Around the dinner table, the conversation was lively. Thank you but for now, the forum has been archived.
Grace has little to do witb it. It's that her back story is already told. Read TSH and the threads on Ep 8
My point was that, if anything, Sarah might be too old. I was unaware that Sarah's DOB was 45, which lines up with the bomb year, and would make her 11 in 56.
Agree with the OP. Sarah has something with her but it ain't been shown to us what it is.
Nor will it, ever. Suggesting debates based on perceived "evidence" are moot.
What's more interesting, for this viewer, is asking questions about how we might read it poetically.
In the original series and FWWM, the metaphor of "possession" helped both the characters in the narrative (including Laura) and the viewing audience cope with the unspeakable horror of Laura's suffering.
In the new series, the metaphor is extended in scope to cover the nuclear family, not merely the abuser and victim. Sarah is very loosely implicated as complicit-- to the extent that she did not/could not intervene-- but, more fundamentally, I think we see her portrayed in a sympathetic light.
Those who read her stabbing Laura's picture as some sort of malevolent act, recall that she's suffered a fate arguably as horrible as Laura's. It struck me that we were seeing her completely unravel, and she remains, for me, the most compelling character in the Twin Peaks universe (after Laura, of course).
All of the mythos we've discovered in The Return seems, IMO, to retain total "plausible deniability," so to speak. That is, simply because we've seen something or heard a word uttered does not in any way mean we need to understand the germinal scenario of the whole narrative-- the Palmer family tragedy-- differently. Ditto, say, the Kennedy assassination. No number of theories about how it happened change the fundamental fact that it did happen, and more than five decades of theorizing hasn't yielded much at all.
Agreed. I also read the picture smashing as something else. Sarah has been drowning Laura and her death and how it happened for years with booze and drugs and cigarettes. All a totally normal (if unhealthy) response that any mother might have after losing a child in that way. I see that scene as a mother finally facing the reality of what happened and finally confronting the picture she has left up all these years - the young beautiful Laura, as if she was still alive. She finally admits to herself that Laura is never coming back and tries to destroy the image, but she can not. Laura's death can not be erased.
Honestly, you can't just ignore context when viewing something. What are we shown immediately prior to this? Laura being 'saved" and her dead body disappearing along with events from that day her body is discovered occurring differently because that didn't happen. Then Sarah attempting to smash the picture while a sort of time loop occurs. The idea that scene is totally unrelated to what happened immediately prior seems a bit of a stretch. And why is this lone scene shown here while no others like it shown if it is unrelated?
Again, in reply to your "How can you...?" question, I said above that I think the debate is moot. Nobody will prove anything to anybody else at the level of individual readings. You are welcome to view the sequence of events as related, causally or otherwise. But I think it's clear, at very least, that The Return plays with time (narrative and otherwise), sequence, causality, reality, etc. Ostensibly, both literal, metaphorical and/or psychoanalytic readings are equally valid/viable.
But I find the "hard evidence" arguments presumptious.
She took her face off and a toothed black faced thing came out and ripped a guy's throat open in almost the exact same manner the thing in the glass box killed the couple in NY. A scene which is immediately preceded by Sarah watching animals devour a cow alive on TV to drive the point home with a hammer. These aren't the actions of a human being, no matter how disturbed. The fact that this thing, The experiment, is mother to BOB, has nothing to do with Sarah being a mother too. That is coincidental. She didn't possess Sarah because she's a Mom. Rather at some point Sarah gave up hope and became vulnerable to her.
I agree. Theories are fun, but this feels like trying to come up with something different instead of going with what Occam's Razor is telling you. And while Lynch's works are...well, very him...there were many, many things in season 3 that were what they appeared to be and nothing more.
She took her face off and a toothed black faced thing came out and ripped a guy's throat open in almost the exact same manner the thing in the glass box killed the couple in NY. A scene which is immediately preceded by Sarah watching animals devour a cow alive on TV to drive the point home with a hammer. These aren't the actions of a human being, no matter how disturbed. The fact that this thing, The experiment, is mother to BOB, has nothing to do with Sarah being a mother too. That is coincidental. She didn't possess Sarah because she's a Mom. Rather at some point Sarah gave up hope and became vulnerable to her.
