Is suburbia innocent?
This is a rhetorical question…………..
Nice observations but is “small town” the same as “suburbia”? In my mind, the two seem like separate entities. Suburban innocence seems different than rural innocence.
SPOILERS
To answer your question, I actually think that what struck me about Blue Velvet was that it was actually not an indictment of suburbia. The idea of suburbia covering up a more twisted world is, of course, the first thing we see in the film, and films that make that basic point have become fairly common (Edward Scissorhands, American Beauty).
But Blue Velvet is something else. After all, the innocence of suburbia is restored at the end. Also, remember Cooper’s love of the Douglas Firs, cherry pie, and simple values of Twin Peaks.
I see Blue Velvet more as an allegory of good and evil (purity and corruption) that uses suburbia as a symbol. Jeffrey is innocent, but he’s fascinated by the bad side of town because white picket fences are all he’s ever known. So he wanders over, experiments with his darker impulses, is almost overwhelmed by them, but triumphs in the end and returns home—no longer innocent, but wiser. The answer to the question, “Is suburbia innocent?”, would still be “no.” But unlike, say, Edward Scissorhands, it also seems to be that: “it should be.”
I think it’s tempting to view Blue Velvet as a satire of suburbia. I think Roger Ebert misread it as such. He notoriously panned the film, ranting at one point about “cheap shots” and playing up the suburban expose angle. (He also objected to the treatment of Rossellini, and his criticism makes it sound like he doesn’t know she’s an actress playing a part).
If anything, considering how radical Blue Velvet is on the surface, the surprise to me was how conservative and morally conventional the movie is underneath. (Consider the Rossellini character, who goes from being used as a sexual object to being restored in chaste motherhood for the happy ending…the idea of healthy sex seems to be tastefully out of sight).
But yes, a beautiful and frightening film, one of the best of the 1980s.
Your observations on Blue Velvet are on target and well thought out. This is where I was going when I asked the question.
Ari, you make the distinction between “small town” and “suburbia”, and speaking strictly, they are different entities. However, I feel a movie like “The Stepford Wives”, even though it’s set in a small town in Connecticut, has a strong suburban feel, as opposed to a “rural hick town” feel. The luscious houses and front lawns, middle class values, the big supermarket and parking lot, the house with the tennis court—these things remind me of comfortably wealthy suburbia. I felt somewhat of the same suburban vibe in “Blue Velvet”, but even if David Lynch’s film is small town horror and opposed to that of the suburban variety, it’s still a fascinating look at the benign white picket fence facade covering something sinister and dangerous. This is what Roger Ebert evidently fails to understand: horror created by the familiar suddenly becoming the unfamiliar.
Roger Ebert’s blathering about Isabella Rossellini being “humiliated” is complete B.S. Roger, as per usual, felt the film hit too close to home, and was looking for the most obvious and widely acceptable excuse to loathe the movie. Yes, Isabella is just an actress paid to play a character, this is her craft and Roger can’t accept that. Anyway, Isabella has a figure in “Blue Velvet” that would be the envy of countless women and a beautiful singing voice and gives a great performance—where’s the shame in that?
If you want proof of Roger Ebert’s inconsistency, read his review of “Last Tango In Paris”, in which the following extract appears:
“It is said in some quarters that the sex in the movie is debasing to the girl (Maria Schneider), but I don’t think it is. She’s almost a bystander, a witness at the scene of the accident. She hasn’t suffered enough, experienced enough, to more than dimly guess at what Paul is doing to himself with her. But Paul knows, and so does Bertolucci; only an idiot would criticize this movie because the girl is so often naked but Paul never is. That’s their relationship.”
This is the film where Maria’s character has to shove her fingers up the great Marlon Brando’s backside and simulates being sodomised by Brando in the infamous “stick of butter” scene. Ms. Schneider herself said she felt humiliated doing the scenes. But that didn’t stop Roger Ebert giving it four stars. Hey, I think it’s a fine film, I didn’t feel embarrassed watching it, but if Ebert gives this one a green light, why his hatred for Isabella Rossellini’s work in “Blue Velvet”?
