs, lives in, and can affect the running of the text.
(6)
Lavery Paratexts
Forthcoming:
Books on Joss Whedon, TV
Finales, The Sopranos,
Supernatural, Television
Art (a text book), TV
Auteurs
Television Paratexts Contributed To
Dr. David Lavery
Founding Co-Editor, Co-Editor (2001- )
Founding Co-Editor
Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks
Edited by David Lavery
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: "The Semiotics of Cobbler: Twin Peaks' Interpretive Community
| David Lavery
Bad Ideas: The Art and Politics of Twin Peaks | Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Peaks and Valleys of Serial Creativity: What Happened to/on Twin Peaks
| Marc Dolan
"Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?" alt.tv.twinpeaks, the
Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery | Henry Jenkins
Family Romance, Family Violence, and the Fantastic in Twin Peaks | Diane
Stevenson
"Disturbing the Guests with This Racket": Music and Twin Peaks | Kathryn
Kalinak
The Canonization of Laura Palmer | Christy Desmet
Lynching Women: A Feminist Reading of Twin Peaks | Diana Hume George
Double Talk in Twin Peaks | Alice Kuzniar
Infinite Games: the Derationalization of Detection in Twin Peaks | Angela
Hague
Desire Under the Douglas Firs: Entering the Body of Reality in Twin Peaks |
Martha Nochimson
The Dis-order of Things in Twin Peaks | J. P. Telotte
Postmodernism and Television: Speaking of Twin Peaks | Jimmie L. Reeves,
et al
Appendix A: Directors and Writers
Appendix B: Cast List
Appendix C: Abbreviations
Appendix D: A Twin Peaks Calendar
Appendix E: Twin Peaks Scene Breakdown
Bibliography
Henry Jenkins (1958). Comparative media
theorist.
"Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel
Stupid?" alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author,
and Viewer Mastery | Henry Jenkins
“The series that will
change TV.”
Rodman, Warren. "The Series that Will Change TV."
Connoisseur, September 1989: 139-44.
Watch Promos
Mark Frost
Mark Frost
David Lynch
1977
1980
1984
1990
1986
1996
2001
1999
2006
Twin Peaks Generic Allegiances:
•Frost once described Twin Peaks as "a moody, dark
soap opera murder-mystery, set in a fictional town in
the Northwest, with an ensemble cast and an edge”
•A mystery (“Who killed Laura Palmer?” drove the story
for its entire first season and nine episodes into the
second)
•A soap opera (it even contained within it another soap
opera, Invitation to Love
•an FBI drama (Malach)
•a detective story (Hague, Nickerson)
•a sensation novel (Huskey)
•a western (complete with a “Doc” right out of
Gunsmoke and a Sheriff in a cowboy hat)
•a coffee commercial (Reeves, et al)
Peaks Paratexts
Ancillary Texts /
Commodity Intertexts
Peaks Paratexts
The Secret Diary of
Laura Palmer, written
by Lynch’s daughter
Jennifer
Peaks Paratexts
The Autobiography of
F.B.I. Special Agent
Dale Cooper: My Life.
My Tapes
Peaks Paratexts
Diane: The Twin Peaks
Tapes of Agent
Cooper
Peaks Paratexts
Welcome to Twin Peaks:
Access Guide to the
Town
Peaks Paratexts
Wrapped in Plastic, a
Twin Peaks fanzine
Major Characters
Annie Blackburne (Heather Graham)
Deputy Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz)
Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook)
Major Garland Briggs (Don Davis)
Denis(e) Bryson (David Duchovnay)
Gordon Cole (David Lynch)
Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)
Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh)
Laura Palmer, Maddy Ferguson (Sheryl
Lee)
Philip Gerard (One-armed Man (Al Strobel)
Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn-Boyle)
Dr. William Hayward (Warren Frost)
Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn)
Ben Horne (Richard Beymer)
Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly)
James Hurley (James Marshall)
Big Ed Hurley (Everett McGill)
Nadine Hurley (Wendy Robie)
Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn)
Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton)
Hank Jennings (Chris Mulkey)
Leo Johnson (Eric Da Re)
Shelley Johnson (Madchen Amick)
The Log Lady (Catherine Coulson)
Man from Another Place (Michael J.
