BLUE VELVET: Why Desire Goes Wrong

David Lynch’s troubling and sexually violent 1986 film Blue Velvet reveals the corruption and dark impulses under what seems to be a white picket fence kind of purity and innocence. In Lynch’s signature style, this jolting movie strips bare the confusing urges and compulsions people live with related to desire, need, and what is or is not love. Jeffrey, essentially capable of love, gets drawn into the web of a broken woman named Dorothy. For what reason, we can only surmise. But, conjecturing can lead us to what drives curiosity and confused desire. Frank, on the other hand, knows nothing about love. More broken than Dorothy and likely traumatized by love as a child, Frank is perverse and violent due to his rejection of any real emotional need (“Don’t Look at Me.”) So, how does Blue Velvet help us understand why desire goes (terribly) wrong?  

Turning Away from Real, Safe Love

What happens when an innocent boy finds a severed ear? And how does this lead to the uncovering of confused desires and an entanglement in perverse sexual violence? Is it his essentially kind, helpful, and empathetic nature? Or is he driven by sexual curiosity and raw, desires? Both enter into how Jeffrey Beaumont’s (Kyle MacLachlan) innocence is corrupted.

Jeffrey, a young college student, barely a man, returns home to seemingly idyllic Lumberton, North Carolina, to care for his ill father. Yet, nothing is as perfect as it appears. Like any human psyche, Lumberton (and Jeffrey) teem with emotions, yearnings, and fantasies in Blue Velvet.

But what does an ear have to do with it? An ear is for hearing and learning to listen. That includes listening clearly to your desires and needs and learning not to be led astray into dangerous places.

Jeffrey is led astray, and why that is – is important to explore. It happens to the least likely when something unconscious pulls you away from what is safe and sane. Jeffrey meets Sandy (Laura Dern), Detective Williams’s daughter. She’s only a bit younger, an obvious match for him.

They are friends and team up to discover where the mysterious ear came from (even if they would be better off leaving it to her Detective father). They support and care about each other. In other words, unlike Frank (Dennis Hopper) or Dorothy, Sandy and Jeffrey “have each other’s back.”

But. Jeffrey betrays Sandy by being drawn into Dorothy’s neediness, confusion, and distress.

Why does that happen in Blue Velvet?

Fear of Loss & Becoming A Savior

Jeffrey is naïve and curious. But that isn’t the whole story; it’s never as simple as that. He wants some power that he doesn’t have. Power over what? Loss, probably, with his dad so close to dying, which is why Jeffrey is now home. So, let’s put Jeffrey’s involvement with Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) into the context of his current situation and likely his past.

We know little about Jeffrey’s childhood. We do know he grew up in this seemingly unspoiled town without exposure to or knowledge of its rough, corrupt, violent underbelly. Not until now.

Not until the discovery of “the ear.” All young men and women are curious about sex, have feelings of lust, and can be overtaken by them. Jeffrey finds himself consumed by a curiosity about the beautiful, wistful, frightened singer Dorothy Vallens. Why? How’s she connected to the ear?

Jeffrey (and Sandy) wants to find out. He pretends to work for a pesticide company and enters Dorothy’s apartment to snoop. When he hears her come in, he hides in her closet, scared of being found. Scared that his curiosity, his impulse to invade forbidden spaces, will be discovered. He’s a good boy, likely a boy afraid of loss, a boy who feels he must be a savior.

But, again, why?

Would that give him power over sudden loss? Like his dad’s stroke? Jeffrey has no idea what he’s getting into. Dorothy’s no fragile flower; as sadistically angry (it turns out) as her captor, Frank.

She drags Jeffrey out of the closet. Forces him to strip naked. To humiliate him. She forces him to beat her and have sadomasochistic sex. (Sadomasochism is a dance between abuser and victim.)

Dorothy’s no longer “the victim.” Who’s in control? Blue Velvet says something about that.

Obsession & Possessive Control in Blue Velvet

With Jeffrey, Dorothy chooses to be beaten. If she “wants it” (or, sadly, believes she deserves it), she’s in control and not the helpless victim she’s become in Frank’s world. In choosing it, Dorothy isn’t the victim any longer. She has (in her mind) triumphed over her trauma. Dorothy turns the tables on her terror (at least for the moment.) She victimizes someone else, an “innocent” Jeffrey.

