Four years before David Lynch would redefine crime television with Twin Peaks, he fractured the conventions of noir into the kaleidoscope that is Blue Velvet. Though the critical successes of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man would make an auteur out of Lynch early in his career, the lackluster showing of Dune compelled the filmmaker to explore more familiar avenues with his subsequent endeavor. Tracing the polluted veins of an unassuming logging town, Lynch sought to illustrate the frailty of the American dream and illuminate the wickedness that lies just below the pristine veneer. Citing Lumberton, North Carolina as his palette, the director would the move to dissect the noir hero and investigate the implications of their journey through an unwinding world violence and depravity.
Lynch built Blue Velvet, as well as the bulk of his work, under a consistent notion: In order to distort something, one must first understand it. Like an advert built by the chamber of commerce, Lumberton is first proposed as a dream-like community; yard fences are snow white, a firefighter happily waves to no one in particular, and Mr. Beaumont casually waters his lawn. However, serenity is promptly eviscerated as Beaumont collapses while gasping for air, his desperate wheezing and the soothing tunes of the film’s titular theme follows the frame below the Earth as insects and worms writhe in discord. At the film’s onset, Lynch argues no amount of lawn care or fresh paint will mask the horrors of reality given enough time.
Blue Velvet’s protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), is prime for Lynch’s examination. Taking a hiatus from college to watch over his family and their hardware store as his father recovers, Jeffrey is both seasoned and naïve. When he finds the catalyst for his descent into the underworld, a severed and ant-covered ear, he not only reports it to the authorities but obsesses over the mystery it entails. Jeffrey understands the need for police procedure but finds the bureaucratic bottleneck to hinder his gambit for understanding. After failing to garner ground from Detective Williams, Jeffrey enlists the aid of the policeman’s daughter, Sandy (Laura Dem). When Sandy voices concern, Jeffrey contends, “there are opportunities in life for gaining knowledge and experience; sometimes it’s necessary to take a risk.” Jeffrey is keen to the importance of the discovery but is unable to fathom what he will inevitably find. In Lynch’s universe, the curious pursuit almost always leads to a dark epiphany.
Jeffrey in no form prepared for the depths his investigation will take him as both his understanding of heroism and human nature fall prey to the corruption percolating throughout his hometown. Moments before entering the apartment of Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), the nightclub singer presumably tied to the disembodied ear’s owner, Jeffrey jokingly reaffirms Sandy’s resolve as he claims “no one in this town will believe we’re crazy enough to do this.” With this offhanded remark, Jeffrey near-fatally downplays the covert depravity of Lumberton. Securing a consistent way into Dorothy’s apartment, the would-be Hardy Boy lodges himself in her closet, fancying himself a fly on the wall. After listening to Dorothy’s brief interaction with her son and a yet-to-be-seen Frank (Dennis Hopper), Jeffrey is quickly discovered, held at knife-point, and goaded into a sexual encounter with Dorothy. Jeffrey is made vulnerable and, for a moment, experiences a microcosm of the ordeal Dorothy endures daily at the hands of Frank. Joined by the loose thread of a shared trauma, Jeffrey’s vision of heroism is slowly chiseled away.
Nightmarish visions of his father and Frank begin to plague Jeffrey as grows closer to the latter and his criminal circuit. The film’s setting shifts primarily to nighttime, an appropriate frame for Frank’s ruthless underworld. Masculinity and sexuality are distorted within the villain’s oedipal eroticism, and Jeffrey’s relationship with Sandy grows estranged. However, Lynch interestingly opts to not hinder Jeffrey’s growth too severely; in fact, his hunt for the ear’s owner drives him to more dangerous lengths, ultimately bringing him face-to-face with the antagonist himself.
Even before Jeffrey meets Frank, he devolves to brutality through Dorothy. Moments after confessing his love for Dorothy, Jeffrey rushes to Dorothy’s home for another sexual encounter. Amid their interaction, Jeffrey catches a glimpse of Dorothy and following a less than receptive response, he strikes her twice to the roar of a wildcat. Jeffrey attempts to partition his notion of intimacy, leaning into the animalism of Frank while reconciling his own dream of a high school sweetheart in the form of Sandy. Lynch argues with this process neither can be reasonably digested, hurling Jeffrey into a realm of uncertainty. He is effectively slipping from the precipice of heroic idealism and into a polluted reality.
Throughout the infamous joyride, Frank adamantly shows Jeffrey the unknown depths of his frenzy. Contrary to Jeffrey’s presumption, the criminal does not operate towards any goal beyond utter chaos. In the same scene, Frank cries to a lip-synced performance of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” he excitedly screams, “I’ll fuck anything that moves!” There is no logic to Frank aside from the most guttural urges, yet his influence and aura are inescapable. Lynch sows Frank’s fragility to his sleeve, yet it is always bookended by violent and sexual outbursts. For Frank, love and hate bare no distinction. Thus, Jeffrey can only bring himself to cry in the fallout of his encounter.
After uncovering Frank’s mole within the police department and running across Dorothy naked and on the edge of death, Jeffrey finds suffering will only subside with the defeat of Frank. Heroism becomes an empty notion, but heroic convention like wit and courage, are still held close to Jeffrey’s character. Rather than approach Frank in a head-to-head and competitive conflict, Jeffrey lures Frank to his demise with the aid of a police radio. Jeffrey’s resolve to kill Frank after his hiding spot is found is abrupt and dirty; the figure accepts there is no glory to his deed, illustrated as Frank’s brain matter and blood pool across the same living room Jeffrey had his first encounter with Dorothy. Sex, and by extension life, are intertwined with death in a gory crescendo. Thus, Jeffrey’s heroic ideal is tarnished by the carnage left in its own wake.
With Blue Velvet’s final moments, Lynch contends there is no function to the veneer of the American dream. Likewise, the heroism of the noir figure is blind to the violence it so readily approaches. However, in the remnants of the broken, idealistic mask, meaning and truth can finally be discerned.
