Neighbourhoods or nothing? Social relations in David Lynch's Blue Velvet

David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) raises significant questions concerning small-town social relations in the United States, the corrupting powers of industrial urbanism and the notion of propinquity. It is a vivid rejoinder to the idealization of the small town and to comfortable notions of community in general. Through a close reading of the spatial strategies employed in Blue Velvet, this article maps Lynch’s conception of the neighbour and the neighbourhood. The analysis encompasses the political rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin, the planning ideas of New Urbanism and critiques of the neighbour articulated by Freud and Žižek, as well as placing Blue Velvet in the context of Lynch’s other work.