In Blue Velvet, David Lynch offers us a primer to what happens when the automobile replaces the walking body as the primary vehicle of waking dreams. Dorothy Vallens and Jeffrey Beaumont—lovers trapped in a car—recede further from reality each time Frank, their menacing kidnapper, gives it the gas, turns the wheel and spits in their faces. Dorothy and Jeffrey, doe-eyed and horny, their affection mirrored in each other’s pain and the rain-soaked windows, dare to glance at Frank. “Don’t you fucking look at me!” Frank bellows, as his V8-engine propels them from city to country, from the safety of visibility into the muddy ruts and mists of fallow grass and blown-down fences.
For Dorothy and Jeffrey, Frank’s forced wandering transformed their desire into an affliction—an involuntary acid trip in a wayward universe, a land without asphalt, without streetlights. No signs or markers here, just tire tracks. Frank understood that to let loose upon his prey en plein air, he would have to keep moving—evade the binding stares and casual glances of others. Frank’s automotive dream world evidences how sharply technology has changed our experience of the walking spirit… The 19th century flâneur, that romantically autonomous soul, wandered the streets in sight of others, in consort with everyday life. For the flâneur, wandering meant hovering on the verge of visibility, wandering without cultivating the regard of others while existing precisely within the company of others… “to set up house in the heart of the multitude,” in Baudelaire’s words.
