section_path: Artistry/Themes and motifs
section_name: Themes and motifs
paragraph_text: Themes and motifs
  
  Lynch refused to publicly explain or assign any specific meaning to his works, preferring that viewers interpret them in their own ways. Asked how audiences should approach his films, he said: "You should not be afraid of using your intuition and feel your way through. Have the experience and trust your inner knowing of what it is."
  
  I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it. That's why I love coffee shops and public places—I mean, they're all out there.
  
  Many elements recur in Lynch's work; Le Blanc and Odell write, "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas".: 8 Works like Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks depict stories in which "the folksiness of small town America collided with utter depravity, beset by evils from both sides of the white picket fence", while his later "Hollywood trilogy"— Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire —explores "the celluloid dreams of Los Angeles bitter realities and almost cosmic horrors lurking in the hills". Elements like red theater curtains, diners, dreams, nightclub singers, and occult-like rituals recur frequently in Lynch's work. Another prominent motif is industry, with repeated imagery of "the clunk of machinery, the power of pistons, shadows of oil drills pumping, screaming woodmills and smoke billowing factories".: 9–11 Other imagery common in Lynch's work includes flickering electricity or lights, fire, and stages.: 9–11 Physical deformity is also found in several of Lynch's films, as is death by head wound. His work frequently depicts a dark, violent criminal underbelly of society, and often contains characters with supernatural or omnipotent qualities.
  
  In The New Yorker, Dennis Lim concluded that "the primal terror of Lynch’s films is an existential one" and that "the volatility of the self and of reality" is central to his work. Lim wrote that "for Lynch, disruption is generative: trauma, the recurring subject of his films, can rupture the fabric of reality". Critic Mark Fisher noted that Lynch's works destabilize the hierarchy between distinct levels of reality and fiction:, resulting in a ambiguous ontological situation in which "any apparent reality subsides into a dream". Kite wrote that "the central mystery" of Lynch's work is rooted in overlapping "worlds" of consciousness and the resultant "perpetual folding between outside and inside". Gilbey wrote that Lynch's work "exposed the horrors lurking beneath apparently placid exteriors, and found beauty in the quotidian, the industrial" while reflecting a "mix of folksy naivety and elusive strangeness". Critic Greg Olson wrote that Lynch's work is preoccupied with the "deepest realities" behind surfaces and facades. Author David Foster Wallace characterized Lynch's films as deconstructing "the weird irony of the banal". Lynch's work reflects a preoccupation with the instability of identity, particularly in female characters. He tended to feature his female leads in "split" roles: many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. Hoberman identified a duality between "exaggerated, even saccharine innocence" and "depraved evil" in his work, while Lim emphasized that the good and evil in Lynch's art exist in an ambiguous relationship to each other.
  
  Lynch's affinity for Eastern spirituality is evident in his films, though it typically manifests in American trappings. Joseph Joyce of Angelus wrote, "his work could perhaps properly be understood as the marriage between Western kitsch and Eastern spirituality". According to Kite, much of Lynch's work is underpinned by his Advaita Vedanta –inspired philosophy, in which the soul is defined by "light and unity" but forgets its original essence, becoming lost in illusions of isolation, violence, and separateness for some time before awaking to remember its true nature. Kite suggested that Lynch could be understood as "a religious or spiritual artist in a loosely categoric sense", and called his worldview "essentially monist " but punctuated by superficial duality and Gnostic conflict. Lynch directly invoked the Vedic scriptures known as the Upanishads in several of his films and books; in Twin Peaks: The Return and in his live introductions to Inland Empire, he quotes a passage from an adapted version of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:
  
  We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.
  
  All but two of Lynch's films are set in the United States, and he frequently referenced 1950s and early 1960s U.S. culture despite his works being set in later decades. Bradshaw wrote, "o director ever interpreted the American Dream with more artless innocence than David Lynch", citing his work's juxtaposition of the safety of "the suburban drive and the picket fence" with "escape, danger, adventure, sex and death". Joyce wrote, "it's easy to presume that Lynch was cynic. But he really did love Americana; blue jeans and slicked hair, soda fountains, Roy Orbison and, yes, milkshakes". Lynch said: "I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories".: 18 Of the 1950s, he said, "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways... there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork for a disastrous future.": 3–5
  
  Lynch refused to publicly explain or assign any specific meaning to his works, preferring that viewers interpret them in their own ways. Asked how audiences should approach his films, he said: "You should not be afraid of using your intuition and feel your way through. Have the experience and trust your inner knowing of what it is."
  
