The Black Lodge is a fictional setting featured in the television series Twin Peaks. It is an extradimensional place which seems to include, primarily, the "Red Room" first seen by Agent Cooper in a dream early in the series. As events in the series unfold, it becomes apparent that the characters from the Red Room, the room itself and the Black Lodge, along with the White Lodge, are connected.
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At first it is revealed that there is a mysterious dark presence in the woods that the town's Bookhouse Boys have been combatting for generations. Although they don't know what it is, Native American policeman Deputy Hawk says that the Black Lodge is from the mythology of his people, describing it as:
During the second season, Windom Earle relates a past-tense story about the White Lodge:
As the Black and White Lodges become more prominent in the story, Major Briggs claims that during one or more of his disappearances, he had visited the White Lodge and goes on to offer advice regarding it. There is no clear evidence of him being affected by the Black Lodge and it is not clear how he arrives there, aside from a bright flash of light, or what the intentions of his trips were.
Although the Red Room began exclusively as a location within Agent Cooper's dreams, the inhabitants began appearing in other locations in the town, inciting other elements in the plot, to the point where the Red Room and White/Black Lodge stories became one. After discovering a mysterious map in Owl Cave, it becomes evident to Earle and Cooper — both independently and with different motivations for wanting to visit it — that the entrance to the Black Lodge is located in Ghostwood Forest which surrounds the town of Twin Peaks, at a pool of a substance that smells like scorched engine oil and surrounded by 12 young sycamore trees. This area is known as Glastonbury Grove.
It is said that the key to gain entrance to the Black Lodge is fear —usually an act of brutal murder. This is in contrast to the key to the White Lodge, which is love. Another requirement to enter the Black Lodge through the entrance in Glastonbury Grove is that it may only be entered "...when Jupiter and Saturn meet..." When the above requirements are met and one approaches the pool in Glastonbury Grove, red curtains appear, which the person walks between before the curtains vanish once again.
There is little furniture in the Red Room aside from a few chairs, a statue of Venus de Milo and there are no doors to speak of. The floor is a zig-zag pattern of black and white and every wall is covered with red curtains. In the final episode, we see a second room in the Lodge, identical to the first. Between the two rooms is a narrow corridor which has the same floor and "walls" as the other two rooms.
Inhabitants of the Lodge speak in a warped dialect of English and often speak in riddles and non-sequiturs. The main inhabitants of the Lodge are The Man from Another Place, The Giant and Killer BOB.
In the final episode of Twin Peaks, Cooper meets The Man from Another Place, who refers to the Red Room as the "waiting room". This coincides with Hawk's claim that every spirit must pass through the Black Lodge on the way to perfection and that the Red Room leads to the White Lodge as well.
The red curtains, zig-zag floors and bright spotlights of the White and Black Lodges have also appeared in several of David Lynch's other films, suggesting that Lynch may view their influences as ongoing in his narrative worlds.[1]
The Black Lodge and White Lodge is home to many spirits and people alike including BOB, MIKE, The Man From Another Place, The Giant, Laura Palmer (passing through the Red Room before ascending to the White Lodge), Chester Desmond, Phillip Jefferies and Dale Cooper. The spirits can take over humans: BOB possessed Leland Palmer and later, Dale Cooper; The Giant possessed the elderly waiter from the Great Northern; and MIKE possessed Phillip Gerard.
In the two-part Simpsons episode, Who Shot Mr. Burns?, Chief Clancy Wiggum has trouble solving the case and falls into a dream sequence in which he awakes in the Red Room and Lisa speaks backwards. She gives him clues in reverse-speak, but Wiggum is unable to understand her until she gives up in frustration and speaks normally.[2] While recording Lisa's lines for the segment, Yeardley Smith recorded the part backwards and it was reversed, which is the same way it was done on Twin Peaks.[3][4] Several other parts out of the segment are direct references to the dream, including a moving shadow on the curtain, and Wiggum's hair standing straight up after waking.[5]
William Burroughs' 1980 book Cities of the Red Night makes reference to the mystical "Black and White Lodges", pre-dating Twin Peaks and possibly being the inspiration for the Lodges referred to in the show.
Likewise, the Red Room is referenced in the manga/anime series Monster, in which a backroom in a bar that's curtained off serves as a meeting place for the Baby (whose character was partially inspired by the Man from Another Place) and Nina Fortner. During the scene, the Baby also dances in a way reminiscent of the Man from Another Place during his appearances.
The design for 'the black room' in the manga/anime series SoulEater was taken from the Red room also. Although the floor is instead a red and black checkered pattern.
Black Lodge Studios outside of Lawrence, Kansas was founded by Producer Ed Rose and members of The Get Up Kids who are fans of Twin Peaks.
Twin Peaks's score conductor Angelo Badalamenti helped write the song "Black Lodge" on the 1993 Sound of White Noise album by Anthrax.
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