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Media Relations

"Wild at Heart": IU film studies professor Joan Hawkins discusses films of David Lynch

I have to make what I see, whether it's a painting, a table or a movie -- or it's like a death and what would be the point of that?

-- American director David Lynch

The new "BCT Directors Series" at the historic Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington, Ind., begins today (Jan. 18) with a discussion of American film director David Lynch. Indiana University Bloomington film studies professor Joan Hawkins will kick off the series, which is designed to pay homage to the most influential people in modern cinema, with an introduction to two of Lynch's acclaimed films, Wild at Heart and Lost Highway. The films will be shown at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., respectively, and there will be an intermission featuring live jazz and concessions.

In the Q&A below, Hawkins, who studies European and American film history, film theory, experimental film and horror cinema, discusses her fascination with the provocative and controversial Lynch, media criticisms that his films are too complicated for "mainstream" audiences and the director's contributions to modern cinema.

LIU: How did you become involved with the Directors Series at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater?

JH: The Buskirk Chumley contacted the department of Communication and Culture, where the IU film studies program is primarily located, and asked if we could recommend people to introduce the directors included in the series. I was recommended for David Lynch, since I teach so many of his films. Karen Bowdre will be introducing the Spike Lee films (on Feb. 8) and Jason Sperb, who had written a thesis on Stanley Kubrick, will be introducing the Kubrick films (on March 29).

LIU: Do you have a special connection to David Lynch? What is it that has attracted you to this director who so many theatergoers find so mesmerizing, puzzling, strange, or as Mel Brooks described him, "Jimmy Stewart from Mars?"

JH: Well I work on films that take place at the intersection of horror and the avant-garde, so the "Jimmy Stewart from Mars" aspect is definitely appealing. Lynch deals with a lot of the themes that turn up in horror films: voyeurism, sexuality and gender, anxiety about the family and the dark underside of seemingly "normal" life -- so that's always a powerful attraction. But his films are so bizarre and quirky -- they share some of the narrative elements of avant-garde narrative films and stylistically, they're just stunning. Sort of Jimmy Stewart meets Kenneth Anger. As far as a special connection to Lynch -- I teach courses on independent cinema and on nightmare films, so I frequently teach his work.

LIU: Lynch's abstract, non-linear, unconventional films have been criticized for being too "incomprehensible" for so-called "mainstream" audiences? Is this a fair assessment?

JH: I think critics don't give "mainstream audiences" enough credit. You only have to look at what has emerged on television in the past few years to realize that mainstream audiences are quite capable of following very complicated, often nonlinear, narrative threads -- and are, in fact, willing to subscribe to premium channels like HBO precisely in order to gain access to more demanding viewing. In Lynch's case in particular, he has become practically a cult director. Starting with Eraserhead, he attracted a strong following on the midnight movie circuit -- and the sheer number of students who talk to me about Lynch shows how popular he still is.

LIU: Upon its release, Lost Highway was called radical, even for a Lynch film. What made it so radical?

JH: Most Lynch films -- as bizarre as they can be -- stay within one narrative universe. That is, a film like Eraserhead announces pretty early on that it's taking place in a world we don't recognize -- and it stays there -- so we accept the weird baby and the radiator lady as pretty congruent within a very strange tale. By the same token, a film like Blue Velvet stays pretty firmly in the sort of "naturalist" realm. It's a dark, creepy world that's presented and "normality" is heavily ironized, but the things that happen can happen in the real world (no sudden appearance of a supernatural creature, for example). Lost Highway starts out in the Blue Velvet type of realm. There's the creepy appearance of tapes which leads us to expect a story similar to Michael Haneke's recent Cache. But then we get this sudden transformation -- where Fred, a middle-aged sax player, suddenly turns into Pete, a young car mechanic. I don't think he'd melded dream with narrative so intensely since Eraserhead.

LIU: Lynch described Lost Highway as "a 21st-century noir horror film." How much inspiration does Lynch draw from film noir and how has he transcended the genre?

