Tracing the Nowhere: Heterotopian

Incursions in Twin Peaks

,
TIJANA PAREZANOVIC AND MARKO


LUKIC

Opposing Spaces

TWIN PEAKS (TP)

A
NALYTICAL INCURSIONS INTO THE WORLD OF
unlock a myriad of possibilities, ranging from the analysis of
its influence on later genre and television productions to the
intrinsic reading of David Lynch’s potential philosophical contribu-
tions to his own and other cinematic (pseudo)mythologies. A more
in-depth study discovers various narratives and metanarratives, genre-
related stereotypes, and their constant methodical breakdown,
together with the threading of a very complex spatial factor that
serves both as a fixed and perpetually fluid setting constructed in rela-
tion to the needs of the Lynchian universe. However, this spatial fac-
tor, regardless of its relevance for the narrative at hand, as well as its
theoretical and interpretative complexity, remains a topic rarely
addressed,1 particularly in relation to the opposing qualities in spaces
such as the town and the forest, or various more intimate locations as
opposed to the mythical (and mystical) Red Room or the White and
Black Lodges. Lynch’s architecture presents viewers with a number of
different spaces and locations, each crucial for the setting and later
development of the narrative, while simultaneously positioning them—
visually, functionally, and symbolically—as opposites. The proposed
binarism in turn augments actions and reactions, making the plot
both simple while presenting opposing types of spaces, and

The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 51, No. 1, 2018

© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

109
110 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

complex at the moment that those same spaces become subject to

scrutiny.
Different theoretical approaches could be used to analyze and
possibly understand the multilayered meaning and functionality of
space(s) within Lynch’s vision of TP. However, Michel Foucault’s dis-
course on heterotopias particularly suits the sporadic, extremely
unorthodox articulation of space within Lynch’s world. Heterotopias
co-exist with ordinary sites and at the same time cause confusion and
distress within a well-organized world. The heterotopian spatiality of
the Twin Peaks TV series (1990-91) and the complementary film Fire
Walk With Me (1992) goes beyond the initial Foucauldian paradigm
of “a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one
another and absolutely not superimposable on one another” (“Of
Other Spaces” 23). The Lynchian world relies on certain spatially
determined points in the narrative, leading to what we shall refer to
as heterotopian incursions, for the depiction of those crucial elements in
the development of the narrative, the purpose of which is potentially
to solve the pervasive mystery posed by the initial TP question:
“Who killed Laura Palmer?” Through these heterotopian incursions
otherness, pertaining to the secrecy and dreamlike illusory qualities
of places such as the woods and the White and Black Lodges hidden
therein, invades common reality and entirely transposes the dominant
narrative thread onto a heterotopian level. Such positioning, or more
precisely superposing, reflects, however, on Foucault’s concept of spa-
tial relations and heterotopian spaces, questioning their impossibility
to invade, permeate, and eventually replace those ordinary sites of
human activity.

Unwrapping the Plastic

Although the term heterotopia appears only three times in Foucault’s

voluminous corpus—one of which appearances remains unavailable in
English—the variety of critical approaches and contested opinions it
has bred seems inexhaustible. Part of the controversy regarding
heterotopias arises from the somewhat inconsistent descriptions of the
concept given in the Preface to The Order of Things (1966) and the
later transcript of a lecture Foucault gave in 1967, which was
published in 1984 as “Des espaces autres.” In the former, Foucault
Tracing the Nowhere 111

mentions heterotopias for the first time as disturbing spaces which

“secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to
name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names,
because they destroy ‘syntax’ in advance”—the syntax applied to the
ordering of words into sentences, as well as the syntax used for struc-
turing things and causing them, in Foucault’s words, “to ‘hold
together’” (xix). It appears from such a definition that, regardless of
their real or imagined location, heterotopias bear a potential to cause
confusion and distress upon the otherwise neatly organized and
well-managed world—to contaminate it, in a way, with their incon-
gruity and disorder. On the other hand, the 1967 lecture-based article,
“Of Other Spaces”—or “Different Spaces” (1998) in Robert Hurley’s
translation—presents a different view of heterotopias as certain (real)
sites that co-exist with other sites and, although they qualitatively
differ from all the other sites and bear certain marks of ancient sacred
places, function only in relation with other real sites. This considera-
tion of heterotopias does not immediately contest the one given in
The Order of Things, since the relations heterotopias form with other
sites always imply some contradiction, difference, and inversion;
heterotopias “have the curious property of being in relation with all
the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert
the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect”
(Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” 24). As alluded to in “Of Other Spaces,”
heterotopias still possess the disturbing agency that threatens to shat-
ter order within a well-contained unit, although this agency is appar-
ently presented not as a force that disrupts syntax in advance but
rather as part of a dichotomous syntagmatic structure, composed of
ordinary sites designated for rest, relaxation, transportation, or other
daily activities, and other, heterotopian sites, or countersites, which
function in accordance with six principles Foucault outlines in the
article.
That Foucault’s two definitions of heterotopia are not strictly
opposed has been noted in a recent article by Kelvin T. Knight.
Knight claims that the paradox seemingly inherent in the concept of
heterotopia arises from the fact that the lecture, “Of Other Spaces,”
was given to a group of architects and therefore mistakenly assumed
to be an innovative guideline for the interpretation of and approach
to real material sites. To substantiate his thesis that the concept
“rather pertains to fictional representations of these semimythical
112 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

