Thanks for the compliments.

Yes, please, feel free to express your doubts, thoughts, disproval, or anything you would like to say about it.

Well Xav the two biggest things that I notice are

1) Sorry to be a stucjk record but I'm still bothered by the doppelganger nature of Gonzales and Loraine DeRosa (can I call her Lorraine?). Diane represents DeRosa as looking like Gonzales in the dream and fantasy (Betty and Camilla respectively). In your theory diane shares a bed with Gonzales AND has a thing (real? imagined?) with DeRosa. It's quite a love nest at Sierra Bonita isn't it?

2) You don't mention abuse in your analysis. Is that because you take it as a given or because you don't accept it? Without the abuse thread I don't think we have a believable character for Diane. Finding your neighbour (who you're obsessed with) in bed with someone isn't a convincing motive for murder to me.

In my head I'm cherry-picking bits from your theory and inserting them into the classical theory. But where your theory is strongest (van, aunt, Jo's office) is where the classical theory needs help least.

Can you tells us your thoughts on the classical theory and Alan Shaw's essay, and how it led to your theories.

BTW, small point. Do you think Diane wore a red wig when she and Jo put Lorraine(can I call her Lorraine?)'s body into the blue van?

Siku, you don't need to go to Alan Shaw's essay to know that Diane's sexually abused past is important to the rest of the film. If you watch the very beginning of the film, before the titles, you will see grown men dancing with young girls. My guess is that the girls are no older than 13: Possibly wearing padded bras and make up. The scene is shot from a strange angle, not far off the ground. This would indicate that the viewer could be even younger than the female dancers. We don't see Diane in this scene and I am guessing that we are seeing this (abstract representation) through Diane's eyes. Then we do see Diane looking very happy amongst an older couple. (We do not see her with any prize for winning a competition.) My interpretation of this is that she has been liberated from the abuse and relocated with elderly foster parents.

marksman and Siku,

That's a good point marksman made about the opening image of the dancers. I've been doing an analysis of the movie, and lately I've been thinking that maybe Diane was abused by a friend of her father (as suggested in the Bob Brooker audition), and that this friend was somehow involved in teaching Diane what little Spanish she seems to know, like if he were a grade school teacher or tutor. Rita saying 'silencio' several times in her sleep might mean that this is what the abuser said to the young Diane while he was forcing himself on her - the word could have become 'embedded' in Diane's subconscious, which I believe to be represented by Rita.

Thanks for the feedback, Siku.

First of all I am not sure about the first name of DeRosa. If Diane's dream only rearranges the names on the Sierra Bonita apartment list board then I consider that her initials read L J, so Lorraine might very well be her true first name.

In her dream and in her distorted memories Diane had an intimate relationship with (the physical appearance of) Rita/Camilla. Since Diane 'possessed' the box of the Lamp Lady (aka Mss Dishes or WI12) and because the piano ashtray is found on her coffee table (why is it not in the box?), I conclude that they once shared apartment #16, which happens to have only one bed(room). The dream also insinuates on Diane's first lesbian love making event. Did Betty confirm to Rita that it was her first time making love with another girl?

Though I never mention any abuse (CSA - child sexual abuse) I do fully subscribe this theory and it very well provides a strong indication for Diane's mental situation and it gives background for various reasons why Diane acted the way she did.

I can not tell you much about Alan Shaw's essay right now. I know I have read it once, and it confirmed the 'traditional' dream-reality theory, which I also keep alive, because the movie contains so many details to support that idea. Maybe I should re-read his essay again, soon. To put it really Lynchian, maybe I remember more of his words than I can recall.

Did Diane wear a red wig when she and Joe put DeRosa in the blue van? Every time a red haired lady pops up in Diane's dream, there is an atmosphere of danger, of getting caught in the act, which again might refer to Diane's younger years.

cheers,

Xav

Siku wrote:Blu this has got to go on the main site, presume that's ok Xav?

If people want it up, I'm sure Bob can find a space for it. I need to find the time to go back through it all. I think I remember seeing it on IMDb back when it Xav first posted it, but my memory aint what it used to be!

Xav - given IMDb's policy of pruning posts, do you have it saved offline somewhere in case it gets lost from over there?

blu wrote:Xav - given IMDb's policy of pruning posts, do you have it saved offline somewhere in case it gets lost from over there?

Sure, I have a copy on my PC, so go ahead. It will be lost in IMDB's space soon anyway (3 months data base range only).

I'm glad we're all in agreement about the abuse theory. The details you mention, Marksman and Fonebone, are interesting and entirely feasible. For myself I tend to interpret the old couple as the abusers, remembering them in the limo. I know others have suggested that they are nice and torment Diane, indirectly, by reminding her how far she's fallen. Again feasible.

Xav I don't know if you have read the whole of this thread but I too believe that Diane had a sexual relationship with the lamp lady (Gonzales). From that starting point I am tempted to interpret Camilla and Rita as, respectively, fantasy and dream representations of this one lover. To have another lover in another flat... It seems a bit implausible.

