The tonic of the sonic

pp. 142-160

in: Simon Bayly, A pathognomy of performance, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

In the opening slow-motion sequence of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, the hyperreal, innocence of suburban America is drenched in an intense white light, only to be superseded by the darkness, mystery and evil of an entirely different world beneath. The film manages the transition between these two realms via the ear: the protagonist discovers a severed ear in a grassy patch of derelict land; the camera descends upon the ear and then into it, twisting down the coils and convolutions of that most complex of organs, whose anatomy is so difficult to visualize and, relative to the eye, so poorly understood.