Wild for Sale
Larner, Jeremy
Three middle-aged friends emerge from a movie cubicle in a postmodern pink stucco cinemadrome, where they have just seen the latest David Lynch film, Wild at Heart. Crossing the Culture Center,...
...Finally she takes the fourth chair, adjusting it so that she faces away from them, as if she were merely sharing their table—and lights a cigarette...
...He told you, he moralized to avoid experiencing the girl's pain...
...sit down at an open-air cafe across from a museum where Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs are on exhibit...
...Sings...
...I've been sucked in and mugged, just as I was by "Twin Peaks...
...And how the camera relishes the crunch of that black man's skull into the wall, how it shows Cage pounding his head against the marble floor from an angle that makes the blood spatter toward the viewer...
...For the first hour, whenever he overdid the violence, I tried to believe I was seeing a very original, very sly comedy...
...He invites us to glory in pain, to be aroused by it...
...L.C...
...These are not just innocents...
...L.C...
...But they don't love, so they're stuck in receiving and inflicting trauma...
...People like them may run governments...
...The third is a liberal critic, intensely concerned with good and bad work, authenticity and wholeness...
...L.C...
...and a Porsche...
...SHRINK...
...I see it in rock videos, in urban thrill killing, and in so-called Democrats outscreaming the Republicans for the state's need to exterminate criminals...
...The dialogue is heavy with portent, the camera lavishes intimate close-ups, the music throbs with melodrama...
...Interrupting, without turning her head) Daddy, you're ranting again...
...The world is wild and crazy, always has been...
...That's why people cry at happy endings, incidentally...
...One is a suburban yuppie management consultant, with an M.B.A...
...It is the Liberal Critic's daughter, on vacation from Yale, come to pick up her father, who has never learned how to drive...
...it makes sense that she might not stand up to assault...
...L.C...
...There's nothing to integrate...
...The Yuppie regards the daughter with cheerful amusement, seeing her as one more of life's weird entertainments...
...DAUGHTER (over her shoulder) A reader...
...But it's all a parody—especially the Elvis songs and the stuff about true love...
...If you start to laugh, you'll choke on genuine gore...
...Is that funny or profound...
...She tells Cage it was her uncle...
...Just hang on/ to what we got/ don't let go/ cause we got a lot...
...Go ahead—laugh at the stupidity and ugliness of the world...
...What you've just described is the beginning of a ludicrous soap opera...
...The viewer loses the power to respect or care about the imperiled lovers...
...At this point, a young woman wearing a miniskirt over tight pants and under a medley of T-shirts, approaches them...
...And if you go out at night in America, you will see both dangerous types and sad, addicted zombies...
...Finally you see her hand press on his and hear her voice, sure enough, murmur, "Fuck me...
...L.C...
...My favorite R 'n' R song...
...That scene is preceded by a vision of the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz...
...They're the only people who can have perspective...
...Among other things...
...DAUGHTER...
...L.C...
...They're human, too...
...Got a job interview...
...It wouldn't occur to you you're all making the same assumptions...
...SHRINK...
...SHRINK...
...And you exaggerate yourself when you say the Laura Dern character was raped as a child by her father...
...What Lynch is showing us is the externalization of inner life...
...they're ominous and silly, making the story and characters look ridiculous...
...I can't believe you guys...
...It's disturbing, just as our lives are...
...Why not...
...That it's better than a sharp stick in the eye...
...They know what Lynch is saying...
...Crossing the Culture Center, they confront twenty-three restaurants and food shops and, after some confusion...
...The secret of every character is a need to defile himself or herself—or others...
...The man was hired to kill him...
...The daughter stubs out her butt, rises...
...I've got a plane to catch...
...How could you take him seriously...
...he views movies and art as entertainment...
...You haven't read the basic critical texts...
...L.C...
...She tests him with confessions as they make plans to escape her murderous mother...
...Lynch invoked the abused side of all of us—many laughed, a few moralized...
...DAUGHTER...