JH: The look of many of his films borrow heavily from noir -- and he certainly plays with many of the tropes of noir -- bad girl/good girl; the lone hero trying to make moral sense of an increasingly complex world. And the writer he frequently works with -- Barry Gifford -- is a huge noir fan. His book Devil Thumbs a Ride is like a love letter to the genre. As far as transcending the genre -- I'm not sure he does that as much as he takes certain elements that are sort of buried or latent in noir, and exaggerates them -- takes them over the top. As (IU film studies professor) Jim Naremore points out in More than Night, the mode of noir grew out of a complicated blend of ideas, which allowed it to draw on surrealism, horror, French existentialism -- the entire complicated stew of artistic and philosophical impulses that surrounded the period just prior to, during and after World War II. Lynch takes us back to that moment, exploits all its potential (he certainly, for example, exploits the surreal elements of noir) and gives it a hip, postmodern look.

LIU: Richard Corliss at Time wrote of Wild at Heart that "it's hard not to be seduced by the sick wonder of it all." What is it about Lynch's films that make them so seductive, even for those who end up not liking them or finding them so confusing? Their dreamy quality? The strange visuals? And what's with The Wizard of Oz allusions?

JH: I'll start with The Wizard of Oz -- it's the quintessential American fairy tale -- and Lynch, for all his seeming nonconformity, is very interested in exploring traditional American values. One book about him -- Pervert in the Pulpit by Jeff Johnson -- discusses his work in precisely those terms -- the way they both promote a return to traditional American values and critique the possibility of ever effecting such a return. So The Wizard of Oz references are interesting, because they do both hold out the nostalgia for traditional values and subvert them. ("Dorothy" in Blue Velvet is a case in point.) As far as the seduction -- speaking for myself and the friends/students I know who like Lynch -- it stems in part from the dreamy quality and the sheer beauty of the visuals. But also the films really do engage the part of us that like puzzles -- not just mysteries, which are challenging in their own way -- but puzzles that promise to be linear but often require a different mode of thinking to "get" the clues. Lynch films are sort of like the Friday New York Times crossword.

LIU: What are Lynch's main contributions to modern cinema? Why is he considered so influential?

JH: I think both Lynch and Cronenberg belong to a moment when certain anxieties about sexuality, gender, disease, bodies and the status of truth/knowledge were simmering, and when a huge sea-change was in the air. Certainly, Lynch's Eraserhead was popular at the same time that the punk-related downtown cinema movement was flourishing in Manhattan and when punk/downtown writers like Kathy Acker were taking established novels like Don Quixote and turning them on their head. So he took what was a punk/avant-garde youth film sensibility and married it to more established genre films -- and he still has his finger on the pulse of the culture's uneasiness with itself. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called his most recent film "the most intelligent film" she'd seen in 2006.

LIU: What can we expect to hear during the live jazz performance at intermission? I'm assuming that it will have some relation to the music in Lynch's movies, especially since the director has been praised for his innovative usage of sound.

JH: I'm as excited to hear if the music has a specific relation to the films as you are. I think jazz is a nice complement to Lynch because it does some of the same things -- introducing extremely inventive and free-form riffs while still maintaining a basic melody line. And it is the quintessential American music form that laid bare many of the inconsistencies and contradictions in American culture -- as well as many of its strengths.

LIU: Thanks, Joan!

Notes:

For more information on the BCT Directors Series, visit http://www.buskirkchumley.org/BCT_Directors_Series.htm.

Karen Bowdre, assistant professor in the IUB Department of Communication and Culture, will discuss the significance of Spike Lee's films on Feb. 8. On March 22, Jason Sperb, a doctoral student in the Department of Communication and Culture, will give a presentation on the films of controversial director Stanley Kubrick. IU's Kinsey Institute will also participate in the event and provide visual imagery that explores sexuality and cinema during the 20th century.

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