ABSTRACT
“David Lynch and the Stages of the Brokenhearted” explores Lynch's art and cinematic work in relation to the screened stage beginning with The Elephant Man (1980). Here, Screened Stages returns to the stage proper, and its parts expressed in the theatricality surrounding performance. For instance, the curtains and cinematic framing create prosceniums that appear onscreen literally in both theatres and everyday life. Lynch's use of stages within nearly all his films, alongside the use of curtains lining the edges of fantasy spaces, belies a fascination with the reality within reality. These representations offer a presentness and depth to the structuring of space and time that unfolds in his films. The relationship to narrative that occurs in all his work oscillates between fantasy and that unbearable aspect of reality that Jacques Lacan termed as part of the register of the Real. The use of the stage suggests a relationship between the two that connects directly to a sense of decomposition within his films that collapses the divide between theatre and cinema. The chapter concludes with Lynch's most recent film, Inland Empire (2006), where the representation of the stage on screen amid technological changes suggests an enduring relationship between the two forms.
