This chapter will argue that the semiotic item ‘David Lynch’ has become a meme, and through memetic imitation in digital form is stripped of the very essence of David Lynch. It will assess the play that is at work in shaping transmedia aesthetics by way of media transpositions of elements from Lynch's oeuvre into new media contexts and the role multimodality plays in this process. I understand digital memes as multimodal media that foster canonisation processes and turn David Lynch into an aesthetic signifier that normalises his shock aesthetics into a part of the everyday register. At the same time, the use and circulation of these digital memes evidence creative forms of polyvocal public participation. In collecting and discussing memes from social media platforms, closed and open online fan groups, discussion websites and popular online platforms such as 9gag or me.me that allow for the sharing of user-generated content, this chapter will ask about the function of David Lynch memes. In doing so it will reflect on the relationship between digital memes and networks of communities that operate by a logic of cultural (re-)appropriation, collectivism and the use of vernacular creativity.

Laura Dern Cries, the Internet Laughs

Sometimes ugly cries on screen can become long-lasting moments of comic relief. Among the internet community this might be the case in the memory work for David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986). At one point in the movie, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosselini) shows up at the door of her secret lover, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan). She is tattered, bruised and topless. Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), intended to be romantically involved with Jeffrey, is at Beaumont's place and, in an epiphany, understands what is going on between Dorothy and Jeffrey. She immediately bursts into a crying fit. In 2017, amidst the actress's very own career resurgence, Dern's crying face from Blue Velvet had a second life: cropped from the shot and photoshopped onto a fan-made rainbow the still of Dern's crying face was decontextualised from the movie and passed on as a digital meme. This meme was remixed and transformed in visual online conversations to comment on the actress's work: In one example the crying face from Blue Velvet is juxtaposed with Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) bawling mien during his encounter with Darth Vader in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).