Patriotism, Morality, and Metaphysical Tension in Lynch’s Eccentric Vision of America
Raleigh Adams
Assistant Editor of Campus Life & Administration, The Buckley Beacon
“Through the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds…‘Fire walk with me!’”
Straight from the heartland of America, David Lynch came into the artistic scene in the latter half of the twentieth century, stradling being the weirdo’s weirdo and “Jimmy Stewart from Mars” (Hoberman, J., “David Lynch, Maker of Florid and Unnerving Films, Dies at 78”). With a filmography that hypnotically swirls a genuine nostalgic love for America with a keen eye to the fiery truth of her realities, his works invite viewers to walk the thin liminal line between those two worlds. But, behind the surrealist trappings and characteristic Einstein-like shock of hair, Lynch was the quintessential American artist, and a surprisingly conservative one at that.
Save The Elephant Man, which takes place in Victorian London, and the foreign galaxy of Dune, Lynch’s films are all set in the United States. He once described his fascination with the country: “I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories, or little characters pop out, so it just feels right to me to, you know, make American films” (Lynch, David, and Chris Rodley, Lynch on Lynch). Lynch’s artistic love of America was just that, a love. The country was his muse.
Much like a modern iteration of the Hudson River School, Lynch had a caring hand for midcentury America that translated directly into his scenes and imagery. From the Double R Diner frequented by Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks to the idyllic roses and white picket fence that set the scene for Blue Velvet, Americana images are Lynch’s cinematic love letters to a “fantastic decade” where “there was something in the air that is not there any more at all.” He recalled, “It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright” (Lynch, David, and Chris Rodley).
Like any true love, Lynch’s for America was earnest, unfaltering, and unconditional. Not only that, his love was honest, showing America’s beauty and shortcomings. Unlike his contemporaries who probed the horrors lurking beneath suburban American life, Lynch’s work radiates a deep patriotism and belief in America’s goodness, tempered by an acknowledgment of metaphysical evil. His depiction of small-town kindness exists in tension with the sinister unknown behind neighborly smiles and manicured front lawns. There is a uniquely conservative germ to Lynch’s posturing in this way. Eager, honest, and determined to depict the nation truthfully, the filmmaker embraced the principle of imperfectability. While mankind is not made for perfect things, and evil undeniably lurks while charlatans will promise faux-perfection, this does not exclude the fact that beauty may be found shining amongst these cracks.
David Lynch created a body of work that, underneath its oddities, put forth and supported a clear moral order. Goodness and evil intermix, but ultimately, goodness prevails, it must. This reflects a conservative belief in an enduring morality, one in which men and women are grounded and governed by a perennial moral order. This order is a thin yet shining cord connecting Lynch’s body of eccentricities.
This connecting theme of the prevailing nature of goodness can be seen in the characters of Twin Peaks. Special Agent Dale Cooper enters the town of Twin Peaks to solve the murder of local homecoming queen Laura Palmer, and is greeted by the type of nuanced neighbors one may find in any American town: Sarah Palmer, a grief stricken mother; Bobby Briggs, a high school trouble maker devoted to those he loves; and Sheriff Truman, hardened from what the line of duty has shown him but deeply kind nonetheless. It is through these characters that Lynch’s belief in the American ethos and values shines through. Every character falls into evil, be that through the spiritual powers of the otherworldly Red Room, or through drugs and murder (Lee, Audrey). While these threats are real, they are equally matched through the powers of community, care, and the American way of life. Coffee and pie at the Double R Diner offer balm for weary souls, romances bloom, and daily life marches on despite the strange happenings Cooper faces. It is everyday American goodness, love for one’s fellow man, that keeps the people of Twin Peaks victorious over the evils that haunt them.
One of Lynch’s final films, The Straight Story, puts a final signature on his faith in American goodness and life. The film stands out from the man’s usual ambiguity and strange evils. Rather, The Straight Story puts Lynch in the spotlight for what he is: A profound yet unexpected moralist. Based on a true story, the movie follows an elderly World War II veteran, the titular Alvin Straight, who drives his tractor over 200 miles to visit his dying brother and make amends. Along the way, Lynch sprinkles lessons and parables regarding the importance of family, the reality of aging, the experience of veterans, and “everything that goes unsaid in the stoicism of everyday life” (Carmody, Tim, “Opinion | David Lynch Was America’s Greatest Conservative Filmmaker,” The Washington Post). David Lynch appears to embody the stereotype of the subversive artist out to destroy society and its institutions. Yet Lynch pulled an unexpected twist, and instead with a loving hand “peeled back the veneer of the political consensus to show both the fundamental cruelty and tender humanity of ordinary life” (Carmody, Tim). It was Lynch’s alienness, his rare qualities of genuineness and eagerness, that allowed him to see the U.S. in its entirety, warts and all.
Lynch passed away on January 15, 2025, after a lengthy battle with emphysema, amid the ongoing wildfires across Los Angeles. While he may have come from Mars, he saw America more clearly than most of us do on Earth. Through his lens, we glimpse not just the darkness that lurks in the corners, but the light that continues to shine — even in the strangest of places. In a world where art is cheap and morality seems fleeting, Lynch has left a dreamlike inheritance for the nation: The quiet kindness of neighbors, a warm cup of coffee, and an enduring belief in something greater — if only we take the time to firewalk alongside him.
