David Lynch’s Anti–Political Correctness

The legacy of all-American surrealism

David Lynch, director of Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, and Eraserhead, was that rarity — a grant-funded filmmaker who was also a true artist. Staying apolitical in his work, Lynch expressed the personal idiosyncrasy that reflected his upbringing in Midwest America (born in Missoula, Mont., and of Finnish-Danish heritage) as well as his private, frightened knowledge of national terror.

As an aspiring artist, he studied at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, which exposed him to the city’s social aberrations. In the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, he told filmmakers Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia ...