Fantasy in Mulholland Drive

Fantasy is central to the film Mulholland Drive (2001). David Lynch’s directorial construction reveals the way in which Hollywood conventions ultimately dictate one’s fantasies. Lynch also highlights that Hollywood as a medium is a fantasy made up of fantasies, that needs to be viewed as that. He reveals this specifically through the use of a two-part structure, whereby one is privy to explore the individual’s construction of fantasy in the first half of the film as compared to the reality of the second half of the film. This structure allows Lynch to demonstrate that this reality is too a fantasy created by Hollywood. Thus, for this essay I will argue that rather than taking a conventional, two-part analysis of the film, (the first part being fantasy and the second part depicting reality), the entire film is constructed of different levels of fantasy.

The film’s analysis of fantasy within Hollywood begins with the way in which individual’s construct their desires and wish fulfilment through Hollywood genres and conventions. As discussed by Jay R Lentzner and Donald R Ross in their article “Dreams that blister sleep: Latent Content and Cinematic Form in “Mulholland Drive”, the so-called dream sequence “is formed from a pastiche of other Hollywood movies” which “invites a kind of free association to popular culture.”1 This can be seen in the jitterbugging couple’s sequence whereby notions of the 1950s as an idealized time within Hollywood is presented. The “free association” is played out by Lynch by removing the background and floor level and multiplying the same

image, representing the glee of stardom, performance as discussed by Debra Shostak in “Dancing in Hollywood’s Blue Box: Genre and ScreenMemories in Mulholland Drive”.2 Furthermore, the figure of the cowboy, provides another example as to the way in which Diane transforms her desires and dreams into images of Hollywood conventions and clichés. As discussed by Roger F. Cook in his article “Hollywood Narrative and the Play of Fantasy:David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive”, the cowboy invokes clichés of the Hollywood Western, he wears a plaid coat, a red bandana and a cowboy hat and speaks in a “whiny drawl” that mimics the speech of the “Western hero”.3 Cook argues that the use of this cliché by Lynch highlights conventions of Classical Hollywood. The use of the figure is also important, as he functions as a kind of authoritative figure who freely moves between the first and second part of the movie, highlighting the generic convention of the cowboy as a hero who knows right from wrong and who will ultimately triumph over evil. On another level, fantasy can be seen to permeate the characterisation of Diane and Betty as discussed by Bruce R Burningham in his article“David Lynch and the Dulcineated World” as he argues that Betty and Diane are indeed conventions of female characters in Hollywood. Burningham argues therefore that on both levels of the film (the dream sequence and the reality sequence) the two characters are two sides of the same “true Hollywood Story”.4 Burningham argues that the two women, despite being played by the same character, could be seen as completely different figures and goes on to say that neither really exist. Lynch achieves this complication through the figure of Betty as an overt symbol of old Hollywood, a kind of Doris Day type that is following the American Dream in Hollywood.

