The probing psychological detective drama Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch, is a surrealistic portrayal of a convoluted blend of perverse and erotic elements of desire; desire that is inflicted with the pain and satisfaction of extreme sadomasochism. The eroticism as it exists in the conscious and unconscious minds of the protagonists makes itself readily interpretable to the viewer/amateur analyst. One may easily recognize Freudian elements of psycho-analysis within this film, such as the existence of infantile sexuality and the varying degree of perversions, made evident in virtually all the behavior of the psychotic prototype, Frank. However, one also needs to be wary in interpreting these notions that are essentially served up to the viewer/analyst on a silver platter.
By falling into the trap of simply applying Freudian theory to different aspects of the movie and interpreting them, the viewer loses sight of the greater Lynchian project at hand. This film also engages aspects of character role reversal, where the analyst or viewer takes on some of the symptoms of the analysand; which may inevitably employ the viewer of the film itself to be involved in a kind of perverse behavior. However, before making this assumption one must analyze the Zizekian reading of the hard-boiled and classical detective and the Freudian concept of transference. Incorporating these psychoanalytic observations into a reading of the film implies that interpretation and investigation easily becomes perverse only when the analyst/detective is emotionally invested in the investigation itself. This provokes one to probe into the psyche of the clinical psychoanalyst; is the psychoanalyst’s quest to observe and interpret the symptomatic perversions of others a manifestation of their own voyeuristic perversions or does the exchange of money simply negate this perversity?
Blue Velvet first inducts this concept of role reversal through the protagonist Jeffery Beaumont, who voluntarily enlists himself into the investigative process of solving the mystery of the ear he found in a field behind his neighborhood. Through information gathered from his soon to be love interest, Sandy Williams, whose father is the police detective, Jeffery finds himself in the closet of a lounge singer’s apartment, “looking” for a clue to the mystery. The first act of Jeffery’s, the analyst/viewer’s observational perversion is promoted by Sandy Williams overhearing her father bring up the disconnected ear and the name of Dorothy Valens, the Latin lounge singer. It is an interesting connection to make seeing that psychoanalyst’s livelihood is dependent upon hearing clues to help cure the neurotic patient. By Sandy over-hearing this clue she sets into motion a chain of events, propelled by Jeff’s unrelenting drive to get into Dorothy’s apartment, which lead Jeff to be stranded in Dorothy’s closet as she undresses. As he voyeuristically watches her undress, he uncovers several clues integral to the mystery of the ear, which becomes his excuse for continuing the investigation well after it starts to reel out of control. However, it soon becomes apparent that Jeff’s true desires lie not in solving the crime, but observing and becoming part of the sexually and morally twisted world that he investigates.
Before Jeff enters Dorothy’s apartment for the first time Sandy asks him, “Are you a detective or are you a pervert?” It is with this simple line, said almost in jest, that the true nature of the movie begins to evolve. With the induction of Jeff into the apartment, by him breaking the law and going to such extreme measures to solve a case that has virtually nothing to do with him, Jeff makes Sandy wonder if he is a detective or a pervert, or both as this paper would argue. In Freud’s lecture entitled “The Sexual Life of Human Beings” he makes it known that many “normal” people have a sense of perversion in them. Some methods of sexual perversion have been socially acceptable in different culture at different times. Jeff’s latent perversion that emerges as a voyeur and later as a participant in sadomasochistic behavior in no way compares to the sexual perversions and psychosis exhibited by Frank, whose extreme Oedipal complex and violent sadism speak largely of his undeveloped infantile sexuality perhaps due to trauma in his childhood. Jeff and Frank’s discrepancy in perversity help to separate them into the role of analyst and analysand, respectively. However, Jeff’s position as analyst is still marked by his own perversity and emotional investment in the investigation, which is discussed at a later point in this paper. Jeff’s perversion makes itself present first in the form of the voyeur/viewer that stemmed from his need to analyze and interpret the clues he uncovered. However, as he witnesses Frank and Dorothy’s bizarre and violent act of sadomasochistic sexuality and begins to grapple with its meaning, he begins to switch roles with his objects of analysis. Once Dorothy discovers him in her closet she performs an act of sexual sadism on him, making him the masochist, which is normally her role in her sexual encounters with Frank. She displaces her subjugation and degradation by Frank onto Jeff by turning him into a sexual object, in a way that both frightens and excites Jeff. Jeff’s apparent enjoyment of the perverse sexual act completes the role reversal between him and the object of his analysis, thereby rendering his investigation perverse.
