‘A Candy-Colored Clown’: David Lynch’s Pop Musical Fixations

In the defining scene of David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet, Dennis Hopper’s psychopathic Frank Booth takes Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey out for a joy ride. This evening will be traumatizing for our hero, a boy-next-door seduced by darkness and drawn into a world of crooks and sadists. Memories of Frank’s brutality will likely fade behind a wall of repression, yet the echoing sounds of Roy Orbison’s 1963 love ballad, “In Dreams,” will never let go.

Lynch’s obsession with mid-20th century America, and the saccharine pop music that played in the dance halls and diners of the `50s and `60s, goes well beyond Blue Velvet. Yet Lynch’s fourth feature, the first to take place in a recognizably American setting, best epitomizes the director’s subversive employment of music. At the seedy apartment of a mysterious figure named Ben, our host, a “suave motherfucker” played by former child star Dean Stockwell, launches into a karaoke rendition of Orbison’s classic: with a cigarette holder in hand, his hips sway as he performs for an audience of leering misfits; the light from his makeshift mic illuminates his cake-white face with an eerie glow. There’s something undeniably romantic about the whole set-up—Stockwell’s longing gaze, the sense of drama he achieves with the timing and movement of his body, the baroque texture and color of the room. At the same time, there is a level of artifice to the performance—summoned by Ben’s whiteface and his ethereal lip-syncing—that sends chills up the spine, transforming Orbison’s seemingly innocent love song into a source of menace. 

Frank, physically and emotionally overwhelmed by Ben’s performance, cuts it short, only to deliver an interpretation of his own moments later. A man unhinged, Frank’s face warps and twists as he terrorizes Jeffrey with his henchman. “In Dreams” blasts on the car radio. A female groupie climbs on top of the vehicle and sways suggestively under the moonlight. And Frank, his face inches away from Jeffrey’s, speaks the words to the song through clenched teeth: “In dreams, you’re mine, all of the time.” Through Frank, these lyrics surpass Orbison’s authorial intentions—an expression of divine romance—and convey an inescapable darkness capable of invading the most private corners of the mind. 

The cinema of David Lynch deals in the interplay of good and evil, though his intentions are more complicated than pitting one of these elements against the other. In Blue Velvet, the sleepy suburbs of Lumberton depict a white-picket fence utopia, while the film’s young whitebread protagonists, Jeffrey and Laura Dern’s Sandy, are almost unbearably sincere, and too good for this world. Once swept into the mystery of the severed ear that Jeffrey discovers in a field, we are able to look beyond the glittering surface at the violence and corruption lurking in the shadows. A similar dynamic takes root in Twin Peaks, with Lynch’s idyllic Pacific Northwestern small town rattled by the murder of Laura Palmer, unleashing a deep underground network of conspiracies and supernatural terror.

Lynch sees mid-20th century pop music as a palpable symbol of the era’s wholesomeness, something capable of inducing a cozy sense of familiarity. Yet the way he utilizes these classic songs scrambles their easy sentimentality. In episode 14 of the first season of Twin Peaks, Louis Armstrong’s 1968 recording of “What a Wonderful World” fills the Palmers’ home as cousin Maddy, a Laura Palmer surrogate, tells her grieving aunt and uncle she plans to leave town. This affectionate moment is bolstered by Armstrong’s rich, gravelly vocals, yet the song’s heartening lyrics jarringly clash with the events that follow: the revelation that Leland killed Laura, and Maddy’s subsequent horrific death. In Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive, multiple wannabe starlets in bouncy, pastel-colored outfits deliver jaunty performances of retro bops. Following a brunette’s rendition of “Sixteen Reasons Why I Love You,” a 1959 song written by Doree and Bill Post, an eerie blonde with glazed eyes takes her place in the recording box and launches into Linda Scott’s bubbly 1959 anthem, “I’ve Told Every Little Star.” This throwback to the cutesy glamour of mid-20th century pop culture leads into the film’s most grisly encounter, when Betty and Rita (Naomi Watts and Laura Harring) discover a couple of rotting corpses.

By associating these seemingly harmless melodies with scenes of gruesome violence, Lynch not only upends these innocuous objects of nostalgia, he calls attention to them as products of a post-war era rife with contradictions. The idealistic culture of the ’50s and early ’60s, with its poodle skirts, happy housewives, and matinee idols, was born out of the spectacular violence of war, the unforgivable atrocity committed by the United States in its bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lynch’s fixation on this act of savagery is exemplified by Part 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return, an entire episode dedicated to this symbol of human folly.

What makes pop music such a natural complement to Lynch’s elusive body of work is intuitive. Catchy songs, after all, are not interpreted, but felt on a level beyond words. The same goes for all things Lynchian, which seem to connect to us in an unconscious way (which explains the often misguided application of the term “Lynchian” to anything remotely dream-like or weird). “In Dreams,” along with Bobby Vinton’s 1963 “Blue Velvet,” harmonizes the competing light and dark elements of Lynch’s haunting neo-noir with an unexplained and gut-level force. It may very well be impossible to untangle the many mysteries latent in Lynch’s movies—best to let them ensorcel you with the hypnotizing power of an unforgettable song. 

Beatrice Loayza is a film critic and regular contributor to the A.V. Club, Guardian, Reverse Shot, i-D, New York Magazine, and others.

Where to stream Blue Velvet