The Alphabet – David Lynch (1968) – Short Film
What is The Alphabet?
The Alphabet is David Lynch’s second short film, released 1968. The film is a combination of both animation and live-action, with the only actor starring in the movie being Lynch’s then-wife, Peggy Lynch. The idea for The Alphabet came from a visit Peggy had to her parent’s house. Lynch commented, “Her little niece was there, I think in a darkened room in a little bed, and was having a nightmare and repeating the alphabet in her nightmare”. Peggy’s strange story inspired him to make The Alphabet for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. This film awarded him a spot at the American Film Institute, where he went on to produce his first feature film, Eraserhead.
What is it about?
David Lynch famously keeps the true meaning of his films a secret, as he wants the audience to have their own interpretation and experience of the work. After numerous watches and some research, I believe the film is about the fear of learning and growing up. Throughout the film, we follow a girl that is scared and tortured by the alphabet. We see different interpretations of the girl, both through abstract animation and live action. Children are a recurring theme in both this film and other Lynch works, such as Eraserhead. Lynch had a daughter (Jennifer Lynch) with his first wife Peggy Lynch when he was 22. Lynch’s thoughts on children are “I love all my children and we get along great, but in the early years, before you can have a relationship of talking to them, it’s tough,” he said. “And I would get divorced and stuff — I’ve got four kids and three divorces“. Since it was made around the time of his first child, we can assume that The Alphabet (and other films like Eraserhead) take inspiration from his own experiences as a father with a young child.
We hear the sound of a child crying, and the animation of the film has a childlike look to it which adds an eerie and uncanny atmosphere. The use of collage, colourful dots and the hand-drawn aesthetic makes it feel somewhat childlike as it feels like we are seeing everything from the girl’s perspective.
One line of dialogue said directly to the viewer near the end of the film, “Remember you are dealing with the human form”, represents that we are dealing with people, in particular children. Children are young and inexperienced and need to be taught about the world around them. When a child doesn’t understand something or a teaching style doesn’t fit them well, learning can be difficult and scary. This resonates with me personally, and I think this is Lynch critiquing the educational system. This still rings true 53 years after this film was released.
In the abstract interpretation, we see what looks like a collage of a person. In the collage, we see a multitude of different art forms. The face is very abstract meanwhile the breast looks like it’s from an old renaissance painting from the 1500s. The rest of the body is made up of different types of abstract art. The fact the face and breast are the only human parts of this collage could be representing the girl becoming a woman. The sound in this part is very frightening, we hear the sound of a baby crying, and the baby crying sounds slightly sped up and broken which adds a sense of surrealism to the film. Since we see the collage being built and the vagina giving birth to the letters this could be related to the themes of birth. We hear the sound of the siren which gives a feeling of alertness, the siren sounds very similar to the baby’s voice, and the siren is shaky and slightly differs in pitch adding to the uncanniness of this short.
We see the use of nudity in the animation, the character has a breast and we see what looks like a penis fill with blood then switch to a distorted face. Next to the person a red box grows out of the ground and turns into a vagina, the letters A, B and C then come out of the vagina into the head of the person. This happens a couple of times until the collage gasps and then cut to the girl gasping too. The face of the animation then disintegrates with blood pouring down it. This is eerie and uncomfortable to watch, prompting the viewer to also feel scared by what is happening to the girl. I believe the use of nudity is used to portray conception birth and the letters represent teaching the child. Another representation of birth in this film takes place earlier in which a capital A gives birth to a lowercase A, which is another tie to birth. Throughout this entire scene, the siren is the most prominent sound.
During the final sequence of the film, the girl recites the alphabet. When she gets to the letter G, there is a close-up of the girl’s face where she looks terrified. I find it interesting why they stopped at the letter G. Does the G represent growing up? Girlhood? I think stopping at G was intentional. After finishing her reciting of the alphabet she spits blood all over the bed and then it cut to credits. My interpretation of her spitting blood is that she’s been infected by the alphabet, she sees adulthood as a disease and something she does not want. The alphabet and this whole film is a metaphor for both a fear of learning and growing up.
The Sound
The sound of this film is very human. There are non-diegetic sounds of a child crying, the voices of children saying the alphabet, and a siren. The human voices link with the quote, “Remember you are dealing with the human form”, reiterating the theme of humanity. There is also the diegetic sound of the girl reciting the alphabet. There are wind-like noises that sound like they’re made by a person, a ‘shhh’ noise. This again exhibits the recurring theme of humanity and people. The sound of the film was revolutionary for the time, no films were doing sound like this to score their films. Most film directors used orchestras and traditional means of composing. SInce Lynch was somewhat of a oneman band he had a lot of freedom to do what he wanted sonically. It could be seen as a bit crude nowadays given this sound has been done better by Lynch after this and it does sound a tad amatuerish but for the time it was quite polarizing. It still does hold up today as a terrifying piece of sound.
The way Lynch captured the sound of the crying child was by recording his newborn daughter, Jennifer Lynch, with an Uher tape recorder that was broken. The broken tape machine gives the crying a warbled and sped-up sound, it sounds like a baby but somewhat tampered with. A Uher tape machine is a german manufactured reel to reel tape machine, they were supposed to be portable unlike a lot of other reel to reel machines of that time (1960’s). This whole film would have been recorded onto tape. So I’m considering possibly using tape in some way for my recordings.
My Ideas
The Alphabet gives me a lot of inspiration for what I could be doing sonically. Ideas of musique concrete, field recordings, and noise started coming to my head the more I watched it. I would be interested to work with tape and digital. Using equipment like hydrophones, contact mics, Sennheiser 416 and collaborating with friends to create sounds and atmospheres. I would like to do a mixture of sound mixing/recording in the foley room/recording studio next door. This will give me good experience in working in a more professional manner. I plan on using pro tools but will be using ableton for experimentation and recording at home.
References
Hood, B. (2018). David Lynch knows he’s not the best dad. [online] Page Six. Available at: https://pagesix.com/2018/06/25/david-lynch-knows-hes-not-the-best-dad/