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Reader comments on
Subject: the scary bum IS the key
Date: Jan 1, 2003
David Lynch is into transcendental meditation, and is versed in eastern religions.
I have this sneaky suspiction that the frightening bum is a variation on a Hindu god, Kali, who is the manifestation of destruction and whose name means Black Time. Sort of a walking version of the apocalypse.
Kali is quite rightly fearsome to humans--all matter becomes energy in her presence, which is no fun at all if you happen to be human, because Kali destroys all the things that separate us, such as individuality, height, width, depth, space, and time. She's sweet oblivion.
If Lynch's scary bum is Kali, as I think he/she is, then the bum isn't a plot device--the bum is THE plot itself. And any attempt by the viewer to unravel the mess to try to recover a sense of linear logic in the plot is useless, because it presupposes that the characters are separate, that their identities are permanently affixed to single characters, that one thing happens and then another follows it--i.e., all the basic assumptions that Kali destroys from the get go.
In the presence of Kali, there IS no time. There IS no difference between dreams and reality. And there is no difference or even separation between identities. This conceit matches very well with a hollywood setting--watch how Naomi Watts, an actress in a Lynch film portraying an actress auditioning for a film, shows exactly what great actors and actresses do, redefine a character by playing the same scene in an entirely different way. Her suddenly riveting and intense audition, compared to her playful rehearsal with her girlfriend, is perhaps the only vaguely linear clue Lynch gives about the irrelevance of identitiy, or even time, in this film.
Lynch is asking you to abandon Western thinking, linearity, identity, and any logic based in time on this one. A tall order, but if you can go with it, Mulholland Drive transforms from an exasperating Rubik's cube of a movie into a darkly gripping reverie.
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wow from Rosanna, Jun 10, 2002
Re: wow from Joshua (editor of Offoffoff), Jun 12, 2002
Re: wow from Tashtigo707, Jun 17, 2002
PCP from Kilgore Trout, Sep 1, 2002
Aunt??? from HugeElvis, Oct 14, 2002
» the scary bum IS the key « from Ethan, Jan 1, 2003
wow from Rosanna, Jun 10, 2002
Re: wow from Joshua (editor of Offoffoff), Jun 12, 2002
Re: wow from Tashtigo707, Jun 17, 2002
PCP from Kilgore Trout, Sep 1, 2002
Aunt??? from HugeElvis, Oct 14, 2002
» the scary bum IS the key « from Ethan, Jan 1, 2003
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