David Lynch's Film, Blue Velvet

David Lynch's Blue Velvet is an exploration of things above and below the surface. This surface is really a borderline between not only idyllic suburban America and the dark, perverted corruption that lies underneath but also between good and evil, conscious and subconscious, dream and reality. Although this division seems quite rigid and clean-cut some of the most important implications of the film stem from the transgressions of these borderlines. In the initial scenes of the film Lynch introduces Lumberton, the typical small town in Middle America where the fireman waves at you, the children are well protected, the lawns are green and there is a smile on everybody's face. Naturally, the most important clich?

is also included—we see the white picket fence with ruby red roses against a bright blue sky, making out the colors of the American flag. There is, however, trouble in Paradise. First we witness a man—who later turns out to be Jeffrey's father—suffer a stroke and, after showing his helpless agony, the camera burrows into the grass revealing insects "in a ferocious, predatory, and cannibalistic fight for life" (Dirks, "Blue Velvet (1984)", http://www.filmsite.org/blue.html). These pictures, made even more terrifying by the extreme close-up and the accompanying sounds, provide the first visual clue of the dive we are about to make into the subterranean world under the pastoral life of normalcy. Our guide through this hell below and within is Jeffrey; an all-American boy who comes home from college to help out in the family business while his father is in the hospital. His finding a severed human ear is what sends him out on a journey to solve a mystery and eventually leads him to find out more about the world, and also about himself, than what he bargained for.

As the main focalizing agent of the film Jeffrey becomes the central character, the hero on a quest. He has to solve the mystery, help a lady in distress, fight villains and find love and happiness. During his adventures he also has to face and defeat the greatest evil of all—the evil within himself. Jeffrey's journey into the underworld of Lumberton may also be seen as a journey into the subconscious of the human mind, into the Freudian id. This may be supported by the scene in which the camera zooms in on the severed ear and, going down the rabbit hole, it leads us insi...

... middle of paper ...

...there is something unsettling behind all this perfection.

The robin on the windowsill is so obviously artificial and fake looking that it is hard to believe in its ability to bring true love to the world. However, it may also be argued that, since the world of Lumberton is also quite artificial, a bird like that is only appropriate for the job. As we revisit the images of the town familiar from the opening scenes of the film it is impossible to ignore what we already know—there is evil beneath the surface and it does not take much for it to reappear again. Although Frank, the drug-dealing gangster is dead, Frank, the evil within is still there hidden in the subconscious of happy, unsuspecting people waiting for his turn. The film closes with pictures of Dorothy, now reunited with her son, sitting on a bench in a peaceful, sunny park. The perverted eroticism that used to ooze from her pores is all gone, replaced by the appearance of a caring, loving mother. There is, however, deep sadness in her eyes as we hear the last lines of her song—"and I still can see blue velvet through my tears"—and we know that she will never really be able to escape from the evil in her past.