Update and scripts

After about eight months of research, I have begun scripting the rough draft for Left Behind and the Opaqueness of God. I still have plenty of reading to go before the final draft, but I now know enough to begin putting some pieces together. As said in the trailer from a few weeks ago, the release window is this winter. I'm hoping for December/January and not February, but this project is growing more and more massive as my education progresses.

And now for the latest episode scripts. Eagle-eyed viewers might notice some differences between the scripts and the video. Some things get cut for one reason or another. For example, the episode on La La Land was going to be much longer. Anyway, here you go:

La La Land

 AUDIO 1
 I'm not going to tell you not to love La La Land. A lot of people love La La Land. I'm not going to tell you that you need to agree with me. A lot of people don't agree with me. If I were to do those things, it would be rife with snobbery, and as I will explain later, that is not an attractive characteristic. Rather, I want to examine the flaws of the film and explain why dislike of La La Land has become more widespread than many critics and audiences anticipated. Believe it or not, it is not only because of some backlash at its popularity. There are legitimate reasons why this movie fails to appeal to so many people, and there are legitimate failings of the movie itself. Let's begin with...
 
 THE NON-MUSICAL MUSICAL
 AUDIO 2
 There has been an abundance of criticism in recent musicals about main characters played by actors who are not upper-level singers but will bring in audiences more than unknown vocalists. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Moana and Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast, as examples. This criticism is not invalid, but it these issues are negligible. Johnson's charismatic sing-talking is unspectacular but completely passable and reasonably acceptable for the character he was portraying. He's...fine. Emma Watson may not be an opera singer, but her voice is lovely and fits well within the film. She's...fine. Ryan Gosling is not fine. He groans out lyrics as the director hopes the actor's overall charm and good looks will distract us from the fact that can't sing.
 Neither can most people. I certainly can't, but I'm not the one starring in a Hollywood musical. This isn't even his fault. He's just doing his job to the best of his ability. The problem is that somebody thought that audiences would be happier with a recognizable, handsome star who can't sing in this musical rather than someone who can do the job well but isn't...Ryan Gosling. Now the proponents of Gosling's casting will say that the film needed big stars – not big musical talents – but there are actually tons of well-known actors who can also sing. Behold.
 [Jeremy Renner] [Robert Downey Jr.]   [Neil Patrick Harris] [Joseph Gordon Levitt] [Chris Pine] [Taye Diggs] [Ewan McGregor]
 And this is Ryan Gosling:
 [clip] [clip]
 AUDIO 3
 Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of songs to spread out the singers and avoid Rosling dominating the lyrics. There are five main songs that actually contain lyrics in La La Land: Another Day of Sun, Someone in the Crowd, A Lovely Night, The Fools Who Dream and a myriad of variations of City of Stars. The rest of the soundtrack is instrumental. Parts of Another Day of Sun and Someone in the Crowd have noticeable sound mixing problems with its score raising far too loud to hear all the lyrics.
 [clip] [clip]
 I know someone out there is raising his hand saying he absolutely can hear every word after Googling the lyrics, but...no. Don't bother. Anyway, there is a reason people feel that La La Land drags in the middle. The first two rousing songs are gone, and all we have are instrumental works over montage and variations of the same dreary song. Defenders may be quick to point out that this is a jazz musical and that lots of instrumental pieces make sense, and while that's true, that does not differentiate itself from every other non-musical movie that also has a score. So, every single movie. For a musical, La La Land doesn't have much to sing along to.    
 
