Conor here: It seems to me that the author of the following piece only scratches the surface of how Lynch’s films dealt with the forces that dominate our lives, which are more systemic than the product of the bad apples the author mentions here. Hopefully some film buffs can weigh in.
Anyways, here’s a Lynch short film from 1987 “The Cowboy & The Frenchman”:
By Billy J. Stratton, a Professor of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver. Originally published at The Conversation.
“There’s a sort of evil out there,” says Sheriff Truman in an episode of David Lynch’s iconic TV series, “Twin Peaks.”
That line gets to the heart of the work of the filmmaker, whose family announced his death Jan. 16, 2025. Lynch’s films and TV series reflected the dark, ominous, often bizarre underbelly of American culture – one increasingly out of the shadows today.
As someone who teaches film noir and horror, I often think about the ways American cinema holds up a mirror to society.
Lynch was a master at this.
Many of Lynch’s films, like 1986’s “Blue Velvet” and 1997’s “Lost Highway,” can be unsparing and graphic, with imagery that was described by critics as “disturbing” and “all chaos” upon their release.
But beyond those bewildering effects, Lynch was onto something.
His images of corruption, violence and toxic masculinity ring all too familiar in America today.
Take “Blue Velvet.” The film focuses on a naive college student, Jeffrey Beaumont, whose idyllic suburban life framed with white picket fences is turned inside out when he finds a human ear on the edge of a road. This grisly discovery draws him into the orbit of a violent sociopath, Frank Booth, and an alluring lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens, whom Booth sadistically torments while holding her child and husband – whose ear, it turns out, was the one Beaumont had found – hostage.
Beaumont nonetheless finds himself perversely attracted to Vallens and descends deeper into the shadowy world lurking beneath his hometown – a world of smoke-filled bars and drug dens frequented by Booth and an array of freakish characters, including pimps, addicts and a corrupt detective.
Booth’s haunting line, “Now it’s dark,” serves as a potent refrain.
The corruption, perversion and violence depicted in “Blue Velvet” are indeed extreme. But the acts Booth perpetrates also recall the stories of sexual abuse that have emerged from organizations including the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts.
As the exposure of such crimes continue to pile up, they become less an aberration but a dire warning of something that’s deeply ingrained in our culture.
These evils are sensational and appalling, and there’s an impulse to perceive them as existing outside of our realities, perpetrated by people who aren’t like us. What “Twin Peaks,” Lynch’s hit TV series, and “Blue Velvet” do so effectively is tell viewers that those hidden worlds where venality and cruelty reside can be found just around the corner, in places that we might see but tend to ignore.
And then there are the uncanny and eerie worlds depicted in “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Drive.” The characters in those searing films seem to live in parallel realities governed by good and evil.
“Lost Highway” begins with a jazz musician, Fred Madison, being convicted of killing his wife. He claims, however, to have no memory of the crime. Exploring the theme of alternate worlds, Lynch thrusts Madison into an illusory realm inhabited by killers, drug dealers and pornographers by merging his identity into that of young mechanic named Pete Dayton. In doing so, Lynch combines the worlds of “normality” and perversity into one.
In the 1990s, artists like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, whose music is included on the official soundtrack of “Lost Highway,” also confronted audiences with images of decadence and social decay, which were inspired by his own disturbing experiences in Hollywood and the music industry.
These dark themes have since been personified in rich and powerful men like Sean “Diddy” Combs, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein who, for years, skated along the surface of high society with their perversions hidden from the public.
In his 2001 film, “Mulholland Drive,” Lynch turns his attention to Hollywood and the wretchedness that seems baked into its very nature.
A wide-eyed and innocent aspiring actress named Betty Elms arrives in Los Angeles with visions of stardom. Her struggle to achieve success – one that ends in depression and death – is certainly tragic. But it’s also not very surprising, given that she was trying to make it in a corrupt system that all too often bestows its rewards on the undeserving or those who are willing to compromise their morals.
As with so many who go to Hollywood with big dreams only to find that fame is beyond their reach, Elms is unprepared for an industry so consumed with exploitation and corruption. Her fate mimics that of the women who, desperate for stardom, ended up falling into the trap set by Harvey Weinstein.