places” (142), Knight refers to a radio talk given by Foucault for

France Culture in the period between the publication of The Order of
Things and the 1967 lecture. This talk was published in French as
“Les H
et
erotopies” in 2005. As he later repeats in “Of Other
Spaces”—so far the most comprehensive account of heterotopias avail-
able for the study of such places in fiction and therefore taken as the
main theoretical framework in this article—Foucault here regards
heterotopia as an “effectively enacted utopia” (“Of Other Spaces” 24).
An ideal, although entirely imaginary place, utopia can nevertheless
sometimes “be tied to a specific time and place . . . with which chil-
dren are all too familiar; in the spaces of their play, the attic, the gar-
den or their parents’ bed, they find the ocean, the sky or the Wild
West”—and it is on those occasions, which extend beyond children’s
imagination into the world of adults where they are located in litera-
ture, that utopias become heterotopian (Knight 146). Literary and,
more broadly speaking, fictional texts also allow for the incongruity
and disorder implied by Foucault’s first definition of heterotopia,
since fictional spaces are granted liberty to juxtapose within them
people and objects that could otherwise never be placed onto the
same syntagmatic level.
It is obvious at a glance that Twin Peaks features a variety of places
that are all clearly defined, usually enclosed, and firmly posited
within a spatial structure where every single one of them has a prede-
termined fixed function; the placeness of the series is perhaps its most
striking characteristic. As the events unfold more and more discon-
certingly, culminating in the chaotic Miss Twin Peaks pageant and
subsequently shifting the setting altogether to the labyrinthine Red
Room in the last episode, it is precisely this spatial paradigm that is
shattered or completely distorted. To give a few examples, Ben Horne
transforms his study at the Great Northern into a trustworthy minia-
ture replica of the American South during the Civil War; James Hur-
ley leaves town only to get involved in a dramatic plot which, while
being spatially enclosed within the house of Evelyn Marsh, is still
completely detached from the self-contained world of Twin Peaks
and presents a singular excursion outside the town and the surround-
ing woods; having suffered amnesia, Nadine Hurley can no longer
recognize her house as home, in terms of what Bachelard considers
“one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories
and dreams of mankind” (6). Thus, the spaces of TP progressively
Tracing the Nowhere 113

become transformed or estranged, and this does not go unnoticed by

the people who inhabit them. In one episode, Annie Blackburn
emphatically remarks, “I know where I am, but it feels odd being
here,” referring to the entire town of Twin Peaks—to the everyday
reality of life she has become dissociated with after years spent in a
convent (“On the Wings of Love”). In “Masked Ball,” Ben Horne,
perhaps one of the most unlikely characters to utter such an insight,
reflects both on the recognition that certain disorder has invaded the
familiar space and the necessity to reestablish order: “I have been toy-
ing with the notion that if one could find the perfect arrangement of
all objects in any particular space, it could create a resonance the ben-
efits from which to the individual dwelling in that space could be . . .
could be extensive, could be far-reaching, far-reaching.”
This distortion of the spatial paradigm, noticeably occurring in
the second season of TP,2 does not in any way annihilate the initially
presented firm (although superficial) segmentation of space into units
that each serve their intended purpose. These units could be identi-
fied and described, as Foucault states, “via the cluster of relations”
that helps define the purpose of each site (“Of Other Spaces” 24).
Moreover, most of the characters are visually connected to certain
places as they frequently or nearly always (with rare exceptions)
appear in the surroundings the viewer comes to regard as naturally
attributed to the character in question. To continue with Ben Horne,
for example, he is on most occasions found in his study, which func-
tions as the office, or else in the hotel lobby or conference room,
which equally stress—mostly through the association with Ben
Horne—the fact that these places can be relationally defined as sites
of work. Similarly, when the camera moves to the Double R Diner,
one immediately (and justly) expects to see either Norma or Shelly in
their blue uniforms, although the diner gathers most of the other
characters for whom it functions as a site of temporary relaxation (cf.
“Of Other Spaces” 24). Sarah Palmer and Eileen Hayward, both
mothers, almost invariably appear in their seemingly comfortable
suburban homes with elaborately depicted large living rooms and
more intimate, although equally detailed, upper floor bedrooms. Per-
haps the only place where Sarah appears outside her home is the
cemetery, and Eileen leaves her house only to visit the Great North-
ern—both instances causing great distress and/or giving rise to anxi-
ety and wonder. Similarly, the appearance of Ben Horne at the
114 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