Similarly, the character of Diane, as discussed by Geoff Klock in his article “Goodnight, Sweet Betty”: Levels of Illusion in Mulholland Drive and Hamlet”, can be seen as a fantasy character as her segment is constructed by a “world where romantic woes are handled by a hit man” which indeed appears to be a fantasy.5 Thus, as Klock quotes “her so called real life is a melodrama” and ultimately a fantasy.6 This argument becomes extremely important when looking at how the film itself analyses the way in which the medium of cinema and Hollywood as a dream factory is a fantasy as well. The scene “Club Silencio” is pivotal in demonstrating this. As discussed by Klock the Club Silencio exposes the world both Naomi Watts (Diane/Betty) and Laura Harring (Rita/Camilla) are in is fundamentally a fantasy. Not only this, but the scene reveals to the audience that the film itself is complete fantasy, revealing the horror as Klock states that individuals “need to organize with stories to achieve basic human meaning in our lives”.7 This realisation is problematic as discussed by Cook as it reveals that cultural production through film perpetuates a “mode of traumatic forgetting” which is brought on by unrealistic fantasies created in Hollywood.8 The scene seems to reveal as discussed by Shostak that the film as medium is a void, a fantasy, in which both audience, characters and performers vanish.9 Shostak states however, Lynch does not present this as necessarily a bad thing, but rather draws attention to the way in which film gives “viewers a place to dream.”10 However, as Heather Love discusses in her article “Spectacular Failure: The Figure of the Lesbian in Mulholland Drive” Lynch “never gets to the bottom of them (clichés)”, whilst providing a clear critique of the conventions of Hollywood, mystery still remains as to whether Lynch is condemning or appreciating the fantasies presented by film.11 Thus, Lynch provides a dichotomy for scholars whereby everything is put into “post-modern quotation marks” as discussed by Anna Katharina Schaffner in her article“Fantasmatic Splitting’s and Destructive Desires: Lynch’s Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire”due to Lynch’s aim to express “weary awareness of the artificiality of all representations” and celebrate representation “in spite of this knowledge.”12 Furthermore, as Klock discusses the “Lesbian Scene” is also an important point in the movie whereby Lynch works to reveal the idea that Hollywood is a fantasy. As discussed by Tony Hughes-d’Aeth in his article “Psychoanalysis and the Scene of Love: Lars and the Real Girl, in the Mood for Love, and Mulholland Drive” the scene reflects the continuity editing of classic Hollywood love scenes whereby audiences’ sense of time and space are erased and both the audience and the characters “are harmonized in the merge of erotic will”, and of “mutual gazes, of expectation and satisfaction.”13 Thus, the scene functions as a site in which the space between social experience of love and fantasies of love are one in the same creating, as Hughes- d’Aeth states a “homogenous state of desire.”14 This site of fantasy allows Lynch as Klock argues to use lesbianism as a symbol of the closed world of the movie”, the scene is heavily stylised and adheres to a kind of “silly soft core pornography” which in itself is unrealistic and functions as a wish fulfilment for male members of the audience.15 Another instance of Lynch’s criticism of Hollywood as a fantasy can be seen through the character played by Harring as she assumes the name of Rita. As highlighted by Klock, the scene in which Harring looks at a poster of Charles Vidro’s movie Gilda, calls to mind the connotations of the actress who was famous for her radical transformation from Margarita Carmen Cansino to Rita Hayworth.16 This intertextual reference makes clear that the identity of Rita in the film is an illusion just as Gilda and Rita Hayworth were illusions.17 This illusion can be problematic for scholars such as Martha Nochimson as she argues that clichés of old Hollywood cinema can be seen as a “trap of created substitutes for life” which could potentially misdirect audience members from the real.18 However, as argued by Todd McGowan in his article “Lost on “Mulholland Drive”: Navigating David Lynch’s Panegyric to Hollywood.”, the more optimistic argument is that the fantasy that Hollywood creates does not necessarily have to be judged but rather acknowledged as a site of pleasure “that social reality cannot” provide.19 Conclusively, as Heather Love highlights Mulholland Drive provides an in-depth analysis of different levels of fantasy namely the “unconscious, structuring fantasies: dreams and daydreams; and shared, public fantasies” and their intrinsic relationship with one another. Therefore, it can be concluded that Lynch provides a criticism of Hollywood as a dream factory on multiple levels:through the use of clichés and conventions of the classic era, he explores the way in which fantasies of the screen have a place in individual lives; and additionally through the way in which the cinema and Hollywood as an industry is created by fantasies, rendering it a complete fantasy. Thus, it becomes clear that nothing in the film can be deemed reality but rather a constellation of different levels of fantasy that explore its influence in audiences and popular culture.

Footnotes

1 Jay R. Lentzner and Donald R. Ross. “The Dreams that Blister Sleep:Latent Content and Cinematic Form in Mulholland Drive”, American Imago 62, no. 1 (2005): 108.

2 Debra Shostak, “Dancing in Hollywood’s Blue Box: genre and screen memories in Mulholland Drive”, Post Script 27, no. 3 (2008): 5. 3 Roger F. Cook, “Hollywood Narrative and the Play of Fantasy: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive”, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 28, no. 5 (2011): 376. 4 Bruce R. Burningham, “David Lynch and the Dulcineated World”. Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 30, no. 2 (2010): 46.

5 Geoff Klock, “Goodnight, Sweet Betty”: Levels of Illusion in Mulholland Drive and Hamlet”, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 34, no. 1 (2017): 54. 6 Klock, “Goodnight, SweetBetty”: Levels of Illusion in Mulholland Drive and Hamlet”, (2017):54. 7 Klock, “Goodnight, SweetBetty”: Levels of Illusion in Mulholland Drive and Hamlet”, (2017):54. 8 Roger F. Cook, “Hollywood Narrative and the Play of Fantasy: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive”, (2011): 376. 9 Shostak, “Dancing in Hollywood’s Blue Box: genre and screen memories in Mulholland Drive”,(2008): 5. 10 Shostak, “Dancing in Hollywood’s Blue Box: genre and screen memories in Mulholland Drive”,(2008): 5. 11 Heather Love, “Spectacular Failure: The Figure of the Lesbian in Mulholland Drive,” New Literary History 35, no.1 (2004):122. 12 Anna K. Schaffner. “Fantasmatic Splittings and Destructive Desires: Lynch’s Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire”, Forum of Modern LanguageStudies 45, no. 3 (2009): 275. 13 Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, “Psychoanalysis and the Scene of Love: Lars and the Real Girl, In the Mood for Love, and Mulholland Drive”, Film and History43, no. 2 (2013): 17. 14 Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, “Psychoanalysis and the Scene of Love: Lars and the Real Girl, In the Mood for Love, and Mulholland Drive”, (2013): 17. 15 Klock, “Goodnight, Sweet Betty”: Levels of Illusion in Mulholland Drive and Hamlet”, (2017): 54. 16 Klock, “Goodnight, Sweet Betty”: Levels of Illusion in Mulholland Drive and Hamlet”, (2017): 54. 17 Klock, “Goodnight, Sweet Betty”: Levels of Illusion in Mulholland Drive and Hamlet”, (2017):54. 18 Shostak, “Dancing in Hollywood’s Blue Box: genre and screen memories in Mulholland Drive”, (2008): 5. 19 Shostak, “Dancing in Hollywood’s Blue Box: genre and screen memories in Mulholland Drive”, (2008): 5.