red, white, and
blue
by Douglas Messerli
David Lynch (screenwriter and director) Blue
Velvet / 1986
Blue Velvet is a very
dark—perhaps I should change that adjective to “horrific”—satire about small
town USA in the manner of Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant analysis in Shadow of
a Doubt, the work which David Lynch points to as his major influence. Lynch’s
work, however, has none of the lightness and goofiness of Hitchcock’s
presentation of Santa Rosa, California, family life. Whereas the innocent young
heroine of Shadow, Charlotte “Charlie” feels an almost clairvoyant link
with her uncle Charles, the villain of Hitchcock’s masterwork, the two
innocents of Lumberton, Oregon, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sandy
Williams (Laura Dern) have absolutely no ties to the evil forces that inhabit
their logging community.
But we sense something horrible wrong from the very beginning in Lynch’s
film, as Jeffrey’s father is comically attacked by the green snake of a
front-yard garden hose, which brings his son home from college. And Lynch hints
early on that the lovely wooden houses of Lumberton are infested with dangerous
insects, first based only on hearsay, but soon after by evidence of the blight
itself.
Walking through a wild field wherein sits
an abandoned wooden shed, Jeff actually discovers a human ear filled with a
swarm of black ants. He bags up the ear as if it were a kind of disgusting
prize and, being the good citizen he is, takes it immediately to the local
police, asking for a detective Williams (John Dickerson) who lives near his
family home. He is told that he should tell on one about the ear, and that the
detective in turn will not be unable to share any information he discovers
about to whom the ear might have belonged.
Almost immediately, however, he meets us with the detective’s daughter,
Sandy, who has “overheard,” her room just above her father’s home office, what
she knows so far about the case, that it may have something to do with a local lounge
singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who lives in a nearby apartment
building.
Just as for Charlie in the Hitchcock movie, that’s all it takes for the
clever Jeff to prove, with the help of Sandy, that young men and women,
particularly those of the generation having grown up with The Hardy Boys and
Nancy Drew mysteries can outwit any police department gumshoe. Their endless
curiosity and daring lead them into a world that as Detective Williams himself
proclaims, they would be better off not knowing.
Within hours, Jeff has hatched a plan to check out Dorothy’s apartment
pretending to be a pest exterminator, someone hired to wipe out those bugs who
have made their way into the Lumberton abodes.
And just as quickly he is dropped into a world, ostensibly draped in red
(the color of Dorothy’s curtains and one of her dresses), white (the colors
associated with Jeff himself: his house, its picket fence, his tie, and at one
point his suit), and blue (Dorothy’s bathrobe and most notably her signature
song, “Blue Velvet”), all colors of the US democracy, but here involved in a
perverse series of events that leads him and Sandy into the dark side of the
Republic: the red, white, and blues in this world are just too intense,
textured, and somehow obscene in a manner that can’t quite be explained.
On this first visit to Dorothy’s
apartment, he merely steals copies of her keys. But it doesn’t take long for
him to leap even further into this allusive world by taking Sandy on a sort of
date to hear Dorothy’s nightclub act, where she sings the famed Bobby Vinton
song, sneaking soon after to visit her apartment and this time seriously search
for any evidence that might connect her with the missing ear, the voice and the
ear, obviously, being almost comically connected in this strange dream-like
work.
At this point everything changes, as Jeff and Dorothy both are sent down
a rabbit hole where they discover an alternative universe.
Dorothy returns home and undresses, Jeffrey hiding in the closet where
he can see nearly everything, in some senses a straight college boy’s dream.
She soon after she hears him move, as a hanger falls into place, discerning his
existence, and, with knife in hand not only demands to know who he is and what
he is doing in her apartment, but demands he strip: “Get undressed. I want to
see you!”
He strips to his underwear, Dorothy demanding that he now stand as she
moves to the floor, again inquiring what he wants. When he has no answer, she
pulls down his underwear, apparently ready to engage in fellatio with the young
man, while also refusing to permit him to touch her or even look at her.
In some teen films this might be such a
young man’s sex dream, but here it is so unexpected and seemingly out of
context that we can see it merely as perversity.
She
orders the naked boy to the couch, demanding he lie down, where, still with
knife in hand, she smothers him in kisses.
But the knock on the door tumbles the entire scene into even a deeper
hole of madness, as she orders Jeff back into the closet (returning him to the
role of voyeur and perhaps, in this twisted world, insisting he somehow return
to his youthful world as an outsider innocent of sex) as Frank Booth (Dennis
Hopper) enters. He is the true psychopathic monster at the heart of this
underground sex, drug, and kidnapping world who, before the eyes of our still
somewhat innocent voyeur (and the audience’s perhaps even more surprised eyes
and ears) plays out an S&M drama of such twisted Oedipal proportions that
it is difficult, in not impossible, to fully explain.
