TALES OF LOHR: TO THE VICTORS GO...
Thoughts on the dubious detriments of the spoiler; plus, "Factory Roll Call" is Nico's mirror
For the aesthetically inclined, the goals and ambitions that accompany the turning of a new year frequently include plans to finally catch up with that book / film / album / TV series you’ve been planning to cross off your personal “To Be Consumed” list. And so, my 2023 has kicked off with my first-ever plunge into the mythic universe of Twin Peaks, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s cult-worshipped ABC series that rose like Icarus from the staid landscape of dramatic television circa 1990, only to flame out after a mere 30 episodes. This truncated initial run was followed by a prequel theatrical film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), which met with largely hostile reviews only to achieve its own exalted cult status in recent years, and then, twenty-five years later, by the eighteen-episode Showtime miniseries Twin Peaks: The Return, hailed by many as a landmark in television (and controversially declared, despite its TV origins, the best film of 2017 by Cahiers du Cinéma). Despite being an ever-deepening admirer of Lynch’s work, somehow, I had never before taken in this series. But I have long been aware of its considerable pop-culture presence. I still recall Lynch gracing the cover of the first-ever print edition of Entertainment Weekly, and how “Who killed Laura Palmer?” became the “Who shot J.R.?” of a new TV generation.
But here’s the thing:
I already know who killed Laura Palmer.
The passage of three decades’ time, combined with my generally omnivorous attention to all manner of art, media, and culture, informed me quite some time ago that Laura was murdered by her own father, Leland Palmer, in the grip of a demonic entity known only as BOB. This being has been glimpsed twice on the episodes I have thus far seen, but as these appearances explains nothing about him, I only know the identity of this glowering gray-maned lunatic because of my foreknowledge of the series’ payoffs.
All of this provokes the inevitable question: Since I already know who killed Laura Palmer, is it even worth it for me to spend the considerable amount of time it will take for Lynch, Frost, et al. to show me who killed her?
The answer to that question all depends on one’s perspective regarding the necessity of spoiler avoidance to the effective consumption of cinema, television, and literature.
Among certain segments of the popular culture-centered cybersphere, it has become a virtual article of faith that the revealing of plot twists, narrative reversals, and ultimate payoffs is tantamount to a mortal sin. This issue has been exacerbated by the rise of streaming and on-demand viewership, which has altered the viewing experience from earlier everyone-watches-at-the-same-time paradigms (such as it was during the initial run of Twin Peaks) to a splintered, spread-out cycle where people find themselves catching up with the latest episodes of their favorite series in wildly varying frames and spans of time. This makes it almost impossible, despite shared fandoms, for one to be sure if another viewer or reader has reached the same milestones on the road to the story’s conclusion as another has. And this has given rise to the metaphorical criminalization of the spoiler within numerous circles of fandom.
This is, at base, an understandable impulse. If one has become emotionally invested in the spinning out of a particular tale, it is generally preferable to receive the surprises said story has to impart from the storytellers themselves, rather than from secondhand recountings by fellow fans. But the ascension of the online Spoiler Inquisition has brought with it a few curious wrinkles that, to me at least, muddy the waters surrounding the issue.
First, and to my perception most egregious, is the seeming belief among the most militant anti-spoiler consumers that advance knowledge of any aspect of a piece of art or media constitutes a spoiler, and is not to be countenanced. One could understand, for instance, a person being upset at being told the fate of Prince Joffrey in Game of Thrones, or the identity of Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects. But if someone can’t even get the sentence, “Hey, I saw the new Star Wars movie” out of their mouth before you’re barking at them to refrain from spoiling the film, you’re putting pre-emptive pressure on any possibility of connecting with a fellow-feeling media consumer. I once had someone get upset at me for “spoiling” a film for them because I had told them, with no additional details, that I had seen the film in question, and that I thought it was good. Someone’s opinion of a film, if it comes down to nothing more nuanced than “I liked it” or “I disliked it,” is not a shattering narrative revelation. It in fact reveals nothing, save for the taste of the person making the comment.
It is also intriguing to me that much of the most intense anti-spoiler sentiment is fixated not on the ultimate resolution of narratives, but instead on more granular details of character beats, relationship dynamics, and the like. An obvious example of this is the intensely guarded nature of post-credit sequences in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all of which, by default, occur after the principal action of the films they post-script has been resolved. I believe this microcosmic nitpicking over intra-narrative spoilers is largely predicated on two realities of the consumption of popular contemporary filmed media.
