#benjamin horne

Twin Peaks : The Return Part 1 (2017)

My Log Has a Message for You

before i'd even seen it, 'fix your hearts or die' had become my prevailing belief.

and ben is one of - if not the worst - men in the show, second only to leland himself, maybe. yet, after his breakdown, it seems he truly does change. he stops doing bad things, mostly. the worst of it. he refuses to sleep with his married secretary in the return, something he never would've thought twice about. it seems he just manages his hotel and tries to watch out for his family.

so what do we do with that? the pain and wrong he committed is still there, the impact ripples over every teenage girl he slept with and everyone he fucked over. everyone who was abused by him. he should be in jail. or dead. but he's not. and he changed his heart.

From further conversation- of course this story neglects the experiences of indigenous women; it is after all a story that follows a case that the FBI- through Dale Cooper- deems serious enough to investigate. The story already barely touches on Ronette because she isn't wealthy enough. And we do see more of the girls at One-Eyed Jack's, who are all just as likely to be trafficked- and many more of them aren't white. Blackie's own murder is witnessed by the sheriff who lets it happen. Dale beats Nancy into the wall and never looks back. Josie. Josie.

It's tricky, because- i do think the writers were at times unthinkingly replicating norms of racism and classism. And I think that regardless of their intentions, Twin Peaks does illustrate the exact flaws and horror of law enforcement, and the white middle class they exist to "protect."

I still wish Hawk got to bring up the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous girls. I still wish Nancy would reappear in the story. I wish anyone cared that Blackie was murdered. I wish Jenny would reappear, that the kind working girl who warned Audrey would come back, that Josie wasn't doomed to the worst writing in the show.

These are all holes in the story; even if they are blind spots that are in Dale's vision, they are presences and absences that should be felt. To make clear that the only girls Dale seeks to find justice for are Laura and Audrey; the daughter of a lawyer, and the daughter of the richest man in town. And this says a lot about Dale, and the Sheriff's department, and the FBI, that these other girls exist, but are not even worth a backward glance.