Lynch’s death comes at a time when America seems to be hurtling toward an ever-darker future. Perhaps it’s one foretold by politicians turning a deaf ear to acts of sexual assault, tolerating the vilification of victims or even bragging that they can get away with murder.
Lynch’s vital body of work warns that the cruelty of such people isn’t really what we should fear most. It is, instead, those who laugh, cheer or simply turn away – faint responses that enable and empower such behaviors, giving them an acceptable place in the world.
When Lynch’s films were first released, they often appeared as surreal, funhouse mirror reflections of society.
Today they speak of profound and terrible truths we can’t ignore.
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I take it further: Lynch is warning about one’s own complicity, which ensures the evil outcome. In Blue Velvet, Jeffrey indulges in Booth-like behaviour, and the final line is ‘I could never eat a bug’ as the character pops food into her mouth. In Mulholland Dr, Betty/Diane builds an elaborate fantasy to justify her self-inflicted situation – yet she (the woman in apartment 12) comes out the end sober if selfishly sour, so Lynch gave her some way out.
I’d have to consider myself a Lynch fan, having watched all of the intensely creepy “Twin Peaks” along with a couple of viewings of “Blue Velvet.”
The Frank Booth character was not so far from Hopper’s real persona in 70s Taos according to the investigators I worked with in the DAs office in the early 80s.
I’ll have to find “Mulholland Drive” after learning more about the plot. As a guardian-ad-litem for a little girl caught in a divorce in South Carolina, I met her mother who had been a small town high school cheerleader and church youth leader who went off to make her mark in Hollywood. She quickly was routed into the porn industry where she was brutalized and humiliated over and over again. In an instance of Stockholm Syndrome, she became addicted to “the life,” so that when she finally escaped LA and returned home, she ended up working in a strip joint, which her ex-husband used to try to get even her visitation taken away.
When money and profit drive everything, everything will be for sale to the detriment of human decency and kindness.
I had a brief run in with 90s era Dennis Hopper, and maybe he’d mellowed by then. Back in the salad days in Vail, I was the wingman for some Texas good old boys whose idea of a good time was to go out, get drunk, try to find a woman to take home, or failing that, get in a fight. One night as the club was closing, two other guys got in a fistfight on the dancefloor. Ostensibly to “break it up”, but in reality just to get in a few shots himself, my buddy jumped into the fray, grabbed one guy by the collar and slammed his head onto the hardwood. I was observing all this from the edge of the room when suddenly a guy to my right, sensing some injustice, asks me what my buddy’s problem was. I turned and it was Dennis Hopper. I tried to explain that my friend was just helping, but I was not very convincing and Hopper saw right through our little ruse. But we were not kidnapped and subjected to some novel torture, or force fed any bespoke mind altering substances, and Hopper left with just a few words of righteous admonishment. I do hope that other guy’s head was OK.
I knew that Dennis Hopper was a terrible coke-head for many years but other than that I don’t know much about his habits.
Twin Peaks was my first introduction to the mind altering vision of a series and film maker like David Lynch. That was late in high school and while I can’t recall intricate details from the series, the varying characters were both unique and oddly appealing ( okay especially some young actresses in the TV show would catch a high school boy’s interest ). Plus the acting and series quality, for that time seemed a little better production value.
I would say the series began a journey of interest, which really didn’t take until hold until after college with a comparably off beat, other world depiction of our sinister leaders in the X Files series. Question what you were told*, ask real questions and don’t wholly accept the leading narrative of the day or the era. Fox Mulder in that show had some wild out there ideas, but he was not alone. And occasionally the weekly episodes provided a good chuckle at the expense of over zealous organizations like your local HOA..
*Shorter, avoid the grape flavored Kool Aid.
In High School I took AP history and we spent much of a month studying and discussing the Holocaust and wondering whether the German public was naive or evil. If my history teacher would have told me that the America of the future would actively assist genocide I would have thought that she was crazy.
Yet here we are
History – depends on whose ox is being gored.
Per Conor Gallagher: “the forces that dominate our lives, which are more systemic than the product of the bad apples the author mentions here.”
I recall the release of Blue Velvet, which was the must-see film that season. Later, Twin Peaks had its pilot episode, which was notable for its long running time. Then the episodes that followed were, errrr, hard to parse. Lynch may be best at portraying the American id.
