Authorship and the Films of David Lynch: Aesthetic Receptions of Contemporary Hollywood by Antony Todd (review)

Writing any book on an individual director in the last thirty years can be tricky: either one must “assume” authorship and therefore not really discuss the issue (which most seem to do) or tackle the problem of authorship directly. Antony Todd, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, certainly does the latter. He reveals an awareness of the history and controversies over the auteur theory, as he makes a case for its place in film theory today. Those familiar with recent developments in Lynchian scholarship, or film authorship for that matter, may already be familiar with his work, as the present book’s third chapter, “Meanings and Authorships in Dune,” appeared in a 2009 issue of Film-Philosophy.

Todd uses the introduction and chapter 1 to justify his auteurist study, before moving on to Lynch as a “marketable author.” He cites the contextual model Barbara Klinger used in her work on Douglas Sirk (1994) along with the reception studies of Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser as primary influences on his work. Todd also cites Janet Staiger’s “authorship as origin approach,” which treats the author as a “free agent.” Todd frequently refers to Lynch as a “post-classical auteur,” not because there is something implicitly “post-“ about Lynch that separates him from our traditional notions of the classical auteur, but rather because he situates Lynch as “a historically constituted agent” of post-classical Hollywood as well as post-classical art cinema. Still, Todd relies on the film texts themselves. Dune (1984), Blue Velvet (1986), Twin Peaks (1990-1991), and Mulholland Dr. (2001) get the most attention, with entire chapters devoted to each. Accordingly, he acknowledges that “this book will also look beyond its empiricist findings, towards the text itself, in an effort to account for the different experiences at play in the encounter between the auteurist text and the reader, and in doing so, we may (re)consider ways that the author functions for pleasure in these relationships” (6).

Discussing authorship in Lynch’s early career can be thorny, but Todd traces Lynch’s trajectory as he moved rapidly from underground (Eraserhead) to Victorian period drama (The Elephant Man) to event picture (Dune) to auteur picture (Blue Velvet) to TV soap opera (Twin Peaks). While he does not grant them their own chapters, Todd reflects on how Eraserhead (1977) became a midnight hit and how Lynch “journey[ed] from underground to aboveground” as he was subsequently tapped to helm The Elephant Man (1980).

Chapter 3, on Dune, is significantly revised and reworked from its aforementioned appearance as an article. Todd searches for authorship(s) even in this albeit problematic science-fiction adaptation, concluding that viewers do indeed make their own meanings, and thus that “auteurism can be seen as an ideological (rather than scientific) operation through which the horizontal ontology of the text—be that formal, thematic, and/or industrial—will trigger the search for an authorial voice from the predisposed reader” (56).

But not all Todd’s concerns are authorial. Chapter 4 consists of a largely Freudian reading of Blue Velvet, while also examining the reception of feminist critics to the film. He attempts to answer those who viewed Blue Velvet as a deliberate attempt to undermine feminist film theory. Yet even in this case authorship concerns remain on the edges: “Based on Freud’s evidence, we may reasonably introduce the idea that the need for an author might represent an instinctual manifestation that might be suppressed, but cannot be expunged” (76).

In his chapter on Twin Peaks, Todd focuses on the show’s press criticism. He also explains how Lynch recovered from his reputation’s collapse in 1990-92 in spite (or because?) of it being his most prolific period creatively (Wild at Heart, 1990; Twin Peaks; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, 1992). He credits the more offbeat releases of Lost Highway...