The Passion of Laura Palmer
A few months ago, I spent a couple weeks in France and had occasion to spend some days in the town of Lourdes, notable to me because of those who’d recommended it and notable to Catholicism for the miracles that had there occurred, all of which I learned about upon arrival. In the late 19th century, a teenager named Bernadette Soubirous reported experiencing a series of apparitions and visitations at a spring by a figure who identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. The figure asked that Bernadette drink from the water there and build a cathedral atop its grotto.
Following the investigation of these visions by the Church, the cathedral was built, the spring became a source of unexplained healings for those who drank and bathed in its water said to be miraculous, and Bernadette posthumously became a saint. Today, 5 million pilgrims visit Lourdes every year seeking healing of maladies both physical and spiritual.
Having recently revived my then-dormant journey through Twin Peaks: The Return, the story of a canonized teenage girl experiencing visions amid a tumultuous upbringing that led to a devoted following worldwide immediately brought to mind Laura Palmer and the grotto of Twin Peaks upon which David Lynch built his church.
Laura Palmer, whose influence on both the world of Twin Peaks and of television at large, makes the most substantial claim to patron sainthood of television this side of I Love Lucy. Whether you accept her role as the antidote to the mindless violence of ‘80s TV crime shows or as the forerunner of contemporary ‘prestige’ character dramas, it doesn’t really matter. The devotion she inspires among millions of fans across generations is not unlike that which draws Catholics the world over to the home of the young Saint Bernadette.
Neither Laura nor Bernadette invited the supernatural forces that commandeered the course of their lives. But both found peace in death, a peace that’s since been exhumed: Bernadette by fanatics eager to create relics from her remains and Laura by Lynch vis-a-vis his fans and a certain special agent grasping for goodness beyond his reach and comprehension. All the beauty from the finality of a cathedral burial and the awe and wonder of angelic visitation at the end of Fire Walk with Me comes undone.
In watching The Return, I felt the awe but not quite the wonder. The wonder that lived on in Laura’s memory is hushed by the ripping of her soul from its resting place to grace our TV screens a final time. By the time we get her back in Part 18, it’s not just not Laura anymore—it’s not even our idea of her. And how could it be? So much changes in 25 years. As much as we miss as the woodsy charm of 90s Twin Peaks, WA, we can’t get it back simply by bringing back all the familiar faces. As much as we admire and maybe even envy the rapture of Saint Bernadette’s visions, we can’t recreate them simply by going to her grotto ourselves or praying by her relics.
But hey. Who are we to complain? It’s a fallen world and in this fallen world we have a beautiful cathedral in the foothills of the Pyrenees and a third season of dazzling American storytelling and those are things to appreciate, even as we remember what it meant for Bernadette and Laura to give them to us.
Loved this
Great stuff