in my own Mind

« Maybe that’s all Bob is. The evil that men do. Maybe it’s doesn’t matter what it’s called. »

Like probably all of you, I am a big fan of Twin Peaks.  I watched the first season with the happiness of finding a new piece of media to obsess over. Everything in Twin Peaks seemed so true and new to me. I was delightedly immersing myself into David Lynch’s weird world.

But something so much darker and sad seemed to hide behind the face of this already  sad and dark story.

In season 2, Cooper read the ultra secret diary of Laura Palmer. It’s written that Bob have molested her during her childhood and adolescence.

But Leland say it himself, he’s been Bob since he was himself a child. Bob as always been there so he was always Bob. In the movie we can clearly see that the relationship between Laura and Leland is very strange. Laura always seem uncomfortable around him and he is obsessed by her secret life and boyfriends. He read her secret diary and even destroy page that are about him/Bob. He daydream about her in his sexual rapport with Theresa and about how they look alike. He sees her everywhere.

There is a scene in the same movie where Bob come to agress Laura during the night in her room. When she wake up she see Bob at first and then the face of her dad. Is Bob Leland or Leland is Bob ? What I mean by that is that when Bob « take control » of Leland does is appearance really change to take the form of Bob ?

I don’t think so. Bob is a metaphor to Laura that she uses to separate everything her father did to her without actually associating it with him as a trauma response.

Albert says: «  Maybe that’s all Bob is. The evil that men do. Maybe it doesn’t matter what he is called. »

The apparence of Bob is only an image. Bob in reality is representing the evilness of the human race and the evilness in Leland. That’s  why he reflect in the mirror, he is the true side of Leland.

But then what does Sarah Palmer see at the end of the couch ? The ghost of the incest in her family that she never noticed or never wanted to notice before the death of her daughter ?

She say clearly in her deposition to the police that she saw a man with long white hair and an horrible smile. Maybe all she see it’s the true nature of her husband she denied for so long. Or maybe it’s the effect of the drug her husband gave to her to blind her every night.

In this specific scene of the movie where Leland make her drink a glass of milk with sedatives before bed, she seem to accept it without finding it strange. She just seem sad. Did she knew about the real nature of Leland ? Even after his death she never seem surprised of the guiltiness of Leland, she only seem sad of losing both her daughter and husband. And she only relieved when Cooper tell her that Leland « apologised » to Laura in his last moment.

Leland is so obsessed with Laura that he kills Maddy too when she went to leave the house and leave him. Like James he is amazed in the ressemblance of the two girls. The couple try to replace Laura with Maddy. But when she want to leave to go back to her own life and not Laura’s he brutally murder her. He touch her in the same way he done with Laura cause in his mind it’s the same person.

In the movie and series it shown that Bob only appear a few times in Leland life. Then he kill Theresa and after Laura and then Maddy. But after the death of Laura, Bob is omnipresent in his life. He is there everywhere and he even manifest himself when Donna come to see Leland after Maddy death.

He hold Donna against her consent even tho he know she is conscient of the situation.

But at these moment the movie lie to us. We can clearly see that Leland as always been strange with Laura and all her friends. Bob as always been there in the life of Leland. And it’s doesn’t just lie to us, the show lie to himself. Cooper says it to Harry : « Is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter ? ».

Nobody want to believe that and they prefer to invent something even more sordid. I’m not saying that Bob and all this isn’t real, I’m saying that it’s a way for everyone to cope over a crime so awful committed by a close member of their community.

But why Leland ?

Cooper say to Sarah after Leland death: « There’s thing dark and heinous in this world. Things too horrible to tell our children’s . And your husband was a victim to one of these long ago when he was innocent and naive. »

I think Leland was molested too as a child by a man name « Robert » who was a friend of his parents. The man that lived in the all White House near his own house. He explain himself to Cooper that he was himself just a child. That during the night in his dream he met Bob. Leland say« he wanted to play and he opened me. I invited him. He came inside of me. … When he was gone I couldn’t remember. He made me do things terrible. »

The terrible things have a double meaning. The man molested him by making him do terrible things and the trauma pushed him to do the same to his daughter. (I’m not trying to normalise it, but it can be the comportement of victim who doesn’t heal of what happened to them. And they can replicate these acts on they own children’s or others.)

It’s like if Robert passed him the « Bob » by breaking his life and childhood. Leland even call himself « Robertson ». The son of Robert, the man who molested him. Like a kind of disciple.

He will try to pass it again to Laura but she will prefer to die to break the cycle. She doesn’t want to become like her father or to suffer all her life so she chose death. She knew and she wrote it in her diary: « 23 February, tonight is the night that I die. I know I have to, cause it’s the only way to keep Bob away from me. The only way to tear him of from the inside. I know he wants me, I can feel his fire. But if I die he can’t hurt me anymore. »

Twin Peaks is the sad story of a girl everyone could helped but where no one did. The entire show of Twin Peaks  turn around the fact that everybody knew her and talk her but nobody understood.

Not her own mother that knew something was going own, or her psychiatrist, or her best friend or even Harold that read her whole journal before she died. James say it himself that sometimes Laura said « weird » things but he chose to ignore it. Bobby only realise it the day she dead and buried.

They all knew something was gonna happen and the only one that wanted to do something about it was Cooper in his office after the death of Theresa Banks. The only one that didn’t knew her. He is the only one she tell about her father in the scene of the red curtain cause he his the only one to no desire her in a way. Cooper treat her the same way he treat Audrey. Like a teenager and a friend. He is here to help her get away from the lodge and to free her mind. But he cannot change the past.

Laura Palmer is a girl who died of all the men surrounding her. She hoped a miracle or that one day the sadness would end but nothing came.

« The angels wouldn’t help you, because they where all gone away. »

Goodbye Laura Palmer, we hardly knew you