There is a longer history of exposing the rot. There is also a long history in U.S. culture of lamenting the “loss of innocence.” Loss of innocence is practically an industry in the U S of A, along with “we must get back to the garden.”
Without looking at larger causes, nothing is going to happen, politically or culturally.
As for earlier visions of rot, there are plenty:
–Sunset Boulevard (for failed Hollywood careers).
–A Star Is Born (version 1).
–Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (child starlets reduced to killing pet birds).
–Marnie (kleptomania and abuse and charming Sean Connery).
–All about Eve (for that matter).
–Night of the Hunter (abuse by the clergy).
And I suspect that John Waters exposed some rot. And cha-cha heels.
Not to take away from Lynch. But there are other ways of approaching the “rot” — and have been other ways of approaching the rot. In U.S. literature, the U S A Trilogy by Dos Passos has some tart insights into rot, particularly in the volume 1919. And Sinclair Lewis wasn’t exactly a happy camper. The two of them, though, were able to evoke big themes, economic factors, and cultural assumptions that Lynch couldn’t, largely because novels simply are “bigger” than film can be.
I would amend your list with at least one entry for film, 1999 release of Fight Club. It mocks US consumerism and towards the latter half and the ending, portrays all those joiners of Project Mayhem as highly capable young males in spite of their ” middle children of history…”
I watched the film before reading the book, then went back and watched the film again several times over a course of 5 or so years. After getting my professional career arc or any potential thereof be summarily flushed with the GFC in 07 to 10 the understanding of the film’s work really grew, from my altered life and altered perspective. Personal diatribe aside, the book is a highly valuable, cynical take on modern American life and the authoritative appeal to be a good, loyal and devoted consumer.
Adding, it greatly helps when the film director is now recognized for his many accomplishments prior to this film and on films that followed it…David Fincher is a personal favorite.
Elmer Gantry most definitely exposed the rot of its time, and shined a light on a particularly American archetype that continues to this day – the mountebank who rises to power even though everyone knows they’re full of it.
I really should like David Lynch. I agree with his overarching themes, and I very much like other directors who make similar types of films. But I just couldn’t get into Lynch. I saw Blue Velvet when it came out and started off liking it, but Laura Dern’s character ruined it for me. The movie was pretty freaky and somewhat challenging, but rather than let the audience figure it out, every 20 minutes or so Dern would show up on screen and her scenes would serve as a recap to explain everything that just happened in case it had gone over your head. Then there was Wild at Heart, which again I started out liking. Half way in, it becomes clear that it’s an allegory of, or at least has many allusions to, The Wizard of Oz. The reason it becomes clear is because is that for pretty much an adult at that time, if there was one movie they had seen many, many times over the course of decades, it was the The Wizard of Oz. Yet near the end, in case you hadn’t got it, Lynch has Glenda the Good Witch actually show up just to hammer it home. Lynch’s movies are visually stunning and do have a lot to say. I just think his filmmaking doesn’t give the viewer enough credit so he never became a favorite of mine.
That’s my review after not having seen any of these movies for over 30 years now. I’m happy to be convinced otherwise because like I said, I feel like I should like him more. Otherwise, maybe I’ll reread Babbitt or It Can’t Happen Here. That last one really gets at the political rot that hasn’t stopped since Lewis wrote it almost 100 years ago.
I always thought Lynch’s casting of Ann Miller – who may or may not have owed her rescue from obscurity at Columbia to her relationship with LB Mayer – in Mulholland Drive was him telling the viewer ‘twas ever thus.
Isn’t it odd that the author Billy j Stratton, after talking about the boy scouts, the Catholic church and Harvey Weinstein, fails to even mention Jeffrey Epstein?
I have noticed that blackmail can never be discussed. For instance, “Why is the Israel lobby so powerful? Obviously it’s bribes and money!!” I assume this blind spot is because blackmail remains a powerful force that cannot be discussed, or even denied for that matter. As here, it can only be ignored, yet I think it speaks even more powerfully to the decadence of the culture and leadership of the United States.
This article did in fact mention Epstein, in paragraph 17:
Right. How about Nikki Haley writing “Finish them” on an Israeli artillery shell and then returning to the U.S to campaign on cutting social security?
The disposition of the Epstein recordings will be revealed after the compromised parties have left this world. We may even learn who killed JFK in a few more years. As the world becomes more transparent we run the risk of encountering increasingly unbearable truth.