 THE WHITE SAVIOR OF JAZZ
 AUDIO 4
 In La La Land, big 1950's dance numbers are interrupted by almost anachronistic cell phones – yet its ambiguity about “when” we are supposed to be is highlighted far more by its outdated racial politics. La La Land has a race problem. It opens with a dance sequence sung by a diverse group, but immediately after the song, we see Mia and Seb begin to bicker with each other, and all those voices are forgotten for the rest of the film, and our nearly exclusively white musical can begin. Sebastian is convinced that jazz is dying and this purpose in life is to save it from extinction. Casting Gosling forces La La Land into the mold of the white savior film, a story in which the fate of a minority group depends not on themselves but on someone whose intellect or personal passion is portrayed as superior. In this case the traditionally black music style of jazz must be saved by the one man who has the guts to stick to his convictions. The black people in the jazz nightclub are inexplicably seduced by Seb and Mia's dancing.   
 At the end of the film, Seb opens up his own jazz club that is shockingly successful and gains a black apprentice who is pretty good on the piano himself, but not so good that he might take over for Seb himself. In the middle of all this, Seb is approached by Keith, played by John Legend. Keith is a very successful jazz musician who practically begs Seb to join because nobody is more gifted at playing piano than Seb. Keith tells Seb that jazz was innovative in its time, and if he refuses to reinvent jazz in the present, then he’s really not living up to what the genre is all about: the future. Seb agrees, and then he doesn’t. In the predominantly black band, Seb is the one who sticks to his guns, unlike Keith who “sells out” jazz. Basically, the only major black character in La La Land – a film about jazz – is the closest this musical has to an antagonist. At best, it's a little awkward. Your mileage may vary on how much you personally cringe about socially tone deaf casting and narrative. At worst, it's troubling and embarrassing.

AUDIO 5  

I'm not jazz musician, but it only took a little digging to discover that said musicians hate what Sebastian is doing in the film: drawing hard boundaries and narrowing what jazz should and should not be. It's completely out of step with what jazz actually looks like today. Seb is a neo-bop jazz musician. The neo-bop movement condemns the addition of rock and hip-hop into the genre — popularly called  jazz fusion. Miles Davis, for example, was lambasted for “selling out” – a role that black musician Keith takes on in the film, only to be challenged and at least thematically defeated by our savior when he opens up his own jazz club and quits the band. This all seems rather heavy for something that is just...MUSIC, but taste and style can sometimes harden into something resembling ideology.   

There is a kind of snobbery that persists throughout La La Land, and really, all of Damien Chazelle's films: all three of his directorial efforts have been about jazz. 2009's Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, 2014's Whiplash and now La La Land. All his movies are about jazz, and rather than loving tributes, at least the last two contain scenes in which the male protagonist condescends to otherwise ignorant characters about why jazz is great and rock is bad. Seb condescendingly reminds Mia, late in the movie, that she loves jazz now. This infantile devotion to purity is not something to honored. It's not romantic if it talks down to the audience avatar, a character who does not like jazz in the same way that the target demographic audience of the film probably does not like jazz. It should be obvious, but in case it were not, when Mia says she hates jazz and Seb explains why her opinion is wrong, Seb is the director, and Mia is US.   

AUDIO 6

An enthusiast tells others why they love something. A snob tells others why they are idiots for not loving it.In this scene, Seb tells Mia that jazz is dying. In the scene immediately prior to this, he is INCREDULOUS that she does not like jazz. He is SHOCKED AND SURPRISED and...how? How can be know that jazz is dying and is also surprised that he met someone that does not like jazz? If he believes jazz is dying, he should not be surprised that a woman he just met does not like jazz. He should be surprised if she DID like jazz, based on his assumption about the state of the genre, but not the other way around.
 There is a difference between working almost exclusively in a particular genre – the way many directors only do comedies or only do horror – and what Damien Chazzelle does – only making movies on the subject of jazz AND making all these movies about why the audience is foolish for not loving it. You know what? Maybe people don't need to be condescended. Maybe they have heard jazz, understood what is was trying to do and trying to evoke but simply did not like it, which is apparently the worst thing one can say to a snob – the fact that dislike of the thing the snob likes is not born from ignorance but experience and sincerity. An enthusiast tells others why they love something. A snob tells others why they are idiots for not loving it.In this scene, Seb tells Mia that jazz is dying. In the scene immediately prior to this, he is INCREDULOUS that she does not like jazz. He is SHOCKED AND SURPRISED and...how? How can be know that jazz is dying and is also surprised that he met someone that does not like jazz? If he believes jazz is dying, he should not be surprised that a woman he just met does not like jazz. He should be surprised if she DID like jazz, based on his assumption about the state of the genre, but not the other way around.  That is the key difference...and speaking of obnoxious behavior... That is the key difference...and speaking of obnoxious behavior...
 
