The famous movie director David Lynch is known for his eccentric style of symbolism. Before the cult-90s TV show“Twin Peaks”, he made the 1986 controversial noir movie “Blue Velvet”. The characters in this movie undergo pressure and changes that some might attribute to a “sense of destiny.” This “destiny” among other traits are all reminiscent of the film noir genre. These traits, such as the femme fatale, the symbolism of colors and music, and the moral ambiguity of the characters serve to further David Lynch’s thematic noir intentions. The femme fatale, Dorothy, shows qualities such as manipulation, having a troubled past, and a seductive presence which single her out as the stereotypical archetype. The symbolism of colors and the music show an obvious intent to instigate emotions in the audience. The moral ambiguity, like the actions taken by Jeffrey and most of the cast, runs throughout the film.

The character Dorothy is presented as having the typical “evil and seductive” qualities when she takes advantage of the “innocent” Jeffrey through violent means. She threatens him with a knife, and proceeds to rape him as she still holds it up to him. After the scene with Frank, her pride was let down so she decides to manipulate him by showing herself as a helpless woman who is desperate for someone to love her. Her manipulative tactic makes Jeffrey become “hypnotized” by her beauty and manipulation. He then proceeds to make trips to her apartment every night just to have sex with her rather than continue looking for clues to the mystery.

Dorothy is also shown as a troubled woman because of her past. We find out that her husband and son have been kidnapped by the underworld, mentally unstable drug-lord/mob-boss Frank. Even though the reasons as to why they were kidnapped remain unknown, it is revealed that Dorothy must work as a “prostitute slave” to Frank in order to keep her family alive. This is typical of the noir setting to present a rough-edged character with a troubled past, but to still leave most of their past’s story a mystery. The scene where Frank comes in and abuses her gives the audience the reason to understand the way she is. As Jeffrey and her were in bed, she told him to “hit her”, signifying that she has grown to enjoy the pleasure of being abused. Throughout the last half of the movie, she is continuously verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by Frank and his companions. It is revealed that she is forced to sing the song “Blue Velvet” in bars for Frank, because it calms him down.

The minute her character is introduced, she is presented with big, curly black hair, a heavy amount of makeup on, wearing a robe, along with talking in a thick italian accent. In that moment, one can clearly see that she is the seductive archetype. This idea is shown where she sings the song “Blue Velvet”, at a bar, which is about a woman getting undressed. It is also shown when she herself gets undressed after the show. In this moment, Jeffrey as a voyeur watching her from the closet forgets all about what he came for, and instead watches her in a hypnotic state. In noirs, most femme fatale characters have scenes where they are shown naked to represent their sexuality as being clearly seen by the audience. In the climax of the film, Jeffrey goes home from a date with Sandy, only to see Dorothy appear, standing naked in his front yard, looking delusional but seductive at the same time. Instead of appearing manipulative as she was earlier, she starts to obsess for his attention and “nice boy hero” persona. She believes that he will truly save her from Frank.

The symbolism of colors and the positioning of music help to aid in a more literal sense to the tones and emotions that Lynch wishes to provoke. The characters in “Blue Velvet” all wear certain colors in their clothing to describe their personality and the emotions that most reflect the theme of the time. Jeffrey is shown as the young male protagonist in the movie. He wears mostly black and dark colors to show that he has a grim personality, and is also full of trouble and indecisive decisions. Sandy, on the other hand, wears a lot of light pink and whites. This represents her as the typical “good girl” in film noir. Her girly taste in clothing gives way to her happy, giddy, innocent personality. Dorothy is usually seen in colors of blue, and in her most controversial scene she wears a blue velvet robe. Blue in this movie is described as a way to try to “remain calm.” Dorothy wears it in this scene as well as on stage singing. This is done to try to calm Frank down, since the blue velvet seems to have a stabilizing effect on him. She wears red towards the end when she is trying to escape the wrath of Frank. Since her apartment is red, she seems to wear it as if to “blend in” with her surroundings. The “yellow man”, Gordon, wears yellow to represent neutrality since he works alongside the detective but also works with Gordon. Since yellow is not an evil color, he is clearly shown as the one member of the gang who is not evil. At the end of the movie, all the characters wear white, including Jeffrey. This shows that he decided to cave into Sandy’s more “angelic” side, and therefore fell in love with her. This color also shows that now everything had fallen into place - Jeffrey is with Sandy, his father is out of the hospital, and Dorothy is reunited with her son.

