If Laura were Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ. . .

Twin Peaks initially appears to be a series that centers around a character who is absent. However, if one deconstructs her rest (I have recently been inspired by a student's use of Derrida's poststructuralist "deconstruction" theory), we find there is a plural oppositional narrative of unrest in Shelly, Audre, and Donna. There is an intertextuality between the resting and absent Dorothy (Laura Palmer) and her unresting and present counter-parts: the scarecrow, the tinman, and the cowardly lion.

In their series, Twin Peaks, David Lynch and Mark Frost, aptly weave a Wizard of Oz narrative into the lead female characters. In a 2005 article, Michael Vass points out that one thing that "distinguishes Lynch's approach from that of postmodernism is that Lynch does not seem to consider cinematic styles and genres as fixed modes of representation that construct various notions of a Real to which we can never have direct immediate access" (par 8). It is this lack of stability that allows for the inconhesive reference of the present work in Twin Peaks to the prior work being referenced, such as Wizard of Oz, that allows Dorothy to be absent. Lynch's allusions to Oz in Wild at Heart, also made in 1990, and in actual televisions spots for the Twin Peaks series are evidence enough that Oz was on, at least, Lynch's mind.

Intertexual narratives between Twin Peaks' leading female characters can be traced back to the order of introduction for the scarecrow, the tinman, and the cowardly lion in Oz. Dorothy encounters the scarecrow who wants a brain first, and, likewise, the Twin Peaks viewer is introduced first to Shelly the waitress, who is obviously in want of a brain. She is one of the most flat and undynamic characters in the series, for she never grows and she never changes. Next, the viewer meets Audre, snooty and indifferent, as she ducks into her Daddy's limo to go to school. She is more than cool. Audre is cold. When Laura's death is announced over the school intercom, Audre smiles. Unlike the character of Shelly, however, Audre does grow a heart. Finally, the viewer meets Donna next to her school locker. She veils all of her endeavors to "solve" Laura's murder, which have unpleasant consequence for everyone she touches, as a need to solve the crime because only she and James "loved" Laura. However, her cowardice is fully realized as her inability to admit that she's simply a meddlesome girl when her subterfuge results in Harold's suicide. She must finally admit that she could have told Sherriff Truman that Harold had the diary; therefore, it was never necessary to violate him to the extent that she did for the purpose of stealing the diary. Finally, after Leland's molestation of her in the Palmer livingroom, she is too cowardly to tell even James.

Next question: who is the Wizard?

Benny