David Lynch Left Us A Warning About America's Car Culture

David Lynch's controversial filmography is a visual smorgasbord for gearheads. His knack for casting cars was not one of his discussed strengths, but his characters often revealed as much about themselves through their vehicles as they did through other means. However, this fascination with cars ran deeper than aesthetics.

As one of American cinema's most celebrated practitioners, Lynch was famous for his intuitive process. He refused to explain his pictures, preferring to let the work stand alone. So while his work could at times be difficult to parse on a narrative level, it penetrated and resonated within the subconscious mind, often bypassing the brain to aim for the heart and gut. What he did with cars was of a part with that oeuvre.

Whether showing us roadside nightmares in "Wild at Heart" or suburban sleaze in "Blue Velvet," Lynch excelled at revealing something disturbing and alien within the quaint trappings of Americana. In "Mulholland Drive," paranoia contrasts with Hollywood glamour, while the seemingly serene heartland town at the center of "Twin Peaks" is unraveled by  the murder of a teenage girl. Lynch's twisted vision of America was his calling card, and of all the national absurdities he catalogued, perhaps none is more omnipresent than the automobile.

Cars are as American as cherry pie, yet they are one of the most dangerous things we accept as normal. The United States has associated car ownership with freedom in the public consciousness. Though he clearly loved aspects of American car culture, Lynch also saw the pernicious elements within it. As we will examine, his filmography conveys a deep anxiety around the centrality of the automobile in our society  — one more aligned with the facts than you might expect.

In Lynchian cinema, violence is often enacted on characters trapped in cars. A limo driver robs his passenger in the opening scene of "Mulholland Drive, only to die in a head-on collision moments later. In "Blue Velvet," a cruel psychopath takes his victim for a nightmarish joyride, partaking in drug use as he drives and attacking another of his hostages. Vehicle interiors in Lynchian cinema are shot in tight, point-of-view angles, transforming them into claustrophobic spaces that hide their victims in plain sight.

These scenes are evocative, forcing the viewer to imagine what might be taking place inside any random vehicle that passes them on a dark night. It's a disturbing thought, and engendering it within his audience fits with the larger themes repeated throughout Lynch's work  – those of the darkness lurking just beneath the polite veneer of American society. Just as the opening shot of "Blue Velvet" dives beneath the verdant grass under a picket fence to reveal the chittering mass of bugs underneath, so too do the polished chrome exteriors of vehicles in his films hide violence beyond the thin metal separating their interiors from the outside world.

Is there any truth to the notion of a car as a cage, hiding dark secrets from the world around it? In the metaphorical sense, of course there is. Beyond that, criminals certainly drive cars and commit crimes in them. So while there's no readily available data on how many people are kidnapped inside of cars, we have some related information. While those stories can be horrifying, they thankfully aren't common.

It is true that a lot can happen inside the confines of a vehicle, and we don't tend to think about how vulnerable we really are in our metal boxes. As a passenger, you have even less control. Sure, you could attack a driver taking you somewhere against your will, but only at the risk of causing a crash. Perhaps that anxiety drove Lynch to fantasize about the worst, and watching his filmography will certainly awaken those fears in some viewers. However, there's no evidence to suggest that such crimes are particularly widespread compared to others.

That's not to say such crimes don't happen, though. The most available such data comes from Uber, which publishes an occasional safety report. The most recent these reports showed that from 2017 through 2022, 75 people died in relation to physical assault while using its services, representing 0.000001% percent of trips taken. Far higher was the number of reported sexual assaults, which totaled 12,522. About 68% of those accused were drivers, while 31 percent were riders.

One case surpasses even the extremities of Lynch's imagination. Last fall, a Denver man was found guilty of kidnapping and sexually assaulting or attempting to sexually assault 12 women between 2018 and 2022. He habitually posed as a rideshare driver and then transported his victims against their will to his home. The man likely would not have been caught had he not made a habit of stealing his victims' phones, which helped link him to the crimes. While the story is harrowing, it is also anecdotal. In general, people of all genders are much more likely to be killed by a car than kidnapped by its driver.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

In "Mulholland Drive," a woman is rendered amnesiac in the aftermath of a car collision. In "Lost Highway," a gangster runs a tailgating car off the road. These are just the start of Lynch's fixation on car-related violence, a bloody trope repeated across his filmography. Usually, car crashes reflect a pivotal moment of change, such as the fugue state that leads to the events of "Mulholland Drive."

