Sorry if this has been covered as nauseum (or if it's better fit for the Final Dossier forum), but I'm still confused about where "The Good Dale" was trapped after Season 2.
I had always assumed he had gone in after Annie and proved to have imperfect courage and was therefore cursed to the Black Lodge. I had thought that was the curse Hawk described. But having failed a test of courage myself recently, I looked up Hawk's quote today:
"The legend says that every spirit must pass through there on the way to perfection. There, you will meet your own shadow self. My people call it 'The Dweller on the Threshold' ... But it is said, if you confront the Black Lodge with imperfect courage, it will utterly annihilate your soul."
Clearly Wyndham was annihilated. But was Cooper? Was the nonexistence business from the Evolution of the Arm the means to annihilate his soul? I mean, maybe at the very end of TPTR, he was annihilated. It could've been for a purpose designed by Dido and Fireman, but still, he was maybe annihilated.
OR! If we believe time is totally circular, maybe he did have perfect courage in the Red Room and it provided him the perfection that Audrey once pointed out?
Still, my BIG QUESTION is: was he roaming around both lodges all these years? He was indeed hanging out with the Fireman.
I didn't see this post earlier. My apologies.
I think he was just sitting in that chair in the waiting room/red room/black lodge or whatever you think it was. There has been much debate on what exactly that room was/is. Either way, I envision him just sitting there waiting for his cup of Joe.
Long time to wait for a cup of coffee, I know. But I hear Starbucks has not branches out to the "other realms"..........yet. I think that's in their 2019 business plan.
Sorry if this has been covered as nauseum (or if it's better fit for the Final Dossier forum), but I'm still confused about where "The Good Dale" was trapped after Season 2.
I had always assumed he had gone in after Annie and proved to have imperfect courage and was therefore cursed to the Black Lodge. I had thought that was the curse Hawk described. But having failed a test of courage myself recently, I looked up Hawk's quote today:
"The legend says that every spirit must pass through there on the way to perfection. There, you will meet your own shadow self. My people call it 'The Dweller on the Threshold' ... But it is said, if you confront the Black Lodge with imperfect courage, it will utterly annihilate your soul."
Clearly Wyndham was annihilated. But was Cooper? Was the nonexistence business from the Evolution of the Arm the means to annihilate his soul? I mean, maybe at the very end of TPTR, he was annihilated. It could've been for a purpose designed by Dido and Fireman, but still, he was maybe annihilated.
OR! If we believe time is totally circular, maybe he did have perfect courage in the Red Room and it provided him the perfection that Audrey once pointed out?
Still, my BIG QUESTION is: was he roaming around both lodges all these years? He was indeed hanging out with the Fireman.
I have no clever input. But I'm awfully curious about your own test of courage.
I think we should bear in mind that Hawk is recounting a legend in that scene, and thus perhaps not describing how things actually work with complete accuracy. Same goes with what we get from Windom Earle, etc.
I have some thoughts that go more to the crux of the questions posed, but am lacking in time right now. I will try and remember to return and say more later.
I believe he was in the Waiting Room (which is neither White nor Black). Time clearly doesn't work the same way there as it does in the outside world. Otherwise he'd have starved/dehydrated to death. Because he wasn't destroyed, and in light of Hawk's description, I don't believe he was inside the Black Lodge.
This discussion always reminds me of the Baby Jesus discussion/prayer in Talladega Nights.
If you don't know it, here is part of it:
Ricky Bobby: Dear Lord baby Jesus, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell. I just want to take time to say thank you for my family. My two sons, Walker, and Texas Ranger, or TR as we call him. And of course my red hot smokin’ wife Carley, who is a stone cold fox.
Cal Naughton, Jr.: mmm-mmm…
Ricky Bobby: Dear tiny infant Jesus…
Carley Bobby: Hey, um… you know sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don’t always have to call him baby. It’s a bit odd and off puttin’ to pray to a baby.
Ricky Bobby: Well look, I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I’m sayin grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grown up Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus, or whatever you want.
Cal Naughton, Jr.:I like to think of Jesus as an Ice Dancer, dressed in an all-white jumpsuit, and doing an interpretive dance of my life.
Cal Naughton, Jr.:I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I’m here to party
Everyone envisions a different "version" or situation for Cooper during that long wait.
I mentioned this in another thread so apologies if you already saw it, but in the FWWM script, the Red Room is described in the scene headings as "Red Room / Black Lodge."
I wonder what it was described as in the original 2 seasons........
Think it was the same?
I believe it is the Black Lodge, not only due to the script description (which kinda settles the debate), but also because that is where the shadow self (aka doppelgangers) of various characters reside.
Also that is where Leland finds Bob and Bob shares garmonbozia with Mike after Laura's murder.
Quite a few arguments pro Black Lodge. I am however curious if you believe that the Castle over the purple sea is the White Lodge, and the Giant (Fireman) and Dido are the guardians mentioned in the first series.
Well, thinking about it more, I suppose it really could be read many different ways--and that is exactly what I think the purpose of the show is.
Coop could have been in the Waiting Room/Black Lodge (according to FWWM descriptors) after failing the courage test while running around searching for Annie. And then his soul could have been annihilated at the lights out scene at the very end of TPTR if we see all the "Coooer's mistake" explanations as correct. (Though I'm not sure where his WL scene w Fireman would fit in.)
