Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Oppenheimer.
A searing, white light bursts out in the middle of a desert. The atomic bomb explosion is so powerful, it cuts through reality, into another world from which dark entities slip out. In the mind of directorDavid Lynch, this is what happens when man-made weapons of mass destruction are created, opening doors that should remain locked. InOppenheimer, the deadly, unimaginable consequences of the weapon are internalized within its creator. InTwin Peaks, there is another way to harness the darkness from nuclear destruction, and one episode didn’t shy away from dropping viewers into surreal, black-and-white horror. One way to understand what happens is through the anxieties felt during the Cold War and the director’s own love (and condemnation) for his favorite decade.
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When the Strange World of ‘Twin Peaks’ Became Stranger
The Pacific Northwest never seemed more cozy and bizarre than in the early 1990s. The originalTwin Peaksaired for two seasons, introducing audiences to an off-kilter place with an ensemble of characters that were human and phantasmagoric. If the little Washington town of Twin Peaks was like a dream, there were plenty of nightmares to be had. Lynch’s trademark surrealism goes further, sometimes, without mercy, in the 2017 revival,Twin Peaks: The Return. In “Part 7,” a monochrome poster of an atomic explosion is seen in the office of FBI Director Gordon Cole (Lynch), a hint of what is to come. This isn’t just a poster; it’s a floor-to-ceiling size image. While the use of it in the set design can be enough for a discussion on symbolism, the show follows up on what this historical moment means in the show’s context. And it comes with unexpected horrors.
Thepresent timeline in “Part 8”involves a bloody resurrection of a vicious doppelganger and a musical performance that is a signature element of this update on the series. The real malicious energy of “Part 8” comes with a jump to the past whenTwin Peaksheads to the Trinity test. Text appears on-screen, stating, “White Sands, New Mexico, 1945.” History buffs know the importance of the date, and within a matter of moments, the average viewer will too. A distorted, static-heavy voice commences a countdown until the first atomic bomb goes off. “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” by composerKrzysztof Pendereckiplays as the camera inches forward to the mushroom cloud, the only sound on the screen is from the disorienting and unsettling orchestral composition. The sound design and soon the visuals are incredibly detailed for an unfiltered David Lynch experience.
There is a burst of color that keeps on switching from red, green, to purple. An accelerating inferno and other images devoid of any color take over. A black screen appears with white specks flying around like flies. Everyone knows what happens outside a nuclear detonation. Instead of vaporizing fire,Twin Peakschooses to go inside on an avant-garde journey. From the Trinity test,diabolical entities are let out from the Black Lodge, an extradimensional evil realm. The blast leads to a pale figure with barely any human characteristics, that vomits out a never-ending substance full of eggs. In this ooze is the entity, Killer BOB (Frank Silva), who will deliver much torment to the town of Twin Peaks.
‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ Fear Nuclear Weapons in Different Ways
In directorChristopher Nolan’s biopic on “the father of the atomic bomb,” the Trinity test goes off without an ear-deafening boom or Penderecki’s score. The scene narrows in on hearing the breathing and gasps from the witnesses as they observe what they have made. Only after several moments does the roar of the shock wave hit. Earlier, a motif finds physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) hearing thunderous banging as internal anxieties wreck him. This noise turns out to be a joyous crowd sitting in bleachers, stomping their feet as Oppenheimer prepares to deliver a victory speech after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The thunderous noise grows louder before suddenly going utterly quiet, a terrified scream breaks through before the silence. While Nolan’s approach is straightforward for the most part, Lynch leans all the way into the abstract.
A time jump happens in “Part 8,” taking viewers to “New Mexico, 1956,” where a young couple spots a face-up penny. They happily think it’s good luck, an innocent, “oh gosh golly” sign to encapsulate the fifties. They have no idea on this same night, their town will lose its innocence. From the desert, there is an invasion. The growling Woodsmen stagger toward civilization, and every one of them including the lead Woodsman (Robert Broski) appears as if their skin has been scorched by nuclear fire. Then there is the frog-moth, its name describing it well, hatching from an egg similar to the ones in that long trail of vomit. The critter wastes no time in crawling away in search of a new home. The Woodsmen to the frog-moth can represent that there was no going back once the bomb went off.
