"We're Going to Talk About Judy" [All]

I know this is long. If you take the time to read, I promise there is something to be had here. This is the result of a great deal of processing, reading, and viewing, and I feel these concepts, whether you embrace them or reject them, add a new layer of depth to the show and open doors to new plot possibilities. Note that various pieces of this are still works in progress, and there is a lot of speculation and conjecture, but overall, I think there is a lot of value here.

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Hello. Long-time lurker here. I have finished processing my analysis of the "character" Judy in the show Twin Peaks, and would like to submit it to the community as a whole for review. I have heard lots of theories about what Judy "is", but none of them quite satisfied and I always felt like there was something major that was there but I just couldn't see it***.***

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What is Judy?

Judy, or Jowday, is a mysterious entity in Twin Peaks that is referenced only indirectly and is never fully explored on screen, at least not directly, but is implicated as the true driving force behind the crisis in Twin Peaks. Jowday is likened to an ancient evil introduced to this world within the timeline of the show and threatening the very existence of reality itself.

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To actually understand what this entity "is", first, we must start with what we know about Judy. Judy is mentioned seldom in the show, and still even so in the additional material such as the films and books. Mentions in the show are limited to a faint background noise, the phrase "We aren't going to talk about Judy", and brief dialogues mostly related to questioning the location or identity of Judy.

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This strikes me as strange for a character that is really one of the driving antagonists.

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The Evil that Men Do

Second, to reverse-engineer who Judy is, we need to think about what we know that has been shown to have relation to Judy. BOB and Judy are heavily implied in the narrative and lore to be connected, if not two sides of the same beast. Given that, to learn about Judy, it helps to look at what we know about BOB.

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Probably the best explanation of BOB in Twin Peaks, in my opinion at least, is given by Rosenfeld, when he says that BOB is "the evil that men do". This is a half-truth, and is in fact the key to unlocking everything else.

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I would only further elaborate on the meaning of the phrase, adding to it so as to say that BOB is "The intentional evil that men do." BOB is raw, tropey, evil-for-the-sake-of-evil evil. BOB is a exaggeration, a ludicrous, laughing, maniacal evil that chants flashy phrases, twisting and contorting it's face and glorifying its actions. BOB is obvious, and implicitly scary, the malicious and ever-present menace which are are to fear and loathe. I mean, even his name is all caps, like it is yelling at you...

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But I might posit that BOB is in no way the true villain of the show, and is in fact child's play to (and perhaps even a puppet to) the real villain, more of a distraction in a massive sleight-of-hand than anything.

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Once we accept BOB as "the intentional evil that men do", it becomes quite logically obvious that Judy is "the passive evil that men do". Let me explain.

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Turning a Blind Eye

Throughout the show, we see a driving theme that I honestly believe is so prevalent, yet overlooked, in media and in real life, that we have all completely overlooked it in Twin Peaks, unaware that it was a central "character" and that the very fact that we didn't see it was a part of the character as well as a massive social commentary. This theme is Judy, in the form of indirect, passive evil, often portrayed through systematic/cultural/learned avoidance, secrecy, ignorance, and general "intentional ambiguity" regarding difficult topics, events, or concepts. In essence, Judy is turning a blind eye. Judy is knowing that there is an important fact that could help solve a crime, but failing to report it. Judy is knowing there is a problem, but not directly addressing it. Judy is unprocessed trauma. And Judy drives almost every conflict in the show...

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You see, the problem with these types of evils is often that they are incredibly difficult to address, to even acknowledge. They are so easy to get away with and so easy to commit. Addressing them can also feel like a sort of evil, due to the associated stigmas, and there is so much shame and context to be deciphered. This is in direct parallel to the character of Judy in Twin Peaks. She is everywhere, but invisible, and only because we don't want to see her, we don't even think to look. The type of evil that Judy represents requires a great deal of processing, of time, of energy, to resolve, as opposed to the the evil demonstrated by BOB, which is big and flash and obvious, easy to point and finger at and say "That! That is the problem! That is the "bad guy", and relatively easy to "fix". But reality is more complex. Acts of evil such as that are often simply the product of a large, systemic evil, born of ignorance and apathy and shame. We fear BOB, and he is a powerful character, because he could exist, but Judy is exponentially more threatening, terrifying, and ultimately compelling as a character, because she does exist, she pervades every element of our lives, down to the very show itself, and she makes a direct and profound philosophical statement that has implications rippling out through every facet of human life...

