Coop & BOB
Pursuing the Cultural Psychopath
by Nathan Townes-Anderson
Written for Professor Patricia C. Phillips' graduate seminar "Practices of Art"
I wrote this essay with the intent of investigating my attraction to certain cultural artifacts and cultural figures, specifically, Mark Frost & David Lynch's early 90's television drama Twin Peaks, Cady Noland, Britney Spears, The Beach Boys and Elvis Presley. Until now this group of my "usual suspects" had remained outside of my artistic practice, a situation I hoped to remedy. I proceeded intuitively and began to imagine myself as my favorite character from Twin Peaks: FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper who "gives himself mind, body, and soul to the magic of his process, assembling a group of suspects, though unable to explain to anyone what he is doing" (Nochimson 154).
So, by way of explaining what we're about to do and further introducing Agent Cooper, I'd first like to show a brief clip from the 2nd episode of Twin Peaks. In it, you will see "Coop," dressed in a standard issue FBI trench coat, working with local law enforcement Andy, Lucy, Hawk, and town sheriff Harry S. Truman. At this point in the story, they are trying to decipher a clue in the investigation of the murder of local high school prom queen Laura Palmer:
"Tibetan Method" (Excerpt from Episode 2), please watch until 4:10...
In her article, "Desire Under the Douglas Firs: Entering the Body of Reality in Twin Peaks," Martha Nochimson argues that Cooper represents a new formulation of the detective character often seen in the Hollywood or television mystery traditions. Typically, these traditions represent the detective as a Sherlock Holmes character type: an unstoppable, disembodied intellect who approaches mystery as the "opportunity for [the] orgasmic restoration of clarity" (Nochimson 145). By comparison, Cooper revels in the vulnerability of his body and uses both mind and body (as in his "Tibetan Method") to solve the crime and yet not diminish the mystery of Twin Peaks. In this reconfiguration of the typical detective figure Nochimson notes that "the illegibility of the body loses its characteristic code as a site of fear; instead it emerges as the focus of knowledge through play as it was when we were young" (Nochimson 147). For this reason, Nochimson feels Cooper "redefines the detective as an adversary of repression and reconfigures his desire as a liberated commitment to the wholeness of life" (Nochimson 155).
But even Cooper can become out of balance. In the final scene of the series, Cooper becomes host to an interdimensional parasite called BOB, who feeds on fear. BOB's entrance into Cooper's body is explained by a sequence in an in-between world called The Black Lodge. In this spiritual testing ground Cooper succumbs to the fear associated with his own repressed trauma, specifically, the grisly murder of his former lover.
Nochimson describes Cooper's fall in this way:
"The continuum of phallic energy folds over easily and phallocentric perversion is an ever-present danger for even the best and brightest of detectives. Cooper's readiness for mystery finally is about avoiding phallocentrism, which is here identified with alienation from the world's body and with castration. When Cooper loses that readiness, no femme fatale is responsible. Neither too much closeness with women nor too much involvement in the world is the primary threat to masculinity. Instead, the image of castration attends both the division of the hero from his body and his fall into masculine contempt for the feminine. In Cooper's triumphs and defeat, [David] Lynch and [Mark] Frost dramatically re-vision the classical case for the difficulties of human encounter with reality." (Nochimson 158)
The entity of BOB in Twin Peaks, who we will see shortly, is a metaphor for the psychopath. In the show, BOB jumps from body to body, "always wearing a mask except when openly aggressing," leaving a "trail littered with the broken, discarded bodies and lives of others" (Noland 79). Please note that these last two quotes are not actually discussing Twin Peaks, although they accurately describe BOB's actions. Instead, they are observations on the clinical psychopath by artist Cady Noland, daughter of Kenneth Noland, and author of the essay "Towards a Meta-Language of Evil."
In her essay, Noland creates a theoretical model for the commonplace practice of manipulation and exploitation of one individual by another. She names this practice "The Game," and defines it as "the site at which X preys upon the hopes, fears, and anxieties of Y for ulterior motives and/or personal gain" (Noland 72). She makes a point of characterizing this game as "mechanistic," a toolset that has "nothing to do with nature" and can be used by anyone against anyone else (Noland 72). For Noland, the clinical psychopath "embodies a gross internalization of the game" and plays this game without moral, ethical, or social limits, s/he is "unpolluted by an internalized other with whom to negotiate" (Noland 73). That said, Noland is at pains to demonstrate that the game is not only played by the psychopath. Through citation Noland argues that "the psychopath shares the societally sanctioned characteristics of the entrepreneurial male. Their maneuvers are differentiated mostly by decibel, the acts of the psychopath being the 'louder.'" (Noland 72)
Significantly then, and in contrast with Cooper, the psychopath is characterized as decidedly masculine, mechanistic, and unable or unwilling to join the "deeper social space" of the world (Noland 75). Thus, where Cooper practices a "liberated commitment to the wholeness of life," the psychopath engages in the "enlargement or aggrandizement of the organism to stave off anxiety about finity and death" (Noland 73). In this way, Cooper and BOB can form a dialectic, one functioning free from fear, while the other is fear incarnate.