 OBNOXIOUS SOLIPSISM IS
NOT ROMANTICISM
 AUDIO 7
 Main characters in film generally require a flaw to overcome to an obstacle. When the lead or leads in a film have flaws, this is part of their development. They need to go through their arc, they need to transform, to go through a change. At the end, they are different – hopefully better – than they were at the start. A film frames this change as positive and their flaw as negative. So, when I say that in La La Land, the characters are selfish and snobby, I am not referring to their flaw that they need to overcome in order to achieve a goal and/or change. The film presents their awfulness as positive. The film is not self-aware enough to realize this. Characters both can and should be flawed, but FRAMING is everything. La La Land frames these characters as wonderful, fantastic dreamers.
 Mia is a non-entity. She has little to talk about. We know nothing about her personality. We only know about her dream. She wants to be a famous actress, and, oh yeah, she does not like jazz, at first. Then she does because Seb mansplains to her enough, and all any woman ever needs is some hipster doofus to educate them until they become the perfect embodiment of the man's interests. What are Mia's personality traits? Besides her goals, who is...SHE? This is not the fault of the actress, who is fine, but the writer/director. Mia creates a one-woman show to showcase her acting, but the film has no interest in the details of that process. Nothing about the subject of the play, stage direction, the business, etc. Plenty of time to discuss Seb's obsession with jazz and why jazz is so great, and we see a full song in their performance. But Mia? Almost nothing. Mia is not a character – she is a symbol of a dream, a symbol of success.   
 AUDIO 8
 And what about Seb? … Seb is the director's false idea of romanticism. In one scene, someone uses the word “romantic” derisively, and that offends Seb, casting him as our personification of this quality. Chazelle's protagonists have this in common: drumming alone and not working well with others, showing up to the performance even after a car wreck, carrying the world on their back. They're music martyrs, suffering alone for the salvation of the world. Romanticism is both wonderful and necessary for art. But I don't think we're seeing a good use of romanticism in La La Land, if at all. We're seeing a social form of solipsism. Seb receives bills in the mail, and rather than getting a paying job, he believes he is above this.   
 
 He is an artist! Paying bills and working for a boss, well, that's for everyone else! Seb is hired to play piano for an 80's cover band, and he bemoans this position because he is a “serious musician.” Oh no, Seb, you have to make money and work your way up in your chosen profession? How do you think life works? Seb is hired to play Christmas music for the owner of a restaurant. From their dialogue, Seb has worked here before and was let go. The owner, Bill, is willing to give him a second chance so long as he sticks to the playlist. Seb reluctantly agrees, arguing with Bill that he also wants to play his jazz songs. It's bizarre to watch. He is hired to perform a specific job, but he just keeps arguing about making it about himself. Eventually, Seb cannot control himself and plays a loud song that is not on the playlist, and he is let go. The way this is framed, we are supposed to sympathize with Seb and demonize Bill. After all, Seb was just doing what was in his heart! He's a romantic!   
 AUDIO 9
 Like all egotists, all snobs, Seb assumes he is in the right. He just wanted to play jazz...but what about what Bill wanted? Bill wanted to give his customers a Merry Christmas. Seb does not even entertain that idea because he's a REBEL. He's a PURIST. When Mia is on a date with her boyfriend, she quietly says “I'm sorry,” and leaves him in THE MIDDLE OF THEIR NIGHT OUT to go date someone else. The movie wants us to applaud her romantic spontaneity, but imagine if your girlfriend or boyfriend did that to you in real life. They would be, you know, a jerk? At least to the director. But to anyone who was dealt with someone like Seb in real life? He's a jackass.   
 He thinks himself so unique, but he is just one of many people who think that their individuality is not only a badge of honor that they did not earn but also an excuse to treat others however they please under the guise of being “true to themselves.” The world is more than...YOU. Actions have consequences, and nobody exists in a vacuum. You are only the most important person in the world in your own head. Films characters should, of course, be flawed. Their arc depends on it, but framing is key here. The film is not claiming that Seb needs to go through a change. It is claiming that the world around Seb does. La La Land does not recognize Seb's actual flaws, his actual obnoxiousness, his actual unrelatability.  There is a scene in which Mia tells Seb that she is worried people will think her one-woman show is too nostalgic. Seb says that if they don't get it, “fuck 'em.” The thinly-veiled implication here is that if the audience does not like La La Land, which fits the description of nostalgic, fuck 'em. This isn't a wink to the audience. It's a middle finger, and it so perfectly encapsulates the snobbery of the film, the selfishness and self-righteousness of Seb. Not to mention the tone-deaf attitude of the director – the belief that these are people we should aspire to be.   
 AUDIO 10
 The lyrics to The Fools Who Dream explicitly reference these “dreamers” – as Mia belts out “And that's why they need us.” I have never heard more smug, self-satisfied lyrics. To La La Land, NORMAL PEOPLE need dreamers like the vacant Mia and the solipsistic Seb just to get through the day. La La Land is so out of touch with the lives of real people. Dreams jobs are for those who don't have to pay rent. Speeches by movie characters who become rock stars about following only your dreams and NEVER taking realistic, careful steps towards your happiness should come with a disclaimer about the survivor bias of this near impossible quest. Seb's allegedly heroic defiance of the dangers of jazz fusion does not stand up to even modest scrutiny. He shows unearned entitlement to a culture that he believes only he can save, turns his nose up at the horrors of popular music from the 1980's, and it is mistakenly framed as romantic rebelliousness. Again, the problem is not that Seb is flawed.   
 The problem is that the movie does not know he is and portrays his revolting personality as the embodiment of romanticism. La La Land does NOT present Seb as someone who needs to pull his head out of his butt. It validates his insufferable attitude rather than challenges it. People say this is a subversion of the classic musical because things don't work out in the end...except that they do. Seb's dream was not Mia. Mia's dream was not Seb. Seb's dream was to open a jazz club, and he did. Mia's dream was to become a famous actress, and she did. Their improbable dreams came true. Their romance was not the goal, it's just what they did in the meantime. So, no, this is not a radical take on the musical or a transgression of the genre or even grounded in reality. It's...a musical, and not a particularly good one. Critics were so starved for musicals that a crust of bread looked like a big, juicy steak. La La Land is stuffed with hammy, lazy homages, embarrassing racial cluelessness and obnoxious characters who are not nearly half as clever and ambitious as the director believes them to be.   

