Impatience is a valuable thing to notice in your self.
People here have pointed out that throughout the show there are many examples of convenience which we often seek out of our impatience.
Convenience is not inherently bad and neither is impatience. What matters is our relationship to these feelings and whether or not we are aware of them acting on us.
The next time some character takes a long time to leave the scene or Lynch's character Cole has a seemingly pointless stair-off with someone and you feel impatient take a moment to really look at your impatience. Turn the TV off if you have to. You noticed you were feeling impatient so you're half way there.
dont talk down to people, it makes you look bad
dont talk down to people, it makes you look bad
Agreed. I advocate our observing our own reactions, rather than preaching to others.
AND- I think there is a point here that DL is intentionally making. The "slow scenes, the "long stares"- they are, I think, intended to involve us, the audience, by begging our inpatience. As I have gone on (and on) about elsewhere, I think the moments (e.g. French girl, floor sweeping, shovel-painting, Dougie) that make us want to scream at th TV (guilty as charged) comprise a smirking 4th wall break by DL directed at us. And in particular in part 12, hence my assertion that Audrey is US in her scene with Charlie. Hearing only part of an obviously portentious conversation, with increasing impatience, and then losing it when we find out we are not (immediately) going to get the answers we seek.
So, rather than judging our impatience, I am attempting to OBSERVE mine, taking it as another clue, and feeling gratified that it places me in deeper relationship with the world of Twin Peaks (or, if nothing else, Audrey, cuz I feel her pain!).
dont talk down to people, it makes you look bad
Agreed. I advocate our observing our own reactions, rather than preaching to others.
AND- I think there is a point here that DL is intentionally making. The "slow scenes, the "long stares"- they are, I think, intended to involve us, the audience, by begging our inpatience. As I have gone on (and on) about elsewhere, I think the moments (e.g. French girl, floor sweeping, shovel-painting, Dougie) that make us want to scream at th TV (guilty as charged) comprise a smirking 4th wall break by DL directed at us. And in particular in part 12, hence my assertion that Audrey is US in her scene with Charlie. Hearing only part of an obviously portentious conversation, with increasing impatience, and then losing it when we find out we are not (immediately) going to get the answers we seek.
So, rather than judging our impatience, I am attempting to OBSERVE mine, taking it as another clue, and feeling gratified that it places me in deeper relationship with the world of Twin Peaks (or, if nothing else, Audrey, cuz I feel her pain!).
Yes! I thought that was the most important part of that scene. Lynch often portrays us (whether it be characters watching Invitation to Love, watching Dr. Amp, getting their minds blown by a glass box on a wall, etc.).
Suspense and expectations are huge parts of art and our psyche. The unexpected is how jokes/comedy work, and it's what's been making us smile since we were babies. Think of how enthralled a toddler can be just as you hide a toy or your hand or anything from them and make it reappear or disappear. They're being stimulated by expectation and its fulfillment or a surprising mismatch. We're still feeling it as grown ups.
Next up, suspense and expectation in music: I've thought a lot about how this show's lore has developed largely from an accident (catching "Bob" on camera). Well, a musician might accidentally come up with a four-note motif that then inspires a ton of counter-motifs and then longer melodies and harmonic arcs that are all related to the original "accident." This is how you can build 45 minutes worth of a symphony. If you're building music that long, in the western tradition, then you are holding the audience in suspense the whole time as they wait for the final cadence--the final return/resolution to a stable chord wherein everything is done.
I doubt Lynch will tie up every loose story line, but still, the way that he or any great slow filmmaker (a la Kubrick)--or comedian for that matter--uses time to build suspense and expectation is what makes their work stand above the less artful.
People have shared their opinions that this season could've been condensed into fewer episodes. OK. That's your opinion. I'd much rather have it as it is, even when an episode like #12 challenges me. This is real art that grabs me and has me on the edge of my seat desperately wanting more. If it just gave me the answers (or gave me Audrey in a bungalow with Justice Wheeler), then it probably wouldn't be much better than the plethora of shows on network and Netflix/Hulu. Most TV is the 3-minute JS Bach etude. Twin Peaks: The Return is a late 19th century opera! They last about 4 hours each--but their final resolutions are orgasmic, because your brain has been impatiently building expectation and desire, gathering patterned cues, all along.
Thank you for your input. I will take it under advisement.
Your information was well thought out, but the use of YOU statement was offputting and I was no longer able to be receptive to your message. I feel that no one gets to dictate how others experience or perceive the world, such as television watching and especially art. If I choose to be impatient, that is part of my experience. Others may choose to be patient or may choose tactics to curb their restlessness. That is is up to them, as it is up to you, OP, and up to me. Please do not propose that you know what is the best method for me or anyone else to watch this show or what we should do in order to make your forum experience easier. It's offensive and it is rude.
