Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return

Antonio Sanna completed his PhD at the University of Westminster, UK. He has published over sixty essays and reviews in international journals and in a variety of edited collections. He is co-editor (with Adam Barkman) of A Critical Companion to Tim Burton (2017) and A Critical Companion to James Cameron (2018), and editor of Pirates in History and Popular Culture (2018).

• Part I. In the Real World: History, Technology and Fandom.- 1. Entering the World of Twin Peaks (Antonio Sanna).- 2. Is It Happening Again? Twin Peaks and ‘The Return’ of History (Matthew Ellis and Tyler Theus).- 3. Extraterrestrial Intelligences in the Atomic Age: Exploring the Rhetorical Function of Aliens and the ‘Alien’ in the Twin PeaksUniverse (Elizabeth Lowry).- 4. Lucy Finally Understands How Cellphones Work: Ambiguous Digital Technologies in Twin Peaks: The Return and its Fan Communities (Jeffrey Fallis and T. Kyle King).- 5. ‘The owls are not what they meme’: Making Sense of Twin Peaks with Internet Memes (Brigid Cherry).- 6. ‘Is it about the bunny? No, it’s not about the bunny!’: David Lynch’s Fandom and Trolling of Peak TV Audiences (David McAvoy).- Part II. In the Lodges: Subjectivity and (Un)Realism.- 7. ‘Between Two Mysteries’: Intermediacy in Twin Peaks: The Return (Thomas Britt).- 8. ‘My Log has a Message For You,’ or, Vibrant Matter and Twin Peaks: On Thing-Power and Subjectivity (Anthony Ballas).- 9. ‘Here’s to the pie that saved your life, Dougie:’ The Weird Realism of Twin Peaks (Ryan Coogan).- 10. Movement in the Box: The Production of Surreal Social Space and the Alienated Body (Joel Hawkes).- 11. How Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks Books Clarify and Confound the Nature of Reality (Donald McCarthy).- 12. Copy of a Copy of a Copy: Theorizing the Triplicity of Self and Otherness in Season Three of Twin Peaks (Kwasu David Tembo).- Part III. Inside the Psyche: Trauma, Dreams and Music.- 13. From Lost Highway to Twin Peaks: Representations of Trauma and Transformation in Lynch’s Late Works (Timothy William Galow).- 14. Kafka’s Crime Film: Twin Peaks: The Return and the Brotherhood of Lynch and Kafka (Adam Daniel).- 15. Who is the Dreamer? (Michael Potter and Cam Cobb).- 16. Is it the Wind in the Tall Trees or Just the Distant Buzz of Electricity?: Sound and Music as Portent in Twin Peaks’ Season Three (Andrew T. Burt).- 17. ‘Listen to the Sounds’: Sound and Storytelling in Twin Peaks: The Return (Kingsley Marshall and Rupert Loydell).- 18. ‘I’ll point you to a better time/A safer place to be’: Music, Nostalgia and Estrangement in Twin Peaks: The Return (David Sweeney).

“What’s noteworthy here is that Ellis and Theus take time and care to state clearly what they consider the benefits and drawbacks to psychoanalytic cinema critique, particularly in regards to Lynch’s work. Fans and scholars alike can benefit from their example as they navigate between those who outright reject psychoanalytic analysis and those who might rigidly attempt to force Twin Peaks fully into a simplified framework.” (Andy Hageman, 25 YL, 25yearslatersite.com, March, 2019)