An occultist’s guide to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet

Much like the alleged secret soci­ety that runs Hol­ly­wood from the murky shad­ows, David Lynch’s 1986 mas­ter­piece Blue Vel­vet alludes to a sin­is­ter under­bel­ly pulling the strings of a scenic sub­ur­ban smoke­screen. Cer­tain­ly, this brood­ing film noir, set to join the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion in May, pulls back the cur­tain of the Amer­i­can dream to expose the evil exist­ing below.

But as Lynch him­self once said, ​“I learned that just beneath the sur­face there’s anoth­er world, and still dif­fer­ent worlds as you dig deep­er.” With his state­ment in mind, Blue Vel­vet can be read as a micro­cosm of alle­gor­i­cal con­cep­tions used to dis­patch themes on elite occultism. The clues are there; it’s about know­ing what to look for.

Per­haps the key to unlock­ing these hid­den mes­sages can be found with­in the open­ing scene, one that fore­shad­ows the ruth­less dis­sec­tion of Amer­i­cana to fol­low. A nos­tal­gic mon­tage of blue skies, red ros­es and white pick­et fences is backed by the croon­ing of Bob­by Vin­ton, only to be crushed when an old man suf­fers from a seizure and falls to the floor.

While he writhes in pain, a dog’s bark turns into a demon­ic howl as the cam­era trav­els through the grass to reveal a writhing mass of bee­tles and soil. Since its release well over 30 years ago, crit­ics and aca­d­e­mics have accept­ed the imagery as a som­bre med­i­ta­tion against the idea of per­fec­tion; just beneath the sur­face resides destruc­tion and decay.

And yet, straight after these scenes we’re intro­duced to our scopophilic pro­tag­o­nist Jef­frey Beau­mont (played by Lynch’s act­ing bul­wark Kyle MacLach­lan), the son of the hos­pi­talised gar­den­er whose dis­cov­ery of a human ear draws him into the dark, twist­ed world of tor­tured lounge singer Dorothy Val­lens (Isabel­la Rosselli­ni) and Oedi­pal sociopath Frank Booth (Den­nis Hopper).

The sev­ered appendage, and sub­se­quent unrav­el­ling of the mys­tery sur­round­ing it, sug­gests the sin­is­ter her­met­ic stir­rings were in plain site this whole time, expos­ing the dual­i­ty syn­ony­mous with the icon­ic occult phrase ​“as above, so below”. These words accom­pa­ny French occultist Eliphas Levi’s image of the sym­bol­ic deity Baphomet point­ing upwards with the right hand and down­wards with the left, drawn from the ancient works of Her­mes Trismegistus.

In inves­ti­gat­ing the open­ing scenes with­in this con­text, the plot reveals itself as more than a com­men­tary on good ver­sus evil; the infil­tra­tion of eso­teric imagery seems to sug­gest a secre­tive force gov­ern­ing the mod­ern world out of pub­lic view. Note the seem­ing­ly inno­cent fire­man hold­ing his left hand down­wards, his right point­ed towards the sky as he waves, the red truck and black-and-white Dal­ma­t­ian beside him indi­cat­ing the colour palette of satan­ic ritualism.

The sur­re­al­ist nature of Lynch’s craft mud­dies the water in terms of ana­lyt­i­cal spec­u­la­tion, and yet cer­tain clues appear clear-cut, par­tic­u­lar­ly the first shot of colour: a bed of red ros­es against a white pick­et fence. Although, to the casu­al eye, the vir­tu­ous image sig­ni­fies a hyper­bolised vision of Amer­i­cana, look a lit­tle clos­er and you’ll seen an unde­ni­able par­al­lel to the Rose Cross of the cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al move­ment Rosi­cru­cian­ism, a com­bi­na­tion of occultism and oth­er reli­gious practices.

The stage is thus set for Jef­frey to become much more than a stu­dent caught in the mid­dle of a who­dunit. As he lat­er admits to Sandy (Lau­ra Dern) over a Lynchi­an din­er lunch, ​“I’m see­ing some­thing that was always hidden.

