A brief, qualified defense of Albert Rosenfield on Twin Peaks:
First of all, total agreement with what Andrew Stevens says here about Rosenfield's Jewishness: perhaps hard to recognize when the role's played by Miguel Ferrer.
Second, Albert's intended to play as a contrast to Cooper. Agent Cooper is the wide-eyed 50s boy, same as the character played by Kyle MacLaughlin in Blue Velvet. He's the guy who gets drawn into the big, sordid mess without even realizing it. Albert's playing a type, but it's the hard-nosed 50s police procedural cop: he's Dragnet all the way through. This, I think, links back to the point I make in the comments of the linked post: he's an outsider, which is good, because he's the only one who remains objective and can think clearly.
The following paragraph is related to the above but not a continuation of the argument:
Also, I'm in no way a Lynch devotee, but I am from a small-ish city in Real America, so I feel comfortable making the following observation: the sordidness of Twin Peaks, or the city where Blue Velvet happens, seems to reflect both an attraction to and a rejection of small town 50s America as Real America, and this is the only sensible reaction to have to such an environment. It's possible to live a life in a small town that fits many of the archetypal American criteria. Nevertheless, as Bob Dylan once said about Hibbing, Minnesota, there's a reason we left, and the reasons are mostly what is dead and limiting in small town life. Eventually we live in bigger places even if we don't always love them, or get along with them (cf The Great Gatsby). Criticizing those places, though, is often a matter of "nobody picks on my little brother except me." All of this sets the approximate background for the show, including who is included and who is viewed as Other, which is apparently what I care about most in this discussion.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
1 comment:
So much to respond, I'll try not to make this go on forever, but first, I'll mention that I responded to Andrew Stevens in that thread just now as well.
"he's an outsider, which is good, because he's the only one who remains objective and can think clearly."
It's good, yes, but he also comes across as a truly horrible person to deal with. Whereas the others are all nice on the outside, nasty behind closed doors, he's all nastiness up-front but (and, again, haven't finished watching the series) sweet on the inside. Either way, to paraphrase what I just responded to Andrew, the issue isn't whether Albert is "good" or "bad," but the choice to have the most "city" character - with city unpleasantness, but this is secondary - have the name "Rosenfield."
"Criticizing those places, though, is often a matter of 'nobody picks on my little brother except me.'"
This gets at the heart of the issue, and I don't think I can address it fully here. But basically, for Americans who grew up in small-town America, small-town America is the underdog. For NY Jews, who learn as soon as they experience the rest of the country that they're considered essentially foreigners, it's the same deal, with love-hate re: American Jewish culture and self-mockery acceptable, but only if coming from other Jews. It's really quite similar, far more than one might think, because even if the NY Jew looking to make it in the big city doesn't have to move geographically (although some will go to L.A., etc.), there's a sense many have - and depict in their art - of having left behind a stifling, narrow-minded world. A world that, more to the point, marks one as foreign and less-than-American.
Anyway, the problem, in turn, is that when I watch "Twin Peaks," I see Albert as bitter in a sense because he knows that he, unlike Dale, can't just as easily live in the big city as in a small town. To get at the broader issue, when Palin speaks of Real America, it's important to remember that everyone ends up feeling the victim, both the self-identified "Real Americans," sick of being dominated by the coastal fake-Americans, and those who don't count as Real, most of whom are not directing the culture and had nothing to do with the fact that so many TV shows are set in NY, but who are nevertheless Jewish, or gay, or otherwise likely to feel more comfortable away from the Real.
I'm not sure what point there is in debating who are the true underdogs, because, while this could be established on a case-by-case-comparison basis, it's difficult to weigh the various factors. Relative cultural and in some cases economic dominance does not necessarily outweigh a sense that one could move or travel to any part of the country and, in theory, be accepted.
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