Who Killed Laura Palmer: A postmodern analysis of the TV programme Twin Peaks ‘Never before, in the history of television, had a program inspired so many millions of people to debate and analyze it deeply and excitedly for so prolonged a period Twin Peaks generated the kinds of annotated scrutiny usually associated with scholarly journals and literary monographs’ (Bianculli, cited by Lavery 1994). We are accustomed to our television programmes mixing genres, using dream sequences, alluding to other era’s and giving us surreal moments. Many think that this is a direct result of the American TV programme Twin Peaks, which caused controversy and gained a cult status like no other before it. It was created, written and directed by the film director David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Erasurehead), in partnership with the well established American novelist, screenwriter, director and film producer Mark Frost (Hill Street Blues, The Equaliser) who had worked in television for many years. Could Twin Peaks be the embodiment of postmodernist television? This essay will investigate current postmodernist theory looking at how it uses examples of intertextuality and pastiche. It will also look at various aspects of the series itself, looking into the contextual elements of the time as well as a formal analysis. It will endeavour to ascertain what makes it such a quintessential piece of postmodern television. It will give an explanation as to what postmodernism is and explore how Twin Peaks is an example of the postmodern era and postmodernist television itself. It is hard to pin point what postmodernism is, it is a style, a movement, a condition of socio-economic factors, a mode of philosophy, a form of politics or a type of cultural study, in this essay we are concerned with the latter. To understand Postmodernism one must have an understanding of Modernism, insomuch as Postmodernism is a method of thought that is a response to Modernism. If there is a common denominator in all of these contentious definitions of postmodernism, it is the determination to define it as soothing other than modernism, a term that is likewise given variable status. Modernism is generally characterized as a period of profound elitism, in which case postmodernism signals a move away from the self-enclosed world of avant-garde back into the realm of day-today life (Collins 1992, p. 4). Another view could be ‘Modernism is concerned with the creation of original thought and art, one can see that Postmodernism is a recycling or re-use of what was once original’ (Albanese 2012, p. 8). In his essay ‘Authorship and the Films of David Lynch’ (1997), Pearson breaks down postmodernism in four classifications; ‘four categories which show authorship as typified by postmodernism. These are: parody and pastiche, prefabrication, inter-textuality and bricolage’. It is hard to recall the anticipation and excitement that Twin Peaks caused when it first came to our television screens. Thanks to a clever advertising campaign where teaser adverts asked questions like ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer?’ the whole nation tuned in to see what all the hype was about - a famous and successful film director making a television show was unheard of. ‘The show was conceived by two men of different backgrounds in the film and television industries, who shared the goal of creating a television show that would not be another predictable program’ (Albanese 2012, p. 4). Twin Peaks aired in April of 1990 and the pilot episode was watched by 34 million viewers in the United States. To give you some context, 1990 was the year that the French and the British met in the middle whilst building the Channel Tunnel, The Simpsons first aired on Sky, the Poll Tax was introduced in England and Wales, and Goodfellas and Pretty Woman were on at the cinema. ‘It also marked a decisive turning point in US television drama. Before Twin Peaks there was plenty of well-made American TV, though it was mostly generic and limited in ambition. But Lynch, a cinema auteur, tore up conventions and almost single-handedly reinvented TV drama’ (Collins 1992, p. 4). It also generated a great deal of merchandise, such as ‘The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer’ among other books. VCR tapes recorded the action and were watched over and over again and a soundtrack was heard in people’s homes. The website Alt.tv.twinpeaks appeared just a few weeks after the series started, which created a community of Twin Peaks followers trying to figure our what was going on and who had killed Laura Palmer. ‘“Thank