ABSTRACT
In the highly anticipated third season of the cult television show Twin Peaks, director David Lynch revisits the fictional northern Washington town’s local bar and expands upon its role from the previous series: The Roadhouse becomes a focal point for the ending of the majority of the episodes and features an assortment of musical acts throughout the season. While cameo appearances by musicians on film and television are far from novel, the collaboration between the Roadhouse musicians and The Return Series is remarkable for the aesthetic reinforcement each party receives from the other. The bands appear on the show in a manner that forces the viewer to engage with their music—songs are performed in their entirety, as diegetic music, and the attention of the audience is directed towards the act of the performance itself, thus affording the musicians a substantial role in each Roadhouse scene. Drawing on Marxian concepts of value and exchange, particularly the notions of social and cultural capital offered by Pierre Bourdieu, this chapter argues that the musical collaborations in The Return Series function as a commensurate exchange of social capital between the performers and the show, which acts as a reaffirmation of the commitment to non-mainstream aesthetics valued by both parties. The performances by Nine Inch Nails, the Cactus Blossoms, and The Veils are each examined, with greater consideration given to the other works by and about these groups, and then positioned as in a similar artistic style as Twin Peaks. Appearances by a musician or group who exist outside the realm of a program coincide with an exchange of economic, social, and cultural capitals, most often with one party profiting more from the exchange than the other. In scenarios where a well-known artist appears, the show is arguably benefitting from star value (a manifestation of cultural capital), while the musician is more likely benefitting from a monetary exchange. The opposite case, where a more obscure musical act is compensated by the exposure opportunity, generates a scenario that has in recent years become a means of procuring social capital for the show, consisting of the value of association with a more cultish act, thus lending an aura of what I refer to as indie credibility. The role of music in The Return Series surpasses that in the original series and corresponds to the aesthetic of Lynch as a director and the series itself in a way that magnifies the indie credibility of both the musicians and the show. While the musicians and the show at certain points carry the potential to outweigh the other in terms of their social capital, this is by and large avoided on all parts by emphasis on the physical labor of the musician performing, and an adherence to musical styles that valorize the niche aesthetics of the series.
