(no subject)

[adiva_calandia]

Oh f-list, you're my only hope!

I'm working on a paper for my China and Its Neighbors class about representations of Tibet in Western and Chinese culture (how Orientalist attitudes are or aren't reflected in both, how a region's struggle for independence becomes commercialized, etc). Since I like doing my own analyses of stuff, my primary sources include Seven Years in Tibet, Kundun, and Dreaming Lhasa.

Now, Twin Peaks fans (I'm lookin' at you, agonistes and gao): How would you personally describe the way Lynch uses Tibet as a narrative device/character element? And if I were going to look at a specific episode or two, what would you recommend?

Thank you, folken. :D

(Doing research for this kind of shamefully makes me want to go out and buy some prayer flags. The commercial cultural system: you're part of it!)

Comments

[newredshoes]

Oh man, for prime commercialization territory, you could also look at the Tibetan Freedom Concerts! (And how they petered out -- I guess the scene lost interest.)

[adiva_calandia]

Yes! This article I'm reading actually talks about them, and how people tend to view Richard Gere/Steven Seagal/Brad Pitt's involvement with the movement skeptically and cynically, as purely a PR move, but people are more accepting of musicians' motives. Possibly because musicians are often seen as being more authentic performers than actors? . . . But that's a sociological discussion for another time.

[agonistes]

-- ooh, jumping around, this reminds me. There's a book I read (that covers Steven Seagal in particular) called Re-Enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West, by Jeffrey Paine, that talks about how Tibetan Buddhism became a PR point for the Dalai Lama in the West -- and how, without doing that, Tibetan culture wouldn't stand much of a chance. It might be useful for your purposes...?

[adiva_calandia]

Oooh, they even appear to have that here in the library. I'll check it out!

[agonistes]

It's actually pretty sketchy, to be honest, with definite orientalist tendencies.

Context makes it clear that Dale Cooper has an interest in Tibet because of reading about the Dalai Lama's escape in (god I hope I get this date right) 1960 and the subsequent subjugation of the Tibetan people. He also (if I'm remembering correctly) has a dream about them -- which spawns his "Tibetan method", which has no relationship whatsoever to Tibetan Buddhism or Bön that I've been able to find. (That's definitely an episode I'd recommend watching, and it's fairly early on in the first season. I want to say it's 1x03, but I can't remember if that's including or after the pilot.) There's also at least one source I remember reading that quotes David Lynch as saying that he had a dream about Tibet, and that's why Cooper had one.

I wrote a paper for my American Indian Lit class a few years ago that looks at elements of American Indian culture in Twin Peaks in much the same way as you're asking about Tibetan culture, and the framework I used for analyzing Indian culture is also useful here. The basic gist of it is that Lynch, Frost, et al. use culture within the show to underscore the moral alignment of various characters and their relative degrees of otherworldliness (I'm writing this pre-coffee, just fyi), and Indian culture gets used to signify that characters and places are filled with mysticism and are more likely than not to represent Neutral Good or similar.

By that same stretch, though, Cooper is the one who seems to introduce Tibet as a concept into the town, and it's definitely a signifier that Dale Cooper is really, really weird. Correct a lot of the time, but weird. (See also the scene early on in the second season where Harry Truman tells Cooper he's had enough of the weirdness, and brings up Tibet as an example.) We don't actually see any Tibetan art -- or Tibetans, for that matter. Tibet in Twin Peaks is a concept defined solely through the eyes of Dale Cooper, who's Mr. All-American White Guy.

In short, both Tibet and American Indian culture (not just limited to tribes of the Pacific Northwest, either) get co-opted to underscore the "weirdness" of the (mostly white) characters and the (mostly white) town.

I love that show, and it's got problems. *wry*

Further reading: I'm at work right now and can't get links, but I believe there's a site called Glastonberry Grove (sic) that's got episode transcripts, among other things.

[adiva_calandia]

You are my favorite. *_* Thank you so so so much!

[jezrana.livejournal.com]

I see Sweeney's already recced Re-Enchantment, but I second it. I used it for a paper in a philosophy class on Buddhism and it's got a lot of great stuff.