KINGSGLAIVE

 AUDIO 1
 Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is a 2016 animated film directed by Takeshi Nozue. The nations of Lucis and Niflheim are at war. The most powerful guardians of Lucis, called the Kingsglaive, defend the realm with magical throwing daggers that allow them to travel across short distances to aid in their combat. As a means of ending the war, the nations of Lucis and Niflheim draft a treaty that would give land outside of the Lucis capital, Insomania, to the people of Niflheim in exchange for a cease-fire and the protection of Insomnia itself. Understandably, this draws a mixed reaction for those who were defending the realm in Lucis.
 But it's all a trick! Niflheim stages the treaty as a means of gaining access to Insomnia, and hostilities break out worse than ever before. It's up to the improbably named Nyx Ulric to save the day, rescue a princess, face a monstrous dark knight and various other fantasy tropes that hamper this very, very bad movie. The visuals look like something from a Final Fantasy game, and no, that is absolutely not a compliment. There are different expectations from a cut scene on a Playstation to a feature film that, yes, was actually released in theaters. That's really the only compliment one can give Kingsglaive: in spite of it looking and feeling like a video game, it is a proper movie. It was released in theaters, it is nearly two hours long and it moves at the pace of a film. It qualifies as a movie and not a trailer to a video game. Admittedly, that is damning with faint praise, as this qualification means that Kingsglaive must be judged on that level. Every character in this film is wedged tightly within the uncanny valley. The eyes are dead, and their lids close much with the same mannerisms of an American Girls doll.   
 AUDIO 2
 Their flesh is waxy and unnatural, their hair sometimes stands perfectly still, and this inherent weightlessness of their bodies destroys any impact that the action scenes potentially could have delivered. The character models are less fleshed out than in Beowulf, a CG film released a decade ago. The world in which they inhabit is a bizarre jumble of fantasy elements lifted from classic Tolkien with the fate of the world resting on a magic ring, Game of Thrones with its warring factions outdoing each other with one duplicitous act after another and Star Wars with its combination of sci-fi technology and sorcery. Not to mention drawing inspiration from its own convoluted games. Fans of the video game series might shout and cheer at the appearance of a familiar purple octopus and the many other references to the game's rich mythology, but in and of itself, this is not something to watch except for some kind of Final Fantasy completionist.    
 