Booth, demanding immediately to be called “Daddy,” angrily calls for his
regular glass of bourbon, that she turn off the lights and never look at him as
he becomes a temporary voyeur, and asks her to spread her legs, obviously to
better observe her “bush.” What follows is an enactment of an almost textbook
case of heterosexual childhood Oedipal lust, where Booth pretends to have sex
with his woman he now perceives as his mother before his own father returns
home. But it’s more complex than that, as he putts on a plastic mask which
presumably gives him a kind of oxygen-deprived rush, reminding one a bit of the
amyl nitrate inhalers of gay men. He proceeds to play out a game of having sex
with his “Mommy,” insisting that “Baby wants to fuck.” At the same time, he is
disgusted by the involvement of his mother in the act, and abuses her for her
incestual fornication by beating her at the very moment he grows every more
sexually excited, quickly coming in or on her in a manner that has more to do
masturbation than with true sexual intercourse. It is so specific and perverted
that we can only imagine that it represents perhaps regular childhood
occurrences of Booth with his own mother before his father’s returns home,
which also might explain his fetishization of blue velvet, clearly a memory of
a nightgown his own mother may have been wearing during these episodes. It is
also quite clear that he truly detests women and the need to engage in sex with
them.
Finally, he stands, comes somewhat back to his senses and tells her to
“stay alive. Do it for Van Gough,” obviously a reference to the person whose
ear has been brutally severed. Booth quickly exits, and Jeff comes out of the
closet once again, checking on Dorothy’s condition and attempting to cover her
with a white shawl which she rejects—his color, and that of innocence.
But as he gets ready to leave, she calls out Don, asking him to hold
her. She’s scared, she admits, and wonder in amazement that her Don is back.
And once again she initiates a sexual relationship with the young boy, asking
if he likes her, to feel her nipple, etc. It appears she is as psychologically
confused as was her abuser and would somehow, like the mother of Booth’s
fantasy, bring her newfound son into her own sexual confusion. Certainly, she
seems to have adapted several of Booth’s S&M tropes, including the demand
that she not be looked at while she engages in sex, as if anonymity would free
them from any feeling of guilt. When he refuses to hit her, however, the
charade is over; he will not participate for her self-punishment for having
become involved in a relationship with someone like Booth.
By the time he leaves Dorothy after this second visit, with the help of
a truly heavy-handed clue hidden under her couch—a photograph of herself, her
husband Don, and her child, wearing the party hat which also sits out on a
table in the room, as well as their marriage certificate behind the framed
photo—Jeffrey has basically figured out the entire plot, that Booth has
abducted Dorothy’s husband and son to force her into sexual slavery. Perhaps he
has cut off her husband’s ear to intimidate her; yet how the ear ended up in
the abandoned lot is never explained.
In fact, a great deal of the plot remains inexplicable even at film’s
end.
What is now apparent is that Jeffrey has already developed a crush on
Dorothy, and sees her yet again when he allows himself temporarily to act out
her S&M demands, hitting her in the face.
He now also observes Booth selling drugs
and meeting up with a man dressed in a yellow suit coat, who the boy calls the
Yellow Man (Fred Pickler). Later he sees the “Yellow Man” meet up with a
different “well-dressed man.”
In between these terrible revelations, Jeffrey seeks out the solace of
comfort of Sandy, with whom—despite his boyish infatuation with Dorothy—he
finds himself increasingly falling in love, despite her own commitment to the
high school football player Mike (Ken Stovitz). Yet he does not tell Sandy
everything and attempts to keep her away from his increasing pull into the
vortex of horror with Frank Booth’s world represents.
Finally, when caught leaving Dorothy’s
place by Booth, he and Dorothy are abducted and forced to endure a high speed
joyride along with Booth’s violent cohorts to Ben’s. Ben’s place, outwardly
called This Is It, is a kind of strange bordello, older women lining the walls,
ruled by the queenly, obviously gay Ben (brilliantly performed by Dean
Stockwell), where Don and little Donnie, Dorothy’s husband and child are being
held.
Later we discover the “well-dressed man” is also Booth obviously dressed
for drug pickups; yet even we now begin to realize that, as in so very many such
sexually complex narratives, there is a double personality to Booth, clearly
defined by his evident attraction to the utterly laid back and effeminate Ben,
who Booth finds to be incredibly “suave,” and to whom he toasts: “Here’s to
your fuck.”
