I watched FWWM last night - I've seen it several times, and I am still not sure what the meaning of the picture Mrs. Tremond gave Laura was.

I know that this sequence shows the dream that Laura shared with Cooper, that was actually a reality and kind-of a time defying lodge thing - he was trapped in the lodge, and she hadn't died yet, so he was warning her not to take the ring... not sure of his motives there, but I understood that much.

I guess what I don't understand is what Mrs. Tremond IS, and what her and her grandson's intentions are. Why did she give Laura the picture? What is her role, what do she and the grandson represent? I know it is something relating to the lodges, and something magical, but am not sure what. Someone else on the board referred to the situation with the picture as leading to evil... and Laura was indeed uncomfortable when she woke up the next morning, and removed the picture from the wall. So what exactly unfolded there??? Any help on this would be appreciated. I'm sure it's been discussed before, but I'm just now starting to think about it.

Hi Nikki

I also watched FWWM again last night (first viewing for about 5 or so years). 

I can't really help you with the role of the Tremonds, they obviously fit into the Lodge hierarchy somewhere (Though God knows where, or even which Lodge they belong to)! Have to say, I personally, find them to be complete nightmare material though!

I was interested in what you said re: Cooper's motivation with telling Laura not to take the ring. I've seen plenty of convicing arguments that this is a malicious act on his part - that by doing so Bob can possess Laura instead and Coop will be free. 

I can't go along with that (Isn't the film depressing enough without thinking that??)

The scene leading up to Cooper talking to LMFAP about the ring, is almost identical to those we see in Ep 29 when Cooper is beginning his exploration of the lodge (the slow measured footsteps etc)

As such, I think this encounter happens early on in his lodge experience, and therefore he doesn't truly understand the significance of the ring when he gives his warning - He probably recognises the symbol from Owl Cave, and Teresa's photo, and acts accordingly.

Also the film's final scene (And how much did I LOVE watching that again last night) doesn't make any sense if he's been working against her...

Good luck with you quest to understand the Tremonds. I've just filed them away with that really scary guy from Lost Highway, who doesn't make much sense either, but makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up whenever he's on screen!

 I'm lost on the Tremonds, too. I do lean toward thinking they are a malignant entity rather than a benevolent one, though.

As far as Cooper, I hate to think that he asked her to not take the ring on purpose to better suit himself. That is so out of character for the Coop we see in the series... I like your theory on it a lot better, but I'd like to know what Lynch had in mind with that scene.

And I really do enjoy that very last seen in FWWM, too. I've always thought it had a "bittersweet" ending - sad b/c Laura had to go through all she did and ended up dying young, but happy b/c she beat the evil and ended up in the white lodge. And she saw her angel. I liked that, too. :)

I think the point of the picture was to lead Laura to finally realising who her abuser was consciously... and so she could therefore be sacrificed for the 'bozia and not become possessed by Bob.  It was during the picture scene that the young boy mentions about the 'man behind the mask' under the fan (Leland/Bob) etc...it leads Laura to run back home and find Bob/Leland in her room going for the diary.  When she runs off after the encounter she waits in the garden and finally sees Leland leaving the house...this seems to be the first conscious understanding that her father is perhaps her abuser via Bob.  Not long after this scene she begins to breakdown rapidly...as you would, if you found out that your 'primary carer' was in fact...your abuser.  Remember...a little later, she does actually realise that Leland is carrying out the abuse (albeit via Bob, the bedroom scene) and things are never the same after that.

Without the scene with the picture being handed over...Laura would never have gone back home to find someone sneeking around in her room...and she wouldn't have begun to suspect/understand Leland's role in her abuse....at least imo.  This causes her to breakdown rapidly and Leland/Bob is forced to act...before the game is up.

As I've mentioned in another post, I find all the Black Lodge entities to be evil. The only spirits we're introduced to who aren't are The Giant (White Lodge represenative), and Mike, but even he's reformed evil. All of their intentions are to thwart Bob, because he's not playing by the rules.

