The University of Salford’s School of Arts and Media recently held a two-day conference dedicated to (re-)exploring the iconic early 90s series Twin Peaks (1990-1). The conference had a strong international flavour as academics from Australia, Scandinavia and the US, as well as around the UK, came together to consider the programme and it’s enduring appeal within the uber-modern location of Salford’s recently opened MediaCity complex. There was even plenty of cherry pie and coffee provided during one of the refreshment breaks – a point that gestures towards the good natured tone of the conference where consistently high levels of scholarship were demonstrated alongside much enthusiasm for the show itself.
Since its initial airing, Twin Peaks has come to occupy an elevated position within TV Studies, being arguably a pivotal text in ongoing debates concerning both ‘quality’ and ‘cult’ forms as well as having been discussed from other perspectives including postmodernism and auteur theory. These elements provided the launchpad for the conference’s opening keynote from David Lavery (Middle Tennessee State University), who’s edited collection Full of Secrets (1995) arguably helped pave the way for the in-depth study of specific programmes within our discipline. Noting this, Lavery’s presentation used the concept of intertextuality to trace Twin Peaks’ influence within both the television industry and academia. He argued that whilst Twin Peaks provides a reference point for a host of revered TV shows and writers/producers nowadays (whether explicitly or otherwise), many of the contributors to Full of Secrets have had similarly influential careers by shaping the trajectory of Media and Cultural Studies in the year’s since its publication.
Ideas concerning intertextuality also arose in Lorna Jowett’s paper (University of Northampton) which argued that Twin Peaks has endured through the continual referencing and reappropriation of the show’s imagery, audio elements and it’s cast from unofficial examples such as Twin Bricks (a short fan-created video which summarises the series in Lego form) to direct homages such as the Silent Singer in Psychoville (2009-11) or an episode of Psych (2006-14).
Jowett’s paper was indicative of a willingness to push the study of Twin Peaks into previously unchartered areas and this continued throughout the conference’s two days. Alanna Thain (McGill University) provided a fascinating paper on the role of dancing within Twin Peaks which challenged established filmic understandings of dance as a break or disruption to the narrative. Instead, drawing upon theories of dance, Thain argued for the re-reading of many denotatively bizarre or innocuous sequences – many involving Ray Wise’s Leland Palmer character – as these provide crucial mediations on concepts such as truth within the series.
Elsewhere, Geoff Bil (University of British Columbia) approached the series from the frequently-overlooked perspective of representation, by considering how aspects of Native American culture and people are made meaningful through the series’ use of mise-en-scene and locations. Catherine Spooner (University of Lancaster) also discussed issues of representation by focusing on the gendered meaning of female costuming within the series. Drawing upon theories of the Gothic, the paper argued that Twin Peaks presents multiple codings of the veil and that, rather than providing revelation and resolution, these in fact generate more enigmas. The revelation of Laura Palmer’s corpse, wrapped in plastic sheeting, provides one example of this which is then echoed differently across the series from Donna’s femme fatale-esque dark glasses through to the red drapes of the Black Lodge. Overall, these papers demonstrated an engagement with Twin Peaks in terms of its aesthetic elements and an investment in discourses of art and ‘coherence’ that encouraged re-engaging with less-considered aspects of the series to consider the relationship between the programme’s content and its wider thematic concerns.
An interest in aesthetics was also evident in other papers as a strong focus on visual style persisted via considering the individualised signatures of creative personnel involved with producing the series. Stacey Abbott’s (University of Roehampton) excellent paper demonstrated these concerns as it examined the devices and motifs employed by the different directors who worked on the show with a view to teasing out recurring elements and thematic concerns. The motivation behind this was two-fold: on the one hand, it invited attendees to ask new questions of both Twin Peaks and television in general (so frequently discussed as a producer’s medium in the US or a writer’s medium in the UK) by considering the agency of individual directors. Additionally, the paper complicated singular understandings of Lynch-as-auteur which persist as the dominant reading formation around the series by inviting reconsideration of the styles demonstrated by other creative personnel such as Lesli Linka Glatter (who directed four episodes of the show).