Jeff experiences further degradation as the masochist when Frank forces him to “take a ride” with him and his crew of similarly disturbed men. He punches and humiliates Jeff, and in perhaps one of the most bizarre scenes of the movie Frank applies lipstick to himself, then obsessively kisses Jeff, smearing the lipstick over his mouth, and then proceeds to beat Jeff brutally. This scene being not only visually disturbing is an eerie representation of the physical tainting, or passing of symptoms to Jeff. Frank displaces his own self-loathing onto Jeff by physically coloring him with the red lipstick on his own lips. It is a visual representation of Jeff’s role reversal with the objects of his investigation and his descent into their symptoms of perversion. Just as Jeff takes on the role of Dorothy, he soon switches to the role of Frank in his dysfunctional sexual relationship with Dorothy. Dorothy, who at one point played the role of the sadist with Jeff, begs Jeff to hit her as they are having sex. He gives in to her request and ravages her body, all the while sounds of animals are roaring as the background music, commenting on Jeff’s descent into the primal, violent world of Frank. This act does not come without consequence, as Jeff exhibits great remorse and reluctance to engage in that behavior ever again. After this act is complete Dorothy’s relationship with Jeff changes.
She sees him as the one who can help her because he has seen her innermost perversions. Her feelings for him become obsessive, made evident by her repeating the phrase to Jeff, “love me, love me” in an obsessive state. She begins to develop strong feelings of affection for him, very similar to the feelings the analysand often feels for the analyst in psychoanalysis. This relationship is called transference in the field of psychoanalysis and it offers a greater insight into how Jeff’s investigation ultimately becomes perverse and leads to a cycle of resistance and repression. Transference, as Freud explains it, differs in both male and female patients in relation to a male analyst. The models that Freud puts forth are almost identical to the “transference” that both Dorothy and Frank experience with the investigator, Jeff. Freud writes that transference in women “can appear as a passionate demand for love” (550). Dorothy explicitly expresses this kind of transference, after her initial violent resistance to Jeff when she discovers him in the closet, when she tells Jeff she loves and needs him. Freud states that with male patients, “more often than with women, the doctor comes across a form of expression of the transference which seems at first sight to contradict all our previous descriptions-a hostile or negative transference” (550-551). Frank follows this method of transference directly with his extremely abusive behavior towards Jeff. However, there does seem to be moments of tenderness when Frank expresses a more needy/obsessive form of transference; for instance when he kisses Jeff with his lipstick-smeared mouth, embraces him, and then punches him.
Both Dorothy’s masochism and Franks’ ultra-violent sadism are perversions that in Freudian analysis become a symptom of displacement for some greater neurotic complex. But why does Jeff get involved in this lifestyle? He is portrayed as a functioning member of society, an average citizen, and has a sexually healthy love interest in Sandy Williams. His transference from analyst to analysand stemmed from his obsession with investigation, and this obsession stemmed from his displaced feelings about his father’s heart attack. When Zizek writes about the beginning of any murder mystery/detective story the beginning is always marked by a murder-a traumatic shock, “an event that cannot be integrated into symbolic reality because it appears to interrupt the ‘normal’ causal chain” (Zizek 58). In this case the traumatic shock happened in the first scene of the movie, Jeff’s father is shown happily watering his yard and then a fit of pain ceases over him as he falls to the ground. Jeff comes back home because his father is lying half-alive in a hospital bed. In fact, it is his walk home from the hospital that leads him to discover the severed ear. Jeff is not able to assimilate the shock of his father’s heart attack into the narrative of the movie, since after this initial scene there is virtually no mention of his father. Jeff’s subsequent discovery of the severed ear serves as the symbolic representation of Jeff’s true feelings towards his father’s heart attack-detached and disturbed.
