From Lost Highway to Twin Peaks: Representations of Trauma and Transformation in Lynch’s Late Works

Abstract

This chapter compares the radical shifts that protagonists undergo in the late works of David Lynch (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and Twin Peaks: The Return). The changes (whether figured as dreams, psychological breakdowns, or fantasmatic projections) compel audiences to reconceptualize characters’ relations to traumatic events, but, in each work, the transformations shift in narrative function and psychological register. Beyond providing much needed context for understanding Peaks, Galow’s analysis demonstrates how the series incorporates elements from the earlier films but employs them to very different effect. The ‘dream within a dream’ reflects a promise of transformation and unification that remains elusive within the narrative and threatens to displace the heroic Agent Cooper, leaving him amidst a postmodern scattering of fragments, echoes, and loose ends.