...The movies can provide a safe place for that...
...Why not say the psychos in the picture are understandably confused and overreact...
...S.Y...
...SUBURBAN YUPPIE...
...That's what movie comedy is all about and has always been about...
...CRITIC...
...Once upon a time, these three graduated from Rutgers together, with honors...
...But they're not comic...
...She was an abused and molested child...
...I agree, laughing is a way of handling pain...
...We have to integrate images of extreme terror or romance with driving to work and putting out the dog...
...He thanks them for teaching him something valuable about love...
...She walks firmly across the mall to her Honda Prelude, her father slouching head-down, behind her, as if dragged on a chain...
...L.C...
...Yes, the Oz references run pretentiously throughout the movie...
...You see a romp and you take it seriously...
...Because life has brought them to a mall in California, they sit beneath a swinging sign proclaiming, "Irony Illegal...
...It's a tribute to Lynch's guile and my gullibility that I didn't walk out before then...
...In the movies, death can be funny...
...L.C...
...The audience howled with laughter...
...Good to see you, Melissa...
...What else could it be...
...SHRINK...
...It was unreal—a cheap thrill—great acting—how could you take it moralistically...
...But the flashback clearly shows her father, the same man whom the mother has burned to death by the Mob...
...Frankly, I'm bored to death by the power babble of patriarchal intellectuals, arguing about who defines right and wrong and who gets to play God...
...These possibilities are brought to mind everywhere, but it's impossible to square them with our daily routines...
...I see it in television ads for perfume and athletic shoes...
...L.C...
...You forget that Cage killed a man at the beginning, going way beyond self-defense in a homicidal frenzy...
...We later learn that Cage was falsely accused—the mother made aggressive sexual advances, then threatened his life...
...Remember at the end, when Cage gets out of jail, he feels he will ruin Dern's life, but after he says goodbye and walks away, he is mugged and beaten by three hoods...
...The movie is a construct in your own heads...
...I saw the film as a parable about innocent love in a world of trauma...
...SHRINK...
...She's an intern this summer at TimeLife–Warner Brothers...
...Oh, it pretends to be a great deal more...
...The creep says he can fuck her if he wants to—and you're dying for Dern to slug him or scream—but instead he presses close to her side, puts his leering face to hers, fondles her groin, and prompts her to say "Fuck me...
...These are false memories to exonerate her terrible parents...
...She hesitates, hearing the strange sixties song of the Yuppie, concerned that someone she knows will see her with these balding men in button-down shirts, jeans, and dirty sneakers, and think she is part of their conversation...
...Really, this is Humanities I-A, Aeschylus to Woody Allen...
...S.Y...
...He accused him in front of Dern of intercourse with Dern's mother in the men's room...
...It's the best we can do, and if you've got it, you had better hold on to it...
...S.Y...
...By taking Lynch seriously, we are drawn in to a nasty world of meaningless illusion...
...Just deconstruct it, and you'll have nothing to quibble about...
...But the story is only a progression of more and more fantastic degradation...
...It's hilarious...
...I see the same thing in fashion photos in Vogue...
...S.Y...
...The Liberal Critic rests his forehead on the saucer that once held his espresso cup...
...The Shrink smiles amiably, keeping his lips together so as to show no teeth...
...The symbols that flood our emotional landscape are in themselves ridiculous and simplistic, but their total effect can be overwhelming...
...S.Y...
...Didn't you hear the audience laughing...
...How about the scene where the lovers come upon Sherilyn Fenn, stumbling around in the middle of nowhere bleeding to death after a car accident, still making hysteric excuses to her dead mother...
...Lynch wants it both ways—to parody and to have his parody taken as portentous...
...SHRINK...
...L.C...
...I think Lynch has worked out a style of conveying our unconscious hopes and fears, which are naïve, perverse, and grandiose—and take forms that don't neatly correspond to their contents...
...SHRINK...
...They're exploited for shock value, as they are in horror films...
...Out of sick embarrassment...