The trauma of Jeff’s father’s heart-attack and his related feelings, which he is unable to assimilate into the narrative of his life, is displaced by the mystery of the severed ear; thereby prompting Jeff’s investigation. Zizek writes that once this trauma occurs in a detective story, “even the most ordinary events in life seem loaded with threatening possibilities; everyday reality becomes a nightmarish dream as the ‘normal link’ between cause and effect is suspended” (58). This is precisely the case surrounding Jeffery’s involvement in the investigation. Following this line of thinking and Freud’s advice on psychoanalysis and interpreting dreams, one can analyze the seemingly trivial details of the traumatic first scene and the movie’s resistance to go back to it and visually remark on its importance. For instance, the camera’s descent from the father’s body to the grass which he is laying on to the writhing, black mass of insects underneath the grass represents the creeping underworld that exists below the sparkling façade of the town of Lumberton, and the father’s heart attack is the precise moment when this world is lifted and the viewer/analyst is able to see the trauma, perversions, and violence existing beneath the surface of “everytown” America.
All of the analysis thus far has set to prove the movie’s engagement of Jeff’s role reversal, from analyst/viewer to the object of his own investigations. This is done to portray how investigation of symptoms is perhaps a symptom of something itself. But how does this apply to the viewer of the movie, and beyond into the clinical realm of psychoanalysis? In the film itself, the camera can take the role of the psychoanalyst; thereby invoking the viewer of the film to take the same role, as they see what the camera does. The camera exhibits the kind of hovering attention that is essential to successful psychoanalysis as it floats over the town of Lumberton observing and investigating the “underworld” of this picturesque town. The viewers are further implicated in the film during the scene when Frank kidnaps Dorothy and Jeff and brings them to his friend’s house where Dorothy’s child is being held. In that scene there is a couch in the background of several of the shots. On this couch sit three anonymous “viewers” of the unfolding perversions and dysfunctions that govern this scene.
These viewers represent the viewers of the movie; they/we are anonymous, but present. Their involvement in this scene is detached, so it is unclear whether they are participating in perverse behavior because they are the observers, the voyeurs of perversity or if they are exempt from it because they are detached and not emotionally involved. This question can be extended to the viewer of the movie and the psychoanalyst him/herself. Blue Velvet involves the viewer so thoroughly in its unfolding of psychology and perversion that one cannot escape becoming an analyst of its cinematic and fictional dysfunction. The viewer becomes the amateur detective, taking on the role of Jeff as he becomes involved in the perverse world of Dorothy and Frank. However, does this mean that the viewer’s investigation then becomes synonymous to Jeff’s perverse voyeurism? Furthermore, if the viewer and the detective are implicated as perverse, is the psychoanalyst implicated as well?
In order to grapple with these questions, one must go back to the notion of transference aforementioned and incorporate Zizek’s comparison of the hard-boiled and classic detective as well as his comparison of the detective and the analyst. Zizek writes how the role of the detective, for this paper’s purposes Jeffery Beaumont, is strictly homologous to that of the psychoanalyst, who is taken by the patient as the ‘subject supposed to know’…” (57). However, one fundamental difference between the psychoanalyst and the detective is that:
The detective plays upon the difference between the factual truth (the accuracy of facts) and the ‘inner’ truth concerning our desire. On behalf of the accuracy of facts, he compromises he “inner”, libidinal truth and discharges us of all guilt for the realization of our desire, insofar as this realization is imputed to the culprit alone. (59)
This is precisely Jeffery’s role in Blue Velvet. He externalizes the desire to punish Frank for his treatment of Dorothy, his treatment of himself, and for exposing Jeff to a whirlwind cycle of perversion he was previously blind to by investigating and solving the crimes that Frank committed. He even externalizes the viewers desire to scapegoat Frank, the most outrageously disturbing character in the film, because of their desire for an ending where the bad guy gets exposed and the perversions concealed. In this sense, the detective and the viewer are separated from the analyst, with the roles of the former directly involving perverse desires of the passing of guilt and subsequent destruction of the scapegoat.
