In Defense of Lynch   The typical anti-Lynch criticism claims that Lynch is pretentious. This conclusion is backed up with descriptions of how confusing his movies are, how there are many arbitrary and random scenes which are pointless, and are only done for art’s sake (with the unstated supposition that anyone who is artistic is by definition pretentious). “Pretentious” is, by dictionary.com defined as: a.) Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified. b.) Making or marked by an extravagant outward show; ostentatious.   The critics make use of both definitions of “pretentious.” The argument from confusion makes use of the first definition while the argument from arbitrariness makes use of the second.   So, is Lynch claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit by making his movies confusing? The critic’s assumption here is that Lynch makes his movies confusing because he wants to attain the merit of being an intellectual film director. He is pretentious because he wants to be seen as smart when he isn’t.   This particular criticism is entirely off the mark. By making a confusing movie, Lynch doesn’t have to assume he himself is smart. He would have the same self-perception whether he made confusing movies or not. His last movie, The Straight Story, was far from confusing. Anyhow, the point is that when a director makes a confusing movie he is not assuming that he himself is smart, but that the audience is smart enough to figure it out, or at least give put a mild effort into it. It’s not pretension, it’s charity - charity that is usually accepted ungratefully or not accepted at all. Or, the idea at hand could be described as pretension by proxy: he gives the audience the distinction of being smart when they do not deserve this distinction.   It should be noted however, what “smart” means in the context of a Lynch movie. Having Lynch-smarts does not mean that you must be well read or hold a masters degree, just that the audience has both an imagination and the desire to investigate into the movie a little. Lynch does not hand out straightforward answers like a mother hand feeding her infants. I find it quite perplexing that people chastise Lynch for not treating them like babies. A certain state of mind is needed to watch a Lynch movie. First, the audience must watch the film actively, not passively. Second, the audience must realize that there is a possibility they will not understand everything and attain the unifying theory Lynch had in mind when he made the film. It is much more entertaining instead, to use one’s own skills of deduction to reach a theory that accounts for as much of the movie as possible. That is the whole fun of the Lynch experience. He purposively makes his movies so that they are at least partially open to interpretation. The fun begins when you scrutinize these theories to see which is the most accurate. For people who would rather have a simple conclusive answer handed down to them, Lynch movies are not for you. Now we can deal adequately with the second criticism of ostentatious pretension. Something is ostentatious if it is unnecessarily flamboyant, or arbitrary as our critics say. It must be granted that there are certain aspects of Lynch’s movies, which could be done away with without destroying the plot. However, this randomness is always intra-scenic. It occurs within a scene; there is never an entire scene that is arbitrary. This being so, the randomness takes up only a small part of the film and I for one enjoy it. Yet there is also a way in which these little idiosyncrasies do contribute to the plot. A dreamlike world is often created which has much to do with the story line.   Besides randomness, the scenes that usually get criticized as arbitrary and excessive are the sexual and violent scenes. In reality, it is not the supposed excessiveness of the scenes that the critic has a problem with, but the sexual and violent nature of the film’s theme in general. Being so, these scenes are used to strengthen the plot which often has to do with just plain evil characters. Ostensibly excessive sex and violence actually help to describe the vileness or obsessiveness of a character. Critics mask their contempt for a particular character or theme by claiming that it is only a particular scene that they disagree with. Any understanding of film creation, progression, and flow immediately unmasks the nature of this claim: it simply the whinings of a traditional conservative. The last point about film creation serves to dismiss both claims of Lynch’s pretentiousness. Audiences must understand that every scene has a meaning within itself and the movie as a whole. By putting these scenes together and gaining a coherent theory of the film, the appearance of both confusion and arbitrariness is abated. The fact that abation takes more effort with a Lynch film than the typical mainstream film should not give license to criticism.