Haywards’ serves as an unmistakable signal to Donna that something

is not quite right, whereby the simple fact that he is emplaced in alto-
gether different surroundings inevitably indicates a deeper signifi-
cance.
Places such as these—Horne’s study, the Double R Diner, or fam-
ily houses—retain their primary function as sites where routine every-
day activities, such as work, rest, social gatherings, or temporary
relaxation, are performed. On a different note, TP also abounds in
numerous examples of those other spaces that Foucault regards in
both “Les H
et
erotopies” and “Of Other Spaces” as utopias effectively
reflected onto real sites, or as “places that do exist and that are formed
in the very founding of society . . . in which the real sites, all the
other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultane-
ously represented, contested, and inverted” (“Of Other Spaces” 24).
For example, Johnny Horne’s room at the Great Northern, converted
into a playground much in line with Foucault’s description of chil-
dren’s inventive games tied to a specific place which they temporarily
transform into faraway or imaginary places, corresponds to what Fou-
cault terms the heterotopia of illusion “that exposes every real space, all
the sites inside of which human life is partitioned . . . as still more
illusory” (“Of Other Spaces” 27). Yet another heterotopia of illusion
is Foucault’s exemplary brothel, akin to TP’s One Eyed Jacks. A
brothel and a casino, One Eyed Jacks is literally dislocated to the
other side—across the Canadian border—wherefrom it poses as a dis-
torted mirror in which all the apparent virtues of the Twin Peaks
community members, such as Laura Palmer or Ben Horne, are dis-
closed as vices. What also comes to mind, considering Foucault’s
principle that “each heterotopia has a precise and determined function
within a society” (“Of Other Spaces” 25), is Twin Peaks’ secret soci-
ety of the Bookhouse Boys, made up of men from various segments
of the community. The society goes beyond the work of the ordinary
police force in attempting to combat some vaguely defined evil that
exists in the woods around Twin Peaks. An evil Sheriff Truman
describes as “something very, very strange in these old woods. . . . A
darkness, a presence. It takes many forms but . . . it’s been out there
for as long as anyone can remember and we’ve always been here to
fight it” (“Rest in Pain”). The Bookhouse Boys also function on the
heterotopian principle of opening and closing, as well as including
the chosen members who are given special permission to enter
Tracing the Nowhere 115

(approval from other members, a badge, and the knowledge of the

secret gesture), while excluding everyone else who is not only unaware
of the existence of the Bookhouse Boys but also remains more or less
oblivious to the evil this society fights.
In striving to prevent evil from pervading the everyday reality of
Twin Peaks, the Bookhouse Boys are an entirely utopian project,
which again adequately corresponds to Foucault’s thoughts on hetero-
topias. As they acknowledge the presence of something strange—the
presence which they specifically locate in the woods—the Bookhouse
Boys serve as an appropriate example of a heterotopian society. On
one level, all the members of the society perform their normal every-
day activities within a set of clearly delineated places that serve their
purpose of work (Ed’s gas station or the police station) and rest or
relaxation (Ed’s home, the diner, or Josie’s home in the case of Sheriff
Truman). On another level, their meetings always imply excursions
to places that are normally outside the range of their usual activities
(the woods, the Roadhouse, or the One Eyed Jacks). Their very pres-
ence at these unlikely places imbues them with heterotopian dimen-
sions. These two levels are complementary, that is, set in relation to
one another, and they operate as parts of the same syntagmatic struc-
ture.
Yet another level—the one acknowledged by the Bookhouse
Boys as a presence in the woods—is equally heterotopian in the
semimythical status it comes to possess through the legends about
the White and Black Lodges, although this heterotopia in TP
appears not to be a utopian project like the one described in “Of
Other Spaces” but rather the more threatening notion revealed in
The Order of Things: the heterotopia which breaks syntax and
destroys order. Thus, in the context of this spatially instructed
analysis, we might hold that there is another crucial question of
TP, apart from “Who killed Laura Palmer?” After becoming one of
the Bookhouse Boys, venturing with them beyond the border to
One Eyed Jacks, and getting shot, Agent Cooper is visited by the
Giant, whom he asks the question, “Where do you come from?”
To this the Giant replies, “The question is, where have you gone?”
(“May the Giant Be with You”). This question becomes pivotal in
analysis of the spatial paradigm(s) of Twin Peaks. The answer sheds
some light on the nature and significance of what we have referred
to as heterotopian incursions.
116 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

