"Silencio": Hearing loss in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive

Abstract

In a filmmaking career replete with extraordinary images and sounds, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) stands out for attention as a striking and seemingly inexhaustible resource for analysis. In this article, this film is used to examine the specific ways in which Lynch uses pre-existing pop songs to wrap the spectator within the filmic soundscape. Nowhere is the complexity and uncanniness of pop music made more explicit than in Rebekah Del Rio's stunning performance of "Llorando (Crying)" in the Club Silencio scene. The split between the singer's powerful performance and her subsequent collapse with the sound of the voice left hanging in the air marks a pivotal point in the film. This scene, coupled with other examples of feminine jouissance, is contrasted with the deadening roar of the master's voice, which solely demands obedience but is deaf to any reply. At the core of this article is an analysis of the status of the voice (and the gaze) as examples of the Lacanian object a and its relationship to Marx's concept of surplus value. Mulholland Drive provides a powerful demonstration of how these concepts can be seen, heard, and felt in relation to film, and how sound can reverberate into the spaces and silences beyond the screen.