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Created: March 22, 2002
Latest Update: March 22, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Lost Highway: Unveiling Cinema's Yellow Brick Road

By Reni Celeste

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, March 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This piece is based on a review of David Lynch's Lost Highway. I hadn't meant to move so quickly into film as an art form that is recording at least for short-term posterity the lifeworld as some of us are experiencing it today. But in the process of following through on a search on Zizek and Marx, I came upon Reni Celeste's article, and was immediately captivated. I have only seen bits and pieces of Lost Highway. David Lynch graciously gave my husband some tiny non-speaking appearance in the film, and in some versions this appearance has not been cut. My husband was, of course, delighted with his few seconds of movie fame, and patiently watches the film whenever it appears. I, on the other hand, arriving only when called to witness this star performance, was hopelessly confused.

I have worried for some time that my branching out to cultural studies might entrap me in the whole film world, but I was valiantly trying to ignore how much more reading that would entail. Reni Celeste's article piqued my interest. Movies, to me, were just movies. Sometimes illustrating sociological issues, but mostly, just movies. I reckon that's because, as a poor kid, I didn't have access to the means to produce film. My photographic tastes were pretty much limited to oat meal boxes with pinholes even when I grew up. And video is a much more recent medium to which I had no access. Never mind film.

So imagine my surprise when in the opening of the essay Reni Celeste speaks of the Lynchian universe:

"One finds here a hell as familiar as our own, a wax world whose lines and forms are forever melting, where each object slowly transforms into its opposite, and where all things, even the most irreconcilable, are bound by a labyrinth of intricate web-like relations. For years critics have been treating the patient with psychoanalysis and scolding Lynch for his incorrect politics, but little attention has been given to the visual philosophy he has been projecting across the cinema screen. His work has offended equally reactionary conservative and political liberal."

Just goes to show I should have paid more attention. I did notice the road, but hadn't seen the significance of that yellow line. Of course, the yellow brick road. And a "hell as familiar as our own . . ."? Yes. Why had I missed all that? Hmm, because I couldn't afford to the time or equipment to shoot any of it on my own, and I tend to focus on what I can re-create for myself. Incorrect politics? I had no idea. But that will strengthen our emphasis on left/right balance. How could someone that creative be a Reaganite? Hmm, wrong question. What part of conservatism have I failed to see that might explain "incorrect politics"?

Lost Highway: Unveiling Cinema's Yellow Brick Road An essay on film by Reni Celeste, University of Rochester, Visual and Cultural Studies Program, Published in Cineaction 43 (Summer 1997).

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