A monstrous talent: Blue Velvet Studies in Memory of Dennis Hopper

R.I.P. Dennis Hopper, 1936 - 2010

"Why are there people like Frank?"

"A truly Bad Bad Guy is not believable and impossible to connect with. That is unless your whole story world is twisted and strange in itself; Like Dennis Hopper's truly Bad Bad Guy in David Lynch's Blue Velvet." Sune Liltop, 'Good Guy / Bad Guy',  P.O.V. No.28, 2009

"...the conflict between smoothness and pent-up rage that defines Hopper's roles in films like David Lynch's Blue Velvet [1986]" Adrian Danks, "Nice 'N' Easy: Speaking Frankly about The Night We Called it a Day', Senses of Cinema, Issue 28, 2003

As Film Studies For Free is sure all of its readers will have learned by now, American movie actor, director and artist Dennis Hopper died yesterday. Some remarkable tributes to him have appeared in the last weeks, few if any better than those by filmmaker-critic Matt Zoller Seitz (see his video essay here; and a further written tribute here). Since the news of his death was made public, David Hudson has been collecting a full list of online tributes to Dennis Hopper here.

For FSFF's author, while she has a big soft spot for The Hot Spot (1990) as well as Easy Rider (1969), two films directed by Hopper, his most memorable contribution to the cinema was, in her view, his performance as the raging psychopath Frank Booth in David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet. So this masterful film forms the (usually main) subject of each of the notable resources linked to in the scholarly webliography offered up today.  

Rest in peace, Mr Hopper.

• Jason Bainbridge, 'Soiling Suburbia: Lynch, Solondz and the Power of Dirt', M/C Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 5, 2006 

• Jenny Barrett, ''You've Made Mistress Very, Very Angry': Displeasure and Pleasure in Media Representations of BDSM'', Participations, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2003

• Michael Bloom, 'Rhetoric of Excess: Hyperbolical Irony as Transcendence in Blue Velvet', Offscreen Journal, Volume 13, Issue 9, 2009  

• Barbara Creed, 'A Journey through Blue Velvet: Film, Fantasy and the Female Spectator', New Formations, Number 6 Winter I988

• Stephan Gullatz, 'The Enigmatic Mr. Lynch', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 10, 2009

• Bernd Herzogenrath, 'On the Lost Highway: Lynch and Lacan, Cinema and Cultural Pathology', Other Voices, v.1, n.3 (January 1999)

• Randolph Jordan, Starting from scratch : turntables, auditory representation, and the structure of the known universe in the films of David Lynch, Masters thesis, Concordia University, 2003

• Valtteri Kokko, 'Psychological Horror in the Films of David Lynch',Wider Screen, 1, 2004 

• Stephanie Lam, 'David Lynch’s Blue Velvet: The Use of Binary Oppositions and Space', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 10, 2009

• Andrew Leggett, 'Violence Against Civility and the Destruction of Fantasy: The Waning of the Oedipus Complex in David Lynch’s "Blue Velvet"’, Croosroads, Rhizomes Conference 2008 Issue, Volume 111, Issue 11, 2009

• Clare Nina Norelli, 'Suburban Dread: The music of Angelo Badalamenti in the films of David Lynch', SOUND SCRIPTS Volume 2 (2009), Edited by Cat Hope and Jonathan W. Marshall, Published by Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts Faculty and Education Edith Cowan University and the Australian Music Centre (Scroll to p. 38)

• Matt Pearson, Authorship and the Films of David Lynch, e-book, BritishFilm.org.uk, 1997

• Fred Pfeil, 'Revolting Yet Conserved: Family "Noir" in Blue Velvet and Terminator 2', Postmodern Culture, Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1992 

• David Roche, 'The Death of the Subject in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive', E-rea, 2.2 | 2004