Anderson)
Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie)
Pete Martell (Jack Nance)
Lucy Moran (Kimmy Robertson)
Josie Packard (Joan Chen)
Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee)
Leland Palmer (Ray Wise)
Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie)
Albert Rosenfeld (Miguel Ferrer)
Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael
Ontkean)
“Never before, in the history of
television, had a program inspired so
many millions of people to debate and
analyze it deeply and excitedly for so
prolonged a period. . . . Twin Peaks
generated the kinds of annotated
scrutiny usually associated with
scholarly journals and literary
monographs. . . .”
David Bianculli, Teleliteracy
At 10:01 p.m. Thursday, April 19, the telephone
started like a tribal drum. Everybody in the
continental United States--including my children,
my editors, my enemies--wanted to know about
the dwarf. What did the dwarf mean? Why was
he talking backwards?
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Madison,
Wisconsin, and in Berkeley, California, there are
Twin Peaks-watching parties every Thursday
night, after which . . . Deconstruction. About the
dwarf: Like, wow. Bunuel was mentioned, and
Cocteau, and Fellini.
John Leonard, "The Quirky Allure of Twin Peaks"
“I have never been able to sit through a
whole episode of Twin Peaks. It's a
postmodern soap opera, which means
that every time someone on screen eats
a piece of apple pie, you can hear a
thousand students start typing their
doctoral dissertations on ‘Twin Peaks:
David Lynch and the Semiotics of
Cobbler.’”
Libby Gelman-Waxner, Premiere
magazine
Fandom. Twin Peaks was one of the first television
series to inspire active fan participation and heavy
investment in a current series. At water coolers around
the nation and on alt.tv.twinpeaks and elsewhere, avid
followers of the show speculated endlessly about the
significance of minute visual details (often captured and
rewatched on their VCRs) and narrative developments
in the series (Jenkins). Interest in the series was not
limited to the United States: Twin Peaks was a cultural
phenomenon in the UK, in Europe, and, especially in
Japan. Even after the show’s cancellation, Japanese
flocked to the Pacific Northwest to tour the “actual”
sites of the series: the Double R Cafe, the Great
Northern Hotel, the location where Laura Palmer’s body
was found, “dead, wrapped in plastic.”
Twin Peaks DNA: “dreamy, cinematic
(rather than televisual) style, slow pacing,
extreme violence, emotional excess, disturbing
sexuality, strung-out narrative, accentuation of
subtext, controversial subject matter, lush
scoring, uncanny dream sequences, the demand
for complete attention it placed upon television
viewers accustomed to distraction, its reliance
on “a particular kind of irony where the very
macabre and the very mundane combine in such
a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual
containment in the latter” (David Foster Wallace)
Lynchian. David Foster Wallace on Lynch’s style
as a filmmaker:
•“both extremely personal and extremely
remote”
•“the absence of linearity and narrative logic”
•“the heavy multivalence of the symbolism”
•“the glazed opacity of the characters’ faces”
•“the weird ponderous quality of the dialogue”
•“the regular deployment of grotesques as
figurants”
•“the precise, painterly way scenes are staged
and lit”
•“the overlush, possibly voyeuristic way that
violence, deviance, and general hideousness are
depicted”
Legacy. Though Twin Peaks did not, as predicted, radically
alter television, it did have a lasting influence. Northern
Exposure (1990-1995), Picket Fences (1992-1996) and The
X-Files (1993-2002)—whose star David Duchovny played a
transvestite Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Twin
Peaks—both colonized television territory Twin Peaks had
opened up, as did, less successfully, such flops as Eerie,
Indiana (1991), American Gothic (1995-96), Murder One
(1995-97), and Wolf Lake (2001). Though post-Twin Peaks
television has often seemed designed for a viewership with
Attention Deficit Disorder (Peyton), some of the medium’s
most important contemporary creators now think of the series
as a television touchstone: both Joss Whedon (Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, Angel) and David Chase (The Sopranos)
speak of Twin Peaks in hushed tones. And the name itself has
become part of the language: to evoke “Twin Peaks” in
relation to any narrative or any sequence of events is to label
it as strange, inexplicable, unique.