The Closeness of the Owls

By returning to the initial Foucauldian paradigm focused on sites

which are “irreducible to one another” and cannot be superimposed
on one another (“Of Other Spaces” 23), we are immediately and
correctly led to the analytical recognition of a vast number of clearly
delineated spatial polarities. The ordinary spaces or sites oppose
themselves to the “other spaces,” to various heterotopian notions that
differ from spaces we perceive as ordinary in a significant and multi-
layered manner. The polarities analyzed earlier therefore elegantly
contribute to the creation of a narrative that, on the surface level, is
apparently premised on the idea of the infringement of the dividing
spatial boundaries and the subsequent incursion of elements charac-
teristic of heterotopian spaces. Such a narrative, distinctly framed
within the theoretical notion proposed by Foucault, directly recalls
the traditional frontier narratives premised on the idea of a physical,
but even more of a fictitious, dividing line between what was consid-
ered wilderness as opposed to civilized space. Described by Roderick
Nash in Wilderness and the American Mind, this mythologized line
dividing the “pagan continent” perceived by the Puritan settlers
clearly opposed “normal” spaces to the heterotopian wilderness where
“Satan had seduced the first Indian inhabitants for the purpose of
making a stronghold” (36). Following such a structure, frontier narra-
tives evolve around tension between the two spaces and the (metapho-
ric) friction occurring in the moments when members/elements of
each of these spaces start to interact with the other one. This spatial
tension also allows the creation of an easily identifiable other, located
on the other side of the frontier and therefore corrupted by the
heterotopian features of the space beyond the known borders. Draw-
ing from its fairy tale like spatial and temporal detachment from the
rest of America, the town of Twin Peaks similarly defines itself as a
conceivable frontier town, relying on its own resources while perpetu-
ally threatened by the “other,” in this case negative heterotopian
spaces/elements emerging from and embodied by the surrounding
woods.
Nevertheless, the narrative of TP, following its intriguing irra-
tionality patterns, offers an alternative that openly defies the spatial
polarity described by Foucault. Regardless of which of the theoretical
Tracing the Nowhere 117

interpretations of the heterotopian space offered by Foucault we want

to refer to, an opposition of meaning or even a geographic/locational
separation emerges as a dominant characteristic. As previously illus-
trated, a straightforward application of the heterotopian notion to the
spatial setting of TP results in a number of relatively clear polarities.
However, by focusing more deeply on the spatial dynamics in relation
to the presented storyline, as well as the rather fluid theoretical
framework of heterotopian spaces, a noticeable pattern starts to
emerge, indicating an alternative reading of TP’s spatial relations. As
a plethora of quirky characters is gradually introduced into the narra-
tive line, each of them is contextualized in similarly idiosyncratic
settings, the functions of which vary from a metonymic completion
of different characters to the eventual attempt of creating a homoge-
nized representation of the Twin Peaks community.
All of these places, however, are constructed and presented in
opposition to the surrounding (and never completely defined) wilder-
ness of the Ghostwood forest. The viewer’s perception is thus dictated
by the image of a town filled with secrets, but the evil actually ema-
nates from the forest. The forest is therefore positioned and defined as
a heterotopian space, a detached reality opposed to the “good things”
of the town, or, in Foucault’s terms, a countersite—an opposition to
ordinary sites. Foreboding in its appearance (and the actual site of a
number of crimes ranging from drug dealings and prostitution to
murder), the forest is perceived as the other side of the barrier from
where evil emerges and influences the town. However, regardless of
the number of negative associations with this particular (unquestion-
ably heterotopian) space, a closer analysis reveals that the “evil” and
“strangeness” ascribed to it, that is, the crimes so easily veiled by the
darkness of the wood, are not necessarily directly connected to the
primary evil occurrences on which the TV show is focused. Laura Pal-
mer’s secret life and her subsequent death, Cooper’s strange dreams,
the appearances of ghosts/demons, as well as domestic and other types
of abuse can only partially be traced to the forest.
Indeed, a more accurate positive/negative, or ordinary/heterotopian
spatial relation has to be premised on the spatial dynamics between
the town and the unsettling Red Room and/or the never fully
explored Black and White Lodges.3 Within such a spatial contextual-
ization the forest stops being a countersite to the town, and instead
becomes more similar to it, as an ordinary, although somewhat
118 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

