Grace Ostrosky, Arts & Life Editor–
Content warning: This story contains mention of domestic assault, incest, rape, and murder.
At the beginning, what intrigued me most about “Twin Peaks” (1990-1991) was the television series’ autumnal aesthetic and seemingly basic murder-mystery plot. But now, after falling down a deep rabbit hole, I have become obsessed with the complex characters and themes, and David Lynch and Mark Frost’s commitment to showcasing the often unseen reality that hides behind closed doors.
In season 1, episode 5, the fictional psychiatrist, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, stated that “the problems of our entire society are of a sexual nature” and, at it’s core, “Twin Peaks” is a series about sexual violence.
The series begins with the discovery of a murdered homecoming queen, Laura Palmer, in the small town of Twin Peaks, Washington. The show follows FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper as he investigates the murder, which unravels the dark secrets and bizarre, supernatural elements hidden beneath the town’s picturesque surface.
The investigation reveals the complicated double lives of the residents, such as Laura who in her final months was involved with drugs and promiscuity, and delves into a supernatural world of parallel dimensions and otherworldly entities, such as BOB. This is typically done through Agent Cooper’s prophetic and lucid dreams.
I won’t go into the all of the complex side plots of “Twin Peaks,” which include Benjamin Horne, the shady owner of a hotel and brothel, and his schemes to burn down the local lumber mill, the love-triangle between Ed Hurley, Nadine Hurley, and Norma Jennings, and James Hurley and Donna Hayward’s forbidden romance after Laura’s death, and I will primarily focus on the sexual violence against Laura and the inclusion of BOB as an allegory for taking accountability away from sexual abusers and placing the blame on external factors.
While it is not explored until later in the series, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” reveals through surreal and visceral scenes that Laura had been sexually assaulted by her father, Leland Palmer, for many years. Leland had been possessed by BOB, an demonic entity which caused him to assault his daughter.
Laura herself is not able to distinguish between Leland and BOB, placing all of the blame for the assault onto BOB. She felt that she was unable to speak about the violence she was facing, even to her best friend, Donna.
In season 2, episode 9, Donna reads aloud from Laura’s secret diary: “‘Tonight is the night that I die. I know I have to because it’s the only way to keep BOB away from me. The only way to tear him out from inside. I know he wants me. I can feel his fire. But if I die he can’t hurt me anymore.’”
Laura felt like the only way to be free from BOB was to die.
I greatly admire the dedication to the portrayal of Laura, specifically in “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” (1992), which showed how her drug use and promiscuity were not moral failings but coping mechanisms for her trauma. Lynch and Frost do not blame Laura’s assault on mistakes in her personal life, but blame the mistakes she makes on the assault she is traumatized from.
Additionally, the supernatural figure of BOB represents the evil that men do, specifically the darkness that exists within human nature and the cycle of abuse, violence, and trauma. In Leland playing host to BOB, there is no accountability in Leland’s remorseless actions.
BOB’s backstory, which includes possessing Leland after Leland was a victim of abuse himself, positions him as a metaphor for how abuse can be passed down through generations. And then, for figures like Leland, BOB can be seen as a way to externalize and disassociate from the guilt and horror of their actions.
BOB is also a commentary on “nice guys,” showcasing how seemingly good men are just as prone to problematic and violent thoughts and behaviors, and that violence against women is far too common.
“Twin Peaks” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” reminds us that victims of violence are not to blame for the violence they endure, and that the elevation of victims’ voices are necessary for advocacy. We do not always know what happens behind the closed doors of other people’s homes, but we can intervene when it is brought to public light.
Grace Ostrosky ‘28 is a creative writing and journalism major from Cleveland.
Erin
I see the majority taking this confident stance on Twin Peaks as an allegory for Laura’s abuse by her father and yet I believe that is so narrow a viewpoint, no matter how well intentioned, that it limits a show that presents a far more in depth look at the cycle of abuse and the destruction it causes if we accept it as the mystery it was intended to be.
Lynch never wanted the killer revealed. I believe he found a way to keep that. Stop looking at BOB as the evil that men do. Start looking at him, not only as a possessing “spirit” but a way the true killer framed an innocent man, both inside and outside of his dream world, to escape what he had done.
Twin Peaks was always meant to be the story of Who Killed Laura Palmer. Only it wasn’t a question. Everything in it reflects some aspect of his psyche and what led to his choice to become a monster. When Bobby said that everyone at Laura’s funeral had killed her, he was absolutely right. What we think we learned about Laura and her family really happened inside of his own. Just like many murderers, he projected it onto his poor victim instead. His belief that she needed to die before she became BOB was really his own belief about himself; it was a choice he didn’t make, though, choosing to harm others instead.
In the predominant stance of looking at it as being about Leland’s guilt, The Return is often ignored. That is because it betrays how little Leland actually was important to the story. I also theorize the character of Ray was Lynch’s way to secretly exonerate Leland, whose actor, RAY Wise, always stated his belief that his character was innocent. In the Return, Ray gets out of jail free, is revealed to be working with the good guys by pretending to be a bad guy and points an accusing finger at Mr. C, claiming he knows who he really is.