Lynch's second most brutal car-related death comes partway through "Wild at Heart," when our young lovers on the run, played by Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, notice a procession of scattered clothes on the side of the road. The trail leads to a flipped car and a woman dying from her injuries. Strangest of all, the gruesome scene is never truly followed up on for the remainder of the film. However, the most shocking car death Lynch has put to screen comes in 2017's "Twin Peaks: The Return," when a young boy is struck and killed in a hit-and-run.

In terms of dangers that Americans have mostly accepted as normal, car deaths are a shocking one. It would be hard to find someone who hasn't been in an accident or doesn't know someone who has. Yet the allure of freedom cars represent, not to mention their necessity and convenience in everyday life, are seemingly enough to push those clear and present dangers mostly out of mind. Yet every time we get behind the wheel, we know  — however subconsciously  — that it could be our last time doing so. That subconscious was the raw fuel of Lynch's work, and he unearthed the underlying anxieties associated with driving.

We all know driving is dangerous, but what's less publicized is that it's more dangerous in the United States. According to the NSC, America experiences one of the highest rates of motor vehicle deaths per 100,000 people in the world. This American carnage — to crib a phrase from our most Lynchian president — has not driven any significant policy change to put the brakes on it. Our language reflects an apathy toward these deaths, which we refer to as "accidents," as if killing each other with big, metal boxes is an outcome of random chance rather than the product of a societal failure to design roads and vehicles with safety in mind.

In fact, that attitude is easy to disprove. While our death rate continues to rise, other countries have lowered theirs. This difference is not marginal. The United States has a traffic fatality rate 50% higher than comparable nations in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, or Australia, and Americans are three times more likely to die in a car crash than someone living in France. Data is driving car safety in other countries, but not as effectively in the U.S. 

Many excess fatalities are pedestrians. Ever since the American auto industry successfully lobbied and advertised to create the notion of jaywalking, Americans have clung to the idea that only cars belong in roadways. As a result, pedestrians killed in or near roadways are often blamed for their own deaths.

Across Lynch's filmography, cars are noisy. Normally, a car would be turned down in the audio mix, but Lynch often leaves them shockingly loud, even droning out dialogue. In "Twin Peaks," the sounds of a car are often distinct enough to clue characters in on who's headed their way. For example, James (James Marshall) is often identified by the sound of his famous Harley Davidson FLH-80 from 1978. In "Mulholland Drive," an injured Rita (Laura Harring) stumbles onto Sunset Boulevard, and the sound of traffic is used like a sonic weapon to disorient the viewer.

"Blue Velvet" still haunts viewers with its image of a Dodge Charger's hideaway headlights opening in the pitch black of a foggy night like an enraged bull, its motor revving like the roar of a charging bear. The car, a 1968 Dodge Charger, belongs to the film's villain, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a violent, psychopathic, and sexually depraved drug dealer. Shot from a low angle, with only its grille visible, the muscle car looks threatening and sounds deadly, imbuing the viewer with the feeling of being run over.

Another director might not have resisted the impulse to fetishize the car, making it feel cool rather than stomach-churning. Through Lynch's lens, however, we see the vehicle as an alien object, and the sound design is crucial to that effect. Viewed from one angle, an engine is powerful. It is precisely because of that power that Lynch is able to make it feel terrifying. This portrayal through sound speaks to the anxieties Lynch clearly felt around car culture. It is a perfect encapsulation of his ability to twist the mundane like a knife into an audience's abdomen.

David Lynch's association of cars with noise was, as one might intuit, accurate. Much of the cacophony associated with modern cities comes from cars, not people. As Melissa and Chris Bruntlett note in their book "Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives," the average arterial road can produce sound at five times or more the recommended intensity level set forth by the World Health Organization.

Cars make cities unpleasantly loud, with pedestrians shouting over honking traffic to hear one another. Environmental noise exposure has been shown to cause higher levels of stress and even cardiovascular health concerns. Traffic levels can be alleviated by investing in cycling and public transit infrastructure. Why, then, are our cities choked with traffic while pedestrians pack onto street corners waiting to play real life "Frogger"?

Some cities, such as New York, have taken measures to mitigate the worst of their traffic by implementing congestion pricing. This has drawn ire from some drivers, but the MTA released statistics in its third week showing a massive decrease in the affected area, with many cars opting to stay on the highway rather than shoot straight through downtown. Many drivers who can't avoid the area report easier commutes. Best of all, crashes and injuries are down by 51% compared to the same time period last year.