threatening location, into which a heterotopia of a higher level—an

evil presence hinted at by Sheriff Truman’s words—occasionally
makes an incursion. The most important of these incursions is clearly
the one featured in the series’ final episode with the appearance of the
entrance to the Red Room, which visually changes the part of the
Ghostwood known as Glastonbury Grove, transforming it briefly into
a red-curtained doorway. Characters other than the Bookhouse Boys,
most notably Major Briggs and the Log Lady, acknowledge a presence
in the woods in anticipation of this final incursion.
Major Briggs and the Log Lady have both disappeared in the
woods, at a certain point in the past, and returned with no recollec-
tion of their experiences. To take one of the most disturbing exam-
ples, on seeing Major Briggs at the Double R Diner, the Log Lady
asks him to deliver the message from her Log. Without any further
explanation, Briggs knows that the message is addressed to Cooper,
and goes on to show him a report made on the night Cooper was shot
by the secret government service that employs Briggs. The report
contains, among numerous figures and codes, the mysterious words
“the owls are not what they seem” (“Coma”). As Briggs is allowed to
reveal, his job includes “maintaining deep space monitors aimed at
the galaxies beyond our own” from which various communications are
received and processed. It is clear that the spatial level Briggs deals
with pertains to a dimension altogether different from either the town
of Twin Peaks or the surrounding Ghostwood. It takes yet another
ten episodes to discover that the messages were in fact transmitted
from the wood around Twin Peaks and not some distant galaxy (“The
Black Widow”). The delayed nature of the revelation in itself stresses
the significance of the information and provides a basis for a poten-
tially different reading of the woods, which, while retaining their
association with crime and an ominous aspect that invariably differen-
tiates them from the town, are also—on certain occasions at least—su-
perimposed upon and altered by a distinctly higher order of spatial
reality. The superposition of this higher order of (heterotopian) reality
is not limited to the woods but appears with equal frequency in the
domestic, seemingly tame places in the town of Twin Peaks.
But what does the introduction of this new spatial model mean
within this specific narrative and how does it interact with the ordi-
nary sites and settings presented within the storyline? A more
detailed answer to these questions is likely to be found not within
Tracing the Nowhere 119

the mythologized spaces of the forest but instead within a space that
is much more familiar as well as emotionally relevant for the viewers.
The crucially significant space that actually functions as the point of
revelation, and in various instances as the turning point of the narra-
tive, is the Palmers’ house and, more specifically, Laura Palmer’s
room. As stated by Richard Martin in his analysis titled The Architec-
ture of David Lynch, the issue of houses and homes, in general, within
TP is a problematic one due to them being “porous, unstable and full
of furtive operations” (87). He continues by describing the town’s
houses as “rife with dysfunctional families,” with “adultery, violence,
drugs and madness . . . omnipresent” (87). Following this observation,
it becomes clearer that a relevant analytical focus on space should, in
fact, be directed toward the issue of domesticity and its spatial
connotations instead of the initially threatening representation of the
surrounding woods.
It is the houses that function as tension-producing sites and as
locales through which the actual evil is being channeled and articu-
lated. What the viewers are able to explore, through both the prequel
as well as the series itself, is a succession of locations within the house
divided into two segments: the first and second floors of the house.
Architecturally the house conforms to the western building tradition
with the clear division between the front and back spaces. As Yi Fu
Tuan elaborates in Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, space
as a notion is defined by the position of the body, more precisely,
“the human being, by his mere presence, imposes a schema on space”
(36). Frontal spaces are therefore “visible” and “accessible,” “illumi-
nated,” as opposed to back spaces which are considered “dark” and
“intimate” (40). Accordingly, an important differentiation is made
between frontal or more public spaces, such as living or dining
rooms, and the spaces located in the back of the living quarters, such
as bedrooms. This schema can also be noticed in the construction of
space provided by Lynch where everyday and apparently normal
occurrences take place on the ground floor, functioning as Tuan’s
front space, while the space of the second floor, the more intimate
one or the back space, represents the location where secret and violent
things occur. It is precisely this initial spatial division, so familiar in
its structure, that forces the viewer into a sense of resignation and
acceptance, or more precisely creates distraction by leading her/him
toward a search for an external source of evil—in this case the
120 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

heterotopian forest. However, in spite of Lynch’s narrative deceptions,

the heterotopian spaces are not located (solely) in the forest.
Returning to Richard Martin’s analysis, we notice a number of
elements suggesting subtle spatial readings and alterations, which in
turn lead to a complete change in reality. Among the first prominently
featuring elements, Martin points out the stairs connecting the two
floors. Their function of connecting two spaces is expanded by the con-
stant accentuation of the camera as a spatial element of the utmost
importance. In Martin’s words, Lynch chooses the staircase “as an
uncanny frontier in Twin Peaks . . . a prime venue for the symbolization
of unequal power” but even more a prime venue for the articulation of
an “altered perspective” (88). The key to understanding the effectiveness
of the stairs, alongside other elements such as ceiling fans, gramophones,
framed pictures, mirrors, and others, within the context of potential
existence of alternative heterotopian spaces, is Freud’s notion of the
uncanny. What Lynch does, and Martin successfully describes, is take a
number of common objects and translate them through narrative, cam-
era work, and montage into “traumatic symbols” (Martin 78). As such
they become uncanny and therefore open to further interpretations.
Freud’s attempt to interpret and define the uncanny as something
that “belongs to the realm of the frightening, of what evokes fear and
dread,” is followed by the inability of adequately defining a feeling of
uneasiness (Uncanny 123). Following Freud’s initial definition,
Anthony Vidler, in his analysis titled The Architectural Uncanny: Essays
in the Modern Unhomely, further elaborates the notion of the uncanny by
defining it as “sinister, disturbing, suspect, strange; it would be char-
acterized better as ‘dread’ rather than terror, deriving its force from its
very inexplicability, its sense of lurking unease, rather than from any
clearly defined source of fear—an uncontrollable sense of haunting
rather than a present apparition” (23). Vidler additionally elaborates
this notion of the uncanny by describing it as an aesthetic:

