The Cowboy, the Monster, and Opening the Blue Box in Mulholland Drive
…We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Shakespeare’s The Tempest, IV, i, 156-8)
Of all the unexplained phenomena and dramatis personae of Mulholland Drive (including the blue-haired theatre patron, Mr Roque in his glass basement, and the black book, for example), there have been three caesurae which have provoked the most discussion and confusion. They are the mysterious Cowboy, the creature who lives behind the Winkies diner (and has been affectionately dubbed ‘the Monster’ by fans), and the voracious depths of the metallic Blue Box. Describing these three using a literary term that means “an interruption or gap in a line of poetry” is strangely appropriate when considering the works of David Lynch have been called ‘dark poetry’ and art-film rather than movies proper.
The objects in question are all inexplicable interruptions in a film narrative which seems otherwise to be finally amenable to a logical story (ie. Diane’s miserable real life story that leaks into her dream fantasy world). The Cowboy, the Monster and the Box have been variously passed off as products of the movie’s original conception as a TV series (ie. that they would have been explained in later episodes), or as more of Lynch’s favourite incongruities that are just there to be amusing or unsettling and simply are not meant to be interpretable.
However, the basic human need to solve mysteries has rendered these explanations unsatisfactory to most viewers. When I did some research into the first article in this series, I was amazed to find the amount of on-line contemplation Pulp Fiction’s briefcase had inspired. But that was a mere pearl earring in the infinite blue-box ocean of dizzying discussion that Mulholland Drive has provoked.
Fasten your seatbelts and come along for the Drive: we don’t stop here.
The Cowboy appears thrice in the movie, as he warns he might. In the flickering neon-lit corral he cautions Adam to chose the right girl for his movie, wakes the dead sleeper in Diane’s apartment, and passes in the background at the party on Mulholland Drive. He has been compared to the Mystery Man of Lost Highway, Eraserhead’s Man in the Planet, or the Dwarf/Giant of Twin Peaks. Some have dubbed him a god (who will see Adam once more in heaven if he’s good or else twice more in hell and on Judgement Day) who brings light from darkness, offers redemption or punishment, is omnipotent but promotes free will, drives ‘the buggy’ of the MD universe, and resurrects the dead.
Others insist the white hat is ironic and read him as the grim reaper, a fallen angel, a devil or the incarnation of destiny. A little less dichotic are suggestions he is Hermes the Greek messenger god and the guide of lost souls in the Underworld, or the new face of Virgil (Dante’s guide through the Inferno) who leads Adam, Diane and we ourselves through the mysteries of a movie hell.
The Cowboy has also been interpreted as a manifestation of the real-life hitman paid to kill Carmilla, or of Diane herself (controlling the dream, waking herself from it, tormenting Adam, creating the conspiracy which prevented her getting the role she deserved), or then again, as a physical embodiment of Diane’s conscience, her soul or her real-life anger at Adam and Carmilla. Viewers have pointed out that Adam himself only sees the Cowboy twice, and has therefore ‘been good’ by choosing the correct blonde for his movie, but that if one accepts the dream theory, the Cowboy appears to Diane three times: she has ‘done bad’ in having Carmilla killed, and is thus doomed to die.
The Hollywood appearance of the Cowboy with his iconic white hat, flamboyant costume and timely appearances have led some to wonder if he is an ironic representation of the modern film industry itself, where the traditional ‘good guy’ is now part of the dark plot. The self-referential nature of the film and its themes have provoked others to ponder if the Cowboy might not be the director himself, the drawling country boy who is the self-aware creator and manipulator of this enigmatic world, David Lynch’s own projected persona as god and devil and guide and killer and protagonist of his art.
The line “He’s the one doing it all” has led to suggestions that the Monster is also a representation of Lynch and his directing role, the Artist mastering all worlds and realities, and the owner of the secrets that are in the Blue Box. Most speculations about the Monster are influenced by the problematic nature of the first scene in which it appears – is this a digression back into ‘real life’, where Dan (after seeing the look on Diane’s face as she pays the hitman) continues to be really haunted by the ‘being’ Diane’s actions have called into existence? In this scenario the Monster represents evil incarnate, Death or its harbinger, or the irony of a poor homeless creature in a glamorous city of false dreams being mistaken for the wickedness that lurks in people’s hearts.
A rather ingenious solution suggests this strange scene (note the unique use of camera and sound) is actually a dream within a dream. In other words, this is what ‘Rita’ dreams as she sleeps under the table after her accident. In which case, is the Monster prophetic of her death in the real world? Was the real Carmilla assassinated behind Winkies? Is this why the place haunts Betty/Diane? Is it her decomposing body, or the murder attempt gone horribly wrong? Or more metaphorically, does it represent the evil ugly side of the beautiful Carmilla who drove Diane to such despair?
A further theory is that this section of the movie is a separate short film, a self-contained philosophy of Lynch’s creativity, where Dan is Lynch himself, who brings his audience to witness the horrors he imagines. We are skeptical, but humour him, and are thus also horrified to find there is a real monster lurking in the real world. Twin Peaks fans are rather hopeful the Monster is another face of Bob, whereupon the Cowboy as the Giant and Mr Roque in his black curtained basement are reprising their roles as agents of the Black Lodge, pursuing blonde Diane and dark Carmilla this time instead of Laura and Maddy. The Freudians point out the neat division of the psyche with the Id Monster and Dan the ego with his incredulous superego friend, and others have remarked on the Monster being another face of the psychic at the apartments, the blue-haired theatre patron, or even the Cowboy.