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The ambiguity, the lack of clarity in the show, and the general air of mystery, that sweet intrigue that makes the show so intoxicating, is the antagonist. And we fell for her completely.

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Balance

We can then view the white lodge, and all of it's various inhabitants, to be actions of pure intent, without secrets or ulterior motives or inhibitions. You could even say that Lady Dido represents "The active good that men do", and the Firefight "The passive good that men do" (I initially had this flipped, but in thinking it over, the Firefighter is manifest in the Waiter, who is the most perfect example of passive good, and his actions always seem apathetic in nature, as if he is just doing as he is told) Even further, the characters that seem to govern the "red room" represent neutrality, with TMFAP representing both sides of the equation, his full human form representing an (intentionally?) questionable "the active neutrality that men exhibit" and The Evolution of the Arm representing "the passive neutrality that men exhibit" . Each of these has their own manifestations, influences, garmonbozia, etc...

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In essence, we see a dynamic of three forces: Evil, Neutral, and Good. Each of these has two sides: Active/intentional and Passive/unintentional, which work together and balance each other out (under normal circumstances). But in this case, the neutral party, Mike/TMFAP, was a single entity that contained both sides of the equation - he was simply neutrality. But he was corrupted... his neutrality was corrupted as manifest through the arm, which he eventually cut off, in doing so releasing the "passive neutral" half of the equation, which becomes The Evolution of the Arm and manifests throughout the show in a passive, neutral, observation manner in the form of owls, trees, lamposts, and even the various tulpas.

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Important Late Edit - Season Three and Judy

So, I have been processing more and reading some of the comments here, and I have a late, but very important addition to this theory, and it involves Season Three as a whole.

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So season three, whether you admit it or not, was unsatisfying. Sure, it was satisfying on a level of "Oh, wow, I get what he is going for and it is beautiful", but in terms of a continuation of the Twin Peaks show that we all remember and love, it was a violation, a giant middle finger. We will applaud and call it a work of art, but deep down, there is a pain, a loss, a trauma, that we really don't quite know how to and may never really address.

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We see no resolution to any of the open arcs we have waited so long to understand. Most of the characters are either not present, changed to something we do not recognize, and the answers we do get are generally confusing, upsetting, or incomplete. A perfect example is actually found in one o

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This is very intentional, but, in a very Lynchian manner, not malicious by any means. This is an element of the narrative just as much as anything else. By doing this, Lynch is drawing us into the battle. Lynch is showing us how invested we were in Twin Peaks, how much we cared about everyone and all of the stories, and then obscuring them. This is a grand, third-wall breaking manifestation of Judy. Judy is the complete lack of resolution we receive. Season three is the sacrifice of the potential we all saw in the first run, in all of the stories that could have been, just the same as it is the sacrifice of Laura. We, the viewer, are just as active in the third season of Twin Peaks as the characters themselves, if not more so.

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After all, you could say we, either individually or as a whole, are the proverbial "dreamer". We have seen the entire show play out, from beginning to end, and are the ones who are observing the events and therefore making them a reality. We are driving the plot through our expectations, through our culture and our current events and our very human nature itself. By denying us in the third season, Lynch is pointing out that we too are subject to the laws he is exploring in the show. We too, must make decisions between good and evil, must face difficult decisions and overcome painful moments in life, all the while desperately clinging to the narrative we have applied to life, the framework we use to guide ourselves. When that framework is discarded, when we learn that we are really powerless to save some things, we sink... we descend.