“Part 8” is also the first timeTwin Peakstakes place in the time period the original two seasons hold nostalgia for. Lynch loves the 1950s, but he never settles on a simple, idealized version of the decade in his projects, not even inBlue Velvet, which opens on friendly town folks, a white picket fence, and verdant, weedless grass, this picturesque paradise hiding the untamed, subterranean world of beetles. InTwin PeaksandTwin Peaks: The Return, costuming and settings are nods to the ’50s, but there was plenty of darkness within the decade, and “Part 8” focuses on one in particular.
The Monster Movies That Were Born From the Atomic Age
Once the Soviet Union successfully tested its atomic weapon in 1949, the nuclear arms race took off. By 1952, the United States tested the hydrogen bomb, the Soviet Union then followed up with its own the following year. Mutually assured destruction was a defense strategy that seemed to protect the world from an apocalyptic scenario of nuclear warfare. Because of the public awareness of this, the 1950s and onward was a time of nuclear war anxieties stemming from the superiority competition between the superpowers at the time: the USA and the Soviet Union.Duck and Cover, a 1952 educational short, offered tips onhow to survive an atomic attackand from the cell-deteriorating radiation. Of course, survival is a possibility depending on the individual’s distance from the blast.
The nightmarish figures from “Part 8" isn’t the first time monsters and atomic horror go hand-in-hand, just take a look at theB-movies of the 1950s. The documentaryNightmares in Red, White, and Blueanalyzes the social fears of the United States per decade through horror movies released. DirectorJohn Carpenter, one of the talking heads, discussed the new movie monster in the fifties by saying, “These were all creatures of the bomb, created by radiation.” Science gone wrong mutated bugs into gargantuan predators. In the earliest of the big bug flicks,Them!, ants grow monstrous due to the fallout from the Trinity test. David Lynch contributes to this subgenre, and as usual, he does so in his own way.
In the biography-memoir hybrid,Room to Dream, byKristine McKennaand Lynch, the director explained that a trip to Yugoslavia gave him the idea for the creature that hatches from an egg. While on the trip, Lynch explained, “–I stepped into this soft dust that was like eight inches deep and it was blowing, and out of the earth these huge moths, like frogs, were leaping up, and they’d fly and flip and go back down again.” Like inThem!, the land of the New Mexico town inThe Returnis contaminated. While the monster movies of the fifties focused on not so sly commentary over Communist threats, the dangers of science, and gave praise to the military for their take-charge attitudes, Lynch goes in another direction.
David Lynch Turned the Atomic Bomb Into Surreal Horror
The bright flash of an atomic bomb isn’t too different from the white light flashing when the entities from the Black Lodge appear. For one sequence in “Part 8,” a place known as the Convenience Store has the Woodsmen scattering about, the editing having them enter the screen and taking them out, moving them forward, then backward. The Woodsmen aren’t mutated, they closely resemble an average person. Even when it comes to the frog-moth, it’s small enough and nimble enough to enter a human mouth, which is exactly as disgusting as it sounds. A few civilians are killed before the lead Woodsman puts everyone to sleep with a cryptic message over the radio. Much of the mayhem that occurs in the climax to “Part 8” happens with little awareness from the public. Should anyone recall the induced slumber the next day, it may just feel like a bad dream.
Twin Peaksco-creatorMark Frosthas his own answer to the inclusion of the Trinity test,telling Salon it was a source“where this pervasive sense of darkness and evil had come from.” This eighth chapter of the 2017 revival is an origin story while recognizing the fears over nuclear devastation, especially in the threats that aren’t noticed right away. While David Lynch never likes to personally reveal what his projects are about, there is an answer that can be figured out from watching “Part 8.” Like those big, damn ants in the 1950s, the Woodsmen and invasive frog-moth are remnants of the mushroom cloud. They are monsters that are easier to comprehend than the reality of an obliterating, horrifying nuclear bomb.