If you have a moment please have a look at the earlier posts on this thread. I think perhaps I am missing something important and your theory seems to offer a way out.

Thanks everyone for your contributions.

Another quick point - how do we identify Laney as Lorraine rather than Diane?

Siku wrote:I too believe that Diane had a sexual relationship with the lamp lady (Gonzales). From that starting point I am tempted to interpret Camilla and Rita as, respectively, fantasy and dream representations of this one lover. To have another lover in another flat... It seems a bit implausible.

I see it as something similar to this.
In the scene in which Camilla is naked on the couch and topless Diane gets on top of her, listen to how Camilla's voice changes:
"They said you drive me wild" spoken in English with a Spanish or Latin American accent.
"We shouldn't do this any more": English with an American accent.
"Don't Diane, stop it!" spoken with the neighbour's voice.

I interpret this as role play: A bit like in the film Vertigo, really. I believe that Diane has got the lamp lady to pretend to be Camilla (who is no longer in Diane's life). Diane's neighbour initially participates in this fantasy because she is a lesbian and Diane is hot. But after while the neighbour has had enough of this game and finishes the relationship.

I don't necessarily see the old couple as Diane's abusers, although they could be (as well as others previously). I think that the most probable explanation is that once Diane had suffered the abuse, she tended to misinterpret people's kindness as something more sinister and that she saw potential rapists everywhere. The scene in which we see the old pair in a taxi could be a representation of Diane's mistrust of her new foster parents.
At the end of the film, when the knocking on the door drives her to suicide, her fear of the person on the other side of the door morphs into all her fears of been abused by older people.

Siku wrote:How do we identify Laney as Lorraine rather than Diane?

A bruised (submissive and passive) blonde in accompany of Joe and his partner Bill approach Joe's blue van. In her subconscious Diane must have labeled her former lover as a dirty cheap whore. The bruises are the silent reminder of Diane's fight with DeRosa after she 'caught DeRosa in the act' in the bedroom of #17, with 'Adam'. In her dream Diane alters this event by casting herself as 'Adam' and Lorraine as Lorraine, in a fight over the family-jewels. I am not sure, but didn't 'Adam' grab Lorraine at her upper-arms and put her on the sink? Then Gene intervened and threw (evicted?) 'Adam' out of his own house.

1. Diane considers DeRosa as a dirty (cheap) whore (someone like Laney, possibly), because she shared the sheets with men in an attempt to work herself in the movie-business. (ref. dinner-party and the Luigi comment)
2. Laney got layed in(to) the blue van and 'disappears'.
3. Laney has got her upper arm bruised.
- I know Woody held Betty at exactly the same spot, which (to me) reflects two meanings at the same time: the victim's (Rhodes/DeRosa) injuries and Diane's abuse at her younger years.

Siku wrote:Xav I don't know if you have read the whole of this thread but I too believe that Diane had a sexual relationship with the lamp lady (Gonzales). From that starting point I am tempted to interpret Camilla and Rita as, respectively, fantasy and dream representations of this one lover. To have another lover in another flat... It seems a bit implausible.

Implausible? Maybe. Your assumption of the Lamp Lady being represented by both Rita and Camilla gives me reason to doubt in the scene where all three of them show up at the door of #12. Why would Diane's dreaming mind bring them together and why didn't this cause some kind of an internal conflict, i.e. two impossible worlds (real and dream) collide, don't they - wouldn't Lynch emphasize such moment by adding more emotional (sound and/or vision) effects?

Maybe the body is the lamp lady. Maybe the lamp lady is dead.

Imagine there's only one girl - Rita, Camilla, Lamp Lady, DeRosa, Lorraine, Blonde Camilla, all one. It might need a tweek to the chronology but it's possible that the body in the next apartment is the lamp lady's.

Xav wrote:Why would Diane's dreaming mind bring them together and why didn't this cause some kind of an internal conflict?

I'm not sure why Diane's mind would bring them together except that, in dreaming, her mind is turning over all the elements of her reality and playing them off against each other in surreal ways.

As to why it doesn't cause an internal conflict, I can only say I see a MASSIVE internal conflict in the look that passes between Rita and the lamp lady, essentially they refuse to acknowledge one another exactly as Diane refuses to accept the rift between fantasy and reality.

I don't really understand the theory so ... therefore, I really can't comment in a broad manner on a theory I don't broadly understand.

Props for not putting out yet other theory as if it doesn't have holes.

I think there is a Vertigo connection .... but as such why not a Psycho connection? Woman on a bed on her side with legs drawn up decomposing? You may want to draw a Bonner connection but a Psycho connection seems to be on firmer ground. I think you comment that not much should be made of another character with only a few lines of dialog, yet one could easily say the same about Bonner - just another character intended to move the TV series along.