Deny All Knowledge: Reading The X-Files
Edited by David Lavery, Angela Hague, Marla Cartwright (Middle Tennessee State University)
The Television Series, Edited by Robert Thompson
Syracuse University Press, 1996
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contributors ix
David Lavery, Angela Hague, Marla Cartwright, Introduction. Generation X: The X-Files
and the Cultural Moment (1)
Jimmie L. Reeves (Texas Tech University), Mark C. Rodgers, and Michael Epstein,
University of Michigan), Re-Writing Popularity: The Cult Files (22)
Susan J. Clerc (Bowling Green State University), DDEB, GATB, MPPB, and Ratboy: The XFiles’ Media Fandom, Online and Off (36)
Allison Graham (University of Memphis), “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?”:
Conspiracy Theory and The X-Files (52)
Michele Malach (Fort Lewis College), “I Want to Believe” in the FBI: The X-Files as an FBI
Drama (63)
Leslie Jones, “Last Week We Had an Omen”: The Mythological X-Files (77)
Rhonda Wilcox (Gordon College) and J. P. Williams (Georgia Southern), “What to You
Think?” The X-Files, Liminality, and Gender Pleasure (99)
Lisa Parks (University of Wisconsin), Special Agent or Monstrosity?: Finding the Feminine
in The X-Files (121)
Alec McHoul (Murdoch University, Australia), How to Talk the Unknown into Existence: An
Exercise in X-Filology (135)
Linda Badley (Middle Tennessee State University), The Rebirth of the Clinic: The Body as
Alien in The X-Files (148)
Elizabeth B. Kubek (Syracuse University), “You Only Expose Your Father”: The Imaginary,
Voyeurism, and the Symbolic Order in The X-Files (168)
Episode Summary (207)
Works Cited (211)
Index (221)
Trust No One: Reading
The X-Files
Edited by David Lavery, Angela
Hague, Marla Cartwright (Middle
Tennessee State University)
The Television Series, Edited by
Robert Thompson
Syracuse University Press, 1996
With a preface by Chris
Carter and David
Duchovny [Not]
The degree to which The X-Files became in the last decade part of
our cultural vocabulary can be demonstrated by an exchange from a
first season episode of the WB series Angel in which Kendrick, an
obviously sexist male detective, hassles female detective Kate
Lockley (Elizabeth Rohm), who has come to believe in the reality of
vampires. The following dialogue ensues:
Kendrick: "Come on, Kate. Everybody knows you've gone
all Scully. Anytime one of these weird cases crosses
anyone's desk you're always there. What's going on with
you?"
Kate: "Scully is the skeptic."
Kendrick: "Huh?"
Kate: "Mulder is the believer. Scully is the skeptic."
Kendrick scratches his head: "Scully is the chick, right?"
Kate: "Yes. But she's not the one that wants to believe."
The Cast
Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)
Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson)
Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish)
Agent John Doggett (Robert Patrick)
Associate Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi)
Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin)
Agent Diane Fowley (Mimi Rogers)
Alex Krychek (Nicholas Lea)
The Lone Gunmen (Dean Haglund, Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood)
X (Steven Williams)
C. G. B. Spender/The Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis)
The Well-Manicured Man (John Neville)
Chris Carter
Creator of
The X-Files
John Mack’s Abduction
“I found it fascinating to hear this,” Carter said.
“This man [Dr. John Mack of Harvard] in the
highest levels of academia and a scientist using
rigorous scientific methods had come up with
something quite astounding. So I thought that
was a wonderful entry into explorations of the
paranormal. And so I came up with Mulder and
Scully, the FBI, and this fictional investigative
unit called the X-Files.
from Paula Vitaris, “X-Files: Filming the Fox
Show That Has Become a Horror and Science
Fiction Sensation”
“The series that will
change TV.”
Rodman, Warren. "The Series that Will Change TV."
Connoisseur, September 1989: 139-44.
The Watergate Hearings, 1973
The X-Files’ Multiple Generic
Allegiances. Paula Vitaris has noted
that XF was “akin to one of its own
mutant characters, with its own eclectic
genetic heritage,” “part police
procedural, part suspense thriller, part
action adventure, part medical drama,
part science fiction and part horror”).
XF, James Wolcott observes more
simply, is actually “television’s first
otherworldly procedural (98).
Fandom. Devoted fans (known as ‘X-Philes’) turned
their obsession with the series into inspired Websites
that helped newcomers to the series to get caught up
and acclimate themselves to the X-Files universe.
