“Who is the dreamer?”—Dreaming and Waking in Twin Peaks in Light of the Hindu Advaita Vedanta
摘要
The article takes the insistence with which the third season of Twin Peaks spans its own method of mythologizing the characters against each other as an occasion for a renewed analysis of the dream-aesthetic alienation effects that permeate the series. It is shown that through the motif of dream and underlying repression, metaphorizing interpretations are forced, which call for a reinterpretation of the overall narrative as a collective dream vision, closely intertwined with the genre pieces of the entertainment industry oriented towards adventure and superhero fantasies. This dream is disrupted by the symbolism and metaphorics of a transcendent worldview, which functions as a mediator of reality but is persistently incorporated into the ongoing plot by a dream-guarding narrative instance. Its central discursive reference point is clearly located in the religious-philosophical doctrine of awakening of the Upanishads. The question of the dreamer’s identity is thus equated with the search for reality before the beginning of the narrative. Based on the subsequent attempt to define narrative reality as a veiling dream and the dream world along with its infiltrations as an interpretive offer of a monistic or non-dualistic eschatology, spaces for further interpretations open up, which are yet to be explored.