Twin Peaks and Repetition

The article discusses Twin Peaks (1990–1991) through the concept of repetition as developed by Kierkegaard, Lacan, Deleuze, Žižek, and others. Since the question is not so much what philosophy and psychoanalysis can tell us about TV seriality, but rather what Twin Peaks tells us about the very concept of repetition, we start the investigation with the Dwarf’s phrasing of “That gum you like is going to come back in style”, continuing with the Giant’s statement “It Is Happening Again!”, and finishing with Laura Palmer‘s uncanny premonition “I’ll see you again in 25 years.” The paper would like to argue that repetition is inherently inscribed in the very intertextuality of Twin Peaks, and can be best addressed through the four repetitions as embodied in this 1990s artistic and cult phenomena that disrupted and subverted the very concept of TV seriality: 1. Twin Peaks, first season: post-modern repetition of modernistic TV series and movies; 2. Twin Peaks, second season: auto-referential repetition of the first season; 3. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), the cinematic repetition of the TV series; 4. Twin Peaks 2016: the impossibility of repetition and something new on the horizon?

The integral (Slovenian) version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!