  I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it. That's why I love coffee shops and public places—I mean, they're all out there.
  
  Many elements recur in Lynch's work; Le Blanc and Odell write, "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas".: 8 Works like Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks depict stories in which "the folksiness of small town America collided with utter depravity, beset by evils from both sides of the white picket fence", while his later "Hollywood trilogy"— Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire —explores "the celluloid dreams of Los Angeles bitter realities and almost cosmic horrors lurking in the hills". Elements like red theater curtains, diners, dreams, nightclub singers, and occult-like rituals recur frequently in Lynch's work. Another prominent motif is industry, with repeated imagery of "the clunk of machinery, the power of pistons, shadows of oil drills pumping, screaming woodmills and smoke billowing factories".: 9–11 Other imagery common in Lynch's work includes flickering electricity or lights, fire, and stages.: 9–11 Physical deformity is also found in several of Lynch's films, as is death by head wound. His work frequently depicts a dark, violent criminal underbelly of society, and often contains characters with supernatural or omnipotent qualities.
  
  In The New Yorker, Dennis Lim concluded that "the primal terror of Lynch’s films is an existential one" and that "the volatility of the self and of reality" is central to his work. Lim wrote that "for Lynch, disruption is generative: trauma, the recurring subject of his films, can rupture the fabric of reality". Critic Mark Fisher noted that Lynch's works destabilize the hierarchy between distinct levels of reality and fiction:, resulting in a ambiguous ontological situation in which "any apparent reality subsides into a dream". Kite wrote that "the central mystery" of Lynch's work is rooted in overlapping "worlds" of consciousness and the resultant "perpetual folding between outside and inside". Gilbey wrote that Lynch's work "exposed the horrors lurking beneath apparently placid exteriors, and found beauty in the quotidian, the industrial" while reflecting a "mix of folksy naivety and elusive strangeness". Critic Greg Olson wrote that Lynch's work is preoccupied with the "deepest realities" behind surfaces and facades. Author David Foster Wallace characterized Lynch's films as deconstructing "the weird irony of the banal". Lynch's work reflects a preoccupation with the instability of identity, particularly in female characters. He tended to feature his female leads in "split" roles: many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. Hoberman identified a duality between "exaggerated, even saccharine innocence" and "depraved evil" in his work, while Lim emphasized that the good and evil in Lynch's art exist in an ambiguous relationship to each other.
  
  Lynch's affinity for Eastern spirituality is evident in his films, though it typically manifests in American trappings. Joseph Joyce of Angelus wrote, "his work could perhaps properly be understood as the marriage between Western kitsch and Eastern spirituality". According to Kite, much of Lynch's work is underpinned by his Advaita Vedanta –inspired philosophy, in which the soul is defined by "light and unity" but forgets its original essence, becoming lost in illusions of isolation, violence, and separateness for some time before awaking to remember its true nature. Kite suggested that Lynch could be understood as "a religious or spiritual artist in a loosely categoric sense", and called his worldview "essentially monist " but punctuated by superficial duality and Gnostic conflict. Lynch directly invoked the Vedic scriptures known as the Upanishads in several of his films and books; in Twin Peaks: The Return and in his live introductions to Inland Empire, he quotes a passage from an adapted version of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:
  
  We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.
  
  All but two of Lynch's films are set in the United States, and he frequently referenced 1950s and early 1960s U.S. culture despite his works being set in later decades. Bradshaw wrote, "o director ever interpreted the American Dream with more artless innocence than David Lynch", citing his work's juxtaposition of the safety of "the suburban drive and the picket fence" with "escape, danger, adventure, sex and death". Joyce wrote, "it's easy to presume that Lynch was cynic. But he really did love Americana; blue jeans and slicked hair, soda fountains, Roy Orbison and, yes, milkshakes". Lynch said: "I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories".: 18 Of the 1950s, he said, "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways... there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork for a disastrous future.": 3–5