Desire Wore Blue Velvet

Blue Vel­vet is per­haps one of the most trag­ic and dan­ger­ous­ly erot­ic films ever made, meld­ing melo­dra­ma and neo-noir to cre­ate a whol­ly orig­i­nal vision that explores the com­plex­i­ties of dark­ness and desire. Each step Jef­frey takes into the under­bel­ly of his beloved Lum­ber­ton leaves him fun­da­men­tal­ly altered. About a third of the way through the film, Jef­frey sneaks into Dorothy Vallens’s apart­ment. He and Sandy had just watched Dorothy per­form ​“Blue Vel­vet” at the night­club and Sandy is wait­ing in the car while Jef­frey plays detec­tive. But Dorothy comes home soon­er than he expect­ed and when she enters, he’s forced to hide in the closet.

Dorothy undress­es and makes her way to the clos­et, but sud­den­ly Frank calls and she answers hur­ried­ly. Her voice is tense and shak­ing as she asks after her hus­band and son, mak­ing sure to call Frank ​“sir” as she des­per­ate­ly tries to talk to her hus­band Don and calm her son Don­ny. Once the call ends, she pulls out a fam­i­ly pho­to­graph from under the couch and crouch­es down to stare at it. Then she puts it back in its hid­ing place and stays on the floor, crawl­ing around in silent despair.

Even­tu­al­ly she gets up, gets dressed and final­ly notices some­one else is there. Dorothy grabs a kitchen knife and approach­es the clos­et, forc­ing Jef­frey to come out and explain him­self. It’s in that moment that we as view­ers real­ize why he’s real­ly there – he wants to be near Dorothy. Even as Sandy and by exten­sion a nor­mal life waits for him out­side, Jef­frey can’t help but want to see the oth­er side. When Dorothy holds the knife to him and demands he strips, what she wants is for him to lev­el with her. She already has Frank lord­ing over her – this time it’s her turn to be in control.

Writer and direc­tor David Lynch was always explor­ing pow­er in his work, accept­ing its allure and inter­ro­gat­ing its dark­ness. Lynch knows that you can­not sim­ply look at the under­bel­ly as an impar­tial observ­er. One has to expe­ri­ence the dark­ness, allow it to over­take them, before they can tru­ly under­stand what it is. This tense encounter between Dorothy and Jef­frey is the begin­ning of a strange courtship that changes the course of both of their lives.

As an audi­ence watch­ing Blue Vel­vet, we are all Jef­frey in that clos­et, unable to watch with­out par­tic­i­pat­ing our­selves. Lat­er, when Frank arrives in all his mon­strous­ness, Jef­frey can’t believe what he’s see­ing. But isn’t that what he want­ed – need­ed – to know? To expe­ri­ence Blue Vel­vet is to con­front our own sex­u­al­i­ty, and the con­tra­dic­tions that dri­ve our desires. Once we’re made aware, it’s impos­si­ble to look away. Even when retreat­ing back into the light, the dark­ness is nev­er real­ly gone. Lynch under­stood that we must con­front and accept the dark­ness with­in us in order to grow and be whole. Jef­frey need­ed Dorothy just as much as she need­ed him. They lib­er­ate each oth­er from the bina­ries of Amer­i­can life – it’s a release just as sat­is­fy­ing as an orgasm. For them, and for us.

To com­mem­o­rate the life and cre­ative lega­cy of the peer­less film­mak­er David Lynch, Lit­tle White Lies has brought togeth­er writ­ers and artists who loved him to cre­ate ​‘In Heav­en Every­thing Is Fine‘: a series cel­e­brat­ing his work. We asked par­tic­i­pants to respond to a Lynch project how­ev­er they saw fit – the results were haunt­ing, pro­found, and illuminating.