David Lynch

Pervert in the Pulpit: The Puritanical Impulse in the Films of David Lynch” - Johnson Jeff

He explores the concept of innate depravity; a Zoroastrian notion of good and evil. His villains are drawn from archetypes of American fiction. Spirit of reform and inverse Protestantism; focus on individual battle. Guilt and sin are main preoccupation of American writers. Lynch uses idea of American Gothic: nostalgia, irony and cliche. Lynch uses form of Calvinism; Romanticism where Man has a dark relationship with the world. Artistic intensity in Lynch's world, but there is a Manichean ideal of two opposing worlds of good and evil. Simple structural codification which critics have a hard time analyzing; either they get too hung up on imagery and aesthetic quality, or the moralization of the work. Some critics argue Lynch infused his works with Sincerity and sentimentality, that moralizing was just a bypass. Lynch executes Abrahamic justice against villains in works. He is anti-intellectual, cleanliness is an image/ideal of a corrective for love and strife. His films disrupt narrative linear form, but he uses familiar material to challenge viewer. His characters who escape traps of logic must still resist assimilating with a culture who restrains their identity. His characters both crave and resist assimilation.


http://www.theopedia.com/Manicheanism
Because Manicheanism is a faith that teaches dualism, in modern English the word "manichean" has come to mean dualistic, presenting or viewing things in a "black and white" fashion.

"David Lynch Keeps His Head" - David Foster Wallace

Ambiguity in his movies about morality and identity is purposeful. That is what makes viewers so uncomfortable.

Blue Velvet