As to the Tremond's/Chalfont's, I would point out that Mrs. Tremond say's her grandson is studying magick. We also have Mike describing Bob as his familiar, nominally the pet of a wizard or sorcerer. While these things don't give us an explict answer, they do paint a picture, so to speak.

i'm replying to the initial post and am tired of all those conditional grammatics. you have to insert all these afaiks, in my mind, could be & stuff yourself.

twin peaks is a mixture of scenes a and b. a is characters, their surroundings/worlds and interactions/relations between those characters. b is a commentary on the problems and the problems' solutions of the characters, b is those mystery parts and dreams and i guess even coop himself. twin peaks is a whole, you need to have watched every episode and fwwm, then you may try to sum up all those impressions you had from those mystic parts. i guess, sticking to coherence of time and space and stuff only makes sens with a, not with b. you can't, at least for the most parts, sum up b on a coherent chronological chain, it's more like you have to puzzle them together without caring about when within the series the different events of that b-sphere took place.

the picture of ms tremond, i only understand it as "picture ON YOUR wall". wall denoting something you can't walk through, it's a dead end, it's a problem. and the picture on the wall, which within tp may be entered, that's denoting a solution to a problem. most of the time when one has a problem one isn't able to think about the possibility of a solution, all the more an easy solution. one is just lost within the problem. so it's a thing to say and it's not that obvious that there actual is a solution.

ms tremond is a character of that b-sphere and is not linked to the real world, to that a-sphere. that she gives the picture to laura is nothing that has a meaning. it's a film and somehow the tale has to be told, in a film in a visual way, so there's this trmond and she gives an actual picture to laura and she hangs it onto an actual wall. the only thing within the within-the-picture dream which may be lined on a chronicological chain and has a value within the a-sphere is the owl-ring, which or which's meaning fills lauras perception more and more.

in tremond i see an old woman, she's female and she knows the solution (so it's possible for women to know it). the grandson is on the one hand one of all those prophetic childs that say hello in all those myriad movies and books and stuff, on the other he's very young, saying: the solution is very easy, a child may fully understand it.

another try would be: the picture on the wall is not THE solution, but one solution and one false solution and the solution laura is going to choose next, so it would be an event one could try to line up on the a-sphere-chain. she will grab this owl ring, that's the only solution she sees and it's false. what i came to the last time i thought of owl ring was that it means: laura thinking of her life and all things that have gone wrong and how she can't escape. the feeling that there's a necfessary connection between her life and the outward world (society & stuff). the feeling that there would be a system at work in society that is on purpose forcing her, and was on purpose forcing her from the day she was born, to going down the road she goes down. and then she wants to scream, to scream in public, just as an individual, meaning a nothing but lonely individual, in an evil world surrounded only by mere hypocrits while, of course, her parents would take the cake. that's the scream she wants to scream and leland can't let that happen.

but also one could try to see laura's death just as metaphorical, that it means: she loses her self, her innocence completely. that the murder-scene is something of: leland is winning, there will be nothing left of laura for a long time. a life in darkness with no hope and just criminals all around. parents eating up their children. just the black consciousness of the parents prevails, the childs own consciousness could never evolve and is finally snuffed, after the eventual failure of the attempt to cover it all up for the sake of dear harmony.

well, i don't know, why do i have all those different theories but can't form them into one? perhaps it's just something with limited attention spam, perhaps it's just human and natural and necessary.

oh! and i see now, i'm 4 month late. well, whatsoever.

edit: 

or ms tremond is actually linked to that a-sphere and is some kind of good spirit coming from laura's efforts with "meals on wheels" (organized it, didn't she? i guess in the show it says only "helped organizing", but in the diary (i faintly remember) it is said that she herself came up with the idea). perhaps then that handing of the picture is something like: she remembers her own self, how she herself is like, not how everyone, especially her parents, see her, because of her deeds. and this then held against the opinion the outward world has about her according to her own thoughts - there opens up a difference. then the question: from where may that difference be derived? and the answer to that question then points to the owl ring, which's meaning then had to be changed (my meaning).

 edit 2:

i enhanced my spheres!

a & b stay the same. say hello to c: it's the nature of film. there has to be a basic coherence on the surface (though one could argue that the viewer creates this basic surface coherence anyways & always, as long as too grave mistakes are avoided). things with space and time and actors (corporeal) and dialogue. very basic, easy stuff. you can't film thoughts, you always need to translate the thoughts to a language of film, it has to be visual and the viewer has to be able to follow it, so you can't do a lot of scenes like audrey horne and john justice wheeler apologizing to each other, for instance. and there may be parts in twin peaks or any movie which just derive from that sphere and are useless for the story underneath the surface, so they may be ignored without missing anything.

and then there's another line of spheres, thats 1.1: it's the nature of human thinking. there's always only present tense, one may not think more than one thought at a time and one may not link more than two thoughts at a time together, something like that. something with a limited attention span. and then there's 1.2: because of 1.1 while watching twin peaks you constantly mix the distribution of a,b,c, accounting a thing to b instead of a, where you accounted it the last time you saw it. there's a constant confusion (i mean pouring together) (and confusion). and then there's 2: there are characters in twin peaks which play a role in both parts (a and b). adding even further to the confusion.

now that's too much. i surrender. for a minute.

and i also wanted to add that i haven't watched tp for about 1,5 years. just the last few days i have been zapping / jumping through some scenes and have started rethinking my 1,5 year old tp-thoughts. yap. (saying this because i maybe have generalized some stuff (scenes) too much. because i wrote down some interpretations i had in my memory without having recently seen the series and those interpretations sort of got ablated by time.)