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In fact, we as the audience are referenced or directly manifest repeatedly in season three. As the bumbling Jerry and his misguided quest, in Naido and her isolation, and perhaps even in Carrie Laura during the final moments of Twin Peaks. For really, didn't we all experience the exact same Trauma as Laura when she realized what she did? We all realized at the same time that Twin Peaks was over. That all of the lives in the town were over, that we would never see them play out and that the story we were given was what there was. The town of Twin Peaks as we now it does not exist, and has absolutely no future. The real Twin Peaks is what we would find if we went there, with no secrets, no answers, and no resolution to help us with the "trauma" that we have been forever burdened with by watching this show. Through the brilliant storytelling in season three, Lynch has allowed us to come as close to empathizing with Laura and all of the other characters as possible. Lynch himself has come as close as possible, having "sacrificed" his "baby" in way for the sake of the art and the narrative.

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Examples and Proof

I will give several important examples and clues that helped me to see this, but honestly, once you watch the show with this in mind, you see "Judy" in almost every scene...

• Perhaps the most obvious example, and the one that really hammered the nail in for me, comes from Bobby, who saw this from the beginning, and pointed it out very clearly in his speech at the funeral for Laura. He points out the hypocrisy of everyone in attendance, noting that they all knew what she was going through, but turned a blind eye and let her continue to be destroyed so that they could maintain their image of the perfect prom queen (notably the same way they pretend that the town has no problems and relegate resolution of serious threats to public order such as cocaine smuggling to secretive societies). He is so very right, he doesn't even know... BOB never killed Laura. Bob was just a vessel... Judy killed Laura (though this was NOT the intent - the intent was to inhabit her and combine the powers of passive and active evil into one being; killing her was the fail-safe).
• Jeffrie's statement about Judy is a dead clue. By stating "We aren't going to talk about Judy", Jeffrie's is pointing out Judy in the most clear way possible. They aren't going to talk about Judy, because not talking about Judy, is Judy.
• There are so many references to "turning a blind eye" in this show, I am just going to say watch and look for them.
• The juxtaposition to nuclear weapon testing has several levels. So... here me out. Similar to Twin Peaks, the explosive power of the atomic bomb, while devastating, was arguably not the most powerful part of the bomb. The power of nuclear weapons is in the threat, the uncertainty on whether it exists, whether it works, how it works, whether it will be used, the damage it can do, etc... Of course, the bomb actually needs to be powerful, just as BOB needed to be evil, but that power is really only a failsafe. From development, to testing, to deployment, the original bombs were shrouded in secrecy, in avoidance and general "evil", regardless of the intent of development as a means to stop and equally evil force. Additionally, the era that followed was one that was increasingly filled with secrecy and a shift towards a more guarded, less direct approach to problems. If we apply the lore of Twin Peaks to this process, we can imagine that a great deal of garmonbozia was generated by the process, at a level unheard of previously, which would allow a (surprise) hostile takeover by the black lodge, which would need to be mitigated by the white lodge (see below for more).
• The Coop/Diane sex scene. This painful scene is the climax of so much pain, so much secrecy, so much that goes unsaid. Cooper and Diane get no peace. They do not talk about what has transpired. She does not get any justice closure. There is a massive, ugly, awful truth, and the characters walk around it like a proverbial pachyderm.
• The entire third season is rather unsettling. I love it, it is brilliant, but overall, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Why? Because it is so ambiguous. Because there are no conclusions, no warm feelings, and almost no acknowledgement of any of the events from the first run. All of this, in itself, is Judy, and Lynch cannot make Judy any more obvious, and/or pull her into our world any more literally, than in the way that Season 3 played out.
