Black and White Lodges

Black and White Lodges
Dale Cooper, The Man from Another Place, seated center, Laura Palmer in the Red Room.
Twin Peaks location
Created by	David Lynch, Mark Frost
Genre	Drama
Type	Alternate dimension

The Black Lodge is a fictional setting featured in the television series Twin Peaks. It is an extradimensional place which seems to include, primarily, the "Red Room" first seen by Agent Cooper in a dream early in the series. As events in the series unfold, it becomes apparent that the characters from the Red Room, the room itself and the Black Lodge, along with the White Lodge, are connected.

History

At first it is revealed that there is a mysterious dark presence in the woods that the town's Bookhouse Boys have been combatting for generations. Although they don't know what it is, Native American policeman Deputy Hawk says that the Black Lodge is from the mythology of his people, describing it as:

the shadow-self of the White Lodge. The legend says that every spirit must pass through there on the way to perfection. There, you will meet your own shadow self. My people call it 'The Dweller on the Threshold' ... But it is said, if you confront the Black Lodge with imperfect courage, it will utterly annihilate your soul.

During the second season, Windom Earle relates a past-tense story about the White Lodge:

Once upon a time, there was a place of great goodness, called the White Lodge. Gentle fawns gamboled there amidst happy, laughing spirits. The sounds of innocence and joy filled the air. And when it rained, it rained sweet nectar that infused one's heart with a desire to live life in truth and beauty. Generally speaking, a ghastly place, reeking of virtue's sour smell. Engorged with the whispered prayers of kneeling mothers, mewling newborns, and fools, young and old, compelled to do good without reason ... But, I am happy to point out that our story does not end in this wretched place of saccharine excess. For there's another place, its opposite: A place of almost unimaginable power, chock full of dark forces and vicious secrets. No prayers dare enter this frightful maw. The spirits there care not for good deeds or priestly invocations, they're as likely to rip the flesh from your bone as greet you with a happy "good day." And if harnessed, these spirits in this hidden land of unmuffled screams and broken hearts would offer up a power so vast that its bearer might reorder the Earth itself to his liking.

As the Black and White Lodges become more prominent in the story, Major Briggs claims that during one or more of his disappearances, he had visited the White Lodge and goes on to offer advice regarding it. There is no clear evidence of him being affected by the Black Lodge and it is not clear how he arrives there, aside from a bright flash of light, or what the intentions of his trips were.

Location

Although the Red Room began exclusively as a location within Agent Cooper's dreams, the inhabitants began appearing in other locations in the town, inciting other elements in the plot, to the point where the Red Room and White/Black Lodge stories became one. After discovering a mysterious map in Owl Cave, it becomes evident to Earle and Cooper — both independently and with different motivations for wanting to visit it — that the entrance to the Black Lodge is located in Ghostwood Forest which surrounds the town of Twin Peaks, at a pool of a substance that smells like scorched engine oil and surrounded by 12 young sycamore trees. This area is known as Glastonbury Grove (spelled Glastonberry in the book Welcome to Twin Peaks, ISBN number 0-671-74399-6).

It is said that the key to gain entrance to the Black Lodge is fear - usually an act of brutal murder. This is in contrast to the key to the White Lodge, which is love. Another requirement to enter the Black Lodge through the entrance in Glastonbury Grove is that it may only be entered "...when Jupiter and Saturn meet..." When the above requirements are met and one approaches the pool in Glastonbury Grove, red curtains appear, which the person walks between before the curtains vanish once again.

Interior

There is little furniture in the Red Room aside from a few armchairs, a wheeled table and a couple of floor lamps. There is also a statue of the Venus de Medici, easily mistaken for the Venus de Milo (The Venus de Milo can be seen in the hallway). There are no doors to speak of; movement from room to room is accomplished by crossing through another set of red curtains that lead to a narrow hallway. The floor is a chevron pattern of black and white, and all sides of any room and all walls of any hallway encountered are covered by identical red curtains. In the final episode, a second room in the Lodge is seen, identical to the first. Between the two rooms is a narrow corridor which has the same floor and "walls" as the other two rooms.

Although the Lodge inhabitants speak English, their voices are warped and strangely clipped and their movements are unnatural (this effect is accomplished by the actors performing in reverse and the footage is then played backwards). Residents often speak in riddles and non-sequiturs. The main inhabitants of the Lodge are The Man from Another Place, The Giant and Killer Bob.

In the final episode of Twin Peaks, Cooper meets The Man from Another Place, who refers to the Red Room as the "waiting room". This coincides with Hawk's claim that every spirit must pass through the Black Lodge on the way to perfection and that the Red Room leads to the White Lodge as well.

The red curtains, zig-zag floors and bright spotlights of the White and Black Lodges have also appeared in several of David Lynch's other films, suggesting that Lynch may view their influences as ongoing in his narrative worlds.^[1]

Inhabitants

The Black Lodge and White Lodge is home to many spirits and people alike including Bob, Mike, The Man From Another Place, The Giant, Laura Palmer (passing through the Red Room before ascending to the White Lodge), Chester Desmond, Phillip Jefferies and Dale Cooper. The spirits can take over humans: Bob possessed Leland Palmer and later, Dale Cooper; The Giant possessed the elderly waiter from the Great Northern; and Mike and The Man From Another Place (Mike's arm) possessed Phillip Gerard.

References in popular culture

In the two-part Simpsons episode, "Who Shot Mr. Burns?," Chief Clancy Wiggum has trouble solving the case and falls into a dream sequence in which he awakes in the Red Room and Lisa speaks backwards. She gives him clues in reverse-speak, but Wiggum is unable to understand her until she gives up in frustration and speaks normally.^[2] As with Twin Peaks — while recording Lisa's lines for the segment, Yeardley Smith recorded the part backwards and it was reversed.^[3][4] Several other parts out of the segment are direct references to the dream, including a moving shadow on the curtain, and Wiggum's hair standing straight up after waking.^[5]

In the anime series "Soul Eater", the Red Room is used as a motif when Soul Eater and Maka Albarn are infected with Black Blood. A demon who dances backward (similar to The Man from Another Place) to a skipping Jazz record attempts to convince them to give in to the Black Blood's madness. Soul resists, but Maka submits, allowing her to overpower their adversary meister Crona and his weapon Ragnarok (see Soul Eater episodes here).

"Black Lodge" (song)

Twin Peaks's score conductor Angelo Badalamenti helped write the song "Black Lodge" on the 1993 Sound of White Noise album by Anthrax.

References