I agree. Theories are fun, but this feels like trying to come up with something different instead of going with what Occam's Razor is telling you. And while Lynch's works are...well, very him...there were many, many things in season 3 that were what they appeared to be and nothing more.
If Occam's Razor makes sense to you, follow it. But in a Lynch production, there's no reason to assume such principles obtain.
Some, like me, will say it makes the most sense when read as a symbolist/expressionist poem. This will confound the "investigators" for whom Occam's Razor obtains. But because we are discussing an artwork, not empirical reality (itself an open question), both approaches are equally valid, and no claim based on textual evidence will prove otherwise....
Again, in reply to your "How can you...?" question, I said above that I think the debate is moot. Nobody will prove anything to anybody else at the level of individual readings. You are welcome to view the sequence of events as related, causally or otherwise. But I think it's clear, at very least, that The Return plays with time (narrative and otherwise), sequence, causality, reality, etc. Ostensibly, both literal, metaphorical and/or psychoanalytic readings are equally valid/viable.
But I find the "hard evidence" arguments presumptious.
I'd agree, the debate is moot. The evidence of Sarah being possessed via her actions and her scenes being placed in relation to the experiment is overwhelming. If it's presumptuous to think this I think it's safe to say it's a presumption Lynch clearly intends us to make.
Again, in reply to your "How can you...?" question, I said above that I think the debate is moot. Nobody will prove anything to anybody else at the level of individual readings. You are welcome to view the sequence of events as related, causally or otherwise. But I think it's clear, at very least, that The Return plays with time (narrative and otherwise), sequence, causality, reality, etc. Ostensibly, both literal, metaphorical and/or psychoanalytic readings are equally valid/viable.
But I find the "hard evidence" arguments presumptious.
I'd agree, the debate is moot. The evidence of Sarah being possessed via her actions and her scenes being placed in relation to the experiment is overwhelming. If it's presumptuous to think this I think it's safe to say it's a presumption Lynch clearly intends us to make.
All of what you say is true... unless all of the representations you describe are figurative-- a hypothesis equally supported by textual evidence. You take these representations to be real. This is an assumption. You then tell others your observations evidence facts. This is presumptious.
Look at David Lynch's paintings and tell me if you can identify a similarly certain interpretation. Better still: attend one of his gallery exhibitions, and tell the others in attendance that the evidence you have perceived has shown you the "correct" interpretation of the exhibition, what Lynch intended, and what they ought to likewise take away from it...
Again, in reply to your "How can you...?" question, I said above that I think the debate is moot. Nobody will prove anything to anybody else at the level of individual readings. You are welcome to view the sequence of events as related, causally or otherwise. But I think it's clear, at very least, that The Return plays with time (narrative and otherwise), sequence, causality, reality, etc. Ostensibly, both literal, metaphorical and/or psychoanalytic readings are equally valid/viable.
But I find the "hard evidence" arguments presumptious.
I'd agree, the debate is moot. The evidence of Sarah being possessed via her actions and her scenes being placed in relation to the experiment is overwhelming. If it's presumptuous to think this I think it's safe to say it's a presumption Lynch clearly intends us to make.
All of what you say is true... unless all of the representations you describe are figurative-- a hypothesis equally supported by textual evidence. You take these representations to be real. This is an assumption. You then tell others your observations evidence facts. This is presumptious.
Look at David Lynch's paintings and tell me if you can identify a similarly certain interpretation. Better still: attend one of his gallery exhibitions, and tell the others in attendance that the evidence you have perceived has shown you the "correct" interpretation of the exhibition, what Lynch intended, and what they ought to likewise take away from it...
Exactly. I think we all agree on certain links and details that seem to connect to each other. The difference is our interpretation of what those links mean, what the connotation is, which is beautiful and something any artist would love to hear.
My point was that, if anything, Sarah might be too old. I was unaware that Sarah's DOB was 45, which lines up with the bomb year, and would make her 11 in 56.
I'm not 100% sold on the idea the Girl is Sarah, though it's possible. The frog moth it's clearly supposed to represent something, not BOB, from the Experiment. What? Another of her children? Sarah does possess special abilities. To me it seems the frog moth isn't meant to represent when the Experiment took hold of Sarah directly because of the presence of Mrs. Chalfont/Tremond in 1989. Chalfont seems to always be in close proximity to BOB, like a MOM, at the trailer park and Twin Peaks. At the meeting in the convenience store in FWWM she looks over things in a motherly way. Which really makes you wonder who her grandson is and who his parents are. The Experiment seems to possess Sarah after 1989, perhaps when Mrs' Chalfont dies?