First of all, this micro-focus takes on an inflated importance to distract anti-spoilers from the truth that, on a macro level, the films they consume offer nothing in the way of surprise. Of course the Avengers are going to defeat the would-be world-conquering supervillain in the final reel. Of course the Rebels are going to triumph against the Galactic Empire. And you can pack as many relationship betrayals and convenient cases of amnesia as you want into the latest Fast & Furious film. It does nothing to change the fundamental fact that Dominic and Family are going to save the day.
The fact that all of the films cited above are part of long-running franchises gets to the other truth of spoiler-foe-friendly media: Franchises like these, and serialized television as a whole, are constructed around super-narratives that, despite the sameness of the individual episodes’ payoffs, are not meant to be concluded. Therefore, the attaching of outsized importance to the potential spoiling of minutiae creates a sense of stakes in a story structure that is calculated to deny definitive conclusion.
I realize, of course, that my framing of these questions may make me seem like an unbearable pedant, not to mention a foe of franchise media in general. But it is merely meant as a prelude to my ultimate point, which is that film and television viewers would be able to enjoy their chosen favorites with far less angst and anxiety, merely through the embracing of a critical concept best articulated by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert. Of course, Ebert’s own relationship to genre and franchise cinema could be checkered (mention his name to a fan of ‘80s slasher cinema, for instance, and prepare to get an excoriating earful), but he could also be an unapologetic champion of such pictures, if they properly served this key edict:
“It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”
In other words, the anti-spoiler crusade is underestimating the potentialities of filmed media by reframing said media as merely a delivery system for narrative information. Ironically, these are largely the same fandom contingents who watch the same films and series over and over again, despite the fact that, as their own professed philosophies would have it, such an activity is futile because they already know how the story turns out. But if they’re honest with themselves, they will concede that it’s not the story of Star Wars they love: It’s the relationships between the characters and the immersive aspects of George Lucas’s universe that’s really pressing their buttons. When the talk about their passion for the MCU, it’s not the third-act reveals of Guardians of the Galaxy about which they enthuse. It’s the look-at-me bravado of Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark; the voluptuous world-building of the Black Panther films; the twisting, vertiginous ingenuity of Doctor Strange’s magic-FX set pieces. It’s these extra-narrative elements that season the story stew, give it warmth and vigor and impact, that make the story worth following in the first place. The story, in truth, is more of a delivery system for these aspects of cinema, and the effects they produce in those who love them.
The literary genre of detective fiction offers near-Platonic representations of these differing perspectives on storytelling. For example, the typical Agatha Christie whodunit is an ideal example of a work for which spoilers should be assiduously avoided…because, I would argue, Christie’s writing style and characterizations are not rich enough on their own to sustain the stories without the element of surprise her standard narrative structure affords. It’s the novel as jigsaw puzzle: Once you’ve filled in the pieces and seen the whole picture, the exercise really doesn’t bear repeating. But when it comes to a mystery scribe like Patricia Highsmith or Raymond Chandler, the piecing together of the plot takes a welcome back seat to the multi-faceted psychologies of their protagonists, the textured atmospherics of their milieux, and the probing intricacies of their tales’ philosophical underpinnings. That is why Chandler could craft novels that, in the case of The Big Sleep, barely allow one to coherently connect the narrative dots, but are still widely regarded as high benchmarks of their genre. Because Chandler uses a story to bring you people and purpose, a world and a worldview. The payoff is, in many ways, where we came in.
That is why I am thus far enjoying my visit to Twin Peaks, even though I already know the sordid, despairing destination to which this journey will eventually lead me. In fact, I consider it a blessing that I don’t have to preoccupy myself with deducing the identity of Laura Palmer’s killer. All the more time to savor Angelo Badalamenti’s singularly evocative musical score, Kyle McLachlan’s high-comedy take on G-man doggedness, Sherilyn Fenn’s ode-worthy beauty, and the sheer, frothing madness of a show that needs a Black Lodge, and needs to need it in that way. Sure, Twin Peaks is a whodunit. But at heart, it’s the howdunit. So it is for all art that truly endures.
FACTORY ROLL CALL
NICO (1938-1988)
Born Christa Päffgen in Hitler’s Germany, Nico’s challenging childhood included the wartime death of her father (variously attributed to suicide, death in combat, or concentration-camp interment) and an alleged rape at the age of 15 by an American Air Force sergeant during the postwar U.S. occupation. She began to take small modeling jobs, and at the age of 16 was given the name “Nico” by photographer Herbert Tobias. Her modeling career began to take off with spreads featured in Vogue, Camera, Elle, and other important international fashion publications.
