From the moment we see the sinister shot of the army of fiendish insects lying in wait beneath the seeming picturesqueness of freshly cut suburban grass, we’re aware that David Lynch is about to make his grand statement on good and evil. One that would dominate the majority of his grand opus of life, Twin Peaks, in the following years. But it was Blue Velvet that established Lynch’s distinctly sinister take on the evil underbelly of every surface–particularly those parts of America that are meant to seem wholesome.
As Lynch himself grew up in small town America, the ways in which he is haunted by it are manifest in the initial purity of our protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), and his gradual descent into the seedy goings-on of Lumberton (particularly if one crosses onto Lincoln Road). That the “fall of the father”–literally–occurs within the first two minutes sets the tone for a world sent into a tailspin, only to be righted when Jeffrey returns to correct what’s been made wrong. Of course, he has no idea upon coming home from college that he’s going to become entangled in some Freudian nightmare involving a fetish for blue velvet, Pabst Blue Ribbon and inhaling amyl nitrate. All activities that serve as bread and butter for Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), the lord of the crime underworld in Lumberton much the same way Jean Renault (Michael Parks) is in Twin Peaks. That is, when he’s not kidnapping a lounge singer’s husband and child to make her his sex slave.
It is this lounge singer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), that opens the Pandora’s box to Jeffrey’s obsession with finding out the truth behind the severed ear he discovers in the field by his house on the way back from visiting his dad in the hospital (a scene of sheer surrealistic horror as it is intended to be a clear demarcation of a son needing to become “a real man” in his father’s fading shadow). Upon taking the ear to be examined by local police detective John Williams (George Dickerson), Jeffrey ends up getting reacquainted with Williams’ daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), who goes to the same high school he did and is now a senior (so it’s not total pedo or anything). As she informs him of some of the snippets she’s overheard her father discussing about Vallens, she offers to take him to the singer’s apartment. Jeffrey is hooked immediately on getting more information, roping Sandy into his scheme to spy on Dorothy to figure out what’s really going on.
Discussing their plan at a quintessential 50s diner called Arlene’s (which has distinctly Double R vibes), Sandy can’t help but go down the rabbit hole with him if for nothing else because of her apparent crush on him despite having a boyfriend. She jibes, “I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.” Seeing that it kind of titillates her either way, he returns, “Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out.” Fairly racy dialogue considering we’re supposed to be in the 50s. And though most of Lynch’s work has a decadeless feel with a tinge of 50s wholesomeness, that Blue Velvet is actually set during this period only serves to further accentuate the evil force that is Frank. Plus, when else would a lounge singer be able to make a decent enough living?
As Frank finds himself in the closet of Dorothy’s apartment, he doesn’t bargain for her shrewdness in detecting Peeping Toms, and is floored when she fishes him out with a knife, berating him for being a perv and then suddenly giving him some light head before guiding him to the couch for more. Dorothy’s visceral carnality fuels and anchors much of the script’s theme of sex not being able to exist without violence in a world dominated by men and their base desires. Frank’s vacillation between infantilism and hyper-caricaturized “maleness” of the gangster variety is the prime example of sex’s inherent brutality. About one person gaining the upper hand through any means necessary to get what they want out of it: their version of pleasure. Dorothy’s increasing helplessness in being forced to do whatever Frank wants lest she lose her husband and son for good gives way to her strange sense of power over Jeffrey. His inexperience excites her, and, at the same time, she knows that he’s just like Frank deep down–has that same capacity for violence in sex.
Because Frank always hits her before or during sex, Dorothy seems incapable of going through with it when Jeffrey comes into her bed, that is, not without demanding, “Hit me!” Jeffrey flinches at the suggestion, his jaw further dropped when Dorothy asks, “What do you want to do? Are you a bad boy? Do you wanna do bad things?” Jeffrey engages, “What do you want?” Dorothy insists, “I want you to hurt me.” He rebuffs, “No. I don’t wanna hurt you. I told you, I wanna help you.” She screams, “Get away! Get away from my bed! Stay away!” the notion of sweetness repugnant to her. Eventually, of course, she’s proven correct about his intrinsic nature as he succumbs to violently slapping her across the face after she goads him enough about it. It is a scene of extreme turbulence that succinctly manifests how sex brings out the worst depravity in people. In fact, one is surprised portions of Blue Velvet weren’t used in some sort of abstinence campaign in the 80s, perhaps concluding with Frank saying, “Baby wants to fuck! Baby wants blue velvet!” or “Daddy’s coming home.”
The intertwined personality of the id comprised of Baby and Daddy in Frank’s mind make him one of the most cautionary tales about letting your sexual psychosis get the better of you. Not to mention how much it can infect (or, as Dorothy would phrase it, “put a disease in”) others you inflict it upon. To heighten this effect, the other song besides “Blue Velvet” that gets played frequently throughout the film, Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” accentuates a certain degeneracy that only comes out at night (when Frank does most of his dealings and when sex tends to occur), as Orbison croons, “A candy-colored clown they call the sandman tiptoes to my room every night.” When picturing Frank as that deranged “clown”/”sandman” who can fuck you or kill you at his nonsensical whim, it becomes a very prescient song choice indeed.
What’s more, Dorothy’s frequent referral to sex as a “disease” doesn’t exactly make it sound appealing, nor like something she much enjoys. More accurately, it’s something that’s been her great bane and her great asset, her body the only tool to use for leverage in her position as a lower middle class denizen of Anywhere USA.
Then, of course, there is Sandy. Sweet, virginal Sandy who Jeffrey would never dream of “experimenting” with in matters such as physical violence while boning. She is too pure, too righteous for such “iniquities” as that. Which is likely why he saves her for girlfriend material, even if she is shocked to later find that he’s had his fair share of dalliances with Dorothy, she is such a benign spirit that she forgives. Her Christ-likeness is augmented by a violent dream she describes to Jeffrey: “In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark [on a side note, this seems to be the basis for the Black Lodge and the White Lodge] because there weren’t any robins. And the robins represented love. And for the longest time there was just this darkness. And all of a sudden thousands of robins were set free. And they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed like that love would be the only thing that would make any difference, and it did. So I guess it means…there is trouble till the robins come.”
Naturally, a robin does come. A very fake-looking one that has served as one of many sources of debate among Lynch fans who have interpreted that fakeness to symbolize that the restoration of good in Lumberton is fleeting. Maybe that fleetingness gives way to Jeffrey becoming the new Frank, treating Sandy abusively to fulfill the instinctive force of his sexual perversions, i.e. “subconscious.” In point of fact, Lynch’s portrayal of women as one of two central archetypes–virgin or whore, with neither being in control of what happens in bed–only further speaks to the reasons why sex and violence are so enmeshed in the male “fantasy,” so often realized.
