Ghost Hosts
Bloody heart in San Francisco in April, 2021. Photo: J. Waits
“I am a visitor,” Mr. Tojamura tells Pete Martel as they sit at the bar at the Great Northern. It’s an interesting turn of phrase, reminding the viewer that Twin Peaks has residents as well as travelers.
If you’ve watched Season 2, Episode 6 (“Demons”) of Twin Peaks, read on. If not, be forewarned. There will be spoilers!
The use of the word visitor also calls to mind the supernatural, which this episode touches on with the One Armed Man’s descriptions of both himself and of BOB in the very next scene. While suffering an episode he explains that he is Mike, saying, “I am an inhabiting spirit,” whereas Philip Gerard is “host to me.” He also refers to his body as “this vessel.” Regarding BOB, he says, “He was my familiar.”
Last week (listen here) I mentioned that Disneyland was on my mind at Harold’s, where I heard music reminiscent of the Haunted Mansion. This week, I’m back in that mansion again thinking about ghost hosts. Are there ghost hosts in Twin Peaks? Are visitors inhabiting souls? We learn that BOB is a familiar, like a witch’s cat - a demon, who also inhabits a body or a soul.
But back to ghosts. Spookily enough, in the scene that I just mentioned, where Tojamura and Pete Martel chat at the bar, it’s following Leland and Ben’s “Getting to Know You” duet. From the musical The King and I, the 1956 movie features a ghost singer, Marni Nixon, who provided vocals for many actors, including Natalie Wood in West Side Story (as well as vocals for Rita Moreno in the song “Tonight”). Ben Horne - in real life Richard Beymer - played Tony in West Side Story and also had his voice dubbed by a ghost singer: Jim Bryant.
On this week’s episode of the podcast, we delve into a discussion about ghosts, ghost hosts and visitors. It’s intriguing that Ben is the owner of the Great Northern, which Cooper speculates is the place where BOB is, based on Mike’s description of a “house...filled with many rooms...occupied by different souls...night after night.”
My particular interest in the minutiae related to the song “Getting to Know You” stems from the many intertextual references in Twin Peaks to cinema and television. Throughout Back to the Double R, I’ve been interested in the other roles that the actors on the show have played in the past, as reference points for us as we watch the show. It’s no accident that we get starring roles and cameos from alums of General Hospital, Laverne and Shirley, blockbuster westerns, and musicals. And many of the characters on Twin Peaks are acting, deceiving, and playing different parts for different people.