Is Bob Leland?

The evil that men do

Is it true as Albert says in episode 2.9 that “maybe that’s all Bob is, the evil that men do”?

Is it really Leland alone that murders Laura, and “Bob” is created by his actions, not the other way around? Or are they even one and the same?

No, Bob really is a supernatural entity. And it really is Bob that uses Leland as his instrument to rape and murder Laura, because if Leland had done it himself, then it would have been a film about one murder of one girl. This interpretation has the effect of needlessly individualizing the film. It is not a film only about one girl, or even a film only about sexual violence in general.

Indeed, under such an interpretation, the first and second seasons of the show would then have been a drawn-out campy, surrealist pastiche of some “true crime” series. In fact, judging by the reaction to the release of Fire Walk With Me, many critics apparently did consider Twin Peaks to be such a pastiche. Initially Fire Walk With Me was panned for, among other things, its apparently sharp tonal shift, from the quirkiness of the first two seasons to the oppressive horror of the film.

But in fact, the first two seasons are much more eerie than the film, precisely because the soap opera makes us complicit in Laura’s murder. In the movie, for the first time, we are allowed to really see, and thereby we are freed of our apathy. Bolaño’s 2666 does something very similar with The Part About the Crimes, where finally we can actually see the crimes themselves, and finally we are permitted to feel empathy for the victims.

Blue Rose

write intro to this paragraph, returning to “It is not a film only about one girl, or even a film only about rape in general.” so what is it about then...? sadism, violence, capitalism, america, genocide, slavery, etc, examples of the same underlying supernatural phenomenon. sexual violence, femicide, this is the nexus, centre, as in 2666.

It is impossible to say with words what the supernatural element is; therefore, the term Blue Rose must be invented to describe it: “I can’t tell you about that.”¹ The Blue Rose is the ineffable “hidden center” of 2666, and Archimboldi is analogous to Leland.

Hallucination

Another somewhat popular attempt to reinterpret the movie against the plain text is by watching it as a kind of psychological thriller about this individual girl in this particular family, and her need to invent some higher power to make sense of her life. Is Bob a purely mental construction invented by Laura’s subconscious because she cannot bear to look Leland in the face as he rapes her?

No, and actually this interpretation is even worse than the first. To the best of my knowledge, this is simply not something that actually happens. If someone is raped by their parent repeatedly as a child, generally, they know what happened. Perhaps there are some rare exceptions, but I think this trope is mostly an invention of bad popular psychology. The problem for victims of sexual violence, usually, is getting others to believe them.

1. Fire Walk With Me, 7:40. Desmond about Lil’s blue rose. ↩