Freudian analysis of blue velvet

David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” was one of the most influential films of the 1980’s and has been argued by many as the catalyst for independent filmmaking. In Blue Velvet, Lynch uses Freudian notions of oedipal conflict, sadism, masochism, and fetishism to exhibit the connection between characters. In this essay I will apply these psychoanalytic theories to a character analysis in Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

Blue Velvet “is a head-on collision between two popular genres from the 1940s: the insipid small-town comedy and the film noir.” (Ebert, 1986) In the opening scene of Blue Velvet the audience is bombarded with images of the ideal American neighbourhood. Children are lead across the road safely by a uniformed crossing guard and the scenery is a banquet of clear blue sky, clean white picket fences, blossoming red roses and yellow tulips. The camera then shifts from this idyllic picture perfect neighbourhood and penetrates deep into the ground revealing a crowd of hungry nasty...