Leland was never the nice guy the viewers claim. He was portrayed as a nutjob and the lawyer to the scummiest person in Twin Peaks: Ben Horne. Dale Cooper is the nice guy of Twin Peaks, which usually, according to Lynch, means he is the one hiding something. Instead of the Palmers, The Return centers on Cooper, his fractured self, his hidden misogyny and desires, his obsession with escaping his mistakes and guilt through saving Laura.
Cooper, the man whom would have us believe Laura whispered “My father killed me”, is also the one that Leland’s Doppleganger confessed to in the original finale, “I did not kill anybody,” and then seemed to try to lean forward to to try to whisper his own secret. Coop backed away from him, however, and then really started to run when he saw his own doppleganger, the essence of everything he was hiding. The only other time he became that scared was when Laura’s doppleganger screamed at him. Why was she screaming at him? In the Return, 25 years later, even though the case was supposedly solved, Laura still whispers something to Dale Cooper, something that upsets him.
Laura as Carrie Page also gives him the best question/advice: Did you find him?…You didn’t find him…You got the wrong house, mister.”
My personal theory is that Laura’s real killer is hiding behind Dale Cooper. Her words indicate that he needs to stop trying to save her and start trying to find his true self and accept his own painful past of sexual abuse, trauma and violence he then forced on to other people, like the Palmers. Note how Dale Cooper is obsessed with taking Laura home but never goes to his own.
To take it a step further, I believe that the true murderer of Laura Palmer is the elusive Billy. Audrey did find him at the Roadhouse: he was the mirror she was holding. Psychopaths/sociopaths often mirror other people, having no true personality of their own. The first time we see a character in the series, they are looking into a mirror.
In prison, Mr. C’s information was mixed up with William Hastings. That’s our Billy, I believe. The same man, whom while being questioned about a woman’s murder, constantly looked to the 2 way mirror, aware he was being watched and trying to reflect what he thought would suit him best back at the police.
I think Billy was the result of incest, his mother’s rape by her own father, but it was really the Hornes: Audrey and Ben. Fire is used as a synonym for BOB/abuse but Ben was the first character we saw walking towards one and fires were most often seen at The Great Northern, more than they were ever seen at the Palmers.
Audrey also held far more complicated feelings for her father, loving and hating him. Laura’s feelings for Leland seemed to be only good before she suspected him of being BOB. Laura was loved by everyone and Leland allowed her to constantly interact with the town, contrary to the behavior of an abuser. Audrey was viewed as odd, for her strange behavior, bouncing between child and adult, while she was kept isolated at her father’s hotel. She was gorgeous and never even had a boyfriend!
The series is called Twin Peaks off of mountains, mountains are known as horns. The owls we see in the series are Great HORNEd owls. Corn, albeit not the same as seen in the series, derives its root name from horn. The symbol on Mr. C’s card has horns. The mother/Experiment has horns. The crescent moon has horns. The ringing of a phone can be deemed as the ringing of a horn, horn being slang for phone. Shoes are centered on throughout the series and they are linked to shoe horns.
BOB and MIKE easily mimic Ben and Jerry, Jerry even losing control of his foot in The Return to mirror MIKE and his arm. The Great Northern finds its more realistic twin in the Dutchman’s while Horne’s department store becomes the fabled Convenience Store.
If the destruction of nature is linked to BOB (the trinity bomb test) we can tie that to the visual image of Ben’s own father passing him the shovel to break ground for the family hotel. And Ghostwood easily becomes Ben Horne’s desecration of his own daughter. If Leland was supposedly abused it is never fully developed. However, Ben gives a speech in the Return about his father giving him a second hand bike, which is essentially a cycle, a word he avoids using for it.
This creates a far more nuanced portrait of the cycle of abuse: Ben was abused by his father and he then abused Audrey, whom gave birth to their son and she then abused him too. This explains the theme of mothers and their children that beats through The Return, like its secret heart. It also sheds light on the attraction/love between Agent Cooper and Audrey Horne, wherein Cooper eventually becomes Richard, the name of his doppleganger’s son with Audrey. Billy was in love with his mother, the woman he also feared and hated and whom he believed he had raped by his own conception. There is the truth behind the garmonbozia: He is his mother’s pain and sorrow incarnate, the evidence and constant reminder of her abuse. Compare Audrey’s conception of Richard with the events of Part 8, it’s eye opening.
This all was the secret Laura’s killer was trying to push on to another family instead and absolve his own of, all as he chose not to face it and heal. It became like a magic act within his fantasy wherein they distract the audience and make them believe an illusion, the very reason for the Magician poem and the fact that the little boy, seemingly without parents, is now living in the Palmers’ house at the end of the series, in the way that both of his names are invoked: Chalfont and Tremond. The grandson is Billy. The poignancy of his being known mainly as the grandson lies in the fact that his grandfather was also his father.
The first person we see with the creamed corn, is the little boy as he holds it in his hands, essentially becoming its vessel.
Looking at Twin Peaks this way has finally answered it satisfactorily to me, wherein the view that Leland was guilty never has. Not for the 35 years it’s been in my life.