• Cooper and Annie: Annie was a trap. Annie was a tulpa, sent to distract Cooper and twist his motives. She led to his ultimate downfall, as he made his decision without a pure heart due to his wavering focus; he made the decision passively, allowing Annie and his unconfessed love influence his decisions. This awareness causes even more shame, as he feels both a failure in the task and ashamed of his inability to simply face the past related to and sexuality in general. This allows Mr C, Judy, and Bob to abscond with Coop's body and force him into his hibernation in the red room. Fortunately, this was part of the plan, and the dopplecooper completed all of the tasks that Cooper never could to accomplish the ends of finally balancing the order (all under the nose of both Judy and BOB), in a way protecting Cooper from having to experience all of the things that Mr C needed to do. Dopplecoop also collected enough garmonbozia to serve as a seed for Laura, something Cooper could never have done. Even Mr. C's final, mocking statement on the first run, "How's Annie?!", shows how core she is to the plot and how important Coop's attraction to her is to Mr. C, as well as how amused Mr. C seems to be at Coop "falling for the bait".
• Doc Jacoby: The doctor was the closest thing to relief for Laura. Laura expressed herself openly to the doctor, releasing her "Judy garmonbozia" and healing slightly, while at that same time intoxicating the Doc with this release as well as with the level of evil she had inside her. Doc felt guilty that he wasn't able to help her, and, sensing the truth, began his bizarre "dig yourself out" campaign and sought to address the systemic problem by forcing people to face what they don't want to.
• Mr C: Mr. C is Cooper's active neutral self, his manifestation of the Evolution of the Arm. He is not evil, but either good. He simply does what he does as a means to a purpose-driven end, without explanation or logic outside of himself, without malice but neither mercy.
• Even Window Earle, the bizarre villain, can be seen as a representation of Judy's influence in Coop's life as much if not more than BOBs, and is surrounded by an air of self-righteous mystery and ambiguity. His history with Coop is unresolved, he is in a great deal of suffering and pain, and his actions demonstrate a mix of malice and sheer madness.
• Sex. Sex, sex, sex... Always a theme in Lynchian worlds, sex is a major key here in Twin Peaks. Sexual abuse, sexual assault, prostitution, relationships... All throughout the show, there are powerful sexual elements, but there are mostly relegated to sub-text. They are there, but they are never named... never resolved... never healthy and never really satisfying, for the audience or for the characters. There is a lot of unsaid evil, a lot of damage caused indirectly. Sarah is an EXCELLENT example. Laura's pain, her abuse, her death - they were all indirectly a result of Sarah's ignorance, filling her with the highly-concentrated (but still not enough... not as much as previous Laura...) Judy garmonbozia. Laura was raped, brutally, after years and years of abuse and drugs and bad decisions, but the crime that is discussed is simply that she was "killed". One-Eyed Jacks... literally the "turn-a-blind-eye" brothel where many of the town's young women simply disappear to... Diane... Ronnette... Etc...
• "But wait! The good guys are really secretive as well, and exhibit a lot of Judy traits in this scenario..." - Well, for one, everyone has a bit of all of the three "forces"... But more importantly, if there was a plan, it would need to be concealed. The best way to do this would be to blend in with a web of disinformation, lies, and general Judy-ness to create a cloak of sorts to conceal the overall project, its members, and their actions.
• Dougie: Dougie is an excellent example of passive neutral. He just... is. Created by the MFAP and the arm, Dougie was a placeholder for Coop while he was trapped and until he was able to bring Mr C. back, and in doing so, fuse active good Coop with active neutral Coop (carrying a concentration of active evil via BOB) into a new Coop who is both good as well as evil enough to be able to address the reality that no-one else can and destroy "Judy"/Laura as well as sacrifice the entire life that he and everyone else have built up to that point.
• Audrey: Audrey... oh, sweet Audrey... Audrey is trapped in a world of lies and confusion. She is ignored, Coop's obvious attraction and the nuances of their relationship go unaddressed, she is left with a horrible child that serves as a constant reminder of the pain she endured...

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All of these are pretty obvious to me, and again, there are countless more if you watch with this in mind...

