BLOG POST #6

Mulholland Drive is a film by David Lynch that follows the real and dream worlds of a woman named Diane Selwyn. It is easy to get confused with the plot line of the story because the plot shifts between a dream world that Diane is imagining, and the real world that Diane actually resides in. This film is a terrific example of postmodernism artwork. In order to prove this it is important that we know what the term “postmodernism” means. Postmodernism is exactly what it sounds like. It refers to pieces of art (movies, paintings, television, music, poems, etc.) that were released after and disagree with modernist ideals. Modernist support things like industrialism, progress, and capitalism. So in opposition to this, postmodernism focuses on disputing these ideals and looking for deeper meaning rather than taking them for face value.  Mulholland Drive reflects these postmodernism characteristics because the movie as a whole is a giant piece of irony. The beginning of the movie is all a dream state that Diane is having. In this dream state she (Betty in the dream) is just moving to Hollywood to further her already flourishing acting career. Throughout the dream things start to not make sense until finally about two thirds of the way into the film the settings shift and the characters names are all switched up. This is because the movie is now in the real world. In reality, Diane is a failed actress and there is no hope left in her acting career. Through a series of motifs it becomes obvious that things in her dream reflect horrible choices that she has made in real life. This is ironic because the thing that she loves to do, which is acting, is what caused her downfall. The promise and hope that she thought she saw in Hollywood has resulted in a failed life. Overall Lynch is trying to show that Hollywood is a mean and ruthless place where people with talent and dreams go to get destroyed by the fact that this so called dreamland is just a vicious money hungry industry that is more likely to kill you than help you.