David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and the Los Angeles Uncanny

Abstract

Unlike other American metropolises, Los Angeles’ identity is inextricably intertwined with moving images and postmodernism, thereby ascribing the city with an ahistorical character and evoking a sense of the uncanny—a subject rooted in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. An interdisciplinary study of various theories of the uncanny synthesizes a new Los Angeles Uncanny that acknowledges the complexities of urban experiences that are unique to the City of Angels. David Lynch's Mulholland Drive is a film that fundamentally relies on its setting in Los Angeles for its metaexploration of the implications of the media and entertainment industry. Placing the synthesized theory in conversation with Lynch's film unveils the hidden histories and identities of Los Angeles—the suppression of which, this essay argues, is ultimately responsible for the uncanniness and horror experienced in Mulholland Drive.