A trip down to DumbLand

For the last twen­ty-five years of his life, David Lynch strug­gled to get films made. It’s easy now to remem­ber Mul­hol­land Dri­ve as a tow­er­ing clas­sic, as if it was always there, but it was a pre­car­i­ous pro­duc­tion; a reject­ed tv pilot with scenes bolt­ed (per­fect­ly) on. Though Lynch was noth­ing if not vora­cious­ly cre­ative, and so he start­ed mak­ing films for his web­site, the now-defunct David​Lynch​.com. Some were mul­ti-part series and oth­ers were one-off gags; all of them pieces that, in some cas­es lit­er­al­ly, came togeth­er to make his self-pro­duced epic Inland Empire.

But that doesn’t mean these in-between films only have val­ue in rela­tion to the canon­i­cal fea­ture films, to the so-called major works, in fact, there is a lot of free­dom in the minor key. Free from the mas­sive weight of expec­ta­tion, an artist can explore their oth­er, per­haps less rep­utable inter­ests, for exam­ple: the fart joke.

And so, we come to Dum­b­Land, a crude six-episode ani­mat­ed series made with the crud­est of means. The wonki­ly exag­ger­at­ed bod­ies and mis­aligned faces of the most charm­ing nuclear fam­i­ly this side of the Palmers were drawn with a com­put­er mouse and voiced by the great man him­self, either doing a sil­ly voice or sim­ply pitch shift­ing his own.

In the fifth episode, the one most lodged in my brain, a man bursts through the family’s white pick­et fence with a stick in his mouth. A car­toon­ish con­cept, but ren­dered so vis­cer­al­ly you can almost feel the plank of wood push­ing through his skull as he screams in unend­ing, incom­pre­hen­si­ble pain. The kind of pain that makes you feel like you’re no longer human, that all you are is suf­fer­ing. It’s so hor­ri­ble that it becomes fun­ny, or so fun­ny that is becomes hor­ri­ble, a place much of Lynch’s work uncom­fort­ably sits.

The brutish patri­arch — who has lit­tle to say for him­self beyond ​“I like to kill things”; if evil wears Lynch’s vil­lains, as David Fos­ter Wal­lace said, then he is evil undressed — sup­pos­ed­ly tries to help by shak­ing the stick with the same force often direct­ed at his wife, who only ever screams (there’s an awful lot of screaming).

The hor­ri­ble rat­tling sound­ing is inter­rupt­ed, sud­den­ly and unnat­u­ral­ly, by the son — who sounds so trans­par­ent­ly like Lynch you can’t help but pic­ture him read­ing the lines and gig­gle — dry­ly repeat­ing first ​“get the stick, get the stick”, then ​“you poked his eyes out”, ​“you poked his oth­er eye out” and so on. The kind of absurd rep­e­ti­tions you’d expect from ear­ly inter­net ani­ma­tors like David Firth and Don Hertzfeldt, both of whom owe some­thing to Lynch in gen­er­al and Dum­b­Land in particular.

Even­tu­al­ly this poor crea­ture is turned inside out, crawl­ing des­per­ate­ly away only to get crushed under a truck. To that final indig­ni­ty, the father responds: ​“fuck­er nev­er even said thank you”. It’s some of Lynch’s basest and barest work, but with­out the con­tra­dic­to­ry beau­ty he usu­al­ly finds in these night­mare places he’s able to be more direct, even, in a way, dis­cur­sive. He can say some­thing sim­ply and straight­for­ward­ly, some­thing it’s worth say­ing in no uncer­tain terms: that Amer­i­ca, and all its peo­ple, val­ues and insti­tu­tions, are fuck­ing stupid.

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.