I’ve become convinced that some viewers can accept any amount of weirdness in a story, but only as long as the characters are being hurt by it; they won't lend the same credence to any positive turn.
I believe you're right and it annoys me so much. It's the same idea that only pain is interesting, happiness is insipid, goodness is boring. Raspberries to that.
(I cannot remember if you have seen History Is Made at Night, but if not, I think you might like it a lot. Part of the reason it's half a dozen genres in a trenchcoat is that it is supposed to have started filming with fifty pages of script and no idea what happened when they ran out and near the end of shooting the producer came up with the idea of a climactic shipwreck. Just about anything could happen in it and be believable, which is why it's so nice that what happens is everyone survives.)
I’ve also become convinced, having watched some interviews with Lynch, that the man is almost entirely without irony—he’s a kid with a jar who wants to show you the bug he found
He makes sense to me as a sincere artist. Like David Byrne and True Stories. I bet people think sincerity can't be complex, either. Anyway, Greil Marcus agrees with you: "The famous opening of this 1986 picture seems to parody the American fantasy of home, peace, pleasure, and quiet—that is, the all-but-trademarked American dream—but what's most interesting about what's happening on the screen is that it may have no satiric meaning at all."
no subject
I believe you're right and it annoys me so much. It's the same idea that only pain is interesting, happiness is insipid, goodness is boring. Raspberries to that.
(I cannot remember if you have seen History Is Made at Night, but if not, I think you might like it a lot. Part of the reason it's half a dozen genres in a trenchcoat is that it is supposed to have started filming with fifty pages of script and no idea what happened when they ran out and near the end of shooting the producer came up with the idea of a climactic shipwreck. Just about anything could happen in it and be believable, which is why it's so nice that what happens is everyone survives.)
I’ve also become convinced, having watched some interviews with Lynch, that the man is almost entirely without irony—he’s a kid with a jar who wants to show you the bug he found
He makes sense to me as a sincere artist. Like David Byrne and True Stories. I bet people think sincerity can't be complex, either. Anyway, Greil Marcus agrees with you: "The famous opening of this 1986 picture seems to parody the American fantasy of home, peace, pleasure, and quiet—that is, the all-but-trademarked American dream—but what's most interesting about what's happening on the screen is that it may have no satiric meaning at all."