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The Catalyst and the End Game

But perhaps the most damning is the way this fits in with the central plot:

With this perspective, it is relatively easy to form a few theories about the "plan" which is carried out throughout the show, seemingly driven by the white lodge inhabitants and carried out by the characters who are either influenced directly by them (such as the log lady) or are simply pure in spirit (such as Andy) - though note that these characters are also capable of being subject to Judy's control at times as well.

Essentially, humanity has been consumed by "Judy", by a web of secrecy and lies and "passive evil", as a result of a great deal of concentrated Judy evil being introduced and consumed by humanity as a result of the detonation of the atomic bomb, the world of lies and evil that surrounded it, and the culture of secrecy and shame that was born. The only hope for humanity is to expose Judy, to craft the perfect, concentrated manifestation of Judy, then destroy it by pulling it into the "light" (which is actually relatively easy, since Judy, by nature, is a world of secrecy, and so all of the lies and twisted manipulation of Judy would be just invisible or at least masked amongst her own influences.)

As such, Sarah is implanted with the future-Laura, an antidote formed from all of Cooper's general confusion, pain, and general "Judy energy" that is sowed at the same time as the initial explosion and left to draw in Judy's energy over the course of it's existence, forming a Judy-magnet that can eventually be destroyed to remove enough of Judy's influence to balance the levels out. Episodes 17 and 18 are Coop being taken to a world where just enough of the properties of the world have been changed enough and injected with enough active neutral energy (thanks to Mr C) so as to negate the need for any subtext, distancing everyone enough from the former world that the issues can finally be addressed and processed. Coop finds "Laura" masquerading as "Carrie", and proceeds to bring her to Twin Peaks. She is taken home, to the core of her trauma, to the festering wound that is eating her alive but which she cannot see or understand, and suddenly, the voice of her mother breaks through, echoing in her ear, bringing to her memory everything she has encountered and all of the passive evil that led to it, all of the pain and suffering that can be found by tracing back the chain that created her. This activates Judy, bringing her to life in this reality suddenly and without warning, while at the same time, allowing Carrie, who is detached from the character of Laura enough to actually process everything, to fully bring to light all of the "Judy" that is stored within her, converting and/or destroying it and allowing reality to be re-aligned in a more neutral timeline in which Laura disappears and life goes on, where good and evil still exist, but are in balance.

Note that this theory draws heavily from the popular "bomb theory", from Waggle at: https://www.waggish.org/2017/twin-peaks-finale/, and expands on it.

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Conclusion

In the end, the character of Judy was there all along. She was present in almost every scene. She was every character at various points, most manifest by the entity of Laura, but also present at less concentrated levels in other characters. Judy was the sinking feeling that you get watching Twin Peaks. Judy was the ambiguity and subtext, particularly the heightened level in Season 3 is simply a product of her further manifestation on the Twin Peaks world, and the unsettled feeling we all got when we finished it. Something was missing. So much went unsaid... So many plotlines were abandoned and unresolved... This was Judy. Every time.

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I feel like the potential commentary here is brilliant. Lynch is pointing out the hypocrisy in humanity the same way that Bobby pointed out everyone's hypocrisy at the funeral. We are so quick to point our fingers at the obvious culprits for our problems. We point at a rape and say that the rape that occurred is evil, but then we go back to our lives and fail to truly address the root problem, often overlooked (subconsciously in many cases), in the systemic abuse and targeting of the female gender as a sexual object. We point to symptoms, and call them causes... And often, we are just as much to blame for the end result that comes from active evil as the people who carry them out. Lynch even offers a suggestion... that the only way to truly address our issues is to create an alternate reality where we are disassociated from ourselves enough to address the evils of our nature and then concentrate that evil into one person and force them to process it instantaneously. I kid. More like, we need to talk. We need to talk about Judy.

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TL/DR: Judy is the representation of passive evil, of "turning a blind eye", unprocessed trauma, suffering, and all of the evils that are not so... intentional and flashy as BOB.

Submitted March 12, 2019 at 06:22AM by Aurouroboros https://ift.tt/2SZMBYm