Cer­tain­ly, from the moment he dares to enter Dorothy’s apart­ment, Jef­frey sees more of this hid­den world than he bar­gained for. We’re made to know her den of the damned can be found on floor sev­en, a num­ber sym­bol­is­ing the per­fect con­nec­tion between the macro­cosm and micro­cosm, tak­ing us back to the acroa­mat­ic per­cep­tion of dual­i­ty. Here the char­ac­ter unex­pect­ed­ly wit­ness­es the bru­tal­i­sa­tion of Dorothy by the vio­lent tyrant Frank, who car­ries out a ruth­less pre­tence of an inces­tu­ous act which echoes arcane rit­u­al­is­tic practices.

For cen­turies, the macabre cer­e­monies of the satan­ic sect have remained a mys­tery for main­stream soci­ety, and yet Lynch reveals the full show through Jeffrey’s water­ing eyes. From the drink of bour­bon to the pur­pose of the blue vel­vet robe, every action is an ele­ment of some rehearsed com­mu­nion, the singer sac­ri­fic­ing her­self to the per­verse sex­u­al desire of her cap­tor in a bid to save her son.

The shaman­ic nature of rit­u­al­is­tic tra­di­tion comes under fur­ther scruti­ny by Frank’s obses­sion with Roy Orbison’s ​‘In Dreams’, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lyric ​“can­dy-coloured clown they call the sand­man”. The bal­lad sig­nals the start of a cer­e­mo­ny; just as Dorothy knew to rush for a glass of bour­bon, Frank’s cronies scur­ry to hit the play but­ton when­ev­er he demands the can­dy-coloured clown.

Unfold­ing with­in the back­drop of the dream­like por­tray­al of sub­ur­bia, these black mag­ick prac­tices arouse fear, con­fu­sion and awe. Just like Jef­frey, we’re left peek­ing through the slats of a cup­board at some­thing we’re not quite sure we’ve just seen.

While he tries to make sense of it all, it’s in dreams, as the song proph­e­sied, when the sub­con­scious takes cen­tre stage. Just as was done with Bob in Twin Peaks and Mari­et­ta in Wild at Heart, Lynch intro­duces fire as an omi­nous sym­bol. Set against a demon­ic rum­ble, the candle’s flame is snuffed out when Jef­frey suc­cumbs to Dorothy’s request to hit her – dark­ness man­i­fests as he takes an active role in the rit­u­al, no longer an inno­cent bystander.

In occultist the­o­ry, fire is the key spir­i­tu­al ele­ment; it is at once the puri­fy­ing light of heav­en and the destruc­tive fuel from hell. In this sense, fire illus­trates the ram­pant duplex­i­ty evi­dent through­out the film. It is the hero­ic deeds of our Heineken-lov­ing hero and the insid­i­ous pro­ce­dures of the socio­path­ic Frank. It is the blue hues of Dorothy’s robe and the stark red of the club in which she sings, the black attire of Jef­frey against Sandy’s pas­tel pinks and whites.

This push-and-pull con­tin­ues right up until the clos­ing scene when Sandy’s delu­sion­al vision comes true. Frank is defeat­ed, Dorothy is reunit­ed with her son and the pic­ture post­card equi­lib­ri­um is restored. Yet there’s a sense of fragili­ty about the scene, that this dream­like por­trait could come crash­ing down at any moment.

In Blue Vel­vet, Lynch has con­struct­ed a her­met­ic ter­rain where masked secrets are allied to the mys­ter­ies of the mod­ern world. Although ambi­gu­i­ty is a pre­req­ui­site of any Lynchi­an work, if we approach the film with this per­spec­tive, the com­plex arrange­ment of sys­temic ideals at least asks us to acknowl­edge an unknown real­i­ty exist­ing beyond our nor­mal sens­es. Unlike Jef­frey and Sandy, we’re awake to the bug-infest­ed world below.

Criterion’s Blue Vel­vet DVD and Blu-ray will be avail­able for pur­chase on 28 May.