Hollywood Utopia

136 Hollywood Utopia
metaphor for men and women cast in the postmodern condition. Vagabonds or vagrants offer
more apposite a metaphor . . . What keeps him on the move is disillusionment’ (Bauman 1993:
240).
Later, in an essay ‘From Pilgrim to Tourist’, he asserts that ‘In modern society, pilgrim is no
longer a choice of the mode of life, less still is it a heroic or saintly choice . . . Pilgrimage is what
one does of necessity, to avoid being lost in a desert; to invest the walking with a purpose while
wandering the land with no destination. Being a pilgrim, one can do more than walk - one can
walk to . . .’ (in S. Hall 1996: 21). What better way to appreciate the philosophical core of the road
movie than in this play between ‘disillusionment’ and goal-seeking motivation?
35. Martha Nochimson in Film Sense describes the film as a ‘mellow picaresque story’ while
affirming that Lynch’s art is all about the ‘will to lose one’s will’. In the ‘sublime panoramic and
aerial shots of the farm belt’, Lynch celebrates the ‘bounty of the fruitful, material American
earth as the context for his tribute to the endurance of humanity, even in the heart of a
desperately isolated and rigidly self-righteous patriarch’ (Nochimson 2000: 2).
36. Music, which has not been textually discussed, yet remains central in appreciating this and many
other films, punctuates and underpins this nature exposition. The foregrounding of nature in all
its forms from bright sunlight to dramatic storms drives the whole narrative and does not act
merely as a mood enhancing signifier. The same music idiom running through the film
punctuates and underpins the centrality of this evocative nature film.
37. The humour of the situation is dramatised with the fat sun-worshipping lady becoming shocked
by his immobility and asking ‘what is the number of 911' to get help, together with his
daughter’s (played by Sissy Spacek with a mental problem) consternation and instinctive
reaction: ‘What have you done with dad?’ -both of which responses disgust his gruff old friend
who asks if Alvin is ‘nuts’!
38. According to the estimations of Edwin Jahiel (who, incidentally, suggested that Lynch ‘pulled a
Cocteau’), the trip would take five weeks and cover 254 miles at an average speed of 5 miles per
hour (cited in www.prairienet.org/ejahiel). The director held his nerve throughout the film by
dramatising the apparent lack of movement while keeping the narrative both simple and
concentrated.
39. The only other time this form of electronic communication is consciously used is when Alvin
needs to get more money on his travels. Otherwise he needs the isolation and natural acuity of
being mobile-phone-less.
40. Some ecologically astute audiences may suggest the representation of genetically modified corn -
which equates with the majority of American farm production - raises the prospect of
‘pure/impure’ nature.
41. In a provocative and auteurist reading of the film in Film Quarterly (Fall 2000), Tim Sreider and