Jeffrey, too, rather than being the victim of a frighteningly dangerous situation he doesn’t know the extent of, is drawn into a confused desire to be her lover (even with abuse) and, ultimately, savior.

He becomes obsessed with Dorothy and can’t get enough. She is, perhaps, an unconscious version of his helplessness in the face of love situations he hasn’t yet been able to control. Maybe he sees Dorothy, saving her, as his ticket out of this powerlessness. A way to feel strong, and not so weak.

Sandy, the obvious choice, has a boyfriend she’s not quite broken up with yet. Jeffrey likely doesn’t trust her love. This puts him in another (helpless) situation that doesn’t feel safe. It’s an easy guess that Jeffrey hasn’t found love to be secure or reliable in the past. So, he turns away (for a while) from Sandy, in the face of a (seductive) trapped woman (he identifies with).

Dorothy (certainly) hasn’t been lucky in love. Her husband (probably a cruel man, too) was abducted by Frank, along with her small son, and now she’s Frank’s sexual slave.

Frank’s obsessed with Dorothy – her voice, beauty, the sad longing in Blue Velvet, the song she sings. He must have her, possess her, control her, make her his; steal her from her husband.

He’s such a horriblly twisted and troubled man that any normal desire (his, isn’t) is humiliation.

Fear of Humiliation (“Don’t Look at Me”)

Frank has used whatever means he has at his disposal to possess Dorothy. Violence. Rape. Drugs for his perverse pleasure. His is satisfaction at the sadomasochistic expense of anyone else. And, his sadomasochism, as we see, is a defiance against humiliation. “Don’t Look at Me,” he demands.

Let’s be clear. There’s no defense or excuse for violence. But Frank’s behavior can be understood. Frank will not be humiliated. He will not be vulnerable. Vulnerability to a man like Frank equals weakness. He won’t tolerate it. Violence equals “strength.” Being looked at, seen for any need, humiliates Frank. He denies need. Forces “weakness” into others. Humiliates them.

Frank is an extreme, sadistic, and perverse example of the fear that many traumatized people live with. Of vulnerability, feelings of weakness or helplessness, being seen (if you live with self-hate). Frank will be the abuser and not the abused. Into his victims, he forces his humiliated feelings.

“Don’t look at me” “I will not be humiliated for my need,” defies the trauma that any need for love brings in early life. This comes from “love” that couldn’t be and wasn’t trusted. From terrible humiliations at the hands of parents, caretakers, or life events that couldn’t be controlled.

It comes from a disbelief in love. Blue Velvet shows us that.

Believing in Love (or not?)

Frank can’t believe in love. Love requires openness and vulnerability. And, Frank controls any such desire. He mistakes his possessive abuse for the “love” of the beautiful Dorothy Vallens. He’s on the far end of the narcissistic, sociopathic scale, tipping the balance off the charts by projecting his fears into others. Frank doesn’t survive. Jeffrey, who’s capable of caring, makes sure of that.

Sure, Jeffrey lost his way, entranced by confused desire, curiosity about “the ear,” and his wish to help. But he learned to listen to his heart. It was always with Sandy. Jeffrey stayed open. He never lost contact with his emotional needs or empathy for others. Dorothy, as damaged as she is and was (by something that traumatized her early, before Frank) always loved her child.

Jeffrey and Sandy save Dorothy and reunite her with her son. Love survives. The others are dead.

Sandy is the epitome of a belief in love. Is hers an innocent kind of love? Maybe. She’s young. Pure, yes. But there’s nothing wrong with that. She isn’t seduced away from her belief or need.

Sandy tells Jeffrey: “The robins will come and when they do, love will prevail.” Sandy has no reason not to believe in love. But this isn’t easy for some. Hers was a good enough childhood.

If you can’t trust love, for one of the many reasons that can traumatize children (abuse, terror, loss, abandonment), there’s help available so you don’t have to shut yourself down and lose hope.  

Stay open. Look for support. The robins do come. See, they did for Jeffrey in the end. They’re always there if you can see them.

Blue Velvet offers us that hope.