“It’s Not a Natural Thing”: Situating Twin Peaks: The Return within the Anthropocene

Abstract

WIN PEAKS IS A SHOW ABOUT "THE ABSURD MYSTERY OF THE strange forces of existence," to quote Albert Rosenfield, Miguel Ferrer's sardonic FBI detective . Where the first two seasons and the film Fire Walk with Me (1992) grappled with the human condition in an era of suburban malaise and cynicism, Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) shifts more philosophically to what it means to be human in the Anthropocene, as we have undone and irradiated the borders of identity, humanity, and selfhood. Show creators David Lynch and Mark Frost depict the naturecultures of irradiated suburbia and posthumanity in a time of planetary ecological crisis. Lynch and Frost's vision demonstrates how the splitting of the atom-the division of the indivisible -has fundamentally blurred and disrupted the borders of the planet, and The Return consequently points to a nuclear origin for the Anthropocene. There is also a recurring concern in The Return with how humanity has harnessed naturally-occurring powers, such as fire, electricity, or steam, and how this extractionist relationship with the globe precedes the splitting of the atom: electricity, particularly in The Return, is seen as tainted or irradiated in the Anthropocene. Under the nuclear conditions of the Anthropocene, the (post)human similarly splits, multiplying as a cell mutates and monstrously duplicates itself like a cell mutating into cancer when exposed to radiation. The Anthropocene politics of The Return consequently recontextualize the earlier series and film: the industrial town of Twin Peaks is lost and must be returned to; the all-American hero Dale Cooper is