Blue Velvet (1986) Understood America’s Growing Obsession With True Crime

Today’s issue of Dust On The VCR is a subscriber request! The masterpiece we’ll be discussing today was chosen by my longtime buddy and fellow film nerd Jordan Gaston. We’ve been friends since college (back when we both had a decent jump shot), but we really connected years after graduation when we started doing regular movie nights with a few other boys, and he’s introduced me to lots of great stuff over the years. We happen to share a love of David Lynch, and even though I wrote about Eraserhead last month, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to dip back into this exquisite catalog. Also, I think it’s his turn to make a movie night selection next. I should ask about that. Anyway. Want to request a film for a future issue? Subscribe to the paid version!

Reader, despite my editor John’s best efforts, I sometimes like to kick off a newsletter with an obvious statement. Today feels like a good time for one, so here it is: True crime is (still) the thing these days.

Yes, it seems as if every violent offense that wasn’t immediately solved has been dug up and turned into a podcast or a documentary or a series or maybe even a docuseries (what a term). As I write this, the most popular thing on Netflix is a Swedish series called The Åre Murders, a title that made me laugh when I first saw it because I thought it said “There Are Murders,” which would’ve been an incredible title.¹

Though the genre is enjoying an extended moment, “true crime” as a concept isn’t a new one. Cable news has thrived on sensational stories ever since its inception. Truman Capote arguably invented the form in 1966 with In Cold Blood.² Hell, we’ve been obsessed with outlaws since Bonnie & Clyde were making newspaper headlines. We’ve always been fascinated by people who are capable of the most heinous acts you can imagine, especially when it comes to what drives them.

But true crime, even when presented in explicit detail, is always sanitized to a degree. These are stories that can be consumed within the safety of our own homes or cars or workplaces. We can shudder at the notion that anyone could do such a thing and then go back to our regular lives. Maybe it’s no longer a perversion if we’re all doing it, right?

I think many true crime stories strip away the most fascinating angle, though. What would it be like to stumble upon a story like this when you’re not expecting it? When it hasn’t been neatly packaged into a feature presentation? What happens when innocent bystanders become entangled in something they should’ve never seen? What happens when they can’t look away?

These are the kinds of questions that David Lynch had on his mind when he made Blue Velvet.

On one hand, Blue Velvet isn’t actually true crime. The numerous atrocities that take place never happened. On the other hand, that’s beside the point. If you don’t think there’s a Frank Booth somewhere in your city—maybe even your neighborhood—then you might wanna start locking your doors.

But what makes the film special isn’t its perpetrators or its victims. It’s the presence of Kyle MacLachlan’s character (Jeffrey) and the journey he goes on after stumbling upon a severed human ear in a field. He does the right thing by bringing the evidence to Detective Williams and the local police force, but when the detective’s daughter Sandy (played terrifically by Laura Dern) tells him some details of the case that she overheard, he can’t help but conduct his own investigation. Jeffrey becomes a proxy for the audience—and it’s his journey that makes the film truly special.³

While rewatching Blue Velvet, I began to wonder what the film would be like if the Jeffrey character wasn’t there at all, if it was simply Detective Williams stumbling upon the evidence and taking the case all the way himself. Focused more on Dennis Hopper going full maniac as Frank, it might’ve been entertaining—“Nighthawks but more Southern” was the first thought that came to my mind—but it wouldn’t have become the cult classic that it is today.

Before I dismiss this alternate version of the film outright, I do have to give Lynch some credit for a fully realized vision here. The setting of a sleepy, industry-obsessed small town (Lumberton, North Carolina) is the perfect locale to present shocking events that shake up an idyllic community, and Lynch added authenticity to the film by shooting in Wilmington.⁴ And there’s plenty of symbolism for all the English majors and adjacent nerds out there, from bugs and birds to rock ‘n roll songs.⁵

But Jeffrey is the crux of the film. As he’s just getting started with his amateur sleuthing, he has an exchange with Sandy that serves as a sort of faux foreshadowing. “I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert” she says, to which he replies “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” But as he digs deeper, he can’t even comprehend the motivation behind his own actions. When the woman that he’s staking out discovers him peeking through the closet, she strips him down and interrogates him. “What do you want?” she asks. “I don’t know” Jeffrey says in nothing but his underwear.

As a writer and director, Lynch was curious about what was going on below the surface. Perhaps that makes Jeffrey a proxy for him too. “I’m seeing something that was always hidden” Jeffrey says to Sandy when he realizes he’s in too deep. “I’m in the middle of a mystery, and it’s all secret.” The mysteries, the secrets, the hidden things—these are among the hallmarks of Lynch’s filmography, the defining characteristics that made him an icon.

With Blue Velvet, Lynch brought those secrets into the light for us. To show us what can happen if we stare too long at the things we should not see. As viewers, we’ve become desensitized to the grotesque, the vicious, the obscene, but maybe we still need to touch grass before queuing up that next episode of the latest true crime thing. (As long as that grass doesn’t have any severed body parts hidden among the blades.)

Blue Velvet is now streaming on Max, and it is available to rent elsewhere.

1. I thought to myself “Wouldn’t it be funny if there was a show or a movie just called ‘Murder’?” Turns out I’m late. By my count, there have been two TV shows (one British, one American) by that name, as well as two Indian films called Murder, the first of which spawned the sequels Murder 2 and Murder 3. (Murder 4 hits theaters this July.)

2. I read In Cold Blood in one of my favorite college classes, Contemporary Fiction. Our professor assigned us nothing but nonfiction texts as a means of discussing whether any storytelling (outside of legitimate journalism perhaps) could capture “truth” objectively. It was always an interesting discussion in that context.

3. Sean Burns, an excellent Boston-based film critic whom I met a year ago at a film festival, put it nicely in his recent Lynch tribute: “One of the most brilliant things about the picture is how the story mirrors the audience’s experience—MacLachlan’s squeaky-clean college student discovering his own dirty, voyeuristic tendencies as Lynch teases and tantalizes us with shocking scenes of sadomasochism from which we cannot pull our eyes away. …It’s a movie about innocence lost, while the act of watching it is itself a loss of innocence.”

4. I would highly recommend Wilmington if you’ve never been. I visited in 2018 for the Cucalorus Film Festival, and I was really taken by it. It has all the charm of a small town with an abundance of cool things to see and do and eat. And they love cinema! So many films and shows have been shot there!

5. My favorite symbol in the film is beer. Jeffrey is on a Heineken kick, and when Sandy tells him that her father drinks “Bud,” all he can say is “Ah. King of beers.” (What’s Frank’s beer of choice? Pabst Blue Ribbon, of course.)