the message is that if you want peace and order in your community, you have to identify subversive elements like frank booth and literally kill them. these elements exist in a realm of evil which is beyond reason, and will always serve to corrode the safety and well-being of your people. the only possible response is to stop being a scared little boy (the main character) and to learn to confront and KILL evil. just shoot it dead.
this is not a subtle theme at all. lynch makes it very clear over and over again what he means. eg, the kid's initial ruse to get into the lady's apartment was to pose as an exterminator. someone who eliminates pests and vermin. but he didn't do the job, and he was punished for his fraudulent act. his redemption didn't arrive until he corrected the fraud and killed the pests in real life. at that point, he became an honorable guardian of his town, and got the girl as a reward.
my interpretation is that all of these things refer to perversions of the natural order. frank booth is enacting an incest scenario with a woman whose actual family he has kidnapped and alienated from her. booth has no fixed or transcendent identity; he switches between 'daddy' and 'baby' in a disordered frenzy which he fuels using drugs and alcohol. he literally replaces the natural air of his environment with a different formula in order to carry out violations of nature.
Date: December 27th, 2020 9:46 PM Author: Mischievous ebony patrolman queen of the night
good analysis.
i agree with you re: BV. ultimately, however, i have lost patience with esoteric moral commentaries, which seem distracting, energy-diverting, and counter-revolutionary in effect.
blue velvet's worldview seems fairly direct. its moral messaging is interesting because it depicts booth and his sick little cabal as a kind of emergent phenomenon. ie, like any species of parasite, their genesis is a kind of natural function, and hence, the role of the exterminator is one that good men must always be willing to assume.
birds in the film come up a few times, such as when the girl describes her dream. they are depicted as spiritual messengers. they also kill and eat pests, and this is shown as a useful service which also serves a spiritual role.
the official authorities in the film are compromised from the inside, and don't actually show up until the main threat is dead. the girl's father isn't exactly corrupt, but he is ineffective, and he is fundamentally afraid to take action. that's another part of the film's moral framing - the work of eliminating evil can't just be outsourced to agencies like 'the police,' since evil can infiltrate those agencies. responsibility for extirpating evil sometimes falls upon the individual.
i'd have to re-watch it first. lynch's films are very detailed and have a lot of particular symbols and events with narrative significance. i saw BV within the past week, so i can still recall a lot of those details.