For 25 years, Lynch and Frost left their audience with a chilling image etched into its mind’s eye. The hero of the Twin Peaks saga, Special Agent Dale Cooper, was shown with his head bleeding, grinning eerily into a cracked mirror, where the face of demon BOB was leering right back at him. But this final, unforgettable image of the series wasn’t the first time we’d seen BOB’s presence revealed in this way. On several occasions Leland’s inhabiting spirit was shown staring back from a looking glass – in the hallway of the Palmer house or the rear-view mirror of his car. And in the terrifying train-car scene, at the climax of Fire Walk With Me, Lynch briefly showed BOB appearing to invade Laura’s reflection.
It’s a startling vision, and one that has already been revisited in The Return when Mr C looked into a small mirror on the wall of his prison cell. Watching his reflection morph subtly and strangely into BOB’s creepy visage was a brilliant, unsettling and memorable moment. This idea that a mirror, in its reflection, can reveal something that is otherwise hidden is fascinating. In some ways it’s a metaphor for art – which can reveal hidden truths about the human experience simply by reflecting our world back at us.
If we accept that this form of mirroring is one of the primary functions of creativity, it seems natural then to explore which aspects of our lives Lynch and Frost have chosen to reflect upon in The Return. One of the most interesting facets of Twin Peaks in 2017 is that it does seem to contain some fairly overt comments on modern society, something that was not always obviously present in the original run.
The examples that most immediately spring to mind are Lawrence Jacoby’s ‘Dr Amp’ rants. His web broadcasts might tend towards the caricatured, “tinfoil hat” end of the social commentary spectrum, but they nevertheless contain overt reference to the evils of rampant capitalism, globalisation and political corruption.
A similar, yet more subtle, comment on 21st Century life comes in a scene showing Norma talking with her business manager (and partner) in a booth at the Double R. We learn that the Twin Peaks diner could make more money if Norma was willing to compromise on her policy of sourcing “natural, organic and local” ingredients. This conversation, and her resistance to putting profit over quality is a quiet yet strong statement about a tension that exists all around us in consumer society.
In a previous episode, when shots were fired outside the Double R and Deputy Bobby Briggs sprang into action, the events that followed were read by many as a possible commentary on American gun control. Outside the diner, Bobby found a distraught, furious mother admonishing her partner for leaving a gun loose on the floor of the car, where their son was able to grab it and fire indiscriminately out of the window. The father and son are quietly defiant in the face of the pandemonium they have unleashed.
Lynch has always been fascinated by the secret darkness hiding behind the respectable face of society - the grotesque bugs lurking in the lawn behind the picket fence. And when The Return holds a mirror up to society, these examples seem to suggest the true face revealed in the looking glass is one sliding headlong into greed, corruption and violence.
But Lynch and Frost’s view of the world has never been unrelentingly negative. They have always made time for moments of extreme happiness and joy – often found in the enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures such as coffee or pie. So far in this article we have ignored Dougie-Cooper’s plotline – notably the main home of coffee and pie in this new Twin Peaks world. Over in Las Vegas, Cooper’s good half has been acting as a mirror to the world around him. His habit of repeating back the words he hears makes him a literal reflection of the people he meets.
If Mr C represents all the bad that was in Agent Dale Cooper, then Dougie-Cooper is pure goodness. It appears that losing negative attributes like selfishness and greed has also robbed him of his agency. He drifts through life, literally pushed here and there by those around him. He vacantly echoes the kindness and warmth shown to him, oblivious to any frustration or ill-will in the world. And by reflecting the light and ignoring the shade, we see that positivity is multiplied in an apparently infinite feedback loop. Anyone who steps into the aura of Dougie-Cooper starts to win at life’s lottery. He’s not known as Mr Jackpots for nothing.
Thanks to him, the elderly lady in the casino wins big on the slots and gets her life back. After he uncovers insurance fraud, the Mitchum brothers enjoy a massive insurance pay-out, which leads in turn to Candie’s breathlessly joyous presentation of valuable gifts to Battling Bud. Sonny Jim has received a brand new gym set thanks to his father’s newfound reflective goodness and long-suffering wife Janey-E Jones has been on the receiving end of a bag of cash, a brand new car and a greatly reinvigorated sex life. But most importantly, aside from all the material ‘winnings’, everyone Dougie-Cooper touches becomes happier.
Knowing that Lynch is a life-long devotee of Transcendental Meditation, it is tempting to read something about a mindful existence in Dougie-Cooper’s story. He is moving through the world, living purely in the moment, neither planning nor reminiscing. He is the very essence of ‘just being’. And look at how he has changed the world for the better. Despite the conspiracies and assassination attempts that surround him, Dougie-Cooper remains uncorrupted, turning life into a conga-line of happiness with his blank, reflective positivity.
So perhaps the mirror image world Lynch and Frost present is not so bad after all. Perhaps it is merely what we make of it - representing a balance, a choice we must all make every time we look in the mirror. Do we give in to the dark, or do we let our inherent human goodness wrap us in its golden glow? In Twin Peaks, as so often in life, it seems what we project into the world is reflected straight back at us.
[EDIT: Since writing this article, another piece of reflective magic has taken place in Twin Peaks. I cannot post this article without at least mentioning in passing the strange reflection glitch in the scene of Big Ed Hurley eating his dinner alone at the Gas Farm. What is means, we cannot be sure, but I worry that it is not a good omen. The fact that Ed himself seems to notice the anomaly makes it even more disturbing. All we know for sure, is that when the reflection and the reality slip out of sync, it’s never a good sign in the Twin Peaks universe.]
This article was first published on the Lynchian Times blog on August 13th, 2017. You can read it in its natural habitat here.