'she seems like a nice girl'

little Pierre wanted Donna's life, didnt he?

that's called sarcasm, isn't it?

even taken metaphorically, pierre wouldn't want donna's life. since imo pierre is prophetic child and prophetic child just wants wild girl and donna has parents so donna not wild girl. even within that interim phase that might occur, where pierre would be quite obsessed with wanting to mess around in girl's heads, he wouldn't be interested in donna. even if she'd went over the top with wearing laura's glasses and stuff. has parents, can't shapeshift into a wild girl, no chance.

 wild girl = has to explain everything to herself alone, without guidance, has to be both parts (female & male), tries to understand both parts, but won't be able to understand men (men not boys). main problem in twin peaks = just boys, no man anywhere.

you wrote: "just because a man isn't acting to a certain culture's definition of  male adulthood doesn't make them boys."

i didn't mean a certain kind of conduct / behaviour. i meant the place from where they take their knowledge. out of nothingness / out of themselves or out of acting along?

what's with those you named? hawk speaks of the lodges, but not as if he'd been there (and his poem, i don't like it). harry has a lot of scenes where he loses the plot. and briggsy has considerable problems raising his bobby, doesn't he? i won't doubt that the ones you named are moral human beings who are far too old to let "it" slip for shorttime gains. but they're no gordon coles either (i thought his hearing problems would mean something like: he is not able to follow the exact words someone says that well, but that doesn't matter, for he knows what others are going through better than they might express it themselves even without listening).

but the main thing would be that i wrote the words you quoted as a part of a paragraph and that paragraph was about "wild girl". most prominent wild girl in tp would be laura palmer. and there was no one around, not a single one who could tell. besides james hurley, that is, but he (understood biologically) was too young. also i said what i said in front of a background i didn't reveal and that background would be ben horne being the highest representative of (the town) tp (owns half the town, wants ghostwood and no sawmill). and he is a boy, isn't he? and mayor milford ... well ...

another thing would be ... the show is designed that way. there would be nothing left to find out for the viewer if tp's male population wouldn't consist mainly of boys. i like smileys. just a distraction because i can't prove my saying. but why should i anyway?

I always thaught of the picture as a gateway into the other world.

Maybe the Tremonds are giving it to Laura to lure her.

That is how I have thaught of it.

There are several fascinating riddles about the Tremonds - who are they in the first place, what is their position in the Lodges, are they in charge of something or are they told what to do (but by whom?), last but not least: what are their intentions towards Laura (and later Donna -> Cooper).

I see them as ones who take Laura closer to the truth. For good, or for bad, is hard to say, though I tend to see them similarly to the Giant (who took Cooper closer to truth). The Grandson's "man behind the mask" helps Laura realise the truth about Leland, and the picture itself takes her deeper into the supernatural world of garmonbozia, literally opens another door for her, as the post above states, too. But to lure or to help? Truth suggests the good, but who knows? The Mystery Man in Lost Highway took Fred closer to the truth as well...
Later in the series it is also the Tremonds' presence that leads Cooper to realise that he shared Laura's dream and subsequently to solve the murder mystery.

Anyway, this is the unknown, things we can ponder on and lead long inspiring discussions.

Some other things, however, are pretty clear - for example that the Cooper shown in FWWM inside the Lodge is a good Cooper, therefore if he tells Laura NOT TO TAKE THE RING, he says it with good intentions and not to set her up. C'mon! Of course I see where this supposition comes from but it is reading way too much into Cooper's character.
Also, when Laura wakes up in the middle of the night and clutches the Ring in her hand, we can clearly see that she is in deadly danger. We may not understand why or where it came from but any basic ability to read film language leaves it totally clear for me that she is in deadly danger and therefore listening to Cooper's advice and not taking the Ring is a GOOD choice for her. Otherwise the whole way of filming those scenes makes no sense whatsoever.

Anyway, this does not take us exactly to the Tremonds. After all, they only give Laura the picture, they don't actually do anything inside it and the choice with the Ring is Laura's, not theirs. So the question remains: even if I think they help, then - for whose sake, I am not sure.

Bobi 1 Kenobi

B. Beware
O. Of
B. BOB