ABSTRACT
In 1996, the novelist David Foster Wallace suggested that “Lynchian” might best be defined as “a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.” In a narrative sense, we can observe that containment in Lynch’s exploration of the “dark side” of idealized American locales, be those archetypical small towns ( Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) or Hollywood ( Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire). This tension between macabre and mundane is a resilient typology in theoretical responses to Lynch’s oeuvre, labeled by critics as “uncanny,” “nightmarish,” or simply “Americana.” Given this prevalence in both work and reception, then, it is unsurprising that Wallace identifies this as the theme in Lynch’s films worthy of the eponymous adjective. However, the degree to which Angelo Badalamenti’s music might exhibit the same themes remains critically underexplored—a surprising omission given the prominence of American generic tropes in his scores. In the Lynchian universe, what does sight share with sound, and vice-versa? Following media-theoretical analyses of digital ontologies, in this chapter I argue that cross-modal resonances have acquired new significance in the internet age; subsequently, renewed attention on sensory distinctions offers new ways of engaging with familiar critical paradigms. I further suggest that critical attention to popular responses to Lynch and Badalementi’s collaborations indicate that audiences might consider the two inextricable, and, as such, a mode of analysis that engages with intersensory slippages accounts for the vernacular philosophies of their viewership.
