Identity construction in David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive

Flowers blossom in front of brightly white garden fances, the fireman driving past waves cheerfully - the US-american small town Lumberton, in which the movie Blue Velvet directed by David Lynch who has also written the screenplay was made in 1986, presents itself like in a picture-book. The idyll gets disturbed when the protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont, a welleducated college student, finds a human ear that he hands over to the local police. Out of curiosity he decides to investigate on his own. Sandy, the daughter of the policeman whom Jeffrey has given his find, makes him pick up the trail of Dorothy Valleys, a night club singer who is involved into this affair. Jeffrey gets into her world and an ambivalent sexual relationship between them comes into being, which turns out to be masochistic as on the one hand Dorothy craves for Jeffrey, but on the other hand turns him back brutally. At the same time Jeffrey takes up a love story with the innocent Sandy. Jeffrey is confronted with two universes: pure sex and desire versus the declaration of true love. “An ambiguos film”, the Lexikon des internationalen Films says, “that during the crass penetration into dark human abysses also deals with the questionableness of traditional world views.” 1

With a car crash on the winding Mulholland Drive above Los Angeles the movie Mulholland Drive written and directed 2001 by Lynch starts. The only survivor is a young dark-haired woman who has been threaten by two men directly before. Having lost her memory due to a head injury she seeks refuge in a vacant house. At the same time the naive Betty, a young blond woman dreaming of making a film career in Hollywood, arrives in Los Angeles. Full of optimism she moves into her aunt’s house in which the brunette has taken refuge. The two women become friends. In search of the identity of the amnesiac who calls herself Rita they fall in love with each other. The story of the two is thwarted by different sub-plots that gradually fall in place into a main-plot which then is appreciably tangled up again. Abruptly a break: Betty turns to Diane, a crossed in love and therefore depressed woman who has failed in Hollywood. Rita impersonates Camilla, a successful actress and Diane’s former lover who is now engaged to a famous movie director. Driven by jealousy Diane instructs a killer to dispatch Camilla. After the offense is accomplished Diane gets insane because of having a murder on her conscience and commits suicide.

As the different levels of reality are in juxtaposition to each other it is the spectacor himself who has to unlock the identity of Betty and Diane respectively. There is no only solution:

¹ Koll, Messias: Lexikon des internationalen Films: Lexikon des Internationalen Films. Filmjahr 2001.

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“Viewers will feel as though they’ve just finished a great meal but aren’t sure what they’ve been served. Behind them, the chef smiles wickedly.” 2

In the two selected David Lynch movies a shared motif becomes apparent: the question of identity. Therefore I define border crossing as the crossing of a psychological border within a person making possible to live out different (part-) identities. Jeffrey in Blue Velvet as well as Betty/Diane in Mulholland Drive have two different identities, i.e. they are presented to us in two different roles, a psychological border crossing takes place. In either case the concepts of identity and identity construction which were current at the date of the movies’ origin are represented. Framing these concepts in relation to the time they were made it becomes clear that we are dealing with innovative groundbreaking ideas. Thus I want to compare the films relating to how they express identity construction and the therewith combined border crossing. Hereupon I will relate this analysis to the history of identity to make clear in which sense the dealing with the identity discourse is innovative in both of the films. Finally I will discuss the question if the presented border crossings are still border crossings today or if they have already become habits. To find an answer I will classify the movies within the film history and explain how the film socialization determines the spectators’ readings. I suggest that both films despite all their differences actually tell the same story, only that there are sixteen years of (film-) history between them causing the different ways of narrating. A second border crossing becomes apparent, a border crossing between the two films.

Before analyzing the films with regard to the protagonist’s identity let me begin by answering the question what identity is in general and giving a survey of the current identity discourse. Conceptions of identity depend on social developments. Therefore they can only be explained considering their historical background. Thus I want to give a summary of Stuart Hall’s studies regarding the conception of identity in the changing times.

Identity stands for “a relatively constant unity in the regard of oneself or of others based on a comparative stability of attitudes and intentions of behavior” ³ , characterizes consequently the self-awareness of a person, the picture someone draws of himself on condition that there is a difference to another thing: “Without the other or the outside identity cannot exist.” ⁴ The border between identity and difference is not determinated, but depends on context and perspective. Accordingly identity itself is not definite, but a process of becoming. To

² Online: http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/mulhollanddrive/

³ Bierhals: Identitätskonflikt im Film „Memento“, p. 4.

⁴ Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, p. 51.

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plagiarize Hall, identity has to be figured “as a ‘production’ which is never accomplished, which is always in process” ⁵ .

In contrast identification signifies the acceptation of oneself as constant by the social and cultural environment, it describes how one is perceived by others.

One’s self lastly means the whole of all attitudes towards oneself and the personal relations to the environment. Therefore identity includes a coherent self-concept.