outgrowth of the Burkean sublime, a domesticated version of abso-

lute terror. . . . Its favorite motif was precisely the contrast between
a secure and homely interior and the fearful invasion of an alien
presence; on a psychological level, its play was one of doubling,
where the other is, strangely enough, experienced as a replica of
the self, all the more fearsome because apparently the same.
(3)
Tracing the Nowhere 121

Vidler’s elaboration of the uncanny precisely conforms to the situa-

tion within the Palmers’ residence. Each time Lynch focuses the cam-
era for uncommonly long periods of time a sense of spatial distortion
is being produced. A sense of awkwardness and uneasiness pervades
the scene, and the viewer becomes aware of a spatial/dimensional
shift, which is soon followed by some sort of supernatural/violent
event. Returning to Martin’s idea of the stairs as an “uncanny fron-
tier” within the house itself (88), we can apply the notion of division
vertically (the lower/public and upper/private floors or spaces) as well
as horizontally. Following the camera view of the stairs positioned
almost regularly at its bottom, the viewer notices that the stairs
divide the upper floor between Laura’s room and her parents’ room.
The importance of this division, as explained in the feature film, lies
in the moment when Leland Palmer crosses the dividing line from
his bedroom to Laura’s in order to sexually abuse her. Leland turning
on the ceiling fan precedes the moment of his crossing, after which
viewers become privy to Laura’s bedroom and the arrival of Leland/
BOB. Both elements, the stairs as a dividing line, as well as the ceil-
ing fan, act as the previously mentioned “traumatic symbols” (Martin
78), marking the precise moment leading to the traumatic event.
They simultaneously acquire an uncanny quality premised on the
subsequent introduction/arrival of an alien presence (the demon
BOB) within the household. By emphasizing the loud and repetitive
sound of the turning ceiling fan, the changing pictures on the wall,
the awkward use of music as a potential indicator of Leland’s mental
instability, as well as other subtle alterations in space and setting,
Lynch straightforwardly announces the introduction of an alien ele-
ment to the apparently safe and peaceful context of the Palmer house-
hold. More precisely, what Lynch does by skillfully creating various
uncanny narrative points is a direct connection to the heterotopian
space initially perceived as displaced. What is constructed through
the initial/surface narrative level as the heterotopian space delineated
by the forest and therefore located, together with the evil and alterna-
tive realities it contains, in opposition to the town itself, is now
being directly connected with and also superimposed on the quotid-
ian and intimate site of the home. What Lynch’s vision offers is not
the initially expected spatial polarity but instead a coexistence of two
parallel (spatial) narratives that, through the visual/directorial articu-
lation of uncanny situations, occasionally merge into one single
122 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

reality. The consecutive articulation of these uncanny elements leads

to the creation of nexuses between the two narratives, between the
Red Room and the Palmer household,4 between ordinary sites and
the heterotopian ones. These nexuses bring about heterotopian incur-
sions, which in turn allow alien entities such as BOB, the Giant, or
the Chalfonts to influence the ordinary sites of domestic intimacy or
communal interaction.
While the notion of these heterotopian nexuses/incursions applies
to the entire Palmer family house, and even to the larger setting of
the town, one particular location within the house bears special rele-
vance for this analysis and that is Laura Palmer’s room. Not surpris-
ingly, this is presented rather more obviously in Fire Walk With Me
than in the series, since the film provides a deeper insight into Laura
Palmer’s experience precisely by means of accentuating her position
in relation to the space she occupies. This position proves to be ever
more disoriented and confounding as Laura gradually comes to realize
BOB’s true identity. While TP, as we have already noticed, offers an
intricately woven set of places that characterize or metonymically
represent the people who inhabit them, what it reveals of Laura Palmer
are only two distinctly contrasted, yet equally emphatic, images: the
framed picture of Laura as the homecoming queen and the haunting
sight of her livid face inside the plastic bag. FWWM compensates for
this initial lack of any spatial characterization of Laura Palmer by
providing numerous instances in which she is lying or sitting on her
bed, staring wildly at the pictures on the wall or toward the open
window through which she leaves the house furtively when pursuing
her escapades—the same window that BOB symbolically uses as the
point of entrance to Laura’s room on the night when he is unmistak-
ably revealed to her as Leland.5
Occurrences such as BOB’s entrance through the open window—
seemingly out of nowhere—the apparition of the wounded Annie in
Laura’s bed, or the disappearance of an angel from the picture hung
on the wall certainly contribute to the experience of dread described
by Vidler as a constitutive element of the uncanny. In terms of
Vidler’s spatial take on the uncanny and in order to explain how the
heterotopian order of the Red Room manages to merge with the
homeliness of the Palmers’ house and, more specifically, the intimacy
of Laura’s bedroom, we might focus particularly on the picture Laura
receives from the Chalfonts and hangs on the wall. The picture
Tracing the Nowhere 123

