Devon’s talk is called, “The Owls Howl at Midnight: From Midnight Movies to ‘Twin Peaks’ Return as Ultimate Reality TV”
From the late 1960s through the mid-70s, a new cinematic phenomenon arose in the dark: the midnight movie. Low-budget, high-vision experimental films like El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, Eraserhead, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show were original hybrids of horror, humor, cringe, and camp. Each re-mythologized tropes and iconographies of their cinematic ancestors with a sense of ironic romanticism and serious play. The midnight movie also created highly engaged mimetic ritual participation in these mythologies; cult film thus ventured into the (sac)religious dimension. This presentation addresses the mythologies and rituals of these films, as well as the mythical nature of the midnight movie itself, including its associated aesthetic qualities, psychological states, and reputation as the witching hour of outcasts, uncanny occurrences, and Dionysian revelry and transgression. Dreams, nightmares, surreal irrationality, and absurd subversion rule deep night and the midnight movie. In conclusion, we will briefly explore how the midnight movie impacted the work and public reception of its final standout, David Lynch, especially his series Twin Peaks—perhaps the best example of how enigmatic filmmaking can hold the midnight hour and continue unfolding a mythology in contemporary settings.
About Devon
Devon Deimler, PhD is an artist, writer, and mythologist. She is Curator at OPUS Archives and Research Center—home to the collections of James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and MarionWoodman, among others—and is Scholar in Residence, Special Editions Editor, and
Founder/Curator of the Cinemyth Film Series at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. She earned her doctorate in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute with her dissertation, Ultraviolet Concrete: Dionysos and the Ecstatic Play of Aesthetic Experience, which received the institute’s Dissertation of Excellence award. Devon earned her BA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she focused on event-based work and modern through contemporary art and film history. Her professional experience in art and music includes founding an independent record label and collaborative event project, Wildfire Wildfire Productions, working as Assistant to the Director at the Dennis Hopper Art Trust, and teaching photography and modern art history and studio practices at American University Preparatory School in DTLA. Learn more at devondeimler.com.