I feel like the OP had a good point, but so did everyone else. Mix it all together and the answer is somewhere there 🙂
I don't have any problem with the OP's point. I would make the same defense of any artist who makes interesting work that doesn't play by the rules.
But the other side of me feels this way (copied from other thread):
There's this super fine line between letting a scene slowly play out and indulging a directorial quirk that can frustrate some viewers.
I've read before that many filmmakers like to go from less cutting in the early stages of a movie, to more in the later stages, to 'speed up' the story, if you will.
The frustration that some viewers have had (including me) with eps 10-12 is that there are SO MANY interesting unresolved plots playing out right now, that we start to think / feel that none will reach satisfactory conclusions. That's an overreaction of course, but I understand why people feel that way.
The Twin Peaks revival has been exciting, unique, and totally smart (unlike most TV) but I still feel the right to criticize things that seem overly indulgent. And Mr. Lynch is well within his rights to say "Fuck you, Albert" to me or any other viewer. :->
I feel like the OP had a good point, but so did everyone else. Mix it all together and the answer is somewhere there 🙂
What if it isn't? What is there is NO ANSWER?!?!?!?!?!
I feel like the OP had a good point, but so did everyone else. Mix it all together and the answer is somewhere there 🙂
What if it isn't? What is there is NO ANSWER?!?!?!?!?!
Then BOB has already won!
I feel like the OP had a good point, but so did everyone else. Mix it all together and the answer is somewhere there 🙂
What if it isn't? What is there is NO ANSWER?!?!?!?!?!
Then BOB has already won!
dammit 🙁
I had a coffee with an old work colleague, now friend who mentioned how annoying he found emails that started with only his name, I'll call him John. So John, have you done.... Rather than Hi John, thanks for your mail. I'm keen to catch up... The former immediately put his back up and tainted whatever followed.
A lot of my role (if I had one currently) involves facilitation of groups of people where I strive to create and hold a safe space for the best possible chance of success to occur. One thing that I've found often undermines this is the language used by people and how people react to it, despite good intentions.
I think the intent of the OP was good, but his choice of the word you seems to have clouded that and created some tension as a result.
Someone else, it might have been SamX how easily we use the word we, (and I did it there without realising I had), rather than I. If I'd wrote the OP I would likely have used something that carried the intent through experiences of my own, so people could assimilate that into their own experience.
Heh heh, and suddenly I'm back thinking about showing rather than telling and how Frost and Lynch have chosen to relay their vision of Twin Peaks 25 years later. There's so much room for me to live in that world alongside them attaching my own life experience to what I'm seeing and hearing. It's so rich. If everything were spelled out for me there wouldn't be any room for me to do that, or breathe my life into it.
There have been so many beautiful moments in the Return that have evoked so much in me, but it's all mine, even my darn impatience. I mentioned it in another thread that a second watch of part 12 had me in stitches, especially Gordon's friend's complete oblivion to the importance of what Albert might want to talk to Gordon about.
Is part 13 coming soon? I don't know whether spending so much time on this forum is good or bad beyond a certain point. I'm sure noticing my impatience for part 13! 🙂
I don't have any problem with the OP's point. I would make the same defense of any artist who makes interesting work that doesn't play by the rules.
But the other side of me feels this way (copied from other thread):
There's this super fine line between letting a scene slowly play out and indulging a directorial quirk that can frustrate some viewers.
I've read before that many filmmakers like to go from less cutting in the early stages of a movie, to more in the later stages, to 'speed up' the story, if you will.
The frustration that some viewers have had (including me) with eps 10-12 is that there are SO MANY interesting unresolved plots playing out right now, that we start to think / feel that none will reach satisfactory conclusions. That's an overreaction of course, but I understand why people feel that way.
The Twin Peaks revival has been exciting, unique, and totally smart (unlike most TV) but I still feel the right to criticize things that seem overly indulgent. And Mr. Lynch is well within his rights to say "Fuck you, Albert" to me or any other viewer. :->
Roberto -- thanks for your even-handed approach here. Everything you've said makes sense to me, save for one sticky phrase. "Satisfactory conclusion" is where we differ. In another hot beef thread, the point I laboriously, but crudely, attempted to make-- to the justifiable condemnation of many here-- was simply that presuming there to be "satisfactory" conclusions/resolutions of plot threads is, well, presumptious. It takes for granted that a certain set of expectations obtain here that The Return has all but demanded (by this point) we leave at the door.
Sorry to split hairs here about word choice... it's not personal! But I do find it particularly odd that the word "indulgent" gets thrown around so freely when it comes to art/entertainment that doesn't take its audience's preferences or comfort as its point of departure. I've never understood why it makes sense to call an artist "indulgent." A person who orders a $1,200 steak at a Manhattan restaurant is indulgent. A person who takes monthly vacations or arrives late returning from lunch every day is indulgent.
