Why I Started Writing About Twin Peaks: The Return & Accidentally Started a Revolution in Film Criticism

I have written this article at least five times over the past seven years. I’ve talked about this topic on a dozen podcasts. And my answers have changed in depth and nuance, though the crux of my position has remained the same. I write about Twin Peaks The Return (2017) because of my experience of the art when it was broadcast into an America whose moral foundation was rapidly dissolving into an environment where people supposedly dedicated to loving their enemy started treating them with cruelty and malice. Suddenly, everybody who didn’t fit in their boxes became enemies. The Return became a lens through which I could almost understand what was happening to my country and the souls of the people suffering, as well as those dealing out the pain.

I have never derived comfort from the story of the ancient carpenter who became a God. As a young boy, I had Star Wars on my mind, and it had laser swords! Christianity didn’t stand a chance because the story wasn’t as compelling to a three-year-old. We live in a memetic world where the best story wins. Human knowledge and experience are passed down through memes. The best memes get airplay in the collective consciousness of our species. And there are levels of consciousness beyond our individual will and limited experiences. Transcendence is the word we use to describe something unknown, something past all that is known. The old adage instructs, “The tongue has never soiled the truth.”

If consciousness is all there is, then art is a form of consciousness, an expansion of creative energy that becomes a wave through time. Some creative people manage to spend their time working with other creatives to construct narrative units of collective energy they broadcast into the universe like pulsar blasts. We call these expressions Movies, but they are consciousness telling stories to itself, reinforcing the secret knowledge of the Universe, which is that even though we feel lonely, we are not alone. This secret was revealed to me through my focused study and meditation on Twin Peaks: The Return.

I thought my style of critical analysis was novel. I wrote about EVERY SCENE of The Return! I labored for hundreds of hours to cover every second of the 18 hours. It took me three years to finish the First Edition of my book A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks. The name pissed off some die-hard Twin Peaks fans because the audacity of trying to pin down the work on the page was a non-starter for those who wallow in mystery without purpose. My attitude towards the work drove others away, I think, because I believed it was a work that could be understood and made meaningful through focused study. Art becomes a poor substitute for moral instruction in a world without functional religion, except for the precious few works that defy or resist interpretation and analysis. I was one of the few critics not impacted by nostalgia about Twin Peaks and what other critics thought and speculated on. I didn’t care because I was having what felt like a deeper experience than their Comic-Con reactions.

Eventually, I no longer cared about others' theories. I instead wanted to know why people loved the work. And if a critic couldn’t find something to love about The Return, I quickly moved on from their opinions. Others in the Twin Peaks community (writers, podcasters, and filmmakers) focused their efforts on the behind-the-camera work. They interviewed the artists and actors who made The Return. They wanted to know the circumstances that drove the technical and creative choices that led to the work of art. And many wanted to know about the drama circling around The Return (and there was much). But it was the worshipping of the director that turned me off most. I didn’t want my interpretation of the art to be impacted by any drama behind the camera. So, I chose to ignore it. And a new form of criticism emerged from my keyboard and pen.

I recently discovered a word that defines my approach to the style of critical analysis and appreciation I learned to practice in my work. The word Limn means “To describe or depict in words.” For some films, describing what the critic sees, hears, thinks, and feels is the only effective way to establish an intellectual foundation to make a moral argument for or against the art. Limn was the only way I found to properly address the complex subject matter of Twin Peaks: The Return.

I repeated this technique when analyzing and writing my next book about an obscure English film and show This Is England. To do the work justice, I had to describe every second of what I saw and felt. Processing art comprehensively through the lens of a critic’s moral framework represents a meaningful shift away from the Auteur theory of art to one rooted in the Viewer’s interpretation. This is a shift in power back to the people paying money for the art, and I will never relinquish it as the essence of New Criticism.

Twin Peaks: The Return still holds moral secrets, so I continue to write about this art in a way no one else has or does.