...SHRINK...
...You see her face in agony, but she's getting turned on...
...I'm not moralizing—I'm reacting to the erotic lushness of Lynch's style...
...You want to rank every flick in the hierarchy of bourgeois commodities...
...The mother goes right to the attack—just as she later tries to kill Cage because he accidentally witnessed the father's murder...
...S.Y...
...Hey, it's just for laughs...
...Kind of a parody of people like Godard or Bergman, who are so self-conscious they dance like elephants...
...And when she says he's a piece of shit, we are treated to a close-up of a filthy toilet...
...These lovers are innocent, they react very naturally, but they're understandably confused and full of weaknesses, just as you or I. They're frightened, they overreact, but they know their lives are on the line...
...S.Y...
...He says it over and over, as the camera lingers on his hand...
...The exaggeration lets you laugh...
...This brings us to the key scene, the moment I'd been dreading without knowing it...
...At any moment we may be pulled up short by drastic changes, absurdities, violence...
...Frame by frame, moment by moment, Lynch's films seem so original, so skillfully done, that I find myself making excuses for the crudity...
...Her father barely nods to her as he presses on urgently...
...What safer moment to cry...
...The characters are either innocents or psychotic criminals...
...SHRINK...
...It's like you're characters in a movie by David Lynch...
...A hush falls over the table...
...q WINTER • 1991 • 113...
...A waitperson introduces himself...
...All of you think you know what that film really is, as if anyone could define reality...
...The second is a psychiatrist, good at what he does, interested in art as the play of personality...
...If you want to get outside that world, you have to listen to a Third World person or a woman, someone you've oppressed and pushed outside...
...Lynch does kissing, for instance, with hunger and fear and ominously swelling music...
...YUPPIE...
...Right, it's so overdone, it has to be funny...
...L.C...
...I felt at that moment Lynch had lured me in and held me like the creep grabbed the girl and tricked me into experiencing her degradation...
...112 • DISSENT Culture Notes L.C...
...Dern also says on the sound track that her mother comforted her, but we see no such thing...
...You do your job, you love your family, you go to a horror film and let it all hang out...
...We see outrageous events each night on our television screens, and we don't know whether to laugh or cry...
...Most people do seek true love— with all sorts of overblown romantic imagery that may lead to disaster...
...SHRINK...
...You're getting old...
...This world of violence and perversity is visible everywhere and part of every American's fantasy speculations, yet few writers or moviemakers have been able to convey the absurd tenor of its wildness...
...Lynch tries to have it both ways: he creates an atmosphere of mystical significance, but if you take him seriously and look for meaning, you'll hear you've been watching a comedy...
...Then the creep laughs and says he'll come back later, he's too busy now to do it...
...The director is advertising his profundity, inviting us to see how he deals with death, love, and evil...
...I have to say, I feel physically sick...
...Sex itself is either a grotesque assault—as with Laura Dern and her father at the beginning of the film—or the heroic WINTER • 1991 • 111 Culture Notes consummation of destiny—as with Laura Dern and her true love, Nicholas Cage...
...No, there is a delight here in pain...
...S.Y...
...You're overanalyzing, reading in your own philosophy...
...S.Y...
...LIBERAL...
...The three friends order decaf espressos...
...You were...
...If you want to psychologize, we're seduced by the texture of television, movies, and so on, into identifying with the oppressor, relishing his masterly style in fantasy, while we live lives of passive consumption and public lying, cheating, stealing, bribery, murder . . . DAUGHTER...
...And I don't think, by the way, that bloody accidents are funny...
...Kids are used to exaggerated violence and a weird array of sounds as part of their natural idiom...
...The little creep with the nightmare mouth, Willem Dafoe, knocks on the door and Dern lets him into the motel room, though she's wearing only bra and panties...
...SHRINK...
...The exaggerations are comic, but to laugh too hard is to laugh at the dreams and terrors of ordinary people...
Vol. 38 • January 1991 • No. 1
