Two Lip Synchs: Blue Velvet's "In Dreams," and Mullholland Dr.'s Club Silencio

September 09, 2009

Two of the best scenes from David Lynch films are lip synch scenes, where someone lip synchs the words to a romantic song. I am thinking of the scene in Blue Velvet where a drug dealer called Ben lip synchs to "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison, and the "Club Silencio" scene in Mullholland Dr. where a female singer lip synchs to another Roy Orbison song in Spanish (?).

As a structuralist the similarity between the scenes turns me on! What are the similarities and differences?

Similarities and Differences.

Two major characters are watching the lip synch being performed. That there are two viewers is more apparent in MD than BV. In Mullholland Dr. The two lead females watch the lip synch from adjacent seats in the theatre. In Blue Velvet, the two male leads, Frank (Dennis Hopper) and Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) are both watching the lip synch, but it is more a case that Frank is watching the lip synch, while being watched by Jeffrey.

In both there is something stage like about where the lip synch takes places. In MD this is apparent. In BV, the camera pans out to reveal a stage-like opening bounded by curtains.

In both there is a square character (Kyle, Betty) and a full blooded character (Frank, Rita) watching, though in BV the full blooded character is up there on or next to the stage.

The act of lip synching, the act of a visual presence pretending and appearing to the source of sounds which in fact come from elsewhere, is shared between the two scenes. The lip synching is emphasised more in MD. The Emcee in MD really makes it clear that Club Silencio is a "lip synch stage", emphasising that we are hearing a lot of instruments, imagining them to be there, but that the sound is not bound up with the visuals that they are imagining to be on stage, or are seeing on stage, even before the song, with the white haired trumpeter that trumpet-synchs before fully-revealing that he is not the source of the trumpet sounds. In BV we could be forgiven for thinking that the lip synch is not important, that Frank is just moved by the song, but in MD the lip synching is given fuller, central importance. "It is an illusion."

In MD the visuals are even an illusion - the emcee, magician(?), in MD disappears.

The viewers are very moved. Or at least Frank is moved in BV. From memory I thought that Rita was especially moved in BD but it seems that both women were moved.

The song in either case is romantic.

The lip synching is made apparent in both, by the removal of the music in BV and by the feinting of the singer (and stopping the pretence by the trumpeter) in MD.

In BV, there is a double lip synch. Frank, moved, lip synchs the words being lip synched by Ben the suave drug dealer.

Well, my take...

Lacanianly speaking, it is the intersection of the symbolic and imaginary that allows us to think that we exist, to pull ourselves out of, to cut ourselves out of, the real. (The real in Lacan is confusing to me: is it the chaotic nothing fog, or is it the mundane/niave, thing-populated, real?)

Ventriloquism (see my youtube video on ventriloquism) is like this scene. A puppet that seems to speak, with a voice thrown from elsewhere.

When we watch TV, when we watch a movie, we see the sounds coming from the speaker in the screen. That is a given. We delude ourselves when watching films. But I think that we delude ourselves all the time. There is never a situation in which my voice comes from my image. There is always a lip synch.

This realisationi is love almost destroyting. IN MD it is enough to force Rita to disappear forever.