features a room with an open door and dark floral wallpaper and
despite the obvious unease Laura subtly expresses whenever she looks
at it (as well as the somewhat eerie circumstances under which she
receives it), there is initially no suggestion that the picture contains
anything beyond reason and explanation. The uncanny potential is
released when Laura, standing at the slightly open door of her room
and facing the staircase in an undefined state between dream and real-
ity, turns around and sees herself in the picture. Laura in the picture,
or rather her double, has her head turned away from the wallpapered
room in the forefront. In the distorted mirror that the picture
becomes, her position indicates that the depicted room corresponds to
the remaining space of the Palmers’ house. A close-up of Laura’s face
then reveals red curtains behind her, hence in her own room, the same
as those seen behind the trees at Ghostwood’s Glastonbury Grove—
the curtains of the Red Room. Thus, in the same way that the hetero-
topian reality of the Red Room occasionally manages to invade the
forest, it is equally able to transpose itself onto the familiar space of
Laura’s bedroom. This exemplifies Vidler’s etymological account of
the very word heimlich—homely, which by association comes to mean
private, as well as secret, henceforth also magic, unfamiliar and unho-
mely, or uncanny (24-25).
Laura’s bedroom, therefore, is the Red Room on those occasions
when BOB (as Leland) transcends the spatial confines of the world
to which he belongs. The play of doubling—as evidenced in the
appearance of Laura and the door to her room in the picture—is all
too obvious in the world of TP and does more than introduce the
uncanny effect. To provide an example of the doubling that operates
on a more mundane, although far from innocent level, we might
refer to Laura’s boyfriend Bobby and his friend Mike, apparently
typical American high school boys, whose very names parodically
evoke the more sinister BOB and Mike, or the One Eyed Jacks as a
place that, with its set of red curtains, has its more ominous double
in the Red Room. Returning to the Palmer household, however, as
presented in FWWM, yet another image of the double appears, the
double who is, in accordance with the above quoted lines from
Vidler, all the more fearsome for being an exact replica of the self
(3). Before turning on the ceiling fan, Leland brings his wife a glass
of milk, which presumably contains strong sedatives. What is, in
terms of narrative representation, curious about the scene—and
124 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

what also supports the heterotopian reading of the narrative level at

which Leland is BOB—is that Leland’s gesture is filmed in the mir-
ror. The image in the mirror looks exactly like Leland, but is in fact
his double—BOB, who is making preparations for the assault on
Laura—and it is by means of framing the scene within the mirror
that we understand both the disturbing truth about Leland’s iden-
tity, as well as the spatial, that is, heterotopian origin of the
uncanny in the Palmer household. According to Foucault, the mir-
ror is, in addition to being “a placeless place” and therefore utopia,
also heterotopian in that “it exerts a sort of counteraction on the
position that I occupy” (“Of Other Spaces” 24). It is thus precisely
BOB (as Leland’s reflection in the mirror) that roots Leland in real-
ity; it is the appearance of Laura in the fictional space of the picture
that confirms her position in her room and dictates her sense of
direction; it is, in other words, heterotopia that influences and dis-
figures the spatial ordinariness of the house. The events that unfold
after Sarah drinks the milk—after the viewer is translated to the
other side of the mirror—assume, while exerting substantial influ-
ence on the everyday lives of the Palmers, a prevailingly hetero-
topian spatial determination.
Similar to Major Briggs and the Log Lady, who, as has already
been mentioned, recognize a certain presence in the woods, the exis-
tence of a disturbing factor in the Palmer household is registered by
Sarah Palmer, who makes a note of it in one of the first episodes of
TP as she tearfully wonders what is wrong with the house (“Traces
to Nowhere”). The answer lies precisely in the fact that the house is
not merely the familiar and comfortable place Sarah is used to, but
at certain moments it is also the place of complete otherness, the
Red Room that Sarah only glimpses during her visions and halluci-
nations. While the Red Room as an alien presence in the Palmers’
house bears all the characteristics of Foucault’s traditional interpre-
tation of heterotopia—whereby, for instance, the very act of Sarah’s
drinking the milk Leland/BOB gives her could be read as a peculiar
rite that allows for the access to a heterotopian reality (cf. “Of Other
Spaces” 26)—the Red Room does not incorporate the Palmers’
house or Laura’s bedroom, nor is it juxtaposed to it in any of the
scenes; there is no clear spatial delineation or separation of the two
simply for the reason that they do not belong to the same spatially
defined narrative. However, the heterotopian Red Room has a
Tracing the Nowhere 125

singular capacity, as we have seen, of superposition over the other-

wise ordinary, nonheterotopian site of Laura’s bedroom, as well as
the ability to transform it into yet another heterotopia, making
them both equally real.

