Chapter 10: PRESS PAUSE "The Transcendent Function"
010 - A Twin Peaks The Return Essay To Read Between Parts 4 and 5 - A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition
Civilized life today demands concentrated, directed conscious functioning, and this entails the risk of a considerable dissociation from the unconscious. The further we are able to remove ourselves from the unconscious through directed functioning, the more readily a powerful counter position can build up in the unconscious, and when this breaks out it may have disagreeable consequences.
—Carl Jung, “The Transcendent Function”—
REPRESSION FOLLOWED BY AN EXPLOSION: Carl Jung was writing about this in the above passage. The psychic explosion is something familiar in the universe of Twin Peaks. Exiting the first four parts of Twin Peaks The Return is an excellent time to take stock of endings. Agent Dale Cooper’s soul hangs in the balance under a metaphoric Sword of Damocles. He could lose everything inside his dream that has turned against him, threatening to cast what is best inside him into a never-ending void. This is repression in a flood of metaphors.
Nearly all these characters are corrupted or creative projections blended inside a fluid dreamscape corrupted by dark forces foreign to Cooper’s soul. Every character we meet in The Return is comprised of diverse elements from Dale Cooper’s damaged, dreaming psyche.
Mr. C, Cooper’s shadow-self, is rough in the places where Cooper is smooth and empty in the areas where Cooper is full. This shadow of Dale Cooper has been corrupted and empowered with dark energy from the assault of an “Extreme Negative Force,” set loose in Cooper’s mind when he failed to act during the Red Room’s dream trap test in the finale of Season Two of Twin Peaks.
Like little Denny Craig, Cooper failed to get up from his desk when the bell rang. He is the victim of an incurable Lancelot Complex. It was cute at first, but it became a deadly trap. Cooper is driven deep within to save the damsel in distress. I define a Lancelot Complex as when a (typically male) literary character is caught between duty and desire. He’s the kind of person who does the right thing, but often for the wrong reasons. He needs his romance to have the same passion as his wars. There is a gap between what the suffering character wants and what the surrounding society wants from that character.
Characters who suffer from Lancelot Complexes sometimes invite dark forces to manipulate them through good intentions. All the goodness inside Cooper is wrapped up and expressed through this Lancelot Complex. He has the best intentions. His loyalty and sense of duty are laudable from nearly every angle. Unfortunately, his relationship with women is juvenile and becomes his primary point of weakness and manipulation. At this point in the story, Cooper is in the grip of a negative force he cannot yet sense inside this demented dream in which he’s nearly lost himself.
Nietzsche wrote, “He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
When fighting monsters, one should lay down arms and retreat in the middle of the first fight. There is no wisdom in losing before the beast can be understood and moved beyond. Is it possible to defeat fear? Or, rather, must we become the heroes of our fates and put fear in proper context so we can move beyond? These are foundational questions to ponder as we move past the first act of Twin Peaks: The Return.
Cooper should have been mauled in the Glass Box, his golden seed cast into the void. But he wasn’t. The guard disappeared, and this curious change of events from what was expected kept Sam and Tracey out of the monitoring room long enough for Cooper to pass through the trap unmolested. Sam and Tracey were not so fortunate.
Cooper should have been ripped apart in the Purple Power Station, but the creature arrived too late (Thank you, Sam and Tracey!). The heavy door held, and the protection spell was cast. Cooper fell into the trap with help from the strange lady who invoked the viewer’s presence directly into the narrative. When that strange lady put her hands on the machine, she opened a secret cinema portal, one rarely used, the door through the fourth wall. She plugged us into this narrative, and we are in the show. We must help keep Cooper safe; the only tools we have to use here are attention and empathy, two cornerstones of higher-level consciousness.
Cooper should have been shot and killed in Jade’s yellow Jeep. His curiosity and murky connection to the past memories outside this dream saved him when he bent down to retrieve the dropped key. Jade, the woman present at Cooper’s birth into this dream layer, has mercy on him and gives him five dollars and an instruction to “Call For Help.” She drops Cooper off at a place filled with professionals who kindly help others spend money, even five dollars. A Las Vegas Casino is the perfect site for a rebirth of the spirit through a corrupted portal of misery and grift. And there are still seven more trials for Cooper in this dream trap.
Only we viewers understand the mortal peril that Cooper is in right now. We hold a fragmented picture of what has come before (past), what we see happening now on screen (present), and what is to come (future). We will remain with Dale Cooper until the bond of Cinema fails and severs our connection. Then, it will just be you and me discussing this story and what it means to us alone together in the after-dark.
The viewer pulls Cooper’s story together in real time. We are the final screens upon which the narrative of The Return is projected. We have a job to do, and this is not passive entertainment. Viewers are the last line of defense in the battle for Dale Cooper’s soul. We bring meaning to this narrative, empowered by our affection and empathy for his fictional situation. Couldn’t his predicament so easily be our own? Don’t we each carry this shadow self within our internal landscape? Another great question to remember as we move into the second act is, “Who has control over the behavior in this narrative?”
Our affections are going to burst through the narrative’s fourth wall. We will recognize these outbursts as little dots of light on the faces of liars and paper forms filled with fraud. As viewers, our affection will guide Dale Cooper; we are part of his story. Our hero, Dale Cooper, has been stripped of his armor and his sword but left with his shield intact. We, the viewers, are this shield. Cooper has the secret weapon of our love. He also has an attachment to a few memories soaked in affection and warm feelings. These precious few memories are incorruptible, like the smell of coffee and the pending taste of a cherry pie, speared and dripping from a steaming hot fork.
Cooper has our hopes, thoughts, and prayers of best intentions. And Cooper desperately needs help. He’s called out for it. The strange woman’s sacrifice on the roof of the Purple Power Station has opened up a conduit for viewers (like us) to pour our love into this dreamscape, where we continue watching Cooper’s journey unfold before our eyes and ears.
Who else will come to Dale Cooper’s aid when he calls for help in this game for all his marbles? Strange tales abound from here where talons and scales writhe in the darkness beyond the edges of all that is known. We viewers will be here together, of course, and we will serve a purpose in this vast and dark narrative. We aim to observe and construct the narrative shelters Cooper needs to make out it of this dream with his soul intact. But time ticks on, even in a dream, and so we must move forward with Dale Cooper through the next trials in the battle for his soul.