Stuart Hall describes the positioning of the subject as an identity political action always taking place in a given setting: On the one hand the subjected is positioned historically, socially and culturally by the surrounding circumstances, on the other hand it positions itself. Thus positioning consists always of an active and a passive aspect […]. 6

In this he distances himself from the idea that identity would be something that could be freely chosen and changed any time: “The decentered subject is always already positioned somewhere, it is historically, socially and culturally positioned from without and contributes on his self to his own positioning.” 7

Hall emphasizes relevant attributes for the identity concepts of the Age of Enlightenment, the Modern and the Post-modern. The Age of Enlightenment (17 ^th /18 ^th century) is effected by the autonomy of the human reason. A solid inner core in the nature of the human being is assumed. It results the idea of a centered unified individual. The head note to this concept is articulated by Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum.

The modern society implicates large changes and upheavals that result in a high complexity. The abolishment of the class system leads to the transition to a functional differentiated society that is charcaterized by the “increase in rationality (Enlightenment), the development of strict organizations (bureaucratization) and the scientification and mechanization of the whole social life.” ⁸ These movements come along with the civil individualization, “the individual as a free corporate body is now considered to aspects like self-determination and self-development.” ⁹ Through different decentrations the subject fragments. In spite of these processes of estrangement it is further on assumed that in the inside there is hidden a ‘true ego’ that guarantees authenticity.” ¹⁰ Into this true identity core part-identities can be integrated. All in all Hall sums up the western histority of ideas in the following way: The Humanism of the Renaissance has put the human being into the spotlight of the universe, and the Cartesian subject with its rational abilities becomes the center of mind. The Age of Enlightenment stressing reason and mind further promotes the self-confidence. The Modern Age is affected by the

⁵ Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, p. 69.

⁶ Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, p. 13.

⁷ Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, p. 70.

⁸ Schmidt: Modernisierung, Kontingenz, Medien: Hybride Beobachtungen, p. 177.

⁹ Schmidt: Modernisierung, Kontingenz, Medien: Hybride Beobachtungen, p. 177.

¹⁰ Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, p. 18.

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individualization of the human being in the double sense as the individual represents the diminutive, no more divisible unity and is always specifiable and unique […]. 11

The concept of identity policy turns “first in the context of a revision of subjectivity and therefore also identity influenced by postmodern theory into a central topic” ¹² . The Postmodernism (20 ^th /21 ^st century) stands for fleetingness, fragmentation and discontinuity. The progressive globalization leads to space-time-compression and acceleration. In relation to identity expressions like crosscutting-identity, identity-surfing or patchwork-identity come up. The human being is similar to a social chameleon that tinkers at its personal myth, its identity. According to that identity is built by self-narration. The self is seen as a reflexive project, as Siegfried J. Schmidt points out:

By reason of the increasing pluralism of Lebenswelten, the temporalization of social structures and the relativization of all values the subjectivity has become the last touch-stone: Identity assumed the form of reflexive subjectivity. 13

That is why today identity construction has to be performed by the individual itself. Due to the postmodern identity-overflow the in-flowing information has to be structured, valued and selected. Schmidt emphasizes that from “the regression of all assurances and legitimations and the increase of options and therefore of risks difficulties arise, starting with the choice of the social role up to the risky construction of identity.” ¹⁴ To create oneself a relative constant coherente identity, individuals use the technique of self-narration. They try to unite their partidentities through a narrative act to a coherent entirety. The personal myth that is told ever and ever again intensifies the identity construction in the long-term memory and creates a selfperception. “In this way the essential ‘fiction’ of collective and social identity is drawn up.” ¹⁵ Let us now take a look on how the protagonists’ identities are made up in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and to which concept of identity construction they correspond. Blue Velvet: “It’s a strange world, isn’it it?”

Jeffrey is presented to us as a well-educated and well-dressed young man who behaves proparly, keeps good company and cares about his family. He grew up in a well-tended upper middle class neighborhood. The neighborhood embodies a kind of microcosm where everything is safe and in order. Out of curiosity Jeffrey gets on finds Dorothy out. First he only wants to investigate concerning his find, but when he sees Dorothy singing Blue Velvet in the Slow Club his gaze betrays that she attracts him. From her closet he can observe her getting undressed, an experience of immediate nakedness he has never made before and

¹¹ Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, p. 17.

¹² Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, pp. 10f.

¹³ Schmidt: Modernisierung, Kontingenz, Medien: Hybride Beobachtungen, p. 179.

¹⁴ Schmidt: Modernisierung, Kontingenz, Medien: Hybride Beobachtungen, p. 179.

¹⁵ Supik: Dezentrierte Positionierung. Stuart Halls Konzept der Identitätspolitiken, p. 51.

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