Watched: Blue Velvet (1986).
Why am I less uncomfortable with this film than Wild At Heart? My guess, and it’s as good as anyone’s, is that Blue Velvet fully commits to establishing a surreal tone whereas the aforementioned film doesn’t, exactly - here, there’s a key narrative thread that feels solid enough that chaos can swirl around it without it breaking.
So yes, there’s a scene in this film who is subjected to an extremely degrading sexual assault (so, uh, big ol’ content warning for this one), and the theme of sexual slavery is there throughout, but so is the idea of encountering the grim world of adulthood for the first time, and grappling with events you don’t quite understand, and finding light in the darkness against all odds. There is a point to it all here, whereas Wild At Heart sometimes felt like an exercise in puerile nihilism.
It took a while to come to this point, though. I’ve realised that when violence against women (of any kind) is depicted on-screen, I’m not exactly sensitive to it, but I will be quicker to dismiss the potentially-redeeming qualities of an otherwise good piece of work. That’s partially because I’m close to a number of people who suffer from PTSD for whom this kind of media can trigger flashbacks, but it’s also because rape and violence against women is often a crutch for (white, male) film directors who don’t know how to otherwise create a grim atmosphere.
Here, though, there is a point, and not just one that serves a facile end. Sex is bound up in this film, coercive or otherwise, and to take it away would make for a much less nuanced piece. There’s a brilliant line in this - “I don’t know whether you’re a detective or a pervert” - and that doesn’t work if the idea of being perverse is implausible in the world of the film.
If you want to read something else that isn’t just me grappling hamfistedly with the film, try this - a back-and-forth correspondence in Stylus magazine between two people who fell on very different sides of the fence when it came to whether or not Blue Velvet is misogynistic, a point of contention that I still can’t fully commit to either way. Having spent some time thinking about it, I’m inclined to say it isn’t, but it’s potentially muddled by Lynch’s other less accomplished work.