Abbott’s arguments sat well with the methodological approach employed by Jennifer Gillan (Bentley University) in her paper examining similarities in visual/set design between Twin Peaks and Pushing Daisies (ABC 2007-9). By arguing that both series appear influenced by the aesthetic style of Rene Magritte, Gillan used both extratextual interviews with Pushing Daisies’ crew and the online database IMDB to show how, when combined, these can assist in tracing the involvement of typically overlooked production personnel such as set designers and members of the art department across different television programmes and mapping their involvement in the creative process. Both of these papers therefore suggested that, by returning to Twin Peaks-as-programme and subjecting it to fine grain analysis, innovative approaches to studying aesthetics can be generated that better address television’s collaborative nature as a creative medium.
Discussion of Twin Peaks’ aesthetics continued throughout the plenary sessions as well, with lively debates concerning the ‘cinematicness’ of the show against its more ‘televisual’ aspects (namely its employment of ‘soapy’ conventions such as the close up) taking place. However, analysis of the series was not solely limited to this area. Andreas Halskov (Aarhus University/Copenhagen University) presented material from his forthcoming book, TV Peaks (2015), which draws on recent original interviews with cast and crew members involved in making the initial series. This promises to be an essential read for fans and scholars alike due to the access that Halskov has achieved and its potential contribution to complicate the mythologizing narratives which and continue to understand the series as the product of Lynch’s imagination alone.
Elsewhere, some stimulating papers were provided that examined Twin Peaks’ endurance through considering either different situated audience readings and/or fan practices. Mona Pedersen and Gry C Rustad (Hedmark University College) provided an intriguing reflexive autoethnography on their different generational experiences of watching Twin Peaks as broadcast TV and on DVD respectively, and demonstrated how contextual factors such as scheduling and modes of viewing impact upon how the series was/is interpreted and evaluated.
Regarding fandom, a diverse range of practices were analysed. Katrilna Hejakka (University of Turku) looked at how some fans manipulate toy dolls to recreate iconic images from the programme – especially of the deceased Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic – and used these to forward an argument concerning the need to pay greater attention to how adult fans employ material objects such as toys in using fandom as an area for play. Rebecca Williams (University of South Wales) took a different approach altogether by employing sociologist Anthony Giddens’ ideas concerning ontological security to consider how fans have managed potential anxieties arising from the news that Twin Peaks will be returning in 2016. My own paper examined fan practices through the lens of the TV anniversary with a view to complicating current research in this area that sees such occurrences as industry-controlled PR exercises. Instead, by looking at a combination of fan practices and unofficial extratextual discourses such as interviews and journalistic speculation, I argued that 2014 saw the series undergo a ‘dispersed anniversary’ as different groups drew upon diegetic information from the series in support of marking the year as a calendrically-significant moment within the series’ history.
In summary, ‘I’ll See You Again in 25 Years: The Return of Twin Peaks and Generations of Cult TV’ demonstrated that the programme continues to be positioned as a significant series for both TV Studies scholars and fans alike. On the one hand, scholar-fans are returning to Twin Peaks armed with approaches and perspectives that are gaining increasing legitimacy within the discipline to reassess the series’ appeal and, in many ways, complicate contemporary understandings of television as a medium that has undergone significant aesthetic changes in recent years. At the same time, others are either reflecting upon their own investments in the series, or those of others who share a similar enthusiasm, to demonstrate how the series continues to be negotiated and repurposed within a contemporary environment of digital and/or social media, the increasing availability of (cult) TV content and tele-remembrance. All of which suggests that Twin Peaks’ status as a landmark text for TV scholars will remain for the foreseeable future. I’m sure it won’t be twenty-five years until the next Peaks conference.
Ross Garner is a Lecturer in Television Studies in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He is currently writing Nostalgia, Digital Television and Transmediality for Bloomsbury and is co-editing a special section of ‘In Focus’ for Cinema Journal on 25 years of Twin Peaks.
