Frank...is one crazy character. Something about him that I caught on to and tried to further think about was his relationship to music, the songs "Blue Velvet" and "Candy-Colored Clown" specifically. I wanted to know what might have led him to develop such a tie, a dependence almost, to these songs.
Well, obviously, he's obsessed with the material of Dorothy's robe, but who knows which came first, the fabric or the song? In the scene where Jefferey returns to The Slow Club, Frank is there, listening to Dorothy sing "Blue Velvet" and holding onto a piece of cloth that matches her robe. He seems enraptured with the song.
In the scene where he takes Jefferey to Ben's place, he first quotes a line of "Candy-Colored Clown" to Ben after he hands him money and drugs. Then Ben proceeds to play and lip sync the words of the song. As he does this, Frank appears to be in the same state as he was at The Slow Club. He knows the words, and as he mouths them along, he begins to appear more and more troubled until the music is abruptly turned off. He has the song played again just before he beats Jefferey. He quotes lines from the song to him as they are sung in the song, and rubs his piece of blue velvet against Jefferey's face before hitting him.
Questions I asked myself while thinking about this were: Do these songs define Frank? Does he allow them to define him and his lifestyle? I can't really know, because in the movie we aren't told the exact answer, but I do know that he definitely allows them to have some great impact on his life.
1 comments:
September 23, 2008 at 8:10 AM
In response to your question, I would have to say yes, Frank allows his obsession with song lyrics to define his life. I assumed this immediately once he started singing to, "Cotton Candy Clown". I've come to notice that it is not just he who acts this way. For example, I have a friend who defines her love life with Taylor Swift songs, and our character in "A Study of Reading Habits", did a similar thing with books.
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