”There’s Always Music in the Air”

Karaktär och funktion hos den diegetiska musiken i Twin Peaks

Abstract

When television series Twin Peaks was first shown in Sweden in 1990 it made a tremendous impression on most people who saw it. The music had a big part in this. In this essay, I describe and analyze the diegetic music of the first eight episodes of the series, and look at how it interacts with the rest of the music, and investigate as well what the shifting between diegetic and non-diegetic music does for the narrative and the story of the series. The analysis categorizes the diegetic as well as the non-diegetic music.

I find that the music and the ways in which it functions are marked by the same ironic distance and constant flux between genres that characterizes the dramatic development of the series as a whole. Through methodological manipulation the illusions and moods created by the music are disassembled and the dramaturgic construction of the series becomes visible. The result is that the narrative construction is a part of the content. In other words, how the story is told is sometimes the story itself.