OR, if we see the ending as a triumph--a defeat of Judy by way of the Fireman's instructions--then Cooper did have the perfect courage when he went in for Annie, willing to sacrifice himself. (And maybe the Fireman scene was after the Lights Out ending?)
Perhaps his Fireman scene was pan-chronological, taking place across the whole story. Fireman tells him he can leave, as though Mr C is just about to be called back in. But Fireman is also telling him to remember the 430 plan, as though he and Diane have already crossed the threshold. Wellll.... a couple weeks ago, I forgot my plan; I didn't have the courage/wherewithal to tell a romantic partner about medical business in my past and ongoing side effects; things got very weird when I got nervous and stuck in my head; I got very weird not knowing what to say as she kept asking what was wrong; and because I was not honest and forthright, I failed the test and returned to the lonely black lodge. The walk and subway ride home in the middle of that night felt like Part 18. That romance is over. Back to searching for my Norma. Oh well. Laura and Sarah went through much worse. I can't get Johnny Jewel's "Windswept" out of my head. That song with Dougie Coop working on case files will probably always be my favorite.
OK, so, going back to what Hawk says, and how to think about that in relation to what we saw with Cooper, it seems pretty clear to say that what he is referring to as the shadow self, or dweller on the threshold (which is such a cool phrase, and interesting to think about) would be the doppelganger, right?
My thought is that the question is whether one confronts the doppelganger with "perfect courage" and it seems to me here clear that Cooper did not at the end of Season 2. So then, the doppelganger is the one that emerges from the Lodge.
Keeping in mind that Hawk is recounting a legend, I think this might make sense. If the doppelganger emerges, instead of the person you knew, you might well label that person as "soulless" - this doesn't grasp reality of what happened, but would make sense from that point of view.
I think we might get caught up with how Windom Earle seemed to actually have his soul annihilated, but I think Hawk's legend can still fit with what we saw with Cooper along the lines of what I just said.
I find the terminology question to be a bit boring, but I will point out that it is certainly complicated by what we saw in the Return. The Dutchman's/Convenience Store, the place near Jack Rabbit's Palace, what I have kept calling the Eraserhead spaceship (with Naido and the American Girl), and wherever the Fireman and Senorita Dido were all seem to be Lodge-spaces. I am tempted to label that last one as the White Lodge, but it also seems like an oversimplification. I always thought that when the Giant appeared in the Red Room at the end of season 2 and said, along with the Arm, "One and the same" that this meant that the Black and White Lodges were one and the same; just dual aspects of the same underlying reality. Now, though, I have to admit that the things I just mentioned complicate and maybe undermine that notion. But, I don't know. FWIW, I always took, "This is the waiting room" merely as a kind of humorous claim that this "room" in the Lodge was the waiting room, as opposed to the other rooms that look exactly the same.
To the question of what Coop was doing for those 25 years, I do think he must have been in contact with Briggs, Diane/Naido, and scheming a bit with Philip Gerard, but would also agree that time operates differently there - it is not wholly outside of time, but it sort of is (?)
Cole says "tge waiting room" referring to the room between the office and the morgue (season 3)
Interesting stuff to keep thinking about. Thanks folks.
And yeah, I think the terminology questions of what exactly is what lodge might be missing the point, so I'm going to set that aside for now. More exciting is this!!
The "shadow self." I had no idea that that was a Jungian phrase--and apparently Freud had a "shadow self" idea too. Well, look at the bits that Frost just shared in an interview: https://mobile.twitter.com/keithgow/status/924564057302089728/photo/2
Frost says he's "into Jung" and that for him that the Cooper story is about someone who "had not yet integrated his shadow self to become a full person."
That there could be Frost's inspiration for the "legend" Hawk tells and for the end of Season 2. It makes sense to me that Cooper may have been too reserved or something. I dunno. Something to think about.
Going back to Freud, I had always thought to myself that MFAP represented the id and the Giant represented the superego, so yes, they are one and the same. I'm no expert on old psychology, but perhaps the shadow self and id are similar, and someone who can't accept they've got an id is more likely to manifest as empty shells--like a Dougie shell or a Mr. C shell.
My my, this show is a Rorschach test indeed.
I don't recall a notion of the shadow self in Freud. He conceived of the id (the "it" in me) as a collection of unconscious drives - primarily sexual, but then there is this notion of the death drive...
My understanding is that Jung developed the notion of the shadow from Freud's notion of the id, and/or the shadow is the id in Jungian psychoanalysis. Jung further moved away from Freud with the notion of a collective unconscious, with all of these archetypes and so on.
I know Freud better than Jung, but I do think Jung would be the more relevant to Twin Peaks, particularly since Frost made this remark. Then again, I feel like Twin Peaks has this way of hooking up to, or resonating with EVERYTHING, so approaching it through just one theoretical frame starts to feel reductive to me.
Just a few little sentences to, possibly, shed some light on this topic:
"Similarly, with Twin Peaks, what is the feeling you get when you're on the set for the Black Lodge? Is it a warm feeling?
I call it the "Red Room." And the Red Room is sort of a junction point. It can be a very good feeling and it can be not so good."
Fire walk with