Roger’s full “Tango” review:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19721014/REVIEWS/301010318/1023
“but even if David Lynch’s film is small town horror and opposed to that of the suburban variety, it’s still a fascinating look at the benign white picket fence facade covering something sinister and dangerous. This is what Roger Ebert evidently fails to understand: horror created by the familiar suddenly becoming the unfamiliar.”
Yeah, the only thing I’d say here is that I think in Halloween Carpenter did the “horror lurking beneath the quiet facade of suburbia” thing just as good as Lynch did. So Blue Velvet is probably more interesting in the ways that Duncan looks at it. Yeah, I think the only answer to the question “is suburbia innocent?” is that it never was, especially since the principles that governed its creation were misplaced (environmentally unsustainable sprawl caused largely by white flight).
Ebert did come around to Lynch by Mulholland Drive though.
-I feel a movie like “The Stepford Wives”, even though it’s set in a small town in Connecticut, has a strong suburban feel, as opposed to a “rural hick town” feel.-
You’re probably right about that, Mark. In some senses a significant portion of southwestern Connecticut serves as a quasi-suburbia for metropolitan New York.
“Lumberton, Oregon” was shot in Wilmington, North Carolina (and also Lumberton, NC, whence came the name), a smallish coastal city that, while certainly not a small town, is isolated from others both culturally and in the sense that time seems to have moved more slowly there, and I think that for Lynch these qualities probably connected with some cities of the Pacific Northwest he had known.
“Yeah, the only thing I’d say here is that I think in Halloween Carpenter did the “horror lurking beneath the quiet facade of suburbia” thing just as good as Lynch did.”
True, there are several moments of eerie disquiet in Halloween, but the character of M.M what not intended to be a metaphor from what i’ve gathered, and that’s a shame because i think Carpenter could have found a deeper connection there somewhere. He used the setting because he understands that suburbia is far from the perfect idealised fantasy but that’s where it ends imo. it’s just an interesting use of setting.
Wasn’t “Blue Velvet” set in Lumberton, North Carolina?
Yes . . . sorry, working on something else Oregon-related at the moment so I mentally transposed. Most of the actual shooting locales are Wilmington, though.
Actually, I don’t think that the film ever specifies as to which state Lumberton is actually located in. Does it?
???
yes, i’m w/ roscoe – i don’t remember the movie citing north carolina, does it? i recall lumberton being some anonymous pacific nw town. or at least there are clues clearly placing it in the pac nw. also shooting in nc likely had more to do w/ economic reasons than narrative ones
“Far From Heaven” is about suburbia.
Well, that explains my confusion of one with the other, perhaps. The point of the location, I think is less about where it actually is that what it is, a small city that is sort of off through the wilderness by itself, with all the attendent superficial quasi-time-warp Americana.
David is right, though, Far From Heaven is more explicitly suburban.
Sandy Williams, not Sarah. I have to correct you because Sandy is to your point. It’s an American girl name. Dorothy is more of a woman’s (though, it is also the name of the famous Dorothy Gale of Kansas).
BLUE VELVET is concerned with what lurks deep within people, not suburbia.
It is a re-imagining (and in some respects, a deconstruction) of the 1941 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(certain scenes are almost duplicates).
That is why it was essential that Rossellini portray the target of Frank Booth’s (Mr. Hyde) sadism. (Ingrid Bergman was the victim of Spencer Tracy’s Hyde in the first film.)
Jeffrey Beaumont (Dr. Jekyll) must rescue her, even as he visits the dark side of his psyche.
Naturally, chemical enhancement is involved, but it’s a bit of a red herring, even if it functions as a brilliant metaphorical and symbolic device.
I accidentally discovered this thanks to the video release of the 1941 film long ago.
I was floored, but thrilled.
