Everyone Gets To Live in Twin Peaks

In Defense of Twin Peaks: The Return

TWIN PEAKS FANATICS EXPLORE TRAUMA THROUGH THE COMEDY OF THE WEIRD. Trauma becomes story and story becomes ritual.

Because Twin Peaks layers abuse with the surreal, and because the surreal allows distance for comedy to sprout, viewers can reframe trauma as something dreadful, divine, and devious…

…and that’s what keeps them coming back.

Allow me to briefly share my perspective on this remarkable art form of Twin Peaks.

Credit: JB Minton - The Salish in Snoqualmie, WA - Oct. 2017

Watching and rewatching Twin Peaks can become a solemn ritual, nearly religious in reverence.

Before 2017, there was only one way to experience the narrative of Twin Peaks, which was as a story of systemic child sexual abuse and its immediate aftermath in a small town that turned its head away from evil, allowing it to thrive.

FOR TWIN PEAKS FANS, this story is a cathedral of pain, where viewers kneel before the relics of Laura’s violated innocence.

However, Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired on Showtime in 2017, altered everything about what came before in Twin Peaks, except for the emotional impact it has on us when we watch it.

But it's just three seasons of TV and a movie. So, what's the big deal?

One of the most provocative arguments I've heard someone make about cultish Twin Peaks fans is that they worship at the altar of child abuse. I had a brief but incredibly compelling discussion with a few fans during a Twin Peaks gathering, lasting less than five minutes, and I haven't stopped thinking about that conversation for years.

The defense against this is that Twin Peaks fans are not "worshipping" child abuse any more than Catholics "worship" capital punishment, but rather are using the metaphors around these tragedies to guide them spiritually through an emotional wasteland to a more satisfactory conclusion that lies beyond the textual. The purpose of watching a character suffer in a movie is to achieve a spiritual breakthrough of compassion for their pain. Compassion sprouts into compulsion, and so the will of nature is activated but bent towards mercy by this refraction of the human soul turned in on itself. Great art flips over the soul.

FOR TWIN PEAKS FANS do not praise the abuse—they confront it; they do not celebrate horror—they seek meaning within it.

However, the alternative view should also be considered: consistent and recurring artistic consumption can be viewed as a form of ritual. And if a spiritual energy is involved in that ritual, it can be regarded as a religious one. So, is there a difference between the Catholic who ritualizes Jesus's suffering through the Stations of the Cross and the Twin Peaks fanatic who rewatches Seasons 1 and 2 along with Fire Walk With Me every year because they move through the massive trials of Laura Palmer?

FOR TWIN PEAKS FANS do not worship pain, but they witness, process and reflect through pain.

Catholics who practice these rituals are supposed to get access to the world beyond by living a righteous life on Earth, according to the directions of Scripture. And for many years, Twin Peaks fans were left with the image of angels and an earthly protector in the form of Dale Cooper. Both rituals make participants feel more at ease about their place in this suffering world through recognizing suffering in another being and sharing it with them, because we all suffer.

Suffering is the universal experience of all human beings. It’s a core feature of our brief lives. How much we suffer is the variable. Art can help, but art can’t do everything. Eventually, we must take these stories that move us spiritually and apply their lessons to the morals and ethics that guide our behavior.

FOR TWIN PEAKS FANS do not idolize pain. They do not excuse horror. They do not erase truth.

But Twin Peaks: The Return turned everything on its head in 2017. It was a mindf*** that kept on pounding. It's still pounding. The story of Twin Peaks, besides being about the suffering and spiritual redemption of Laura Palmer, also became about Dale Cooper's escape from a moral and spiritual trap.

When there is a compassionate witness to another being’s suffering, two beings are suffering. Twin Peaks now accounts for both perspectives: the sufferer (Laura) and the compassionate witness of suffering (Cooper).

But Cooper loses his faculties in The Return. The viewer must stand in and help him keep it together if he has any hope for escape. I think Dale Cooper escaped and survived to fight on. I wrote this whole book about it (A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition).

However, what I didn't have great empathy for while writing the book was the story that had been taken away from those wonderful Twin Peaks fanatics who invested a lot of their lives and emotions into those two seasons and the movie.

FOR TWIN PEAKS FANS will revisit trauma, reinterpret mystery, and resurrect meaning.

The good news is that I think their original experience remains intact. And Twin Peaks: The Return gave us another layer within which to experience the tragedy of trauma and the comedy of the weird.

I think everyone gets their unique experience of Twin Peaks. I support them all and humbly offer my own.

Pain.Beauty.Belief.

Breakthrough.

I hope everyone enjoys visiting Twin Peaks as much as I have