ABSTRACT
Informing the surrealistic disposition of the Twin Peaks universe is a defamiliarization of the usual order of things. J. P. Telotte and Jeffrey Weinstock have both argued that the "bizarre" world of Twin Peaks stems from the resistance quotidian things exhibit toward everyday human reality. Twin Peaks is truly wild at heart, only its surreal beat is too buried beneath an overly cognitive reality principle that keeps the show's sense of impending horror in line with a pleasure principle closely tethered to dramatic realism. The Thing's presence is also implicated through numerous anamorphotic disturbances. A brief examination of two similar scenes from Twin Peaks and Fire Walk can begin to expose how the Thing's presence emerges from obscurity in Fire Walk. The Thing chants out between these two worlds. Unlike Twin Peaks' wild heart buried beneath a more or less conventional narrative, Fire Walk, because the Thing's presence emerges more forcefully, possesses a weirder narrative form.
