I think I'm a little confused about "parents being totally out of control." This gives me cause to wonder what was out of control about the Briggs or the Haywards, thus leading me to believe that I am not clear about what you are saying.

Please clarify for me.  🙂

Posted by: Brandy Fisher

I think I'm a little confused about "parents being totally out of control." This gives me cause to wonder what was out of control about the Briggs or the Haywards, thus leading me to believe that I am not clear about what you are saying.

Please clarify for me.  🙂

Without wishing to speak for someone else, I believe the intent is to say, "Unable to control", as was the case with Bobby.  But he didn't turn out so bad, after all.  Yeah, there's the somewhat unfortunate murder but then, who hasn't done something like that once or twice? 😉

Posted by: SamXTherapy

Posted by: Brandy Fisher

I think I'm a little confused about "parents being totally out of control." This gives me cause to wonder what was out of control about the Briggs or the Haywards, thus leading me to believe that I am not clear about what you are saying.

Please clarify for me.  🙂

Without wishing to speak for someone else, I believe the intent is to say, "Unable to control", as was the case with Bobby.  But he didn't turn out so bad, after all.  Yeah, there's the somewhat unfortunate murder but then, who hasn't done something like that once or twice? 😉

If that is the case, then it  makes much more sense to me and I was reading it awkwardly.

And yes, once or twice, or perhaps a bit more........but who's counting.

I'm not sure if it is about parents/children so much as there is a theme pertaining to generational differences and the like. I am thinking also of the Roadhouse scenes. None of the young adults in the Return seem to be good/well-adjusted. There is an anxiety, drug use, references to economic hardship, etc. I guess I am not sure what I want to say about this exactly at this point, but I wanted to throw that out there.

Ah Jeez, I had my shot and blew it. 

I know it was clumsy wording, but I mean to say the kids are out of control, but specifically those kids that we also know their parents.  Like Shelly was pretty straight, but we don't know her ma and pa. 

Sorry all, sorry. 

The kids seem totally whacked is what I mean.  A kid like Harriet seems like the norm to me, pleasant enough, not looking for trouble, but all the rest seem caught up in way too much trouble. 

Ahhhh I get it now. I was being dense and incapable of seeing through my own confusion. Thank you for clarifying. Makes much more sense now.   ? 

Maybe an explanation :

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4w53wn/speaking-to-the-director-of-david-lynch-the-art-life-jon-nguyen

There are numerous strange anecdotes he tells from his childhood which could be directly linked to his style and work. Especially striking is the time he was playing out in the street late in the evening as a boy and a naked woman came walking through the street near him.

When I heard that story, wow, it reminded me of that scene from Blue Velvet. And when he sees Bob Dylan live and says "he was so little on stage", it reminded me of the old couples in Mulholland Drive when they come out of the bag. A lot of his artwork incorporates a radio and in the documentary he talks about when he first went to college and after he said goodbye to his dad, he sat in his room for two weeks and never got out of the room he was in. He just listened to the radio until the battery died. That was powerful for me.

He implies that after experiencing that solitude in his room as a young adult, he's always been that way.
Yeah. I imagine he had some sort of agoraphobia about being outside. It definitely became more pronounced. He comes from smalltown America, and all of a sudden, he lands in Philadelphia. It was about two weeks after the race riots happened in a war-torn, completely destroyed, downtrodden town. He's always said that Philadelphia more than anything else had a big influence on his art in his life.

I didn't know he had some kind of intestinal or stomach spasms as a young person, either. What were those linked to?
I don't know what it was but I imagine these stomach spasms came from anxiety or stress. I imagine it was a manifestation of his mindset at the time because he talks about a lot about wanting to keep his family separate from his friends at school and his friends separate from his art friends. He lived in three different worlds and he never let them mingle which to me, links to movies like Mullholland Drive or Lost Highway where characters take on different roles, separated. He won't say this but I can only guess those ghost themes come from his childhood.

