Blue Velvet What it means to be normal.
Uploaded by Highhope on Aug 15, 2007
Some would say Blue Velvet examines the underworld and how the surfaces of something dark and evil can be as innocent and normal, or the question and identity of what it means to be normal, or even a victim of being a normal person in today’s unforgiving world. The norm for Lynch is corrupt and violent in its very foundations. The normal sharing of a beer is weighted with darkness. It is surface acceptance and underground violence of the other: the sexual, the beautiful, the foreign, the unknown and mysterious. All innocence is sacrificed for the normal for innocence always exists in passion the extreme the ecstatic. Frank Booth is the symbol of all that is sick in America-he deals drugs and thus manipulates addiction --addiction to love vs. an obsessive addiction to sex. Dorothy Vallens is not addicted to perverse sex as is Frank she's addicted to love but has been twisted psychologically into seeing perverse sex as her only way of getting love: thus "Hit Me". The trauma of being the victim of Frank or equally the victim of a master of addictions (Hollywood Americana ) has burned a perverse psychology into her and it can only be cured by getting back her child=innocence alive=hope.
The sick aspects of Blue Velvet are all very, very relevant. They show the distinction between the victimizer and the victim. This film is so easily misunderstood by the people that are frightened by the perverse and disturbing aspects is because people desire to live on the surface--truth takes strength--the strong, the loving and the damaged will implicitly love this film. Even our wacky, obsessively malevolent villain Frank Booth would love this film--that is the film's deepest message.