Pervert In The Pulpit

Filmmaker David Lynch's work is viewed here as patriotic and Puritanical. This Lynch is an idealistic conservative on a reformer's mission. Lynch promotes a return to the values inherent in a mythological America, but he indulges in a voyeuristic pleasure which he simultaneously condemns. Like Jeffrey peeking through the slats of Dorothy's closet in Blue Velvet, the viewer of Lynch's work is a rationalist plagued by his dreams; intrigued and repulsed, fascinated and judgmental, he both craves and resists cultural assimilation. Works presented include all features from Eraserhead to Mulholland Drive, shorts such as The Amputee and The Grandmother, and contributions to television such as Hotel Room and, of course, Twin Peaks. This study develops an idea of Lynch's politics, analyzes his work, and explores Lynch's paradox of condemning an immoral world through disturbing images and concepts, and touches on such points as the identifiable figure of evil in his works as well as the archetypes of the nymphet, well-meaning traditionalist, and struggling ethicist. Also included are a history of moralistic criticism in American literature and a review of existing Lynch criticism within this context.

Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch: Philosophical Perspectives offers a sustained philosophical interpretation of the filmmaker’s work in light of classic and contemporary discussions of human agency and the complex relations between our capacity to act and our ability to imagine. With the help of the pathological characters that so often leave their unforgettable mark on Lynch’s films, this book reveals several important ways in which human beings fail to achieve fuller embodiments of agency or seek substitute satisfactions in spaces of fantasy. In keeping with Lynch’s penchant for unconventional narrative techniques, James D. Reid and Candace R. Craig explore the possibility, scope, and limits of the very idea of agency itself and what it might be like to renounce concepts of agency altogether in the interpretation and depiction of human life. In a series of interlocking readings of eight feature-length films and Twin Peaks: The Return that combine suggestive philosophical analysis with close attention to cinematic detail, Reid and Craig make a convincing case for the importance of David Lynch’s work in the philosophical examination of agency, the vagaries of the human imagination, and the relevance of film for the philosophy of human action. Scholars of film studies and philosophy will find this book particularly useful.

Todd McGowan studies Lynch's talent for blending the bizarre and the normal to emphasise the odd nature of normality itself. In Lynch's movies, fantasy becomes a means through which the viewer is encouraged to build a revolutionary relationship with the world.

Cognitive Film and Media Ethics provides a grounding in the use of cognitive science to address key questions in film, television and screen media ethics. This book extends past works in cognitive media studies to answer normative and ethically prescriptive questions: what could make media morally good or bad, and what, then, are the respective responsibilities of media producers and consumers? Moss-Wellington makes a primary claim that normative propositions are a kind of rigour, in that they force media theorists to draw more active ought conclusions from descriptive is arguments. Cognitive Film and Media Ethics presents the rigours of normative reasoning, cognitive science and consequentialist ethics as complementary, arguing that each seeks progressive elaboration on their own models of causality, and causal projections are crucial for any reflection on our moral responsibilities in the world. A hermeneutics of "ethical cognitivism" is applied in the latter half of the book, with essays each addressing a different case study in film, television, news and social media: cinema that sets out to inspire moral dissonance in the viewer, satirical and humorous depictions of family drama in film and television, the politics of the romantic comedy, formal aspects of screen media bullying in an era dubbed the "television renaissance," and contemporary problems in the conflation of news and social media. Cognitive Film and Media Ethics synthesises current research in social psychology, anthropology, memory studies, emotion and cognition, personality and media selection, and evolutionary biology, integrating wide-ranging concepts from the various disciplines that make up cognitive theory to provide new vantages on the applied ethics of film and screen media.