Works Cited
Lynch, David, and Chris Rodley. Lynch on Lynch. Faber and Faber, 2005.
Carmody, Tim. “Opinion | David Lynch Was America’s Greatest Conservative Filmmaker – The Washington Post.” The Washington Post, The Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2025, www.washingtonpost.com/
Hoberman, J. “David Lynch, Maker of Florid and Unnerving Films, Dies at 78.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/
Lee, Audrey. “The Absurdly American Life of David Lynch.” Athwart, Athwart, 18 Jan. 2025, www.athwart.org/an-absurdly-
Lynch is probably one of the few artists who’s been so widely called feminist and chauvanist, reactionary and radical, lascivious and prudish (one book by someone who disliked him from all angles was even titled “The Pervert in the Pulpit”). I don’t think he was solidly any of those things but perhaps there was an element of truth to them all. It’s certainly the case that he had a lifelong streak of Eisenhower Americana through his persona. Although he notion of conservatism presented in this article – a Norman Rockwell vision of modest, grounded, optimistic humanism – bears very little resemblance to the carnivalesque, gleefully vulgar sadism that calls itself conservatism today. That said, ironically the personal flamboyance and transgression of Trump (if not his under-the-radar ideological conformity) does mark him as a deeply Lynchian figure – not in any way that embodies Lynch’s own ethos but certainly in a form that Lynch found equally fascinating and repellent. Think a combination of Baron Harkonnen and Frank Booth, a figure simultaneously embodying a sterile frustration and lust for life, fury and humor drawing others in like moths to the flame – despite burning them every time.
In 2018, there was an amusing run-in of sensibilities when Lynch offered halting praise of Trump’s outsider status and potential to upturn a moribund status quo and Trump interpreted this is the most simplistic way possible. This led to a MAGA rally in which Trump waved around a stapled printout of an article and said “the great fillum-maker David Lynch” had praised him as the greatest president of all time. (Trump is I think a genuine movie buff in a way the far more than, say, the cautiously curated Obama – although to paraphrase a tweet from the time, I can’t imagine most of his cheering if slightly confused red-hat-wearing crowd went out that night and purchased Inland Empire to own the libs…God, I wish.) Genuinely one of the funniest moments of his first term; of course Lynch’s subsequent clarification (Trump had the potential to achieve greatness but needed to stop being so divisive) went ignored. That Lynch died within a week of Trump’s second inauguration (incidentally, Lynch’s own birthday) further marks them as a yin/yang of the boomer generation.
Lynch himself was a political wanderer in a way that I believe is actually quite relatable for many Americans despite our supposedly ironclad partisan polarization. If I’m not mistaken, he met JFK as a kid probably around the same time Clinton did (another quintessential ’46er) and seems to have revered him, although his 80s work on the Goddess adaptation with Mark Frost implied Kennedy involvement with Marilyn Monroe’s death (Ethel was on the studio board and nixed the project). He praised Reagan frequently, mostly in aesthetic terms, though he did vote for him (and had quite nasty things to say about L.A.’s homeless population at the time). As you’re probably aware, he was featured in a National Review cover story making a similar observation about how his violent surrealism expressed a love for America that he was celebrating, not trying to destroy. That was written by Joseph Sobran, himself something of a political nonconformist whose paleocon Buchaninite instincts were out of touch with the predominant neocon trends of the time, leading to a break with Buckley over Sobran’s opposition to Israel’s capture of the U.S. political system and abuse of Palestinians (a good stand on his part) and, subsequently, soft pedaling Holocaust denial (obviously not a good stand).
As for Lynch, he drifted left over the years but in his own idiosyncratic way. He became, like many, a vague libertarian in the post-Perot era, squeamish about government busybodies and religious moralists alike; in 2000 he endorsed a candidate for a third party launched by the Transcendental Meditation organization (worthy of its own deep dive). His 2012 endorsement of Obama was framed around Romney’s name being an anagram suggesting the Republican candidate wanted “r money”, and his 2016 pivot from mainline Democrat to Independent anti-establishment insurgent was even more, if not cryptic, at least boiled down: a single tweet proclaiming “YAY BERNIE!” Asked later, he couldn’t quite remember if he voted for the libertarian nominee in the general election after the socialist lost. The Trump comments followed a few years later, and then he sprinkled some Black Lives Matter messaging and pro-Ukraine rhetoric into his 2020-22 weather reports (which reminds me – how could I forget! – that a decade earlier he tagged Vladimir Putin in the ice bucket challenge). That was it for his sporadic political commentary though the work has much to offer in complex ways (usually transcending our sordid discourse).
I did not mean to write an essay of my own, but your reflections got the wheels turning. It’s always interesting to see how and why Lynch reached people with different experiences, philosophies, and perspectives. For someone who believed in the unfiied field – or, I suppose, because of this – he sure knew how to reach different people where they were and bring them into his world.
(Feel free to delete the earlier duplicate of this if it ever goes through; I fixed some typos and added a few thoughts.)