From Scott Meslow's brilliant new book A Place Both Wonderful and Strange: The Extraordinary Untold History of Twin Peaks, here is a wonderfully told story about Denise Bryson, the trans person played by David Duchovny in Twin Peaks.

Note: the passages below contain certain spoilers.

Denise Bryson’s reputation precedes her. When Cooper learns that Bryson, his former partner in an Oakland drug bust, has been brought in as the DEA’s point person on the missing cocaine he’s accused of stealing, he’s delighted. Denise is “one of the finest minds in the DEA,” says Cooper. “Harry, we’re in very good hands.” But when Denise walks into the room, Cooper hardly recognizes her. When they’d worked together in Oakland, Denise—a trans woman—had not yet transitioned. Cooper, caught off-guard, calls her by her deadname. “It’s a long story, but actually, I prefer Denise, if you don’t mind,” says Denise, smiling. And to Twin Peaks’ eternal credit, Cooper’s response is, “Okay.” It would be inaccurate to say that Twin Peaks nailed trans representation when Denise was introduced in 1990, though its small-town characters are believably awkward in what you must assume is their first encounter with a trans person. In the scene that follows, Hawk declines to shake Denise’s outstretched hand, and Truman makes a crack under his breath about how the Great Northern, where Denise is staying, is in for a real surprise. But Cooper—recognized by then, by the audience, as the show’s paragon of moral rightness—is unquestioningly accepting of Denise’s identity. She hasn’t been in the room for thirty seconds before they’ve moved on to more important business: the particulars of Cooper’s drug case and the high quality of breakfast at the Great Northern.

To hear Duchovny tell it, he only landed the role because another, more famous actor turned it down. “I believe that my part was inspired by James Spader and written for him,” said Duchovny. “He wasn’t able to do it, and I was looking for any job I could get. It wasn’t like, ‘Gee, I’m a fan of Twin Peaks.’” Casting director Johanna Ray recalls multiple men arriving in drag for their audition to play Denise. Duchovny didn’t go that far, but he acknowledges his first attempt to play Denise was more over-the-top. “I must have auditioned much more stereotypically effeminate, and then when I put on the makeup and everything, it became clear to me that less was more,” he said.

After that initial introduction at the Sheriff’s Department, Twin Peaks largely does right by Denise. She explains that she realized she was a woman during an undercover investigation, when she discovered she felt more at home in women’s clothing. There’s a quick, heartfelt moment when Cooper—in the midst of a heated conversation about the investigation—accidentally deadnames her. Denise quickly corrects him; he apologizes, she says it’s okay, and they both move on. But even as the show acknowledges her transness, Denise is equally defined, as Cooper told Harry and Hawk, by her intelligence as a law enforcement agent. She sees through the unconvincing attempt to frame Cooper immediately, and masterminds the sting that leads to the downfall of Jean Renault. This leads to a sequence in which Denise appears in drag as a man. “You can call me Dennis,” she says, walking into the room dressed as a stereotypical businessman—not because of any social pressure, but because it’s a role she thinks might be useful in infiltrating Renault’s camp. Still, it’s Denise being a woman that saves the day; wearing the uniform of a Double R Diner waitress, Denise holds Renault’s attention just long enough to pass a gun to Cooper.

Denise appears for just one scene in Twin Peaks: The Return, but it’s one of the show’s most memorable—so much so that it’s routinely quoted by people who haven’t seen a frame of Twin Peaks. When Gordon Cole announces his intention to launch an investigation in Buckhorn, South Dakota, he needs to clear it with his superior officer: Denise Bryson, who has climbed the ladder to become the FBI’s chief of staff. It’s in this scene that Gordon Cole, played by Lynch himself, gets the last word on Denise—one that was almost instantly adopted as a rallying cry by the LGBTQ+ community and its supporters. “When you became Denise, I told all your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die,” says Gordon. “I said, ‘We’ve got to bring [Denise] back. And I think she’s the head of the FBI,’” says Mark Frost. “But I’ll give David the credit. He came up with ‘Fix your hearts or die.’ I’ve seen people carrying that poster at protests over the last few months. There are probably hundreds of tattoos.”

#TwinPeaks #TV #video #DavidLynch #MarkFrost #ScottMeslow

There were others, however, including Nikel Pallat, manager of hard-leftist polemical rockers Ton Steine Scherben, who regarded Kaiser as a typical have-it-both-ways liberal bullshitter. This schism came to a head in a televised debate involving the pair on a WDR talkshow in 1971, whose discussion went under the heading ‘Pop & Co – Die “andere” Musik zwischen Protest und Markt’ (‘Pop & Co. – The “Other” Music between Protest and Marketplace’), which can be viewed on YouTube. Its period quaintness lies not just in the length of the hair of the participants, the studio smoking or the orangeness of Kaiser’s jumper, which merely to look at is to overdose on Vitamin C. It’s in the admirably earnest accommodation of those discussing the feasibility and possibility of the overthrow of capitalism through rock music. As Kaiser seeks to dampen this far-left yearning, the debate begins to heat up. Translated, the action runs as follows.