Right. One could argue that Lynch’s vision wasn’t necessarily about America at all since he also made films set in Victorian England (The Elephant Man) and sci fi outer space (Dune). In The Straight Story Richard Farnsworth plays an old man who drives his lawn tractor across Iowa to visit his dying brother. I’d say it was more a vision in service of an esthetic than the other way around although that esthetic was one of innocence versus corruption. He’s not rejecting the innocence which is also part of “America.”
Question re: blackmail
Which disgraced individuals in the pre-Epstein-“suicide” era may in fact have been the victims of blackmail who refused to follow orders?
Is there any chance that Harvey Weinstein, for instance, finally just fell out with his Mossad handlers?
He did mention Jeffrey Epstein.
“These dark themes have since been personified in rich and powerful men like Sean “Diddy” Combs, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein who, for years, skated along the surface of high society with their perversions hidden from the public.“
And to that, I respond with the largest possible eye roll. Maybe America is hurtling toward an ever-darker future. Though I’d argue the increasing suicide and homelessness rates are more informative indicators than “Red team evil”. Or how about the decrepit state of basic water infrastructure (Flint) or the genocide-complicity of the media (“Screams without Words”), long-term, widespread sex abuse by the Catholic church (hat-tip to DJG’s earlier comment)? The utter failure of fundamental institutions?
hm…something tells me that D.L. from today’s POV got dated.
I have to take the time and go back to some of his films, though.
The public usually talks about the screenplay and the actors’ work with the director (on developing the roles e.g.) when it speaks about moviemaking.
Very seldom about directing as such, which is an art sui generis. And arcane for the most part.
Colleagues of mine back in the 1990s – always more into the actual “industry fare” than me back then – argued that “Lost Highway” was perfect because you couldn’t remove a single shot or change the nature/composition of a single shot in that film.
I wouldn’t agree but doing so argueing outside the conventions of that industrial moviemaking tradition which was however the reference point for D.L.´s work and the industry insiders judging it.
I always contended with the question, how much value is there to this industry standard?
I myself had found childish and too much stylistic navel-gazing in the way he articulated his ideas in the movies.
And as such he was always at the danger of getting fashionable. Which is a death sentence in film in the long run.
Think Park Chan-wook, or a Kim Ki-Duk who actually had serious depression over this (before, ahem, he was struck dead by Covid…😧)
But many 90s big wigs of so-called auteur cinema were affected by this at some point.
Those who grappled with this earlier than later got lucky and could renew themselves in time, e.g. Wim Wenders.
Not so Lynch who already had found it difficult to get Mulholland financed. He spoke very openly about this. He said I have always been a European filmmaker, never American – by which he simply said the truth about where his money came from, often France.
Consider this: Even after the overwhelming artistic success with Mulholland there were no generous financiers around any more.
Mulholland would be his last classic feature. 2001!
I always found that really sad and a scandal of sorts.
Considering the formative years before.
To understand how interwined films work and how much team effort they are, see this list of DOP Peter Deming´s work, who shot Lost Highway and Mulholland. But also Austin Powers, I Love Huckabees, or a great, underappreciated “Lucky You” by today underrated Curtis Hanson (died 2016).
https://www.imdb.com/de/name/nm0005687/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr
Besides, to realize how many directors there are who are labeled in some fashionable way – and active for many years sometimes – see the various decades of Cannes film festival. Just go through the number of names 1990-2002.
Entertainment is a bitch.
https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000147/2002/1/?ref_=ev_tl_yr_8
***
As certain more artistic characteristics are concerned you could argue e.g. over parallels between colour surfaces with Lynch and Almodovar. Or between those two and Hitchcock or the colour of Antonio. Or Lynch and Cronenberg (o.k. that’s sort of obvious).
Considering the 1980s to be the cradle of today’s industry Lynch did leave his imprint.
p.s. arcanum artis: Which of those people talking about paintings in MSM are familiar with the nature of actually carrying out the work itself?
Same with film.
Oh, and yes, Lynch adored Wizard of Oz.
Film historian David Bordwell and German director Christian Petzold had some interesting things to say about L. in the past. I can’t find it now online though. If I do I’d post it later.