In 1959, Nico was cast in a small but pivotal role in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, which garnered her even more widespread attention. She also began to seriously explore her interest in singing, her husky, heavily accented style first appearing on a recording of a Serge Gainsbourg-composed title track for the 1963 film Strip-Tease, in which she also appeared. In the mid-1960s, Nico began associations with Rolling Stones founding member Brian Jones, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page (who produced her first single, “I’m Not Sayin’”), and Bob Dylan, who would write for her the song “I’ll Keep It With Mine.” This period also marked Nico’s brief but intense romance with French actor Alain Delon. She would bear his offspring, a son named Ari, but until the end of his life, Delon disavowed his paternity.
It was Brian Jones who introduced Nico to Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, during a visit the Pop artist and his increasingly influential collaborator paid to Paris in 1965. Moving to New York, Nico soon became a Factory regular and appeared in numerous Warhol films, including The Closet, I, A Man, The Chelsea Girls (in which a striking color solo reel of her shares the final sequence with Ondine’s black-and-white rant on the right-hand side of the frame), a number of reels of ****, and 11 Screen Tests.
At the instigation of Morrissey and Warhol, who felt the band needed a dash of visual elegance to galvanize their seedy onstage demeanor, Nico was incorporated into the Velvet Underground, whom Warhol had started managing around the time of Nico’s arrival in New York. Principal Velvets songwriter Lou Reed was initially opposed to Nico’s working with the group, but ultimately allowed her to take lead vocals on three songs on the band’s debut album: “Femme Fatale,” “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” and the mesmerizing “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” Nico would join the band onstage during their regular Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia shows, and she appeared with them during their ill-fated West Coast sojourn in 1966. That same year, Nico began to perform solo sets throughout New York, usually accompanied by prerecorded tracks prepared by Reed and fellow Velvet John Cale, though sometimes joined by live accompaniment from Tim Buckley or Jackson Browne.
Lou Reed’s attempts to control Nico (which included a brief gambit to manipulate her via a sexual affair) ultimately proved unsuccessful in dissuading Warhol from her use, though she would finally be ousted from her association with the band, as would Warhol himself, prior to the recording of their second album, White Light / White Heat (1968). 1967 found Nico residing in Los Angeles, where she became embroiled in a tumultuous relationship with rock vocalist Jim Morrison, a situation that served to further deepen her growing dependence on heroin. While her romance with Morrison collapsed (many maintain that he was the true love of her life), her commitment to solo performance grew more intense, leading her to take up the harmonium as her preferred instrument of choice. Her first solo album, Chelsea Girl, was released in 1968, featuring a far folkier, Summer of Love-flavored sound than that which would mark subsequent recordings. Cale produced her next album, 1969’s The Marble Index, on which a far more ambient, doomstruck tone of melancholy became prevalent in both her vocals and songwriting. Nico’s solo discography, six studio albums and seven live recordings, feature a brooding texture that has led many to regard her as one of the architects of contemporary goth music, an image further reinforced by her dyed-dark hair, all-black clothing, and preference for unlit, black-draped apartment dwellings.
In 1972, Nico joined Reed and Cale for a series of live dates that were recorded and eventually released as the 2004 album Le Bataclan ‘72. The singer’s relationship with Cale remained especially strong, Cale eventually returning to produce her 1981 LP The Drama of Exile. The 1970s also saw her in a long-term relationship with avant-garde filmmaker Philippe Garel, and she appeared in several of his films and music videos. (Nico would later maintain that it was with Garrel, not Jim Morrison, with whom she first began using smack.) She consistently toured throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, though the venues were often small, the bands hastily assembled, and Nico’s own attendance touch-and-go. And always, always there was heroin, a habit she carried throughout much of her later life and eventually shared with her son Ari, who almost died as a result of his dependency.
Shortly before her passing, Nico made serious efforts to kick her habit, getting into a methadone treatment program, and taking up a regimen of healthy eating and fitness cycling. It was during one of her bike rides, in Ibiza in 1988, that she suffered an accident that resulted in a cerebral hemorrhage. She would die within a day, at the age of 49. Nico has been commemorated in the 1995 documentary film Nico Icon and in several full-length biographies, most recently Jennifer Otter Bickerdike’s You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone (2021).
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