“This is the girl”: Queer Nightmares, Fantasy, and Reality in Mulholland Drive

Abstract

The article discusses how David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive (2001) offers many filmic clichés to deconstruct assumptions about queer identity. Although some critics of the film have suggested that the film upholds heteronormativity, Lynch unravels the limits of linear space and time to contest a singular reality. Analyzing Mulholland Drive via theories of queer temporality will suggest that a singular, supposedly correct reading of this film’s chronology may not be easily determined. In fact, approaching this film from a queer theoretical perspective offers the opportunity to show that, despite the alleged privileging of the heteronormative order, the tropes of neo noir allow the characters to celebrate the possibility of queer desire through the negation of a unitary self.