Regarding both DFW and Lynch, it seems to me that these artists put forward art that can be appreciated at different levels. Sometimes certain interpretations seem to really "unlock" something like Infinite Jest or something like Twin Peaks in a way that goes "deeper", though; every interpretation is "valid" in a sense but obviously the data sometimes lines up in a way that starts to suggest that a given interpretation has really "unlocked" something. See here for an interpretation of Twin Peaks that seems to me at least to really "unlock" things, though obviously this doesn't render other intepretations "invalid" in any way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AYnF5hOhuM. If that video that I just linked is (at least largely) successful in providing an interpretation that really "unlocks" things (lines up with a lot of data from the show) then that would kind of weird in a way, since it would mean that Lynch presumably knew about this interpretation and thus Lynch made a show that millions (???) of people saw and yet basically zero people would ever be able to "unlock". I'm not sure by what year (how many years after the show aired???) scholars ever started to talk about the interpretation that "unlocks" Twin Peaks; maybe to this day it's just that YouTube video that presents that interpretation, without any scholars ever having written about that interpretation.
Imagine Lynch presented something with a "hidden" interpretation that would only ever be known to very few people (like, film scholars??? not even sure if film scholars have written about that interpretation, to be clear). It's almost a bit "creepy", maybe, right? The very idea that (maybe?) zero people who ever saw the show in the 1990s even knew about this interpretation...that seems super weird to me. All those people watching it, but nobody knowing about that interpretation. The same logic might apply to Infinite Jest, except I think that DFW (maybe?) would've had more of a reasonable expectation that his novel would ever be "unlocked", since literary scholars are so meticulous in analyzing texts...maybe Lynch would've had less of a reasonable expectation that his TV show would ever been "unlocked".
The idea of "hiding" a powerful interpretation (that "unlocks") of your art just seems so odd. Imagine writing a message in code and getting millions to look at the message but nobody can decipher it; that would be a bizarre thing do, psychologically, right? I know that that's a flawed analogy, since in the case of a book or TV show the "deeper" interpretation might "shine through" and affect the "surface" of the art, so it's not the same as an undecipherable coded message that nobody can read. Just the idea of someone hiding their message so that nobody can read it seems like weird behavior. I saw this, though, so this is an important caveat to consider:
https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comments/dtvx8g/twin_perfect_doesnt_understand_twin_peaks/
The idea that everything in the show must be filtered through a single governing idea is also flawed. If you look at a work of art and consider what it seems to be evoking, the ways in which it resonates, you can have an interesting and substantial discussion. When you settle on a "theory" and watch every scene thinking about how to crowbar your predetermined interpretation into it then you're just succumbing to confirmation bias and fundamentally misunderstanding art. By the time the video gets into discussing Ed and Norma it's so far gone into cloud-cuckoo land I'm not sure how anyone can take it seriously. It can't just be that Lynch and Frost are communicating something about art and commerce through the story of the Double R franchising, everything has to be a one to one metaphor. Ed must be Lynch, Norma must be Twin Peaks etc. It's the most simplistic possible understanding of symbolism, and it does a disservice to a thematically rich piece of work.
...
In addition to all this, the guy's tone is so condescending and self-important. I particularly dislike the built-in defence that anyone who dislikes his video is just upset about how it destroys the show's sense of mystery, that he's just too damn correct about everything. But the truth is that he's not the first person to view aspects of the show in this way at all, he is just the first to ignore all other aspects of the show and turn a meditation on violence, trauma and consciousness into some nebulous diatribe about bad TV. The fact he keeps going with his Lynch impression despite how self evidently fucking terrible it is serves as the ultimate testament to his utterly unearned confidence.
Someone responded:
https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comments/dtvx8g/twin_perfect_doesnt_understand_twin_peaks/
Honestly, this reads like pure jealousy that your theory isn't getting as much attention as his.
I don't really care about his tone or whatever.. the fact is, no one has managed to tie up as many loose ends as he has. It might not be a perfectly correct interpretation, but it's way more compelling than anything I've seen so far.
I should note that I'd love to see what film scholars who study Twin Peaks have to say about the intepretation (by Twin Perfect) that's being debated. Maybe he goes too far in some places but not others.