Major symbolism is present in the beatles and the robins. At the beginning of them movie, we are shown the 1950s neighborhood, then the camera moves underground to show a bunch of beatles rummaging around, hissing loudly. This represents the fact that “underneath” this perfect ideal society, there is an evil underground world, therefore foreshadowing the plot of the film and the bad yet to come. At the end, there is a robin shown with a beatle in it’s mouth. This shows that evil had been defeated, and good won.

The scenery is also a main part of the symbolism in the movie. The setting of “Blue Velvet” takes place in a 1950’s-esque upper-class neighborhood, even though there are cars and certain styles from the 1980s. Even music from the fifties is constantly played throughout the film, as if the eighties culture did not exist. The fifties style and music throughout the film represents the rigid, but peaceful, society the characters lived in. However, in the violent, evil underground world that Dorothy and Frank live in, they wear more eccentric, eighties-styled clothing. This represents that their gang and lifestyle is perhaps fresh to the society they surrounded themselves in.

The moral ambiguity of the characters serve a main theme of film noir and create a better personal development. Film noir movies are depicted to keep the audience very confused and questionable as to who the good and bad characters could be. In “Blue Velvet”, Lynch uses trickery on the audience. In this case, one may think a character is the hateful “bad guy”, but after a conflict with another character, one will feel sympathy for who was thought to be the “bad guy” and now hatred towards a worse villain. One example was the long night-time apartment scene. Jeffrey appears as the crazy and uneasy pervert because he breaks into Dorothy’s apartment and watches her get undressed. As he watches her, we can be scared to think that Jeffrey would jump out and try to hurt her in her vulnerable position. However, once Dorothy discovers him hiding in her closet, she threatens and takes advantage of him with a knife, proceeding to rape him. Here the roles are switched, and she is taking advantage of him and seen as the deranged source of evil. Then, when Frank enters the apartment, he abuses her in one of the most disturbing and controversial scenes in movie history. Finally, Frank is denoted as the one true source of evil.

One common theme of both symbolism and moral ambiguity in “Blue Velvet” is juxtaposition. Both Jeffrey and Sandy contrast when they are next to each other. In a scene where they talk about the dreams they had last night, Sandy says she dreamt of birds and nature, and Jeffrey dreamt of sex and violence. Sandy is always drawn away from the trouble of the mystery, as Jeffrey is constantly trying to move closer towards it. Sandy represents peace and happiness, and Jeffrey represents trouble and rebellion. As well, Sandy and Dorothy are juxtapositions to Jeffrey’s life. They are the light and shade of Jeffrey’s life - Sandy appears as an angelic type, and Dorothy more of a provocative, devious type. Jeffrey is attracted to Sandy for romantic reasons, and he is attracted to Dorothy for sexual reasons. Both of these women represent the two different sides to his personality - the “good, innocent” Jeffrey who stays out of people’s business, and the wily, curious Jeffrey who has a taste for violence and sex. As mentioned before, the happy but uptight society of the 1950s-esque “american dream” world clashes with the eighties-esque, violent, crime underworld society.

As well, the juxtaposition of scenes is common throughout the film. For example, after Jeffrey was beaten up by Frank and left outside, a happy scene comes into play immediately after. After a scene where Jeffrey is having a nightmare of Dorothy saying “hit me”, with him hitting her, the film immediately cuts to a “perfect world” high school. Whenever a troubling event happened, a much light-hearted scene appeared shortly. This form of moral ambiguity delineated the mental struggles of Jeff, who feels happy and then sad, frustrated, and confused constantly.

Blue Velvet had themes of a strong femme fatale and clear representations of symbolism, all tied together using moral ambiguity. Dorothy was a troubled woman with sexual endeavors and had a way of manipulating innocent men. Symbolism was mostly present in the colors that mostly stand out to the human eye - black, white, red, blue, and a little bit of yellow. Juxtapositioning was used as a way to show different sides of Jeffrey and Dorothy. Moral ambiguity played a huge role, not only to confuse and “weird out” the audience as Lynch commonly does in his movies - but to show the crazy realistic sides we as humans have but fail to accept. The characters never seemed to know what their clear intentions for their actions were. However, we as humans in real life may never know.