It is hard to determine precisely what role other than perhaps serving
as the keeper of Dorothy’s family Ben plays in the complex world of Booth and
his thugs. But here, at Ben’s place, we perceive another very different side of
Booth, a man who almost looses it over Ben’s lip-sync performance of Roy
Orbison’s song “In Dreams,” which even more than the nostalgic song of lost
love which “Blue Velvet” represents, tells of a dream world impermissible in
the macho world in which Booth and Ben live:
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
"Go to sleep, everything is alright"
I close my eyes, then I drift away
Into the magic night, I softly say
A silent prayer like dreamers do
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you
In dreams, I walk with you
In dreams, I talk to you
In dreams, you're mine, all of the time
We're together in dreams, in dreams
But just before the dawn
I awake and find you gone
I can't help it, I can't help it if I cry
I remember that you said goodbye
It's too bad that all these things
Can only happen in dreams
Only in dreams
In beautiful dreams
What
becomes obvious is that in his second, double-life of Booth is a would-be gay
man desperately in love with the cold-hearted, effeminate Ben, who smokes
cigarettes from a holder stick, and performs the song almost as if it were a
drag routine.
That is
not to say that Ben is a nice fellow; Dorothy is allowed to see her Don and
Donnie, but clearly, discovering the one missing ear, the meeting does not go
well; and when Ben is introduced
to the captive Jeffrey, he slugs him hard in the
stomach.
Back on
the road, Booth again puts on his plastic mask in an attempt, this time in
front of the others, to abuse Dorothy. When Jeffrey, from the backseat,
attempts to prevent Booth from continuing, the other Booth personae puts on
lipstick and violently kisses his “pretty boy” before
Raymond and Paul beat him to a near pulp, as Dorothy
pleads for them to stop, leaving him near the saw-mill at which their nightly
voyage has ended.
Returning to town, bloodied and seriously bruised, Jeffrey finally
determines he has to contact Detective William’s to tell him of all he has
learned, while trying to keep Sandy out of the picture.
There he discovers the identity of the Man
in Yellow, Williams’ partner Tom Gordon who has been busy murdering Frank’s
rival drug dealers and stealing the confiscated evidence for Booth to sell.
Again Jeff and Sandy meet up, this time their car being closely followed
by auto they can only presume belongs to Booth. They attempt to escape it,
finally discovering that it is Sandy’s boyfriend Mike, yet another macho male
threatening to beat Jeffrey for stealing his girlfriend. But almost at the very
same moment, Dorothy appears, completely naked, herself beaten, bruised, and
confused on Jeffrey’s porch.
Jeffrey and Sandy rush her into the house, met by Jeffrey’s mother (Priscilla
Pointer) who calls for medical help. But now, almost in a trance, Dorothy
recognizes Jeffrey has her protector, describing him in front of Sandy as her
“secret lover.” Sandy predictably slaps him in the face, he calmly telling her
to report everything to her father as he rushes off to Dorothy’s apartment, not
even knowing what to expect.
There he finds the Yellow Man, Detective Gordon, still standing,
although near death, with Dorothy’s husband Don sitting in a chair, a strip of
blue velvet stuffed in his mouth, dead. As Jeffrey attempts to back out of the
apartment, and slip down the staircase, he encounters the “Well-Dressed Man,”
Booth’s doppelgänger, and rushes back inside. There he grabs Gordon’s police
walkie-talkie, reporting his whereabouts and telling the squad that he is
hiding in the bedroom, knowing from the previous night’s car trip that Booth
and his men listen to the police interchanges. Once more, he hides in the
closet, a place we well knows by this time, sneaking back out at the last
moment to steal Gordon’s gun.
When Booth enters, he rushes back to the bedroom ready to shoot his prey,
firing a couple of shots before realizing that there is no one there.
He finally moves toward the closet, but when he opens it Jeffrey fires,
killing him dead.
Sandy and her father arrive a few moments later, with Jeffrey handing
over his gun, now having become a murderer.
He has ended the film almost as the young “Charlie” does in Hitchcock’s Shadow
of a Doubt, she escaping her uncle’s clutches at the very moment he is
beheaded by another passing train. Hitchcock’s heroine closes the film quite
tragically, having to keep inside all she has discovered about her uncle and the
death she has, in part, caused, all in order to protect the innocence of her
beloved family; but in the process she has had to abandon her belief in family
and the innate goodness of mankind.
Strangely enough the young justified murderer of Lynch’s film—despite
the far deeper horrors he has undergone—ends the film back in an innocent
posture, totally ensconced in a relationship with Sandy, each of the mother’s
looking on. Jeffrey’s father Tom has returned home from the hospital, and
Dorothy sits holding her son Donnie.
Even the robins, which early in the film Sandy has dreamt have all left
town, have returned, one of them shown about to devour a large bug. In short,
Lumberton has been cleaned up; order restored. The American way can move nicely
forward. In Santa Rosa, meanwhile, at least for Charlie, the myths of the
American family have been inextricably lost.
That’s why I describe Lynch’s work as a
satire. Hitchcock’s black-and-white picture is a far more tragic view of the
American Dream, even if it presents a world less perverse, free at least of
such a conflicted gay man as Frank Booth—unless you want to make a case that
the “The Merry Widow” Uncle Charlie is precisely that; fortunately Hitchcock
didn’t take us there.
Los Angeles, February 18, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February
2026).