The primary difference between the hard-boiled and classic detective, according to Zizek, is the level of personal involvement. The classical detective “is not engaged at all: he maintains an eccentric position throughout; he is excluded from the exchanges that take place among the group of suspects constituted by the corpse” (60). Conversely, the hard-boiled detective is, ” ‘involved’ from the very beginning, caught up in the circuit: this involvement defines his very subjective position” (61). Jeff’s involvement due to displacement was physically located at the very beginning of the movie. He then became emotionally involved with two of the main suspects in the investigation. He took on the role of detective/analyst, experienced the relationship of transference, but because of his emotional involvement in the investigation the process quickly became perverse and he became caught up in the perversions of those he investigated. The classical detective can remove himself from the “libidinal circuit” of the process of investigation because of the exchange of money. Zizek writes that this “symbolic value of payment” works the same way in psychoanalysis: “the fees of the analyst allow him to stay out of the “sacred” domain of exchange and sacrifice, i.e. to avoid getting involved in the analysand’s libidinal circuit” (61). Relying on this theory, the analyst, unlike Jeff Beaumont or the hard-boiled detective, remains free from the perversions of his/her object of investigation so long as he/she remains emotionally detached from the patient’s libidinal circuit.
Zizek further states that it is the hard-boiled detective, “not the terrified members of the group of suspects, who undergoes a kind of ‘loss of reality’, who finds himself in a dreamlike world where it is never quite clear who is playing the game” (63). Jeffery experiences this “loss of reality” throughout the length of his investigation with filmic techniques emphasizing this dreamlike state of a complete lack of control. Jeffery involves himself even further in the perversity of his investigation by allowing the feelings of transference that Dorothy exhibited towards him become personal. By encouraging the feelings of love from Dorothy and getting involved with her and the investigation itself, Jeff not only represses the psychic trauma of Dorothy, but his own as well.
The superficial and surreal ending of the movie highlights this idea. The end of the nightmarish chain of events surrounding the ear comes with the discovery of Frank as the murderer and his subsequent murder. The relationship between Dorothy and Jeff is quickly dissolved, with no discussion of the perverse relationships she was once subjected to or the perverse relationship between her and Jeff. There is no “working-through”; she is simply reunited with her child and appears happy and content as can be. Jeff, too, is quickly absorbed in another relationship, this time with the seemingly “normal” Sandy. The final scene of the movie begins with the camera exiting Jeff’s own ear, as if to compact the previous and perverse chain of events deep inside his psyche. This act of repression is furthered by the glossed over, superficial, surrealism of his new relationship with Sandy. The blue skies, plastic smiles, and the campy chirping robin only reinforce this idea of repressed trauma and another kind of dreamlike reality. Sandy does not confront Jeff about his relationship with Dorothy; even she was emotionally involved with him at the time; yet the ending over dramatizes their happy life together. In this instance it becomes apparent that Sandy, too, is repressing the trauma of the investigation.
While it seems obvious how easily an investigation can become perverse when one involves him/herself as a subject in the object’s realm and how as long as the analyst remains out of the libidinal circuit of the object the investigation can remain sound and positive; there is still the notion of a voyeuristic perversion relevant in the role of the analyst/viewer/detective. While the analyst/viewer/detective can remain out of the role-reversals and perverse libidinal circuit of the object, is the desire to observe others perversions/psyches/neuroses perverse? Is it a power trip, or is it a drive to help, heal, solve, or a little bit of both?
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,
