A Critical Companion to David Lynch

by Brandelyn Andres (Contribution by), Adam Daniel (Contribution by), Matthew Grinder (Contribution by), Julie M. Hamilton (Contribution by), James Jarrett (Contribution by)

Overview

A Critical Companion to David Lynch builds on the vast debate of one of the most discussed and researched directors of the present era, with commercial and critical success across multiple mediums and genres. This edited volume provides a wide-ranging exploration of Lynch’s films, practices, and collaborations, with nineteen original chapters examining themes including narrativity, aesthetics, artistry, sound, experimentation, metafiction, and patriarchy from the disciplinary perspectives of film studies, art studies, gender studies, literary studies, and philosophy. Lynch’s entire thought-provoking oeuvre, spanning over fifty years, will be examined, including his shorts and films, animations, TV series, paintings, and commercials.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781666928105
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/04/2024
Series:	Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Directors
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

David LaRocca, Ph.D., is the author or contributing editor of seventeen books, including several from Bloomsbury. He edited Stanley Cavell's Emerson's Transcendental Etudes (2003) and Metacinema (2021). Earlier edited volumes are devoted to the philosophy of documentary film, war films, and the cinema of Charlie Kaufman. He has taught philosophy, rhetoric, and cinema and held visiting research or teaching positions in the United States at Binghamton University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Ithaca College, the New York Public Library, the School of Visual Arts, the State University of New York at Cortland, and Vanderbilt University. He served as Harvard University's Sinclair Kennedy Fellow in the United Kingdom and, like Cavell before him, was honored with the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society. www.DavidLaRocca.org

Kingsley Marshall is Head of Film & Television at the CILECT accredited School of Film & Television, and a member of the project team at the Sound/Image Cinema Lab, both based at Falmouth University, UK.

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he teaches courses on international horror film. He also serves on the editorial board of New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film (Intellect), Director of the horror cinema research group "Grite," and Director of the Spanish horror studies series "Terror: Estudios Críticos" (Universidad de Cádiz).

Table of Contents

1. “Sound Comes First: Understanding the Music and Sound Design of David Lynch’s Short Films,” Reba Wissner
2. “Pataphysical Narratives in Lynch’s Short Films and What is David Working on Today?,” Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
3. “Sense and Significance in Six Men Getting Sick,” Zachary Vereb
4. “Narrativism and Performativity in Absurda and Darkened Room,” Kristina Šekrst
5. “Reframing Noir Windows: The Inward Gaze of David Lynch’s The Grandmother,” Matthew Sorrento
6. “Openness from Closure: Creative Emergence and Embodied Dynamics in Eraserhead,” Peter Lang
7. “The Beautiful Tragedy of Lynch’s The Elephant Man,” Andrew M. Winters
8. “David Lynch Constrained on Dune,” Rupert Loydell and Kingsley Marshall
9. “The Phonic-Materiality of David Lynch’s Lost Highway,” Osman Nemli
10. “‘My most experimental movie’: Transcendental Style and the Art Spirit in David Lynch’s The Straight Story,” David LaRocca
11. “Driving Buicks to the Moon: Innocence and Experience in Wild at Heart,” Kwasu Tembo
12. “Past and Possible Lives in Inland Empire,” David Sweeney
13. “‘It is happening again’: Repetition and Replay in the Works of David Lynch,” Adam Daniel
14. “‘A woman in Trouble’: Twin Peaks as Critique of Patriarchal Violence,” Julie Hamilton
15. “How Twin Peaks: The Return’s Diane Escapes: the Plot in The Pinnacle of Lynch’s Use of Metafiction and Entrapment,” Donald McCarthy
16. “‘Tricks’: Inside Lynch’s Hotel Room,” James Jarrett
17. “Necropolitical Patriarchy and the Lynchian Koan,” Matthew Grinder
18. “Innocence Lost: Constructions of Childhood in The Alphabet and The Grandmother,” Brandelyn M. Andres
19. “Wonder, Weather, and Coffee: Lynch and the Sacred of the Everyday,” Zachary Sheldon