David Lynch delights in his eccentricities and certainly seems to care not a whit whether or not he alienates his audience. But, in this respect, he is in keeping with a long tradition of similarly minded [Western male] artists. I suppose one could argue that that artistic worldview is outmoded today... but it certainly remains ubiquitous, and I can't imagine this is anybody's first encounter with this sort of grandiose artistic self-conception-- what else is an auteur?
But if this view is, in fact, outmoded or regressive, I question why accusing him of being "self-indulgent" is a reasonable response. One could argue that the auteur worldview is fundamentally antisocial in a time when thinking about one's social orientation with the world is a matter of some urgency. Indeed there are countless ways to take issue with Lynch's idiom in social terms: angles of attack that come to mind include his fetish for the (heterosexual) male gaze, second-tier cast members all but defined by their physical abnormalities, or of Lynch's seeming total lack of interest in people of color or queerness)
Too often, IMO, efforts like Lynch's (or of the critiques I've enumerated) get met with the "self-indulgent artist" epithet or corollary smears about the pretentiousness of "intellectualizing" art/film/tv/media/"content"/whatever.
That's my more restrained, deliberate, and mindful articulation of my view on these debates.
I had a coffee with an old work colleague, now friend who mentioned how annoying he found emails that started with only his name, I'll call him John. So John, have you done.... Rather than Hi John, thanks for your mail. I'm keen to catch up... The former immediately put his back up and tainted whatever followed.
A lot of my role (if I had one currently) involves facilitation of groups of people where I strive to create and hold a safe space for the best possible chance of success to occur. One thing that I've found often undermines this is the language used by people and how people react to it, despite good intentions.
I think the intent of the OP was good, but his choice of the word you seems to have clouded that and created some tension as a result.
Someone else, it might have been SamX how easily we use the word we, (and I did it there without realising I had), rather than I. If I'd wrote the OP I would likely have used something that carried the intent through experiences of my own, so people could assimilate that into their own experience.
Heh heh, and suddenly I'm back thinking about showing rather than telling and how Frost and Lynch have chosen to relay their vision of Twin Peaks 25 years later. There's so much room for me to live in that world alongside them attaching my own life experience to what I'm seeing and hearing. It's so rich. If everything were spelled out for me there wouldn't be any room for me to do that, or breathe my life into it.
There have been so many beautiful moments in the Return that have evoked so much in me, but it's all mine, even my darn impatience. I mentioned it in another thread that a second watch of part 12 had me in stitches, especially Gordon's friend's complete oblivion to the importance of what Albert might want to talk to Gordon about.
Is part 13 coming soon? I don't know whether spending so much time on this forum is good or bad beyond a certain point. I'm sure noticing my impatience for part 13! 🙂
Thanks, Colin-- you've given me something to think about. I think your close look at word choice and its relationship to perceived tone is timely. I find communicating effectively in the heat of things on a forum like this to be very challenging-- too often my tone comes off differently than I intend.
There's always the pronoun "one" and the subjunctive/conditional case, "could/would/might".... That's how I'm trying to couch my statements now... "One could interpret x..."
"IMO" sometimes gets used loosely in a way that runs counter to what I think was its original function , such that it comes off passive-aggressively, e.g., "IMO anybody who ... "
dont talk down to people, it makes you look bad
Helpfully, several forum participants pointed out my hypocrisy in another thread.
Unless I'm mistaken, this post might be a good candidate for the same treatment, no?
dont talk down to people, it makes you look bad
Helpfully, several forum participants pointed out my hypocrisy in another thread.
Unless I'm mistaken, this post might be a good candidate for the same treatment, no?
Then again, ... infinite regress. Again. I retract what I see can easily be perceived as my talking down to Nick's (perceived) talking down to Jon's (perceived) talking down to... etc.
In fact, what I did there, unthinkingly, is maybe an instructive example. It's not helpful, it didn't invite more discussion. It scored some smug satisfaction points in a quick-and-dirty way.
And, indeed, this is what got me into trouble in one of the other beefing threads. I was put off by what I perceived to be others' rash judgments, presumptuousness and unstated criteria ... They perceived my indictment of their judgments, presumptuousness and unstated criteria as a rash judgment ... and on and on...
People are entitled to opinions, so I suppose it just means that the participants with a higher tolerance for snap judgments will have an easier go at Welcome to Twin Peaks, generally speaking (given what I perceive to be the omnipresence of snap judgments following a challenging episode) and those I've taken to calling the artsy farts (borrowed from another poster to describe me) who are willing to wait to tackle the entire 18 hours before passing judgment will have to caucus in another corner.
Fire walk with