 In the English language version of Kingsglaive, the protagonist, Nyx Ulrich, is played by Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad and Bojack Horseman fame. I love Aaron Paul, but he's just using the Jesse Pinkman voice while playing a heroic knight who uses chiefly British forms of English words like “whilst” in his grungy American accent – and it absolutely does not work. The voice actors often do not match the characters. I've never seen a greater dissonance between voice actors and characters in an animated film before, and the fish lips and bad synchronization of the voices do the film no favors. In fairness to the voice actors, it would be difficult to show enthusiasm while reading wooden dialogue and sounding out goofy fantasy names while trying to give them gravitas.   
 AUDIO 3

OK, if I can simply deviate from talking about this bad movie, why are video game movies always bad? In the 20+ years of Hollywood attempting to adapt video games into big budget feature films, I struggle to find any that received any kind of critical success or even mild audience adoration outside of camp value or niche appeal. A handful of them are financially successful, but with one notable exception, they almost never have enough bank at the box office to warrant a proper franchise. So, commercially, critically, however you wish to slice it, movies based on video games are garbage. They are a myriad of tired arguments about why this is. There are superficial reasons why adaptations might not work. Gaming is interactive, and adapting something that is functionally disparate creates inevitable loss in translation. There is something to that – it's not invalid – but it's not everything. Based on some articles I've read, gamers want to believe that these films deviate too far from the source material or that the movies are fine but that everyone is just too much of a critic to admit it. This kind of defensiveness is not helpful in this discourse, not to mention that it is demonstrably false.   
 Directors who are and are not game enthusiasts make similarly unattractive, forgettable movies about said source material. I have no fondness for video games, so take this as an outsider's opinion without the trappings of fandom: video game movies have a lot going against them from jump street, but they are also products of a movie-making industry that produces more middling-to-bad movies than good IN GENERAL. Making a movie – especially a big budget movie with lots of moving parts – is incredibly challenging. It's not just one director's vision. There are writers, producers, actors, musicians, crew and thousands more who contribute to creation of one single film. Ever try to count how many people have to be recognized in the creation of a film in the ending credits? That's not even complete – there are usually uncredited script doctors and others who had a hand in it. To paraphrase and perhaps modify Sturgeon's Law here, most movies are trash. That's not a slam on the medium – it's just a testament to its complexity. When a movie goes right, it means EVERYONE brought their A-game.   
 AUDIO 4
 This is Rotten Tomatoes around the time I am writing this. Movies opening this week: four out of five are bad, and one is...OK. We will all probably forget about it in a couple weeks. Top Box Office – so, this is what everyone goes to see, and half are rotten. And of the fresh movies, really one two have any solid consensus on its high quality. So, most video game movies are bad because most movies are bad, BUT there does not account for nearly ALL video game movies being bad. That's because video game movies – in addition to having the deck stacked against it in a general sense – also have one more hurdle: who is making them. A video game adaptation does not attract auteur directors or high-quality blockbuster directors because even though gaming is now on even footing with film in terms of money to be made, the concept of a “video game movie” is still laughable because nobody has made a good one, and the best of the best directors and writers don't want to invest their time and their reputations into something that has always provably been a failure critically and almost always a failure commercially.   
 Let's use another previously maligned film subgenre and its meteoric rise as an example. It took a long time for superhero movies to lose their stigma of “silliness” before major, talented directors started making the leap. Christopher Nolan and Sam Raimi, as examples, helped pave the way in the modern era. Now Shakespearean director Kenneth Branagh, action stalwart Shane Black, pop culture icon Joss Whedon and others are comfortable making movies that used to have a bad reputation. Video game movies, on the other hand, have men like Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson helming projects. Hitman 47 had a first-time feature film director in the chair and The Angry Birds Movie had TWO first-time directors – to say nothing of the people who write these things and who they get to act in them. Like I said, movies aren't the sole property of one person, but the talent involved in all of them are middle-of-the-road. Video game movies need their...Iron Man, and that can create a trend and incentive for major creative forces to get on board. As it is, we are stuck with...oh, yeah. Kingsglaive. UGGHHH. OK.
 AUDIO 5
 Yeah, Kingsglaive was directed by someone whose only other film directing credit is ANOTHER Final Fantasy movie and written by someone with similarly limited experience. In fact, most of the director's background is in making video games and not movies, as if the two are more or less interchangeable. And that's the real problem here. Nobody who has already made it big in the motion picture industry either with critics or with major studios want to do video game movies. These movies are for directors who are just coming up and want to get attached to a big budget movie – ANY big budget movie – or for directors who have no other choices.   
 Meaning there are no great video game movies because nobody worth a damn is willing to attempt make a great video game movie. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kingsglaive is just the latest in a long line of trash video game movies. Maybe the trend will change one day – I always hope for more good movies no matter where they are derived – but a quick look at the people involved in any upcoming game adaptation should tell you everything you need to know about whether or not this will be worth your trouble.     

