InDavid Lynch’s long, illustrious, and eccentric filmmaking career, he has only experimented with animation on a handful of occasions. He used the mode ina couple of his short filmsas well as in some of the most bizarreor creepiest moments inTwin PeaksandInland Empire. However, his most straightforward and extended use of a cartoon style came in the form of an eight-part webseries titledDumbLand— and though its style may be simple, the project is just as absurd and unusual as anything Lynch has ever created.
David Lynch’s ‘DumbLand’ Is a Quirky and Minimalist Cartoon
Released in 2002, before the rise of YouTube and the director’s “David Lynch Theater” page, theDumbLandepisodes first appeared on the now defunct DavidLynch.com. Each episode spans between three and five minutes in length, and they all center around an odiously hot-tempered oaf of a man. Although the man is never properly named in the show, the website originally dubbed him Randy. Lynch drew Randy with a troll-like face, an ogreish figure, and a perpetually agape mouth featuring just three teeth. In every episode, Randy’s irascible nature leads him to ultraviolent actions against those around him — including his insatiably panicked wife, his overly-hyper son, and a revolving door of peculiar neighbors, relatives, and visitors.
All the characters inDumbLand, as well as their surrounding environments, are drawn in an intensely crude, minimalist style. Hard yet squiggly lines, inconsistent character designs, and a distinct lack of detail make upDumbLand’s black-and-white world. The animation is hardly more sophisticated, with glitchy, jarring movements aplenty. Ultimately, it looks like the artwork of a child.
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Violence and Profanity Run Wild in David Lynch’s ‘DumbLand’
DespiteDumbLand’s juvenile aesthetic,the subject manner is far from kid-friendly. As aforementioned, Randy is a volatile main character, and every episode shows him reacting to a situation with gory abuse. In the second episode, he uses a treadmill to send his wife and child through a wall before breaking the neck of a traveling salesman. In the episode “A Friend Visits,” he obstructs traffic to cause a horrible car crash, and in “Get The Stick!” he attempts to dislodge a stick from a man’s mouth only to break his neck and puncture his eye sockets in the process. After the maimed man runs into the street and gets run over by a truck, Randy gracelessly remarks, “Fucker didn’t even say thank you.”
Indeed, in addition to its excessive violence,DumbLandis also filled with profane language. Randy drops an F-bomb in nearly every sentence he utters, and he speaks in either a low grumble or a vicious scream. Even his dialogue with other characters is foul. In the very first episode, Randy accuses his neighbor of having sex with ducks — an accusation that is immediately confirmed as truth! Then, in “A Friend Visits,” he converses with a cowboy about their shared love of killing. It’s humorously crass at its lightest, and downright disturbing at its darkest.
Randy does, however, get his comeuppance throughout the series. In the treadmill episode, he does equal damage to himself by hopping on the speeding machine; in an episode titled “The Doctor,” he electrocutes himself trying to repair a lamp and then must undergo a brutal test of pain tolerance; and in “Uncle Bob” he receives a beating from his mother-in-law, who threatened to castrate Randy if he didn’t take care of the eponymous family member. Then, in the finale, he accidentally sprays his eye with bug repellant when attempting to exterminate an ant infestation. The ants then break out into a musical number where they call Randy an “Asshole,” a “Shit Head,” and a “Dumb Turd.” Randy angrily tries to stomp out the singing ants, chasing them up onto the ceiling before violently falling on his head. He wakes up in a full-body cast, unable to move as the ants burrow under the plaster to crawl upon his skin freely. In the final shot, Randy screams in agony— offering arare bit of resolution in a David Lynch story.
But What Is David Lynch’s ‘DumbLand’ Really About?
As it is with most of Lynch’s projects,DumbLandleaves the viewer with more questions than answers. The project’s full meaning remains unclear in the end.As he did inBlue Velvet, Lynch may be making a comment on the latent violence ingrained in domestic and suburban spaces. After all,DumbLandtakes place in a vague neighborhood of single-family homes, and all the sketches begin with trite household activities like watching television or chatting with relatives before minor inconveniences lead Randy to aggressive behaviors. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the episode “My Teeth Are Bleeding,” when Randy has a near out-of-body experience as the casual, routine banalities all around him grow increasingly, inexplicably violent. Strong cases could also be made forDumbLandbeing about toxic masculinity or domestic abuse, but more likely, Lynch just made the project as a rampant, fun experiment. According toThe Guardian,Lynch created the series entirely on his own, recording all of the voices and sound effects himself, and animating on his computer using Macromedia’s Flash software. Apparently, he used a mouse to draw everything, hence some of the rudimentary designs. Ina 2000 report fromVarietypreceding the project, Lynch admitted thatDumbLandwould be his first time using Flash, and prophetically predicted that the series “will be very crude… It’s very dumb and very bad quality.”
So maybe David Lynch doesn’t want the audience to overthink this one, as he seems comfortable in saying that it’s far from his best work. Nevertheless,DumbLandstill has some of the Lynchian staples, like dry-wit non sequiturs, uncanny settings, morally unscrupulous characters, and an unnerving use of sound. Moreover, given how primitive Macromedia Flash was at the turn of the millennium, and that Lynch put the entire series together by himself, there is something to be admired inDumbLandas an artistic feat. If nothing else, it is exciting to see such an esteemed director create and release something so earnest and understated at the height of his career. He explored and acquired new tools to make something original, albeit playful and childish… with enough fart jokes to fill aMike Myersmovie.
