On Blue Velvet Beetles

Blue Velvet Beetle Poster (SA / 2025)

 

Lynchian (adj.); artworks made in the style of David Lynch; i.e., artworks characterised 

by the juxtaposition of surreal and often sinister visual elements with everyday events 

and environments in order to create a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace.

 

 

As I'm sure most readers will be aware, the American filmmaker David Lynch died last month. 

 

Whilst I'm happy to acknowledge his visionary genius as an artist, I can't say I'm a fan of his work - and particularly loathe The Elephant Man (1980), which has to be one of the most overrated movies of all time [1].

 

Still, when BBC Four decided to show Blue Velvet (1986) earlier this week in memory of Lynch, I simply had to watch it once more - and make the Little Greek do so, even if surreal psychosexual postmodern noir isn't really her cup of tea. 

For one thing, I wanted to see if this exploration into the dark and violent underworld of suburban America was as as disturbing as I originally found it (it was); and, for another thing, I wanted reassurance that Isabella Rossellini, as lounge singer Dorothy Vallens, was as beautiful as I remember her (she was).   

 

Strangely, however, I think for me now the most disturbing part of the entire movie happens in the opening couple of minutes; i.e., before Jeffrey (played by Kyle MacLachlan) finds the severed ear [2] and before he finds himself mixed up with Frank Booth, a perverse and sadistic gangster - who really doesn't like to be looked at - played by Dennis Hopper. 

 

It's the extreme close up shot of beetles ferociously struggling for survival in the soil beneath the perfect lawn that terrifies; not so much the sight of them - as an entomophile, I'm not squeamish about bugs and beetles or other creepy-crawlies - it's more the loud droning audio provided by the renowned sound designer Alan Splet that triggers my anxiety.   

As symbolism, the use of beetles to suggest the fact that death, decay, and corruption - i.e., evil - is ever-present beneath the surface of life - or that chaos reigns, as another great filmmaker once put it [3] - is not particularly innovative, but, nevertheless, it remains potent and evocative here. 

 

The insect motif is, as other commetators have pointed out, recurrent throughout Blue Velvet and it's not concidental that Jeffrey disguises himself as a bug controller in order to initially gain access to Dorothy's apartment and ultimately exterminates that human cockroach, Frank Booth, albeit with a bullet rather than pesticide.

 

Notes

 

[1] I know it was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, but I wouldn't even give it an iced bun. Essentially, I agree with Nadja Durbach's description of The Elephant Man as "much more mawkish and moralising than one would expect from the leading postmodern surrealist filmmaker". 

      See the chapter entitled "Monstrosity, Masculinity, and Medicine: Reexamining the Elephant Man" in The Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture, (University of California Press, 2009), p. 35. 

 

[2] Re the severed ear in Blue Velvet - which is found by Jeffrey crawling with back ants - see the post dated 1 Jan 2024: click 'ere. 

[3] 'Chaos reigns' is a famous line (spoken by a fox) in Lars von Trier's 2009 film Antichrist. I have written two posts on this theme; the first dated 14 Dec 2018 - click here - and the second dated 11 Oct 2024 - click here.  

 

 

Click here to watch the opening scene of Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986), climaxing with what for me is the most disturbing shot of the entire movie; never mind the psychosexual shenanigans, it's the beetle mania that shocks.   

Some readers might also be interested in a post related to this one dated 28 Nov 2021, in which I discuss Isabella Rossellini's entomophilia and her attempt to create green porno: click here.

A Tale of Two Ears and Notes on Aural Regeneration

This ear? 

Yes, that there.

 

 

I. 

 

For Síomón Solomon, the human ear "is not merely a passive cavity or vacuous opening but a transfigurative chamber of auditory fantasy" [1]. If this makes it for some the most poetic organ, so too does it help to explain why for ear fetishists aural sex is the only game in town.

 

One famous lughole lover is the American filmmaker David Lynch, who not only assigns the severed, decomposing ear crawling with ants discovered in a field at the start of his cult movie Blue Velvet (1986) symbolic importance, but gives it something of a lead role [2]. 

 

For as Solomon goes on to note, Lynch became so fixated with the prosthetic ear, that he and his make-up supervisor Jeff Goodwin referred to it as a character in its own right - 'Mr Ear' - and designed it out of silicone rather than latex, "even embellishing it, in a superbly disquieting fetishistic signature, with locks of Lynch's own scissored hair" [3]. 

 

Lynch's ear serves much the same function for Jeffrey Beaumont as the rabbit hole does for Alice; it is what leads him (and us) into a troubling and dangerous underworld. It is only when he finally comes through his ordeal that he (and we as viewers) exit the ear.

 

Of course, not all detached ears found lying on the ground have such a serious symbolic role to play. In Carry On Screaming! (dir. Gerald Thomas,1966), for example, Oddbod's ear has a strictly comic function, allowing for a couple of predictable (but still amusing) gags. 

 

Whether the ear possesses the same remarkable regenerative capacity as the repulsive-looking finger which Oddbod also loses, wasn't made clear in the film, but the possibility of regrowing lost tissues or organs is an intriguing one worth looking at in a bit more detail ...

 

 

II.

 

Salamanders are well-known for their ability to regenerate complex body parts and this has long fascinated scientists keen to discover if people too may one day be able to regrow lost limbs, etc. 

 

Whether this would involve genetically engineering human-salamander hybrids or simply transplanting blastema tissue from these loveable amphibians, I don't know. But, either way, it would be remarkable if doctors found a way to induce regeneration (and tumor regression) in animals such as ourselves with a limited ability to repair our own bodies and a penchant for the quick-fix of forming scar tissue. 

 

Having said that, it might prove easier simply to 3D print new bits and bobs in the lab, as in the recent case of a young Mexican woman who had her external ear reconstructed using this technique to create a living tissue transplant. 

 

According to press reports [4], the transplant procedure was successfully carried out at a US hospital in March 2022 and such newly developed technology promises to transform the lives of people born with microtia; a rare congenital condition in which one or both outer ears are absent or incompletely formed.

 

The company behind this groundbreaking work  - 3DBio Therapeutics - said the new ear was composed of a 3D-printed collagen hydrogel scaffold using the patient's own cartilage cells. Clinical trials involving several other patients are ongoing, but fingers crossed the organ won't be rejected so that what's ear today won't be gone tomorrow.    

 

 

 

Photos from the Microtia-Congenital Ear Institute 

and 3DBio Therapeutics

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Síomón Solomon, Hölderlin's Poltergeists, (Peter Lang, 2020), p. 101. For further discussion of Solomon's audiopoetics, see the post of 10 May 2021: click here.

 

[2] To watch the scene in Blue Velvet in which Jeffrey Beaumont (played by Kyle MacLachlan) discovers the ear, click here.

 

[3] Síomón Solomon, Hölderlin's Poltergeists, pp. 99-100. 

[4] See for example Roni Caryn Rabin, 'Doctors Transplant Ear of Human Cells, Made by 3-D Printer', The New York Times (2 June 2022), and/or Nicola Davis, 'Woman's ear rebuilt with 3D-printed living tissue implant' The Guardian (2 June 2022).