BLUE VELVET

 AUDIO 1
 Blue Velvet is a 1986 film directed by David Lynch. Jeffrey, returning home to visit his father in the hospital, comes across a severed ear. He takes it to a police officer but is told that this is now an official investigation and he can't know anything more about it. Jeffrey, fascinated by the crime, investigates on his own, teaming with the police officer's daughter, Sandy. They discover someone who may be involved: a singer named Dorothy Vallens. Jeffrey develops an awkward and later passionate romance with Dorothy, all the while falling for Sandy. Dorothy's husband and son have been kidnapped by Frank, a criminal boss. Dorothy is forced to perform sexual acts for Frank to keep the husband and son safe. Frank tries to intimidate Jeffrey into backing off. After a series of odd encounters and clues in the case, Jeffrey returns to Dorothy's apartment to a gruesome scene with Frank trailing close behind. Jeffrey fatally shoots Frank. Time passes, and Jeffrey and Sandy have continued their relationship in spite of the revelation that Jeffrey had been sleeping with Dorothy. They remark that it's a strange world, and the film ends.   
 
 Blue Velvet employs dream logic to tell its story. It's not – narratively speaking – an actual dream, of course. This is not an Occurrence at Owl Creek. No. It's more that just as our dreams are influenced by what surrounds us and give us these images in distortions, Blue Velvet is filled with distorted imagery of the culture we inhabit, specifically American culture.  Familiar sights scenes from America in the 1950's populate the film: the boat-sized convertible cars, white picket fences, the noir genre itself and the peaceful tranquility that people mistakenly remember from the era that never actually was. The actual setting of Blue Velvet must be the 1980's due to some styles and cars, but so much of a bygone era permeates throughout the film – even the music.  Dream logic springs out of the senses more than the intellect – or perhaps the loss of senses or corruption of senses. Hearing: Jeffrey finds a severed ear. Sight: Jeffrey's employer is a blind man who nevertheless commands great authority. Smell: Frank frequently struggles to breathe in a drug through his nose with his mask. Taste: Frank shoves pieces of Dorothy's blue robe in his mouth. And touch: Frank tells at Jeffrey, saying “Feel it! Feel it!” And of course, dreaming itself can be seen as prophetic: a sixth sense.    
  [clip]  
  AUDIO 2  
  Characters in the film follow this dream logic by having a kind of clairvoyance. When Sandy emerges from the darkness, she guesses who Jeffrey is. When Jeffrey asks how she knows, she says that she just knows. It's as if the two are fated to meet. Other examples include the blind man who can always guess how many fingers someone is holding up and a few more over the course of the film. Again, it's not a magical film, a fantasy film. It just operates on dream logic, and when people are dreaming, they don't question what does not seem real. The film itself comes from a dream that Lynch had, believing that if the image is strong enough in his unconscious, then it must be part of a collective experience of humanity. Sandy tells Jeffrey that she had a dream in which the world was full of darkness, but then a blinding light changed everything, and a group of robins signaled the return of love. Towards the end, once Frank is dead, a bright light envelops them. Shortly thereafter, they see robins. One robin has an insect in its mouth.    
 The robin, as said by Sandy herself, represents love. Insects are shown earlier in the film, gathering around dead tissue. Insects are referenced again when Jeffrey lies to Dorothy and claims to be an exterminator. At the end of the film, all lies are gone, all shadows are gone, and the robin, devouring the insect, has conquered the darkness. When Jeffrey discovers the ear, the camera zooms deep inside it. Only when the criminal has been thwarted does the camera reemerge from it. Jeffrey awakens, starring at a blue sky. He has figuratively arisen from his nightmare. Dreams are everywhere in Blue Velvet. Even Ben, perhaps the most alluring character in the film, sings “In Dreams” to serenade Frank. Dorothy's name is most likely a reference to the dreaming protagonist of The Wizard of Oz, one of Lynch's most beloved films and one he references in his own work quite a bit.    
  AUDIO 3  
 We see a kind of heightened reality in Blue Velvet. Frank arrives at Ben's home, announcing “This is it!” while a neon sign glows the same words. Most films aim for suspension of disbelief, meaning they provide plausible characters and scenarios to draw the audience into its world. If it's believable, then our minds can forget what we are seeing is only a fantasy, only a dream. But Lynch films deprive the audience of any such comfort and show them something that their unconscious minds might recognize even if their conscious or “waking minds” might not. Blue Velvet is one of his most linear films, and yet, is still has a lot of the “uncanny” about it – something that feels almost real but is separately just enough from reality that it becomes frightening.  