Reading the episode as distinctly part of Diane’s own dream however, has prompted notions that the Monster is Diane herself – the dream keeper, the rotting corpse reanimated, her guilt or conscience in motion, the evil side of her own personality, the dark mask of Betty which she ‘never wants to see outside of a dream’, but which the real Dan saw in her face when she paid the hitman (the smiling Betty does indeed morph into the face of the Monster in the montage at the close of the movie).
This article is itself reaching monsterous proportions, and we haven’t even unlocked the Blue Box yet. Even the most blasé viewers who can pass off an occasional mysterious character as ‘one of those weird Lynch things’ are pretty sure the Box is meant to mean something. And these theories get positively macabre.
Astute viewers have noted there appears to be a blue box in the bedside drawer where Diane gets the gun at the close of the movie. Conspiracy theorists have thus conjectured the hitman’s blue key did indeed open a blue box as in the dream, which may have held a single pearl earring (such as the detectives speak of and which appears lying on the coffee table at one point), an engagement ring, or some more gruesome relic as proof of Carmilla’s death. Sceptics suggest the Box just represents Diane’s fetishised answer to what she didn’t know in real life, her own dream attempt to give meaning to the unknown – that is, a random guess at what the hitman’s key opened.
Some of the symbolic readings of the Box are applicable but simplistic: it is a casket which contains death, the gate to hell or the end of dreams, or Pandora’s box of human evil (hence its proximity to the gun at the close of the movie). More creative are speculations the Box holds Diane’s empty life or hollow heart, Rita’s lost memory, or reality/the ‘truth’: all of which, when unlocked and their secret exposed, might end the dream. More eye-popping are the science-fiction notions that the Box is a black hole, a portal to parallel universes, or a time machine – there have been some absolutely boggling suggestions that its triangle lock is in fact a clock, and that from charting its changing position throughout the film, one may mathematically map the dream time or follow complex theories of numerology…
I myself am rather taken with two intriguing suggestions about the Blue Box. One is connected to Lynch’s penchant for self-reference and intertextuality. Thus, the Blue Box is Hollywood itself, the romantic colourful dream world controlled by the dirty corrupt conspiratorial power as represented by the Monster, whereupon Lynch draws himself in as Adam, the talented but wretched director subjected to the whims of this absurd authority.
Or the Box is the actual film (linked to the theory the ‘black book’ is the movie’s script) which is full of the promise of meaning, but proves to be empty: Lynch, who offers the key and is the keeper and controller of the box and its characters and content, remains the enigmatic Monster who perhaps does not even understand his creation himself.
Even more fun is the proposal the Box is a pun on blue screens and idiot boxes and therefore a critique of the television industry: the Monster and his instrument are the evil forces behind the world of TV entertainment who rejected the script of Mulholland Drive for a television series, and cancelled Twin Peaks so abruptly.
The second speculation is equally appealing. The Box is the portable Club Silenzio, with all that the strange theatre entails and symbolizes: the place of play-acting and dream worlds and eternal silences. The square frame of the stage with its shimmering blue lights is the metallic Blue Box writ large, and may hold the secrets to everything – or may just all be an illusion.
So here I am, driving this buggy – what do I think? I’m not anxious to staple any of these enigmas down to a single encompassing meaning. I love that a friend who saw this movie said the small audience in the cinema wouldn’t leave the theatre after viewing it, because they were all too busy talking together about what it meant. Who wants to kill the fun by insisting on a definitive answer?
However, I do like the notion that the Cowboy, the Monster and the Blue Box are all elements of the same void, the same mystery. In a movie so busy playing with names – Carmilla the female vampire, Adam the ‘first’ man, Diane the goddess of hunting and chastity, with the phonetic sound of ‘dying’ and her namesake Dan, and the suggested ‘ain’t truth’ joke of Aunt Ruth – you’ll pardon my bad pun in pointing out that the Cowboy and his counterparts are catalysts. They are all the liminal beings that form links between the ‘real’ world and the dream world, the caesurae, the visible intersections between fiction and reality.
The Box representing the movie itself is indeed functioning as Mulholland Drive: the long winding journey between the dream and the reality. The good-guy movie character or real-life party goer is also the dream villain/saviour, the sordid realism of the homeless is hiding behind the wall of pretty idyllic Hollywood, the box with its blue keys is both inside and outside the dream world, and is empty and full of meaning, and appears and then isn’t there. They are the gaps. They defy definition because they are transitional and marginal and multi-faceted. They themselves are the limbo, the purgatory, the blue light and smoke of Silenzio, the place between heaven and hell, and dreaming and waking, and the movie and the reality, where meaning falls away because it is all an illusion – there is no single answer, there is no band.
Here – take the wheel. This is where I get out. This article was just a blue key I’ve left for you to try unlocking the puzzle box for yourself. You need to take the rest of the Drive on your own – enjoy the ride.