Of course, many of the cars clogging up Manhattan's streets don't originate there. After all, a great many New Yorkers travel by subway. Instead, cars come from the surrounding suburbs, where driving is necessitated by a lack of density — but David Lynch reserved some of his strongest warnings to us for the subject of suburban car culture.

In "Twin Peaks," cars represent a type of freedom. The titular town is cut off from its surroundings and characters express themselves through their vehicles, with sports cars for dangerous characters and motorcycles for misunderstood outcasts. Car-centric spots like the gas station and diner are key locations in the series. One of the first things we see in the series is Agent Cooper heading into town in his Dodge Diplomat, narrating how far he's had to travel to arrive there. 

Then, of course, there's Lynch's seminal darkening of the suburban imagination, "Blue Velvet." It's a sadistic, psychosexual examination of suburbia, and it features several scenes in which characters are chased by cars or trapped in them. In fact, the vast bulk of the film takes place inside of cars or homes, each enclosed space a staging ground for violence. When it comes to the 'burbs, Lynch has not a single, specific critique  – far too simple an approach for a man who let his art be driven by subconscious forces  — but rather a generalized anxiety.

The perceived tranquility of the suburbs was ripe for the tilling when Lynch took a cinematic hoe to it. Their sheer artificiality is unnerving, while their mazes of looping roads and cul-de-sacs are modern day Dedalian labyrinths. And the further out, the more spread apart the houses are, much like those in the fictional town of Twin Peaks. Cars are therefore the lifeblood of suburbia, the facade of each home dominated by a garage to give vehicles more space than the homeowner gets in the master bedroom. Without a car to leave them in, the suburbs are an isolated and remote island, cut off from the world in the most Lynchian way.

The American dream is encapsulated by the suburbs, which began as a project of racial and class segregation. With that original sin, they declared themselves spaces that stood apart from the diverse reality of America, and that retreat from society  – a mass siphoning of affluence from the urban to suburban areas often referred to as white flight  – was fueled in large part by the newly widespread popularity of the automobile. Without cars to commute from remote suburbs to jobs, shopping centers, and cities, suburban life would have been impossible.

Although racist housing practices have ostensibly changed, demographics have not followed suit at the same pace. That's partially because car culture keeps the suburbs effectively cloistered off, as shown in a study published by Urban Planning in 2018. When you have to drive everywhere to get anywhere, you stay where you are. Moreover, the suburbs have been compared to a ponzi scheme thanks to their tendency to siphon wealth from nearby cities — a process that is further enabled by cars. Suburbians are forced to drive thanks to suburban sprawl, and they drive them into the city for work and leisure, contributing to urban congestion, pollution, and noise.

Those in the suburbs are more likely to own large vehicles, which are accommodated by suburban sprawl, and which suburbanites are likely to feel dependent upon for large grocery hauls and other tasks. It's easy to talk about the many ways this situation is a detriment to non-suburbanites, but what about the residents themselves? Some experts worry that the isolation of the suburbs is a contributor to our national epidemic of loneliness. This — that which is the most damaging to the soul — is their most Lynchian quality.

In his revelations of the American absurd, the centrality of cars in our culture did not escape David Lynch's fiery gaze. Under his lens, cars are loud, terrible instruments of death that isolate us and empower our worst impulses. However, we should not box the artist in. 

Though he clearly saw darkness in our car culture, Lynch also saw a particularly American notion of freedom, one that he clearly wanted to love. His critique of the country that birthed him was in so many ways a plea to his audience to salvage the good in it, and Americana is at the heart of some of the director's most sentimental moments. "Twin Peaks" is remembered not merely for its grisly murder plot, but for classic American cars parked outside a diner that serves cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee.

So, too, in his subconscious examination of American car culture do we see that mixture of love and apprehension for what lies beneath the surface. His work celebrates the joy of cruising down the highway in a drop-top 1965 Thunderbird, lover at your side and the wind in your hair, yet simultaneously envisions the horror of finding yourself on a pitch black road, far from civilization, with a demonic psychopath bearing down on you from behind. His warning was not one of pure condemnation but was rather born from a swirling brew of emotions. 

This, after all, is the duality of car culture  – pleasure and danger mixed together like gasoline and lead. The press of a pedal can carry you into a dream or a nightmare, and the highway stretches on across the horizon into the great unknown. Fire, drive with me.