So what actually happens when Cooper is infiltrated by BOB, as he is in the final moments of Twin Peaks? And how might we understand it in relation to the psychopathic model provided by Noland?
Well, first, let me set the scene for you...Cooper has been found in the forest, mysteriously ejected from that inter-dimensional space we know to be The Black Lodge. He has been moved to his hotel room at The Great Northern where he is being looked over by his friends, Sheriff Truman and Doctor Hayward. Cooper's girlfriend, Annie, has been wounded and we are unsure of her fate.
Now, let Cady Noland add a bit more context. In describing the psychopath's interaction with its target, she notes:
"If [the target] is familiar with [the psychopath], little misjudgments during [the psychopath's] impersonation of a human being become apparent. Particular expressions both verbal and visceral, which are meant to signify the various emotions, seem stilted or contrived. Cases where we have come to expect some affect, such as on the occasion of learning of a friend's or relative's death, [the psychopath] may inadvertently seem remote or cool." (Noland 79)
"Final Scene" (Excerpt from Episode 29), please watch until the end...
As a loyal viewer, this final scene deeply upset me. The persona of Cooper, with whom I had deeply identified, suddenly seemed an impersonation, as a startling inconsistency between inner and outer realities is revealed. Apparently, I have misplaced my trust.
Sadly, the show was cancelled before the Cooper character could be saved. However, given Cooper's previous discovery of BOB inhabiting a human host, it is not hard to imagine how this parasite might be detected again:
"There is a great deal of performance anxiety in [the psychopath] when he realizes that he may have failed to read the specifications of a situation accurately. When [the psychopath] is caught in an unconvincing display of feeling, and [the target] 'calls him on it,' there may be an abrupt change in [the psychopath]'s affect, and perhaps in one of the few times [the psychopath] is 'on the level,' a seething anger is unveiled, if even just for a telling moment or two. [...] In the psychological thriller, ignition points of volatile rage are indicated in the first cracks or fissures which appear in the intact surface of [the psychopath]. [...] Abrupt change in affect occurs as the performance fissure opens up - and it is the shocking inconsistency between inner and outer realities which is so horrifying to the actual or dramaturgical audience." (Noland 79-80)
I believe I have found an illustration of this "performance fissure" in a moment from a performance by Elvis Presley on August 30th, 1974 in Las Vegas, Nevada. In it, Elvis is initially heard reacting to a fan who has screamed "I love you, Elvis!" Elvis acts grateful, as usual, but when another fan screams "I hate you, Elvis!" his response is unexpected and briefly suggests a fissure in Elvis' performance of his persona. The shock of this inconsistency is mapped in the crowd's reaction...
Please listen to the first minute of Elvis performing "American Trilogy" (Live 8/30/74)
Again:
"When [the psychopath] is caught in an unconvincing display of feeling, and [the target] 'calls him on it,' there may be an abrupt change in [the psychopath]'s affect, and perhaps in one of the few times [the psychopath] is 'on the level,' a seething anger is unveiled, if even just for a telling moment or two."
Another such fissure takes place a few nights later, during Elvis' unscripted banter with the crowd. What begins as a sincere aside reveals an anger that contrasts with the stage persona he quickly reconstructs in the final moments of the recording.
Please listen to Elvis' "Drug Monologue" (Live 9/2/74)
It is clear then, at the very least, that the celebrity scandals which so often interest me hinge on inconsistencies that contrast with the elaborate, often fictional, media persona we have been conditioned to accept. Given that popular performers and celebrities also play "The Game," in that they, too, "[prey] upon the hopes, fears, and anxieties" of their audience, I believe "the psychopath" may be an important model for understanding my attraction to cultural figures like Elvis, Britney Spears, and The Beach Boys (Noland 72). So, if Cooper is an artistic investigator pursuing the psychopath, I might become an investigative artist pursuing the psychopathic in culture.
Finally, and more generally, I think I can now say that I am very interested in how, by playing "The Game" and momentarily denying our own insignificant decay, we can split ourselves in two, denying body and elevating mind, creating the potential for violent fissures of the interior and exterior and dangerous distortions of reality. As an artist, I, too, hope to "dramatically re-vision [this] classical case for the difficulties of human encounter with reality" (Nochimson 158).