I've often said that Lynch portrays the world JUST the way he sees it. Usually this comes up when discussing whether he is a woman hating misogynist. But it is just as valid an argument in reference to this subject of crazy children.  We see these out of control kids with often what seems like pretty normal, decent parents (at least at first).

What do you suppose David Lynch sees?

To me it may be that Lynch depicts children almost like an antithesis to the parents.  It's like they are the original doppelgangers, they are this concentrated expression of the part of the parent that the parent has successfully buried or subdued. 

Leland's child was self destructive and absorbed by dark pleasures, Leland was a model of composure and the face of public relations (until, you know, that other thing)

Major Briggs' kid was irreverent in the extreme and belligerent to all kinds of authority.  Major Briggs' whole identity was in a chain of authority and he was very honorable to his official duties.   

Audrey was passive aggressive and manipulative.  Ben was not passive in his aggression at all (but was manipulative too).   

Becky was apologetically abused and enabling.  Bobby had since become more of a take-charge authority figure himself, but when Shelly ran to meet Red, it comes out that Bobby has a touch of feeling put down too.     

I guess I'm reaching pretty far here.  Maybe kids are hellions because it makes for a good drama show that way.  Kids are rebellious.  Nothing new there. 

I think what is going on is more of a societal critique, if we look at the whole. I was struggling with how to put this the other day, but remembered this quote from Major Briggs:

"Rebellion in a young man of your age is a necessary fact of life and, candidly, a sign of strength. In other words, I respect your rebellious nature, Bobby, however, being your father, I am obligated to contain that fire of contrariness within the bounds established by society as well as those within our own family structure."

The use of the word 'fire' seems significant, but I also like the phrase and am going to run with it. Back in the 90s there was still a sense of bounds established by society much stronger than I think there is now. As a teenager, you could have this fire of contrariness, and really feel like it was rebellion against The Man or what have you. So we see the fire - when a fire like Laura's starts, it is very hard to put out - but it is largely contained, or, at least, the seedy underbelly of Twin Peaks is hidden in a sense by the surface goodness. It's that recurring Lychian theme... the severed ear hidden in the grass. So, in the original run, the young buck the authority of adults, but don't deny it fully. There are adults who are recognized as such.

Flash to now, and are there? Did we, the teenagers of the 90s really become adults? Some, sure, but one might argue the tendency has been toward less and less recognition of authority. Is there an established order? I would suggest there has rather been an uptick in nihilism, and that fire of contrariness burns in more and more places, unbounded. It's a world where a gunshot rings out at the RR, and the reason is no reason at all really - a kid who found a gun in the backseat of the car. Where Richard Horne assaults his grandmother. Stephen can't find a job because Mike's assessment of him is correct, but he is unwilling to truly hear it. Even deeper along those lines is Ella (with the rash) at the Roadhouse. And then there is Ruby, whose scream feels all too appropriate not just in reference to the men who picked her up and set her on the floor, but as a general response to the state of the world; a sense of powerlessness, economic despair, and so on.

Everyone lives in a trailer, almost. Even Cyril Pons (I asked Mark Frost about this on Twitter and he replied, "It's a long story." - I want that story!)

Point is, I don't think it is about parents and children so much as generational shift, if we even want to approach it that way. It's about the world. I think The Return captures something about now in the way the original stuff captured something about the 90s, while also being timeless (or, as Nietzsche would say "untimely"). And, it's darker, now. 

P.S. I'm in that mini-generation that has been alternately labeled as The Oregon Trail Generation, Generation Catalano, and now Xenniel, btw - born in 1980 - so I guess I feel I have a foot in both of these "young person" experiences, in a way, fwiw

P.P.S. Those terms are all bad. 'Xenniel' is the worst. 'Generation Catalano' is my favorite - but in the way one enjoys a B-movie...

Nice! Well put.  I'm glad it got asked.  (1980 too, btw).

Ruby does speak for a society at large. 

Works well with the fact that Bobby actually grew up to be a person of authority in a uniform too!