Editing Blue Velvet (film) (section)

==Interpretations==
[[File:Blue Velvet 1986.jpg|thumb|right|"I guess it means there's trouble until the robins come": Throughout the film, a dream Sandy had is alluded to, in which the world was full of darkness and turmoil until a group of robins were set free, unleashing blinding light and love. [[Lighting]] is a strong symbolic aspect of the film, illustrated in this second shot which is lit from above before fading out, representing a return to normality.]]
Despite ''Blue Velvet''{{'}}s initial appearance as a mystery, the film operates on a number of thematic levels. The film owes a large debt to 1950s [[film noir]], containing and exploring such conventions as the [[femme fatale]] (Dorothy Vallens), a seemingly unstoppable [[villain]] (Frank Booth) and the [[Antihero|questionable moral outlook of the hero]] (Jeffrey Beaumont), as well as its unusual use of shadowy, sometimes dark [[cinematography]].<ref name="Rubin">{{cite book | title=Thrillers | first=Martin | last=Rubin | year=1999 | publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] | location=Britain | page=175 | isbn=978-0-521-58839-3}}</ref> ''Blue Velvet'' establishes Lynch's famous "askew vision"<ref name="johnson">{{cite book | last=Johnson | first=J | year=2004 | title=Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch | pages =38–39 | isbn=978-0-7864-1753-7 | publisher=[[McFarland & Company]]}}</ref> and introduces several common elements of his work, some of which would later become his trademarks, including distorted characters, a polarized world and debilitating damage to the skull or brain. Perhaps the most significant Lynchian trademark in the film is the unearthing of a dark underbelly in a seemingly idealized small town;<ref name="White, Heanni">{{cite book | last=White | first=John | year=2009 | title=Fifty Key American Films | page=270 | publisher=Routledge | isbn=978-0-415-77297-6 }}</ref> Jeffrey even proclaims in the film that he is "seeing something that was always hidden". Lynch's characterization of films, symbols and motifs have become well known and his particular style, characterised largely in ''Blue Velvet'' for the first time, has been written about extensively using descriptions like "dreamlike",<ref name="SFSaid">{{cite news | last = Said | first = SF | title = Filmmakers on film: Tom Tykwer on Blue Velvet | url = https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3580902/Filmmakers-on-film-Tom-Tykwer-on-Blue-Velvet.html | work = The Telegraph | access-date = August 25, 2012 | location=London | date=August 3, 2002}}</ref> "ultraweird",<ref name="zacharek">{{cite news | last=Stephanie | first=Zacharek | title=David Lynch's latest tour de force | work=Salon | date=October 12, 2001 | url=http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/10/12/mulholland_drive/index.html | access-date=April 7, 2008 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080415205941/http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/10/12/mulholland_drive/index.html | archive-date=April 15, 2008 | df=mdy-all }}</ref> "dark",<ref name="nochimson">Nochimson, Martha (Autumn 2002). "''Mulholland Drive'' by David Lynch", ''Film Quarterly'', 56 (1), pp. 37–45</ref> and "oddball".<ref name="Johnson">Johnson, 2005, p. 6</ref> Red curtains also appear in key scenes, specifically in Dorothy's apartment and at the night club where she sings, which have since become a Lynch trademark. The film has been compared to [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Psycho (1960 film)|Psycho]]'' (1960) because of its stark treatment of evil and mental illness.<ref name="Taschen Books">{{cite book | first=Jürgen | last=Müller | title=The 25 Greatest Films of the 1980s | publisher=Taschen Books | year=2002 | page=325 | isbn= 978-3-8228-4783-1}}</ref> The premise of both films is curiosity, leading to an investigation that draws the lead characters into a hidden, voyeuristic underworld of crime.<ref name="orr">{{cite book | last=Orr | first=J. | year=2005 | title=Hitchcock and Twentieth-century Cinema | url=https://archive.org/details/hitchcocktwentie0000orrj | url-access=registration | publisher=Wallflower Press | pages=[https://archive.org/details/hitchcocktwentie0000orrj/page/167 167] | isbn=978-1-904764-55-7}}</ref>