‘Societal change will come in an evolutionary process,’ says Kaiser. ‘That isn’t something that’ll happen tomorrow, but a development that will take probably a hundred years.’ He points out that immediate change was the illusion of the people who marched in the 1960s, important though these protests were. Pallat angrily dismisses this Fabian talk of slow, evolutionary progress, suggesting that it amounts to support for continued oppression.

‘You are working for the oppressor, not against the oppressor. Do you realise that?’ Kaiser defends himself, saying that one has to understand how the media work. ‘Who are you working for?’ retorts Pallat, sharply.

‘You cannot dispute that you are working for the capitalist.’ ‘Who do you represent here?’ comes back Kaiser, with equal sharpness. ‘Don’t you think the TV isn’t also a capitalist organ?’ (Here the moderator intervenes to point out that Kaiser isn’t speaking on behalf of TV.)

It’s all too much for Pallat. ‘Here we have TV making this shit-liberal programme we’re having an opportunity to go on about anti-materialism – socialism … we shouldn’t speak about evolution but revolution, yeah? And objectively nothing is changing about oppression. TV is a tool of oppression by general society. And that’s why it is completely obvious that if something should still happen, then one has to stand against the oppressor and not be neutral … and that’s why I am going to destroy this table now.’

Whereupon, true to his word, he produces from his inside jacket pocket an axe and, snarling and swearing, commences to bash the table as the rest of the panellists edge away in consternation. It is not so much the table towards which he bears a grudge but its symbolic role as polite vortex of sedentary, liberal consensus. Once he has completed his attempted assault on the offending piece of furniture, which proves remarkably resistant to his ferocious efforts, he says, ‘So, let’s continue our discussion.’ No one else, however, is inclined to do so.

Taking full advantage of the freedom temporarily afforded him by his axe to do as he pleases, he gathers up the microphones abandoned on what’s left of the table and stuffs them into his pockets, announcing that he is commandeering them for the oppressed. ‘I need the microphones for the young people who are sitting in jail.’

The resilience of the table is a metaphor of sorts for the resilience of a certain leftist strain of German tolerance and liberality at that time, whose broadmindedness and reasonableness was capable of withstanding even axe attack. The very fact that Pallat had an axe about his person in the studio suggests to the cynical an element of premeditation to his outburst. Nonetheless, as insurrectionary television goes, it rather puts the Sex Pistols and Bill Grundy in the shade.

Alongside Can and Faust, Einstürzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld also listed Ton Steine Scherben as one of the seventies German groups he most admired. On the strength of this performance, it’s not hard to see why. It shows also the depth of feeling and revolutionary commitment that had seized the hearts and minds of the more radical young Germans, as well as Kaiser’s ability to put people’s backs up.

#music #destruction #Germany #video #politics #BlixaBargeld #EinsturzendeNeubauten

I've recently seen 'Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere', the first documentary that Theroux has made for Netflix.

I wish the documentary were in-depth; even though it focused on Theroux's usual way of interviewing people—calmly asking questions, simply pointing out inconsistencies in people's stories—there's a lot of show-and-tell of manosphere influencers but little to show how and why they're wrong.

Don't get me wrong: these influencers are often wrong, always in how their xenophobia (real or manufactured for money) shows, for example, through sexism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

I mean, I think the documentary would have been better made if more time were spent on not just following the influencers or asking them slight questions but rather speaking with people who research and know how the manosphere influences not only their target audiences (young boys who become older boys with money and are allowed to vote) but the results of their behaviour on others.

This documentary scantily passed victims. I'd like to have heard interviews with women, especially those who did make it into the documentary.

Unfortunately, even though Theroux hits some good points, I think it's a mistake for this documentary to mostly just pass influencer content through the Netflix funnel rather than to analyse, question, research the field, and ultimately present a better documentary.

#video #sexism #islamophobia #homophobia #xenophobia #documentary

A short while back, MTV—a.k.a. MTV Music—stopped broadcasting. Their website went fairly dead as well. The music video phenomenon didn't start with MTV but without MTV, it would have gone nowhere.

Now, a developer has taken it upon themselves to try and save the feeling that MTV was. Enter MTV Rewind.

What's saved:

• 120 Minutes (6,063 videos): The holy grail of alternative rock and shoegaze.
• Headbangers Ball (1,604 videos): A shrine to thrash and heavy metal.
• Yo! MTV Raps (348 videos): The golden age of hip-hop, preserved.
• MTV Unplugged (343 videos): Stripped-back intimacy from before auto-tune ruled the charts.
• Club MTV (232 videos): For the techno and house heads.

There are also decade-specific buckets—ranging from the experimental MTV 70s (268 videos) to the massive MTV 2020s (8,050 videos)—proving that the music video format isn’t dead, it just lost its home.

Here's an embedded example of MTV Rewind:

For more information about the project, see this Midnight Rebels post.

#music #video