My point was that, if anything, Sarah might be too old. I was unaware that Sarah's DOB was 45, which lines up with the bomb year, and would make her 11 in 56.
I'm not 100% sold on the idea the Girl is Sarah, though it's possible. The frog moth it's clearly supposed to represent something, not BOB, from the Experiment. What? Another of her children? Sarah does possess special abilities. To me it seems the frog moth isn't meant to represent when the Experiment took hold of Sarah directly because of the presence of Mrs. Chalfont/Tremond in 1989. Chalfont seems to always be in close proximity to BOB, like a MOM, at the trailer park and Twin Peaks. At the meeting in the convenience store in FWWM she looks over things in a motherly way. Which really makes you wonder who her grandson is and who his parents are. The Experiment seems to possess Sarah after 1989, perhaps when Mrs' Chalfont dies?
My take is that the gold orb with Laura in it was directly associated with the bug due to how it was inserted into the B&W film by The Fireman. The next thing we see is the desert, the date advancing and then the bug hatches and crawls into the girl in 56.
Agree that the bug is an offspring or creation of The Experiment, like Bob. It lived within the girl ( who I take to be Sarah since I can not come up with any other explanation and have not heard any other contenders ) and years later, that girl gave birth to Laura.
Sarah always saw a horse in her dreams. The woodsman's poem "The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within".
Sarah indeed has a lot of dark within!
Again, in reply to your "How can you...?" question, I said above that I think the debate is moot. Nobody will prove anything to anybody else at the level of individual readings. You are welcome to view the sequence of events as related, causally or otherwise. But I think it's clear, at very least, that The Return plays with time (narrative and otherwise), sequence, causality, reality, etc. Ostensibly, both literal, metaphorical and/or psychoanalytic readings are equally valid/viable.
But I find the "hard evidence" arguments presumptious.
I'd agree, the debate is moot. The evidence of Sarah being possessed via her actions and her scenes being placed in relation to the experiment is overwhelming. If it's presumptuous to think this I think it's safe to say it's a presumption Lynch clearly intends us to make.
All of what you say is true... unless all of the representations you describe are figurative-- a hypothesis equally supported by textual evidence. You take these representations to be real. This is an assumption. You then tell others your observations evidence facts. This is presumptious.
Look at David Lynch's paintings and tell me if you can identify a similarly certain interpretation. Better still: attend one of his gallery exhibitions, and tell the others in attendance that the evidence you have perceived has shown you the "correct" interpretation of the exhibition, what Lynch intended, and what they ought to likewise take away from it...
Willfully ignoring context does give someone license to interpret how they wish. I'll grant you that. But if you attended a display of Lynch's artwork which he clearly tells you is themed I think you are safe in presuming about the interrelation of things which occur throughout the art displayed. Twin peaks is one part of his art. It is a theme. It it safe to assume things within it are interrelated especially when those things are presented as Sarah and the Experiment are within the show. there is plenty enough mystery in this show to go around without turning something Lynch is practically bludgeoning you over the head with to find more mystery.
My point was that, if anything, Sarah might be too old. I was unaware that Sarah's DOB was 45, which lines up with the bomb year, and would make her 11 in 56.
I'm not 100% sold on the idea the Girl is Sarah, though it's possible. The frog moth it's clearly supposed to represent something, not BOB, from the Experiment. What? Another of her children? Sarah does possess special abilities. To me it seems the frog moth isn't meant to represent when the Experiment took hold of Sarah directly because of the presence of Mrs. Chalfont/Tremond in 1989. Chalfont seems to always be in close proximity to BOB, like a MOM, at the trailer park and Twin Peaks. At the meeting in the convenience store in FWWM she looks over things in a motherly way. Which really makes you wonder who her grandson is and who his parents are. The Experiment seems to possess Sarah after 1989, perhaps when Mrs' Chalfont dies?
My take is that the gold orb with Laura in it was directly associated with the bug due to how it was inserted into the B&W film by The Fireman. The next thing we see is the desert, the date advancing and then the bug hatches and crawls into the girl in 56.