Dr. L: That’s a very compelling thesis. One possible problem with it is that Rossellini wasn’t the first or even second choice to play the role of Dorothy Vallens, if IMdB is to be believed. They mention Hannah Schygullah—maybe Blue Angel was Lynch’s original model?—and Helen Mirren. Perhaps when the first two choices were ruled out, Lynch had a happy accident when he met Rossellini at a NYC restaurant. Of course that casting was serendipitously positive for the film, regardless of Lynch’s intentions. And regardless of his intentions, your thesis is definitely worth more than momentary consideration.
I’m putting Jeckyl and Hyde at the top of my list!
Christopher: I should have phrased that differently, because as written it does imply a casting time line. I’m saying that her being Bergman’s daughter is an essential component of appreciating key scenes.
And this matter is more than a thesis I concocted.
BLUE VELVET appropriates the theme of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, replicates key scenarios (if not actual frames) of the latter, and even has the central protagonist explain his goals early in the picture, just as Spencer Tracy does in the earlier film.
Those goals are identical: experiments in discovering / understanding evil.
Both characters are warned against doing so.
Both men are hampered in said research by father figures, each of whom also represents an obstacle
to sexual contact with Dern in BV and with Lana Turner in J&H.
In that context, both films portray evil in terms of male sexual aggression, which is manifested only after the “other” side emerges.
Both men get surreptitious glances at the central female characters in various stages of undress, in startlingly similar ways.
This initiates emergence of the dark side, and an encounter with the “other,” (Frank Booth and Hyde).
I won’t even bother pointing out the stark similarities in how women are tormented in each film. It’s a stunner, believe me. More stunning is how heavily freighted with Freudian themes and imagery J&H really is, and how
consistently BV uses coded language to reference same.
I’m just scratching the surface here, by the way.
All of this is true even if I had never been born.
“Is suburbia innocent?”
Nah, suburbia is a fucking shithole
Dr L: This is definitely a fascinating departure point for thinking about BV.
The film contains extreme examples of idealization and denigration, setting up the idea that neither is a realistic vision, even though the ending suggests a sway back to the idealization, even though the shot of the bird with the worm makes me think we’re seeing the ants again.
I also see a bit Vertigo in this with Jeffrey acting as Scotty.
Pierre, the robin eating the bug clearly is a reference back to the beginning when, after Jeffrey’s father succumbs to the stroke or whatever bodily malfunction it is, the camera tracks through the grass to find the creepy, nasty underworld below. So here is Sandy’s robin from heaven munching on the evil from the undergrowth.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Except for Booth and the beetle. ;-)
@Christofer Pierson – yes, that’s what I meant by the ants.
earman
David Lynch is a fascinating director and Blue Velvet is a perfect example of how uniquely talented he is. Directing from his own intriguing screenplay he weaves a story about a small town in Oregon where there is two parallel worlds,the innocent world of Jeffrey Beaumont and the sinister world of Frank Booth. Kyle MacLachlan gives his best performance as the innocent but curious Jeffrey Beaumont, who finds a severed ear that leads him into the hidden and sinister world of Frank Booth. Trying to solve the mystery of the severed ear he comes in contact with Sarah Williams played by the beautifully radiant Laura Dern. Sarah tells Jeffrey that her detective father is investigating Frank Booth and a lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens. Frank Booth as played by Dennis Hopper is one of the most frightening and dark villains in movie history. Jeffrey and the audiences introduction to the evil Frank through a closet door, is one of the most disturbing scenes in film history. Jeffrey’s journey into the carnal world of Dorothy and Frank is in stark parallel to the innocent and budding romance he has with the angelic Sarah. Jeffrey’s journey into the dark side has a profound impact on him and it leads him into a very dangerous and disturbing quagmire.
David Lynch’s Blue Velvet masterfully tells it’s story with riveting images that lingers on a persons psyche long after it is viewed. The movie starts your journey through a decayed severed ear and it ends by departing the healthy young ear of Jeffrey. This is truly the tale of two cities.This is great movie making.