Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet

A few months ago, I went out to dinner with my parents, and we got to talking about Twin Peaks (which I haven’t seen, but am hoping to watch soon), and that led us into talking about David Lynch’s films. My mom said she enjoyed Twin Peaks, but that his movies were just too weird. This interested me immediately – I like weird. So I put Blue Velvet and Eraserhead in the back of my mind to watch over the summer, but months passed and I never got around to watching either. However, last week I had some free time in the afternoon and I figured what better way to spend it than watching a movie.

Blue Velvet focuses on Jeffrey as one day he returns to his hometown of Lumberton to visit his father in the hospital, fining a human ear on his way there. Intrigued by his finding, Jeffrey decides to do some investigating for himself, helped by Sandy, a detectives daughter, and his sleuthing leads him to the nightclub singer Dorothy.

The Good

• The soundtrack was great. It’s jazzy, it’s eerie, and it quotes Shostakovich’s 15th symphony, and, as a good soundtrack should, really helps set the tone and adds to the movie.
• Interesting plot! This movie can be looked at on all kinds of symbolic levels, but even if you don’t piece together all the symbolism and whatnot, it’s still an interesting movie on the surface.
• I loved the noir feeling of it. The whole film has a very distinct atmosphere, and I feel like the soundtrack really helped with this, as well as the cinematography (which was also one of the very strong points of the film).
• There are a lot of really interesting ways to interpret this movie along with all kinds of symbols and motifs. I won’t get into it, but even a glance at the film’s wikipedia page says a lot. However, even without all kinds of analysis, Blue Velvet is still an interesting films that works independently of all of this, but these were all things that made me even more interested in it.

The Bad

• The movie is kind of on the long side at two hours, and there were moments where I felt like it dragged. I could have lived if it were ten minutes shorter.
• Blue Velvet has been attacked by some critics for its misogyny, and I’d like to go off on a slight tangent to speak on that.
  • The film offers two types of female characters: the sexualized, dark masochistic Dorothy and the virginal, pure Sandy. Both these women are treated pretty poorly by the male characters – especially Dorothy.
  • Are the characters misogynistic? Undoubtably. If you watch the film it’s hard to miss. You’d have to be watching it muted with your eyes closed (which is basically the same as not watching it).
  • Whether or not any of this is moral, so to speak, it raises interesting questions. Does writing misogynistic characters make you a misogynist yourself? To what end are the characters misogynistic? Does their misogyny serve some greater, thematic purpose? And does the misogyny of the characters invalidate the movie? This is supposed to be a review, and not a feminist analysis, and I’m trying to avoid spoilers, so I’m just going to leave this open-ended.
  • Here’s an interesting article that touches a little bit on this misogyny, but is also an overall interesting read (warning: contains spoilers for the movie and for Hamlet). Here’s another interesting discussion of the movie that touches on misogyny. Here’s one that ties the movie in with the Oedipal complex. Again, be weary of spoilers in these.
  • And, of course, if you have anything to add, feel free to leave a comment.

Overall

Blue Velvet is such an artistic film, but it wouldn’t be the first one in the world to fall prey to its own pervasive misogyny. I think that the only thing that could save Blue Velvet from its misogyny is to not let it get away with it. It’s a misogynistic film surrounding misogynistic characters. It’s as simple as that, and it’s important to acknowledge. Am I a bad person for thinking that despite its flaws, this is still a pretty good movie? I don’t know.

Blue Velvet raises a lot of good questions that it probably didn’t intend to, which brings me to the one I think is most important: does the misogyny of the characters invalidate the movie? In this case, for now, I’m going to go with no, but I can’t say I’d never change my mind.

8/10 – Interesting and dark with an evocative atmosphere, Blue Velvet also gives watchers a lot to think about.