David Lynch Adds Black Lives Matter Message to Daily Web Series: ‘Peace, Justice, No Fear’
Zack Sharf
David Lynch has been posting weather report videos every day to his official YouTube page since May 11, but he spruced up the set for his June 3 installment with a Black Lives Matter sign placed behind him. Lynch’s handmade sign also included the following phrase: “Peace. Justice. No Fear.” The sign debuted amid this week’s global protests over the death of George Floyd. Ever one of Lynch’s daily weather videos have run around 40 seconds, but his latest ran 90 seconds and ended with the sign in focus and Lynch offscreen.
Lynch’s weather report videos is one of two web series the filmmaker has launched while in quarantine at his Los Angeles home. The second series, ‘What Is David Working on Today?,’ follows Lynch as he works on various craft projects in his workshop. Lynch has not announced any new film or television projects since “Twin Peaks: The Return” ended its run on Showtime in September 2017, which has made his daily YouTube videos something of a gift for fans. Lynch also made his 2015 animated short “Fire (Pozar)” available for free on YouTube for the first time in the midst of quarantine.
While Lynch isn’t overtly known for being a racially-charged filmmaker, critics have noted in the past that the director’s filmography subtly criticizes whiteness in America. A 2017 essay published by Vulture argued that “whiteness is the source of all evil” in the vision of America that Lynch presents in his filmography. That essay was in part a response to a 1997 essay David Foster Wallace wrote for Premiere magazine in which he asked, “Why are Lynch’s movies all so white?” The Vulture essay argued that “what is abnormal about Lynch’s films is the way he makes whiteness speak and turn its gaze upon itself.”
Lynch is one of several filmmakers and actors using his social media pages to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Earlier today, Steve McQueen dedicated his new anthology series “Small Axe” to George Floyd and other “black people that have been murdered, seen or unseen, because of who they are.”
Watch Lynch support the Black Lives Matter movement and share the weather in his latest web video embedded below.