One ambitious, meticulous X-Files Timeline, to site
but one example, provides a chronology of the series’
Mythology that runs to over seventy pages in length
(see Marek, 2002). Some prominent fans even came
to write for the show: cyberpunk founder William
Gibson wrote two episodes and horror master
Stephen King one.
The X-Files was one of the first shows to flourish
on the Internet: self-styled "X-Philes” accrue
mountains of data about the show, discuss it live
online, and write e-mail to the producers, who
carefully note their comments. (In 1995 Fox began
sponsoring X-File conventions in attempts to
create Star Trek-like longevity and fan following.)
The show's progress from obscurity to cult favorite
is in pointed contrast to that of 1990-91's illstarred Twin Peaks.
Websites like The David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade
(DDEB) and Gillian Anderson Testosterone Brigade
(GATB) promoted the show’s stars as sex symbols.
Slash fan-fiction also coupled Mulder and Scully (in
the show’s actual nine year run, the partners never
did more than kiss, and the series’ UST - Unresolved
Sexual Tension - was never relieved) and even Mulder
and Skinner. Fans did more than write and talk about
the series, of course; thanks to Fox’s skillful vertical
integration of their franchise show, they would have
the opportunity to spend millions of dollars a year on
official books, novels, trading cards, coffee mugs, Tshirts, DVDs, and action figures.
“[E]very time you pronounce it
creatively dead, it comes back to life like
the ghouls that Mulder and Scully have
been investigating these eight odd
years. Every time you think the show
has fallen into irreparable self-parody,
Chris Carter has a marijuana-induced
epiphany, rolls off his chaise on some
remote Hawaiian beach, and
videophones in an idea that shakes new
life into it.”--Kinney (2002)
Memorable Episodes
“Humbug” (2.20). Mulder and Scully
investigate a murder in a circus freak
show wintering in Florida.
Written by Darin Morgan
Memorable Episodes
“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” (3.4).
Mulder and Scully track a serial killer with the
help of a psychic (played by Peter Boyle) able to
predict how people will die.
Written by Darin Morgan
Memorable Episodes
“Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” (3.20). A
famous writer investigate a Mulder and Scully
investigation of an alien abduction in the state of
Washington for a book of “non-fiction science
fiction.
Written by Darin Morgan
Memorable Episodes
“The Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man”
(4.7). The life-story, perhaps fictional, of the
malevolent Cancer Man (who appears to be
Mulder’s real father),who may have assassinated
both JFK and Martin Luther King and be friends
with Saddam Hussein.
Memorable Episodes
“Small Potatoes” (4.20). Five unrelated women in
a small town give birth to babies with small tails. The prime
suspect is a man who can shape shift into whomever he
wants.
Starring Darin Morgan
Memorable Episodes
“The Post-modern Prometheus” (5.5). A letter to
Mulder from a woman who has become twice pregnant
through strange circumstances, brings the agents to her
small town. There Mulder and Scully discover a mad scientist
who has been doing experiments with humans and animals.
Among these experiments they discover a modern-day
Frankenstein's monster, who may possess the answers to
their current investigation.
Memorable Episodes
“Bad Blood” (5.12).
While investigating bizarre
exsanguinations in Texas, Mulder kills a teenage
boy whom he mistakes for a vampire. Awaiting a
meeting with Skinner, Mulder and Scully attempt
to get their stories "straight" by relating to each
other their differing versions of what happened
during their investigation.
Memorable Episodes
“Triangle” (6.3). Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s
experiment in shooting without cuts in Rope
(1948).
Memorable Episodes
“The Unnatural” (6.19). Mulder uncovers a story
involving a Negro baseball player in the 1940s who played
for a minor league team in Roswell. When in a photograph
he sees the Alien Bounty Hunter it is assumed that Josh
Exley, the baseball player in question, might just be alien
himself.
Memorable Episodes
“X-Cops” (7.12). Mulder and Scully find
themselves in the middle of an episode of the
Fox reality show Cops (1989 – ) in what
becomes a kind of X-Files mockumentary.
Memorable Episodes
“Hollywood A.D.” (7.19). The partners
become consultants on a movie version of an XFile, in which comic Garry Shandling plays
Mulder and Tea Leoni (Duchovny’s wife) does
Scully.
“The secret of life is to die at the right
time.”--Friedrich Nietzsche
The same might be said of television series.