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Lincoln the Woodsman: Native Americans and Obscene Patriarchs in Frost and Lynch’s Twin Peaks

2022; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10509208.2022.2124096

1543-5326

Robert Joseph,

American History and Culture

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentsThe idea for this paper was conceived over two sections of Mass Communication Processes and Effects (COM 571) taught at the University of Dayton for the Spring 2019 and 2021 semesters. Special thanks to my students from both of those sections for their stimulating discussions on the eighth episode of Twin Peaks: The Return. Theodra Bane was a tremendous help in guiding me to relevant Indigenous studies scholarship and in providing feedback on select passages. The journal's reviewer offered invaluable critiques of my first draft, particularly in regard to the author's privilege and bias as a scholar with settler ancestry. This revised draft represents my best efforts to acknowledge and curtail these biases. Finally, a significant chunk of this paper was written while on summer vacation with my wife Megan and her patient, supporting family. This essay is dedicated to her.Notes1 Frost, quoted by Bushman (Citation2020, 192–193).2 David Lynch, quoted in Lynch on Lynch (Citation2005).3 Bushman's introduction convincingly outlines the Lynchian bias within Twin Peaks scholarship. As recently as 2020, Julia Grossman and Will Scheibel include in their eponymous monograph a chapter titled "Behind the Red Curtains: Questions of Authorship," which outlines the authorial tension between Frost and Lynch while still framing Twin Peaks within Lynch's ultimate authorship (Bushman Citation2020, 3–7; Grossman and Scheibel Citation2020, 10–24).4 Lynch (Citation2005, 182). In the interview transcript, Chris Rodley asks "Isn't it true that you were less involved in the second series, because you were off making Wild at Heart?" to which Lynch responds "Right. That started…in the second series I was, you know, removed from it. Because of this ellipsis, it is unclear what exactly Lynch said, but it is possible Rodley misrepresented Lynch to fit his original query's assumption.5 As of July 2021, Frost's Twitter profile image is a campaign button from Roosevelt's first presidential run.6 Another obscene patriarch omitted is Ben Horne (Richard Baymer), Twin Peaks's relentlessly appetitive business mogul who has sex with Laura, his lawyer's daughter, while she is working as a prostitute at Horne's brothel, and inadvertently comes close to a sexual encounter with his own daughter at that same brothel. Like Leland Palmer, Horne presents a façade of respectability that hides a myriad of illicit activities.7 For a snapshot of this political critique at the show's initial airing, see Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Adolescent Eye [on TWIN PEAKS, the first season]," June 15, Citation2017, previously published in the Chicago Reader, April 20, 1990, https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2017/06/adolescent-eye/. For a modern iteration of this political critique, see Blake (Citation2016).8 With Meek's Cutoff, Reichardt also upends expectations of Pacific Northwest topography, shooting her film in Southeastern Oregon's arid High Desert, the real-life setting of the titular cutoff.9 Despite several online sources claiming that Silva (who died in 1995) was Native American, according to Henry Lewis, a friend who worked on the Twin Peaks pilot with Silva, he was of Portuguese ancestry Lewis (Citation2021).10 Fans' opinions on Native representation are more mixed. In Laura's Ghost, Courtenay Stallings' chronicle of interviews with women fans of Twin Peaks, she speaks to Gabrielle Norte, a Native American filmmaker who praises how well-written and non-stereotypical of a character Hawk is, while Sezín Koehler, a Sri Lankan/Lithuanian-American entertainment writer, criticizes the show's whiteness and categorically labels Michael Horse "a caricature of a Native American man." While most casual White fans of Twin Peaks likely do not engage in this discourse, Stallings' interviews demonstrate a lack of consensus even among people of color who are fans of the series.11 Frost's Secret History and the original series were obviously not available to Carroll or Gil, who wrote their articles in 1993 and 2016, respectively, and Carroll likely wrote his before Fire Walk with Me was released. Gil does not mention Fire Walk with Me in his recounting of Carroll's original argument.12 This exchange is taken directly from the film, and differs from the shooting script, which slightly changes Leland's words and omits BOB's line altogether.13 In the words of Lynch's editor and then-wife Mary Sweeney, "people were addicted to Twin Peaks and wanted more of it, and they got a David Lynch film instead." Quoted in Lynch and McKenna (2010, 310).14 Meek (Citation2006, cited in reference to Hawk's dialogue in Bil Citation2016). To give one example of this speech used by Hawk, in the series' second episode, in a response to a query to whether a character has awoken from a coma, Hawk notes that "body and spirit are still far apart."15 Lynch (Citation1991, 35); Frost (Citation2016, 198). In the audiobook adaptation of The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Michael Horse reprises his role as Hawk, in addition to supplying the voice for Chief Joseph.16 "The Ballad of Big Ed and Norma and Nadine."17 Bushman, Interviews with Mark Frost, 136.18 Twin Peaks: The Return, episode 3, "Part 3," directed by David Lynch, written by Lynch and Mark Frost, aired May 21, 2017, Showtime, 2017, Blu-Ray.19 Lynch and McKenna, Room to Dream, 488–89.20 Some scholars differentiate the terms frontiersman and woodsman. In his analysis of James Fenimore Cooper's writings, George Monteiro contrasts the idea of the frontiersman, as embodied by the character Natty Bumppo (aka Leatherstocking), with the woodsman, embodied by Billy Kirby from The Frontiersman (1823). In his analysis, Monteiro identifies Leatherstocking's frontiersman as "both harbinger and initial manifestation of the white man's civilization," moving through the frontier to escape civilization's trappings while foreshadowing its eventual conquest. By contrast, Kirby's woodsman is "the logical follower of Natty Bumppo in the movement of civilization through the forest gardens of nature. In him man's battle against nature is given in the simplest of archetypal terms. Nature exists for man and may be used and abused by him in any way he chooses. That said, the two terms are often used interchangeably Monteiro (Citation1962, 213).21 The exceptions to this rule were overtly negative accounts of Lincoln's life by Confederate sympathizers, his Northern political enemies, and by antislavery radicals who saw him as too moderate. For more on these accounts, see "Chapter 15: The Anti-Lincoln Tradition," in Fehrenbacher (Citation1987, 197–213).22 The only film to depict any element of the Black Hawk War is Abe Lincoln in Illinois, which shows a lighthearted scene of Captain Lincoln's flailing attempt to drill a company of volunteer soldiers before deployment.23 Quoted in Bushman (Citation2020, 232).Additional informationNotes on contributorsRobert Gordon JosephRobert Gordon Joseph is a lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Dayton. He received is PhD in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University.