For now:
A film essay about Lynch and his movies, by Guy Girard and Janine Bazin, for the prestigious series
„Cinema de notre temps“, 1993
60 min., English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDUvjTK76JU
btw I do not believe a single word of Lynch claiming how important actual dreaming is for his script. Meditation and all that. That’s PR. Every writer/creator knows that much is intuition. To put that out there as something uniquely special to certain artists is nonsene and a form of “product placement”.
His films might convey a deeper truth about US hypocrisy to viewers (what I personally felt to be childish). That doesn’t make him a saint. Same true for Coppola or Cameron or Spielberg or lesser known more artistic names. Always distinguish between the businessman (aka artist) and the private citizen.
Thanks and I agree that Lynch saw himself as making art films and not as some kind of social commentator.
One thing that continues to befuddle me about my fellow humans is the complete blindness to the unseen world, complete denial that a spiritual realm actually exists. The cosmic nature of this discovery requires a level of self-reflection and then humility that most can not bear. The ‘rot’ exists because ‘reap what you sow’ is a powerful energy force ignored in a society that places “me” and “my choice” and “my rights”. All of that ‘me first’ coupled with ignoring the reality that our individual actions, over centuries, causes rot and decay in both our material lives and our unseen souls and the impact on the unseen souls of others. Only a few recognize the fruit is rotten, and even less understand or care to understand, its root cause.
We continue to ignore the damage that we, collectively, have done. What do you expect?
I’ve seen everything Lynch made, including the awful series “On The Air”.
I just enjoyed his fractured way of looking at the world. There’s a lot of just an old fashioned middle American way of looking at life that comes through in his approach to telling stories.
I remember being out in the Sierra Nevadas with my cousin as a kid. We were both the same age and only saw each other once a year for a week or so, but he’d always have some weird thing in nature that he’d want to show off when we caught up again. One year it was catching scorpions and watching them duel, or one year a giant rock back in the woods that was a lodestone and you couldn’t pull a shovel off it. The Lynch stories are like that. I don’t think there’s any political metaphor there. He’s just showing visual slices of the odd and sometimes really disturbing and “supernatural” things that can happen to (mostly American) human beings in their passage through this world and tying them together into a narrative. There’s also a lot of humor in it. When Dean Stockwell sings “In Dreams” in Blue Velvet, you can relate to Jeffrey Beaumont being scared out of his wits, or you can laugh about one of the oddest – but absolutely realistic – situations ever put on screen. In fact, the whole “joyride” sequence in the movie, from meeting Frank Booth outside Dorothy Valence’s apartment to Jeffrey waking up bruised in the rain, is one of the most brilliant ever filmed.
All that to say, and I think Lynch said it on many occasions, it’s up to us to figure out what it all means. And I don’t think he’d agree at all that he presented a “dark vision” of America. Quite the opposite.
As Pauline Kael once said (re Bonnie and Clyde), if you are going to make a movie about America it would have to be funny.
To a remarkable degree our establishment seem to have lost their sense of humor.
“And I don’t think he’d agree at all that he presented a “dark vision” of America. Quite the opposite.”
yeah
You are right.
I imagine David Lynch would find this article silly, as well as poorly written.
Making everything about political economy is a good way to be miserable all the time, which is the exact opposite of how the man lived his life.
“It is, instead, those who laugh, cheer or simply turn away – faint responses that enable and empower such behaviors, giving them an acceptable place in the world.”
People like Netanyahu, Biden and Trump wouldn’t be where they are today without a lot of support and apathy both from their populations.
How much power do we the powerless have over the Bird of Prey with two wings? A system has evolved to make sure we have very little. We can hope that Trump will at least be better than Biden but what recourse do we have if he isn’t?
Yves laid it all out with her discussion of the Powell Memo as a turning point for TPTB who had tolerated protests and people like Nader in the 60s. All that freedom had to be repressed and now thought control has become a mantra among the elites.
I like Lynch but I don’t think “good” v “evil” is a useful frame in the real world where behavior is actually about power–who has it and who doesn’t.
People may have zero power, but that STILL doesn’t mean they have to support people like Trump who have no real interest in providing concrete material benefits for the working class and the poor, or addressing any of the US’s many structural problems.
The fact of the matter is, the loudest and largest protests in the world still fall on our leadership’s deaf ears, as was seen with the protests leading up to the eve of the Iraq war as well as the protests against the US support of the Israeli extermination of the Palestinians.
