Lynchian: What Does It Stand For?

The Criterion Channel calls David Lynch “a director of such distinctive, overpowering vision that he has inspired his own adjective”; indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “Lynchian” as  “characteristic, reminiscent, or imitative of the films or television work of David Lynch,” tracing its roots to a 1984 article in Cinefantastique. What exactly defines a Lynchian work of art? The answer may be unknowable, yet certain motifs irrefutably reappear throughout Lynch’s work: fragmentation, abstraction, duality, oneirism, and—perhaps the most Lynchian of all—uncanniness: alchemizing the familiar into something unfamiliar and wholly unsettling. At this lecture, we’ll journey through Lynch’s oeuvre of film and TV work, endeavoring to define the undefinable.