The film's thematic framework harks back to [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[Henry James]] and early [[gothic fiction]], as well as films such as ''[[Shadow of a Doubt]]'' (1943) and ''[[The Night of the Hunter (film)|The Night of the Hunter]]'' (1955) and the entire notion of film noir.<ref name="Denzin">{{cite book | title=The cinematic society: The Voyeur's Gaze | first=Norman K. | last=Denzin | year=1995 | publisher=Sage Publications | location=Britain | page=247 | isbn=978-0-521-58839-3}}</ref> Lynch has called it a "film about things that are hidden - within a small city and within people."<ref name="nationalsocietyoffilmcritics"/>

[[Feminist]] [[Psychoanalysis|psychoanalytic]] film theorist [[Laura Mulvey]] argues that ''Blue Velvet'' establishes a metaphorical [[Oedipus complex|Oedipal]] family—"the child", Jeffrey Beaumont and his "parents", Frank Booth and Dorothy Vallens - both through deliberate references to film noir.<ref name="Mulvey">{{cite book | title = Cult etherworlds and the Unconscious: Oedipus and ''Blue Velvet''", Fetishism And Curiosity 3 | first = Laura | last = Mulvey | year = 1996 | publisher = British Film Institute | location = Suffolk | pages = 137–154 | isbn = 978-0-671-64810-7}}</ref><ref name="Taylor, Winquist">{{cite book | title = Encyclopedia of Postmodernism | first = Victor E. | last = Taylor | year = 2001 | publisher = Taylor & Francis | page = 466 | isbn = 978-0-415-15294-5}}</ref> Michael Atkinson claims that the resulting violence in the film can be read as symbolic of domestic violence within real families.<ref name="Atkinson">{{cite book | title=Blue Velvet | last=Atkinson | first=Michael | author-link=Michael Atkinson (writer) | year=1997 | publisher=British Film Institute | location=London | isbn=978-0-85170-559-0}}</ref> He reads Jeffrey as an innocent youth who is both horrified by the violence inflicted by Frank and tempted by it as the means of possessing Dorothy for himself.<ref name="Atkinson"/><ref>{{cite book | title = American Cinema of the 1980s| first = Stephan | last = Prince| year = 2007 | publisher = Rutgers University Press | location = New Brunswick | pages = 160–167| isbn = 978-0-8135-4034-4}}</ref> Atkinson takes a [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] approach to the film, considering it to be an expression of the traumatised innocence which characterises Lynch's work.<ref name="Atkinson"/> He states, "Dorothy represents the sexual force of the mother [figure] because she is forbidden and because she becomes the object of the unhealthy, infantile impulses at work in Jeffrey's [[subconscious]]."<ref name="Atkinson"/>

===Symbolism===
Symbolism is used heavily in ''Blue Velvet''.<ref name="Atkinson"/> The most consistent symbolism in the film is an insect motif introduced at the end of the first scene, when the camera zooms in on a well-kept suburban lawn until it unearths a swarming underground nest of bugs. This is generally recognized as a metaphor for the seedy underworld that Jeffrey will soon discover under the surface of his own suburban paradise.<ref name="Atkinson"/> The severed ear he finds is being overrun by black [[ants]]. The bug motif is recurrent throughout the film, most notably in the bug-like [[Oxygen mask#Anesthesia oxygen masks|gas mask]] that Frank wears and Jeffrey's exterminator disguise.<ref name="Atkinson"/> One of Frank's accomplices is also consistently identified through the yellow jacket he wears, possibly referencing the name of a [[Yellowjacket|type of wasp]].<ref name="Atkinson"/> Finally, a [[American Robin|robin]] eating a bug on a fence becomes a topic of discussion in the last scene of the film.<ref name="Atkinson"/>

The severed ear that Jeffrey discovers is also a key symbolic element,<ref name="Atkinson"/> leading Jeffrey into danger. Indeed, just as Jeffrey's troubles begin, the audience is treated to a nightmarish sequence in which the camera zooms into the canal of the severed, decomposing ear. After the danger has subsided at the end the ear canal closeup is repeated, zooming out on a healthy and clean ear.<ref>{{Cite web|last=AnOther|date=June 27, 2011|title=Magnificent Film Obsession: The Ear in Blue Velvet|url=https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/1186/magnificent-film-obsession-the-ear-in-blue-velvet|access-date=January 9, 2022|website=AnOther|language=en}}</ref>