Agree that the bug is an offspring or creation of The Experiment, like Bob. It lived within the girl ( who I take to be Sarah since I can not come up with any other explanation and have not heard any other contenders ) and years later, that girl gave birth to Laura.
Interesting. Maybe the gold orb/Laura supplanted whatever the Experiment had put into the speckled egg and entered child Sarah later to be born as Laura? Maybe the original intent of the experiment was that 2 of her offspring, BOB via Leland, and Speckled Egg/Frog moth vis Sarah would meet and breed something evil and that was thwarted when the Fireman made Gold Orb/Laura and inserted it into things instead and what happens later to Laura and the Palmers is payback for that?
As far as Sarah's possession I'm not 100% it is even a possession. Sarah tells Briggs she is in the Black Lodge with Cooper. Maybe the real Sarah is actually in the Black Lodge and the Sarah we see in 21st century is a doppelganger?
Also aren't the numbers that Jefferies gives Mr C for where he can find Judy the number of the Palmer's house. To me all the evidence points to Sarah being possessed by Judy and the whole house being owned by Judy and the Black Lodge.
Again, in reply to your "How can you...?" question, I said above that I think the debate is moot. Nobody will prove anything to anybody else at the level of individual readings. You are welcome to view the sequence of events as related, causally or otherwise. But I think it's clear, at very least, that The Return plays with time (narrative and otherwise), sequence, causality, reality, etc. Ostensibly, both literal, metaphorical and/or psychoanalytic readings are equally valid/viable.
But I find the "hard evidence" arguments presumptious.
I'd agree, the debate is moot. The evidence of Sarah being possessed via her actions and her scenes being placed in relation to the experiment is overwhelming. If it's presumptuous to think this I think it's safe to say it's a presumption Lynch clearly intends us to make.
All of what you say is true... unless all of the representations you describe are figurative-- a hypothesis equally supported by textual evidence. You take these representations to be real. This is an assumption. You then tell others your observations evidence facts. This is presumptious.
Look at David Lynch's paintings and tell me if you can identify a similarly certain interpretation. Better still: attend one of his gallery exhibitions, and tell the others in attendance that the evidence you have perceived has shown you the "correct" interpretation of the exhibition, what Lynch intended, and what they ought to likewise take away from it...
Willfully ignoring context does give someone license to interpret how they wish. I'll grant you that. But if you attended a display of Lynch's artwork which he clearly tells you is themed I think you are safe in presuming about the interrelation of things which occur throughout the art displayed. Twin peaks is one part of his art. It is a theme. It it safe to assume things within it are interrelated especially when those things are presented as Sarah and the Experiment are within the show. there is plenty enough mystery in this show to go around without turning something Lynch is practically bludgeoning you over the head with to find more mystery.
One person's "willful ignorance" is another person's intellectual pluralism. Lynch, in my experience, is an artist who subverts genre conventions and audience expectations. Many viewers have approached The Return with expectations that the proliferation of "clues," signs/symbols, etc. will yield "answers" or a "correct" intepretation. I think Lynch loves manipulating his audience in this way.
I think OP's original point was that web forum discourse has ossified an orthodox intepretation ("Experiment" = "Mother") that shouldn't be assumed to be natural or self evident... I'm weary of/resistant to the perpetual search for systematic explanations of The Return (and, more generally, of the expectation that analytical percepts will yield formal truths about a given artwork). Too often, IMO, the interpreter disappears from view beneath the rhetorical cloak of sweeping, unverifiable claims. Arguably, the show has thumbed its nose at this sort of viewer orientation (e.g., seemingly significant digits require contortions worthy of numerology)
IMO, Part 18 showed us that there's relief from this interminable search for "answers" if we approach The Return as something akin to Lynch's last three films, whereby-- in my experience-- one won't find answers by carefully mapping visual/auditory signs onto narrative events or characters (or vice versa...) Such is the psyche (ultimately unknowable, amenable to analysis but not reducible to description) and such is Lynch's surrealism/expressionism. We get a direct link to his imagination, where neither natural laws nor textual criticism will show us "truths"-- only impressions thereof.
But we can, of course, agree to disagree.
Fire walk with 
