Believe Care Invest: Blue Velvet

Why Jeffry might be hard to identify with:

• He’s odd. He’s detached. He’s ultimately kind of disturbed.
• This world doesn’t really feel very realistic, and it certainly doesn’t feel like North Carolina, although it was actually shot there, but I think that’s intentional on Lynch’s part. He’s more interested in portraying an idea of “Americana” rather than a specific place in America.

Believe

• So in some ways Jeffrey is hard to care about because he’s so odd, but it’s helps that he’s odd in specific ways. “I used to know a kid who lived there, had the biggest tongue in the world.” “You know the chicken walk?” We’ve never seen a kid be odd in quite this way, and that makes him more believable.

Care

• He’s come home from college because his dad is in a coma and he needs to help out. He visits his dad and it affects him. We also share his frustration when he’s given no information about the case.

Invest

• He’s not the easiest hero to invest in, because he’s very unskilled, but we love curious heroes with good eyes, and he’s certainly that: He spots the ear that no one else would have spotted, and later says, “I’m just real curious like you said.”

Five Es

• Eat: Not until minute 17, when he enthusiastically takes Sandy to Arlene’s diner.
• Exercise: He likes to go for walks. There’s how he finds the ear, and later how he courts Sandy at night.
• Economic Activity: He’s come home to work in his parents’ hardware store. The whole town is named after their industry, Lumberton.
• Enjoy: He’s pretty joyless at first, but he starts to perk up when Sandy comes into his life. They’re awkward together but they still enjoy each other’s company.
• Emulate: He imitates the police.

Rise above

• He borrows the stores bug-spraying equipment under false pretenses in pursuit of his kink. Presumably he lets his investigation distract from his duties.

High five a black guy

• This is a particularly egregious example. Suddenly Jeffrey is best buds with two black guys who work at the store, and then they disappear from the script forever! And one of them is seemingly magical, because he seems to see all even though he’s blind! “Oh it’s so good to have you back,” one of them says warmly.