By Ben Kane
David Lynch was one of the most monumental directors of our times. Known for his ability to manipulate and syncopate the surreal and the sinister into an immersive, disquieting, and atmospheric blend, few have wielded the camera with such a visionary prescience as he. The news of his death following the California wildfires therefore left culture vultures, cinema lovers, and horror fans alike disassembled, however another demimonde has too been left reeling in its wake: that of a queer and trans community who were consistently given voice and representation by Lynch, against a granular contemporary mentality which atomised trans bodies as the cheap butts of jokes or signs of mental malaise. Here, we remember David Lynch and his powerful, transgressive, and beautiful queer surrealism.
Illustration by GAY45, depicting Denise Welch from “Twin Peaks”.
‘I think I’m in love with Shelly from the diner,’ sings Grace Ives on her left-field pop track, a desire-filled sapphic paean for the Twin Peaks character of the same name. This is one of a myriad of ways that David Lynch’s works touched and inspired the art of today, and specifically that by queer people, who continue to find solace and meaning inside his surreal dreamworlds. Still, his overt and unwavering support of the queer community seems overshadowed by his cinematographic legacy, Lynch being one of the firrst to portray transgender characters in a positive light.
It’s in the cult classic TV series, co-created by Mark Frost, that we see his progressive ideas at their figurative peak in the transgender character of Denise Bryson (David Duchovny), a DEA agent who first appears in the second season to help protagonist Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) clear his name. The context surrounding transgender representation in TV and film was hardly glowing in the 20th century, being treated as cheap and lazy comedic relief like Chandler’s mother in Friends, or as a source of horror and revulsion as in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. Lynch, however, ensured that his trans character was taken seriously.
Denise herself is not immediately introduced to the audience. Rather, Lynch opts for the show’s protagonist, Cooper, to give a prologue to her character. He speaks of a ‘Dennis Bryson’, ‘one of the finest minds of the DEA.’ A knock at the door then signals the agent’s arrival. The camera pans down to the floor. She walks in, heels first, much to the men’s and the audience’s surprise. She introduces herself as Denise politely yet authoritatively, explaining that an undercover assignment helped her realise that she felt was comfortable in women’s clothes. Cooper, and everybody else, immediately adheres to her requests. Through this simple scene, Lynch depathologises her identity and focalises on feelings of gender euphoria, affirmation, and self-discovery, rather than on transness as a source of ridicule or psychopathy in the aforementioned examples, affording Denise more narrative context than many other queer characters in 90s media.
I think it’s important to note that it is the hero of the series that spearheads this vision. Dale Cooper is level-headed, emotionally insightful and representative of the force of good in Twin Peaks’ Manichean, moralistic world, a character that many viewers would aspire to emulate. If the logical and shrewd special agent can easily adhere to how someone identifies, Lynch may be asking, what’s stopping the viewers at home from doing the same?
Appearance versus reality is a key trope running through Twin Peaks. Set in a town where nothing is as it seems, the show becomes the perfect location in which to discuss transgender identities. Lynch portrays queerness as logical and tangible, set apart from the show’s many surreal narratives, a stark contrast to the sensationalism surrounding queer characters in contemporary media. With a spiritual homicidal maniac terrorising Dale Cooper’s dreams and a mysterious liminal space where Laura Palmer’s (Sheryl Lee) soul is desperately trying to contact the living, a transgender special agent appears to be the least unbelievable aspect of the show.
In fact, it’s barely mentioned by other key characters. Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), daughter of the richest man in Twin Peaks, stares in awe when she first comes into contact with Denise. Looking her up and down, the camera following her gaze as it pans from her tights up to her iconic 80s quiff, we can only assume she is confused by Denise’s presence, thinking she was “interrupting something” of a more sexual nature. When Cooper reveals she is here from the DEA, Audrey’s suspicion is transformed into amazement at her realisation that women can become agents, a far cry from the misogynistic culture surrounding the small town.
This perfectly highlights Lynch’s nuanced discussion of transgender women on screen. Instead of making Denise a point of ridicule or intrigue, he subverts expectations and criticises the systemic sexism of small-town America that leaves the women destined to work at diners or to be abused housewives, sometimes both. The one character who aspires to achieve a richer life than this, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), ends up dead. Denise is a breath of fresh air to inspire cisgender and transgender women alike to the possibilities of their futures.
Lynch is never dependent on using the character’s transness to drive forward the plot. This remains a refreshing choice that again allows Denise to exist as a whole identity, rather than a myopic caricature of transgender people. Episode 20 sees Denise made a heroine when she saves Dale Cooper from being held hostage, relying on her femininity and the misogyny of Cooper’s captors who would never suspect a female agent.
Sauntering up to the house where Cooper is held, camp yet confident in her pinafore and blouse that disguises the fact that she is an agent, she is allowed entry into the hostage site by pretending to deliver food. Distracting the men with her naive charm and a seductive skirt lift, it’s too late for them to realise she’s hiding a gun in her garter belt, which enables Cooper to grab for it first and free himself from captivity.
This overreliance on feminine stereotypes does seem predictably outdated, yet I don’t believe it was done in bad faith, only symbolically solidifying the inherent femininity that is present within Denise. In the character’s return in the show’s third season in 2017, we see that Denise has climbed the ranks to chief of staff for the FBI, solidifying Lynch’s view that trans people belong everywhere, not just on the periphery.
Her return to the screen is also integral to Lynch’s most overt testimony against transphobia and solidified himself as an ardent queer ally. David Lynch, speaking as the character he portrays on the show, Gordon Cole, clarifies the meaning behind the queer allegories littered throughout the show and his works as a whole, perhaps to make sure the audience knows that these words are, in fact, his own: ‘And when you became Denise, I told all your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die.’
An unusually straightforward advocation from a master of surrealism, it appears that Lynch couldn’t allow a message this important to be lost within his rich and sometimes intangible symbolism, allowing those who have been gleaning queer references from his works for decades to be consolidated and validated by this unwavering support.
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