David Lynch's Blue Velvet is a shocking cinematic experience. The act of looking is distorted in several ways by Lynch in order to render his audience displaced and horrified. From the opening scenes of the film, two very different worlds are established: one of bright, surreal images and the other of a dark and evil world hidden beneath the surface. By allowing his audience to view the underground world, Lynch is satisfying their voyeuristic fantasies and also alerting them to a similarity between it and his characters. In a noir style detective plot, Jeffrey moves between the two worlds discovering his desire for the perverse in his relationship with Dorothy. Through Mulvey's theory of the controlling male gaze, Blue Velvet clearly challenges its audience's ability to watch and to derive pleasure from looking. This psychoanalytical approach provides a deeper understanding of Lynch's clear Freudian references and themes. Through the looks of the camera, male characters and audience, the female characters are sexually objectified and made powerless to the active male gaze. However, Lynch does temporarily subvert his gendered scenario through the character of Dorothy, whose sexual power over Frank and Jeffrey is defined by her masochistic desires. Therefore, Lynch's audience is made complicit with the uncomfortable images and dirty fantasies played out in Blue Velvet. .
The hidden world of Dorothy's masochism and dark desires is reflective of the underground images at the start of the film. Before the audience is introduced to Dorothy and Frank's sinister environment, Lynch forces us to look beneath the surreal surface of suburban bliss. The opening shots are of white picket fences framed with red roses and firemen waving happily from their truck as children are ushered across the street. "This parody of suburban idyll is gradually undercut by a sequence of disturbing images." The camera pans down into the grass blades and below the surface to show a dark and vicious world of "violence and cannibalism, death and decay beneath the neat suburban lawn.
According to Mulvey: "In a world of sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on the female figure which is styled accordingly". Do you agree? Discuss in relation to films from the unit with attention ...
The rooms were colors of blue, purple green, orange, white, violet, and black. ... Blue, with its vivid windows; purple, with its ornaments and tapestries that made your pane feel purple; and green, that even had green casements. "The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue." The panes of the black velvet room were of a deep blood red color. ...
As the film starts, we see the opening of the red velvet curtains, which indicate the style that we can expect during the film. ... As characters practice their last minute preparation before entering a competition, the blue Danube waltz is played, this is an effective piece of music to open the film. ... The Blue Danube' has become a cliché as people unfamiliar with classical music recognise this tune and associated it with dancing, and it is therefore very appropriate for the clicked, rule-governed world of ballroom dancing. The glamour presented through colourful rich costumes ...
Eugene Delacroix's work entitled "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi" is one of much drama and emotion. The composition is an oil painting on canvas. Delacroix shows the viewer a scene of a woman standing on a rocky cliff above water. An arm of a dead man is protruding from underneath the rocks, a...
The rooms went in the order of blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally black and scarlet. ... The seventh room was constructed of black velvet with blood red window panes. ... The black velvet interior provided a sense of fluidity toward death, while the blood colored window assumed that nothing was to be seen save death itself. ...
The setting of the writing is in the yellow train and the girls are sitting on the blue seats. ... When I was reading it, it really made me feel that I am sitting on those blue seats appreciating the breath taking scenery and having my hopes high. ... The use of words are colourful and expressive: "I rode in a train with blue seats, bright bright blue, and there was this factory chimney smoking white against the sky and the sky was grey like velvet." ...
Whenever I glanced at the night sky suspended by the waters, I would look at my own reflection and try to find just a trace of a diamond in my heart - a diamond that signified just one thing, love Much as I do remember about my quiet and peaceful moments watching the stars glisten and flicker across the velvet curtains of the night, I have never been able to recall what happened after the night's gazing. ... I was merely clad in my baby blue nightgown and soft white robe, which was tightly wound against my waist to keep me remotely warm. ... So I called out to my lonely star that gle...
Whenever I glanced at the night sky suspended by the waters, I would look at my own reflection and try to find just a trace of a diamond in my heart - a diamond that signified just one thing, love Much as I do remember about my quiet and peaceful moments watching the stars glisten and flicker across the velvet curtains of the night, I have never been able to recall what happened after the night's gazing. ... I was merely clad in my baby blue nightgown and soft white robe, which was tightly wound against my waist to keep me remotely warm. ... So I called out to my lonely star that gle...