I think that Mao was sadly right when he said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Unless people are in a position to actually pose a physical threat to our elites, they do not care what the population thinks of their leadership. This is why I have always been skeptical of protests actually working as elite officials in many civilizations have shown throughout history that they will not listen to the voices of their subjects unless they are physically-forced to do so. All of this talk about “Democracy” is and always has been window dressing.
The problem, is that any sort of potential insurrection or attempt at revolution on the part of the citizenry would be quickly dealt with because of the degree of surveillance and weaponry available to both law enforcement and the military and the elites control both. Even if an insurrection succeeded, a new elite would be established that would probably end up being just as bad as the one that it replaced.
“hurtling toward an ever-darker future” from the mouth of a denizen of the early 21st century…human history is on average quite a bit darker than this little post-war island we are familiar with.
I’ll be ‘that guy’. I find Lynch to be severely overrated. His films for the most part are convoluted and overwritten, sometimes appear to be simply unfinished. Twin Peaks was decent. The Straight Story was good. His pathological obsession with rape and murder is unhealthy to say the least.
JACOBIN’s obituary by Eileen Jones, who I frankly don’t really follow after her firsts for me offered too little substance (good texts on film are very rare.)
RIP to David Lynch, Mysterious, Bizarre, and All-American
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/david-lynch-obituary-twin-peaks
I did appreciate this however:
“But we couldn’t immediately say why, which is a hallmark of Lynch’s work. His films always tended to go beyond the smarty-pants rhetoric of cinephiles. And what a relief that is! Not to be generating yet another slick summing-up of a masterpiece that reduces it to our small, would-be clever notions of film art. I read Letterboxd postings that make me want to weep — everything’s a masterpiece, with three masterpieces per week getting churned out by your Christopher Nolans, your Denis Villeneuves, your Greta Gerwigs, your Luca Guadagninos, to judge by the relentless upbeat chatter of those who are wowed by every third movie that gets made.
Good luck with Lynch. His films don’t sum up easily or cleverly.”
or this:
“Nobody other than Raymond Chandler and Mike Davis ever nailed down a vision of Los Angeles as beautifully rendered and terrifying and complete as David Lynch did with Mulholland Drive (2001). I saw that one while I was living there, working on the margins of independent film, and I felt as if someone had infiltrated my mind and seen what I’d seen. Like those velvet-black night rides up winding roads in the Hollywood Hills on the way up to a party in some lit-up modernist masterpiece of a house, drives that always felt simultaneously as beautiful as a dream and as menacing as one’s own inevitable, and probably violent, death”.
But here is the problem:
“There are other wonderfully talented up-and-coming filmmakers, of course, but nobody who can in any way approximate or appropriate Lynch, or even try to follow in his footsteps. At a time when the old auteur theory, which argues that the director is or should be the sole “author” of a film, is largely dismissed, there’s Lynch to consider.”
Auteur-theory – even though everybody uses it as a common-place term – was outdated the moment it hit the papers. Only people who try to put complicated things into simple boxes to label them could break down a movie, where 5-5000 individuals are involved to one single person.
And how can any serious professional film critic familiar with film history claim “talented up-and-coming filmmakers, of course, but nobody who can in any way approximate or appropriate Lynch, or even try to follow in his footsteps” – thats just a misunderstanding on so many levels.
Or as Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu said correctly, “Film festival contests should be abolished. There are no winners or losers in film. Film is not a sport.” This contest/ranking-ideology with films is one of the most destructive features of the (US) film industry.
David Lynch (1946–2025)
Women in Trouble
Max Nelson
22 January 2025
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/women-in-trouble
p.s. Since Nelson mentions White Sands in the end –
shortly before “Mulholland Drive” Lee Tamahori did “Mulholland Falls” which was completely centered on the Manhattan Project and the nuclear reality of post WWII-USA and how it became an entity of its own hovering above all.
p.p.s. Since a couple of weeks ago there was discussion here on California and water – water was a huge issue during the development of the state – as e.g. we know from Mike Davis´s research or a film like “Chinatown” which is basically an investigation into the psychology of rotten power and fights over who controls the water and thus the state control “Dune”?). And eventually of course: Chinatown was inspired by the real life William Mulholland.