Laura’s Red Room

While the dynamics of the spatial paradigm(s) within the TP narra-

tives varies, often drifting into the regions of the spatially and tem-
porally abstract, any possible analytical approach unavoidably leads
back (or potentially forward if placed within a Lynchian context) to
the previously mentioned question that the Giant posed to agent
Cooper: “Where have you gone?” The Foucaldian attempt to read the
specifics of these spatial paradigms, or to define the actual location
where Cooper, together with other characters, went to, continues to
be a mystery locked in David Lynch’s imagination. Nevertheless, the
heterotopian theoretical paradigm allows us to read into, and poten-
tially map, the abstract spatial constructs proposed by Lynch. What
the initially perceived and completely plausible reading of hetero-
topian spaces offers is a clear delineation between ordinary spaces,
with all their intricacies and obscurities, and the foreboding spatiality
that lies on the other side of the imaginary borderline. The potential
map, therefore, becomes readable if not clear, firmly establishing the
initial spatial polarity. Lynch’s narrative, however, is unable to func-
tion within clear demarcations, and through the articulation of char-
acters, such as Laura Palmer, functioning and interacting within
specific spatial contexts, the opening paradigm starts to change. The
proposed initial heterotopian spaces continue to exist, but the idea of
the inability of the superposition of spaces as defined by Foucault
fails. The once codified and symbolically impregnated heterotopian
spaces unavoidably persist in their existence, only now, introduced by
Lynch’s enunciation of the uncanny, they complete a heterotopian
incursion within Laura’s room. It is this simultaneously heterotopian
and ordinary site to which the Giant is referring in a typically cryptic
manner, while simultaneously pointing to the characters themselves,
as well as the town, closing the circle by marking them as the initial
and final source of evil.
126 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

Notes
1. For some recent references to the issues of spatiality in TP, see Shimabukuro, “Mystery of
the Woods”; Pheasant-Kelly, “Strange Spaces”; and Loacker and Peters, “‘Come on, get
happy!’”
2. And even more emphatically in FWWM, which functions as a prequel, which in turn might
lead us to conclude that the spatial paradigm of TP is distorted from the beginning, and this
distortion only veiled in a semblance of order.
3. Since neither TP nor FWWM provides a detailed description or a more precise spatial con-
textualization of the White and Black Lodges, and considering the fact that these are consid-
ered by some authors to be one and the same (Hague 141-42), both contained in or adjacent
to the Red Room, the spatially well-defined Red Room is in this analysis used to designate
all three—the waiting room that it represents itself, the White and the Black Lodge.
4. Although the dominant site of these types of convergences in Twin Peaks is the Palmer
household, mostly due to the narrative being focused around its family, other sites, such as
Dale Cooper’s hotel room (“May the Giant Be with You”) or the Roadhouse (“Lonely Souls”
experience similar occurrences.
5. The presented illogical spatial conflict (BOB entering through the window, while Leland
comes in through the door) emphasizes even more the transmuting quality of the incursive
heterotopian space, aligning the once ordinary site in accordance with the (lack of) rules of
heterotopian spaces such as the Red Room. It also evokes Foucault’s initial interpretation of
heterotopias as places that cause disturbance and break syntagmatic order—in this case, the
spatial syntax of the Palmer household.

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Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human
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——. “Of Other Spaces,” Translated by Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics,
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Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. Translated by David Mclintock,
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Tijana Parezanovi
c is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Foreign Lan-

guages in Belgrade, Serbia, where she teaches several courses in British
literature, cultural studies, and literary translation. She holds a PhD in
Australian literature from the University of Belgrade and is a coauthor of
three edited books, numerous articles, and translations of fiction and nonfic-
tion. She acts as associate editor of [sic]–A Journal of Literature, Culture and
Literary Translation.
Marko Luki
c is an associate professor in the English Department at the
University of Zadar, Croatia. He is the acting Head of the Department and he
teaches various courses in American literature, popular culture and cultural
theory. His research interests include violence and trauma in contemporary
American fiction, human spatiality and space in literature, and the contempo-
rary horror genre. He is the editor-in-chief of [sic]–A Journal of Literature,
128 Tijana Parezanovic and Marko Lukic

Culture and Literary Translation, conference director/organizer of the interna-

tional conference Re-Thinking Humanities and Social Sciences, and the
cofounder of the Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Humanities.