  [TRANSITION]  [MUSIC CUE: ]  
  AUDIO 4  
  The color blue reoccurs several times, generally representing tranquility or attractiveness. Frank's mind is plagued with anger and fear and lust. He seeks the tranquility of the blue. He listens to Dorothy sing Blue Velvet under a blue light. He drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon, a fact that he shouts loudly, incapable of loving anything peacefully. He never achieves his tranquility, he chases the mystery of blue – only receiving the peace of the grave. Although not explicitly mentioned in the film, the drug Frank inhales is meant to be amyl nitrate, which has a disorienting affect. Frank does not seem to be able to keep himself off of it. He is suffering too much – suffering from himself. He is self-loathing. When exposing his perversion to Dorothy, he frequently and violently reminds her not to look at him. He presents himself as a weak child and Dorothy as his mother. He eats her blue robe. He wants this tranquility, this mysterious attractiveness, this peace. Jeffrey is capable of achieving real peace in life. He sees the blue sky at the end.    
  Red curtains reoccur in Blue Velvet. In fact, they reoccur in a lot of his films, but specifically here, they represent a coming danger and mystery. The camera shows them several times in Dorothy's apartment, usually right before a revelation or clue in the mystery is uncovered, not just for the characters but for the audience. Frank smears on red lipstick and kisses Jeffrey as he beats him, further associating the color with danger. The falseness of the suburban opening scene is dripping with danger. We see bright red roses, a red fire truck and red stop sign at the crosswalk. All the major pieces of the opening are red, and then we slip underneath this phony suburbia into something worse, and then red takes on all a whole new meaning. It was there the whole time – the danger, the “strange world” that characters reference – it was always there, hiding in plain sight. In roses and firefighters, but pull back the curtain and everything can be seen much more clearly. Not just the curtain covering this seemingly quiet American town but rather the curtain covering the horrors of the human mind.    
  [clip of strange world]  
  AUDIO 5  
  One character, Gordon, is repeatedly called The Yellow Man. He wears this color to signify neutrality since he is working with both the police and with Frank. Or perhaps cowardice because he won't take a side. At the end of the film, when the darkness has subsided, the characters wear white. Duality is a common aspect of any Lynch film, and it certainly pokes its head into Blue Velvet. The town is split in half at Lincoln Street. To further keep this in the mind of the audience, the antagonist's last name is Booth. Frank shares the surname with the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, meaning Frank is a representative of the bad side of town and someone who is “killing” Lumberton. Everything in Blue Velvet has a kind of visual and narrative opposite. I've mentioned a few already with the colors, but also various locations. For example, The Slow Club, the provocative bar that Frank loves – and its opposite, the little diner where Jeffrey and Sandy meet in safety to discuss their findings. Even characters have opposites: Sandy, in her innocent pink clothes, is the alternate version of Dorothy.    
 The Yellow Man has two different roles depending on which side of town he's on. Jeffrey is meant to be Frank's opposite, but the tragedy is that Jeffrey is revealed to have darker impulses as well. Frank even remarks that Jeffrey is just like himself. Jeffrey's father struggles to breathe in the hospital and his son tries to take care of him. Frank inverts this as the child violating someone he calls his mother, all while struggling to breathe. Lynch once said “We all have at least two sides. The world we live in is a world of opposites. And the trick is to reconcile those opposing things. I’ve always liked both sides. In order to appreciate one you have to know the other. The more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see too.” In the end, Jeffrey defeats the darkness or at least keeps it at bay. If Lynch is to be believed, it is still part of him. Jeffrey did not just win by taking on Frank and killing him. Jeffrey recognized the darkness inside of him, embraced it enough to understand it but eventually, he rejected it. He is fully awake, but by the director's standards, that's not literal. He's AWAKE in that he is more AWARE now – aware of himself and of the world – and he is no longer trapped in the nightmare.