The Owls Are Not What They See
Twin Peaks was one of the most popular shows on television during its first season, aired in 1990. The show was based in small town America, and was easily related to by young and middle aged viewers. The series begins with the murder of an American icon, the Homecoming queen Laura Palmer. The entire series spawned from the single image of a young beautiful girl’s dead body that washed up on the shore. This image led to others similar to it- the violence and contempt towards women. The women of Twin Peaks all seemed to have something in common, where they were all either murdered, portrayed as weak, deceptive, and/or abused by the male characters. The dangers that stem from showing ...
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whether he would prefer to believe that BOB worked through Leland or ‘that a man would rape and murder his own daughter.’ At this moment Twin Peaks articulates a revision of the seduction theory. Little girls are not abused by their fathers; if they meet an unhappy end, the reason must be sought outside the family circle” (Desmet 98). This reinforces societies urge not to directly face its problems, but rather turn away in a convenient manner. Twin Peaks expresses this urge by hiding Leland’s identity as the rapist/murder so well, until it is finally showed to the audience when Leland brutally murders his niece Maddy. Could it be that the reason it is impossible to identify Leland as the killer, is because the viewer does not want to? The audience knows that Leland is capable of murder after he is seen murdering Jacques Renault, but they still do not want to believe that Leland would kill his daughter.
There are clues, however, which do point the blame ...
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Also, each of the women who die in the series, are at one time or another put into sexual situations, turning the women into objects (or in some aspects, ‘whores’) used only for sexual purposes, which, in the male conscious, removes any responsibility to see them as ‘real’ people. “In a society as riddled with domestic violence as ours, it is risky business to feed a mass audience the idea that the girl next door might be a whore, that the seductive adolescent perhaps wants a real man to hurt her” (George 115). The consequences for the visions that Twin Peaks portrays is that it is acceptable for men to sexual abuse, hurt or even murder women, ...
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"The Owls Are Not What They See." Essayworld.com. March 7, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Owls-Not-What-They-See/4176.
"The Owls Are Not What They See." Essayworld.com. March 7, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Owls-Not-What-They-See/4176.
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