There’s a line in a Jacques Derrida essay – one about the complex feeling of being naked in front of a cat – that makes me cry if I think about it too much. Describing his cat as an ‘existence that refuses to be conceptualised’, Derrida reflects on its mortality:

From the moment it has a name, its name survives it.

There’s a lot of power in naming – in the control it allows to those who denominate. It can be, and has been, a horrible tool; a colonial asset; a method of enforcing cruel histories and upholding rigid binaries.
The power of the name, though, remains in those denominated.

When a longstanding avant-garde director, seen as one of the filmmakers, died on the 16th of January this year, I felt slightly compelled not to speak his name. It was as if I needed to recognise the grief I felt without a label attached to recognise that loss most. 

On the 1 March, Brum-based pop-up exhibitor Whatever Pays the Rent (WPTR) honoured the director’s passing with a quiz and a screening of his 2001 film, ‘Mulholland Drive’. It’s the first time I’ve been to one of WPTR’s Interactive screenings, and my nerves toward such an interactivity slowly dissipated; I soon found myself in a screen packed with so much life that it was hard not to feel the city’s culture in every corner of the room. 

I decided to dress up for the event as a rogue-ish character from Twin Peaks. After ruminating on the potential of assuming the log lady’s skin, I opted for Dr Jacoby: both in outfit and name, I had an existing identity to tie into my outfit. Perhaps it’s the case for all cosplay that you have to merge yourself into the character you portray. Nevertheless, I had more options than usual – Lawrose Jacoby? Jacob JaRosey? 

The quiz itself began, as they usually do, with a question:

What was the Log Lady’s real name? 

Fuck.

My interest in names goes hand in hand with my hatred of forgetting them. The quiz accentuated my faulty memory to a horrifying extent, prodding me with names I just couldn’t mentally reach. Gordon Cole? Gone. Sheryl Lee? Gone. Chucko, Buster, Pete, Bob, and Dan? The best I could do was Chucky, Bucky, Plucky, Lucky, Simon. The more I couldn’t get, the more I realised the importance of the name – not just in quiz answer form, but for filmmaking as a whole. The finale, which saw 2 teams (both named after chickens) name as many Twin Peaks characters as they could (while wrapped in plastic, of course) accentuated the role of the name into absurdly vital territories; from Nadine Hurley to Bob, each label almost seems to define their characters before the actors get a chance. The very first words of the show, even, are a call to a name – Diane.

For a work like Mulholland Drive, a much more directly intense film, the name finds a resonant, but deeper, role.

Mulholland Drive is driven by the tragedy that befalls a character with no real name. After escaping a murder attempt via a memory-breaking car crash, Laura Harring’s character finds a companion in Betty Elwes, who has arrived in Los Angeles hoping to make it big as a Hollywood Actress. 

When prompted for a name, Laura Harring’s character adopts ‘Rita’, from a poster of Gilda featuring Rita Hayworth. The act is more conscious than it appears, reflecting a string of influence on-screen and behind the scenes. Her choice of Rita over Gilda indicates an alignment (both in character and film) towards Rita Hayworth; Hayworth’s own experience as an actress, including her experience as a sex symbol for World War II soldiers, the white-washing procedures she endured as an attempt to break through, and her notoriously harsh Columbia Pictures contract, parallel Harring’s ‘Rita’ (who, herself, adopts blonde hair as an act of ‘unbecoming herself’ later in the film).

Later, at a diner called ‘Winky’s’, a waitress’ name-tag prompts Rita to reminisce – remembering ‘Diane Selwyn’. The girls remark upon this new memory. Could it be Rita’s real name? 

The question seems fraught from the moment it’s spoken. While we understand the artifice of the name ‘Rita’, see directly where the name comes from, the act of naming solidifies ‘Rita’ into Laura Harring’s character. A filmic follow-up to Derrida’s quote might be in order:

From the moment it has a name. it outlasts any other.

Diane Selwyn feels like it cannot be Rita’s name. We already witness the act of a dual naming in all performances, a translucent layer between character and actor. Could she therefore be Rita, Diane Selwyn and Laura Harring? 

Mulholland Drive flips my question on its head when Laura Harring suddenly begins performing ‘Camilla Rhodes’, and Naomi Watts ‘Diane Selwyn’. These names were characters we’ve already known, with existing actors, and we’re thrust into this parallel universe to pick up the narrative pieces. 

The film succeeds in this transition, in part thanks to the work done to involve these names into the script. ‘Diane Selwyn’ is an iconic (and echoic) name far before her character appears, repeated and reiterated for its significance until being tied to a horrifying image of neglect. ‘Camilla Rhodes’, too, is utilised from the start of Mulholland Drive, with the immortalisation of her name and face being a key focus for one of the film’s secondary plots. “This is the Girl” (a quote about Camilla) acts as both a mantra within and for Mulholland Drive, when her importance towards invisible executives changes the very narrative we are following. 

The disruption of naming, into multiple performances, seems to honour the horrors of the name in Hollywood. The name may be our best metric of stardom; a concrete depiction of whether someone is recognisable – oh, that’s Marilyn Monroe. The Curation of a unique name is an epidemic in performance circles – a decision that creates outstanding individuals, trimmed of any unnecessary nominal fat (like non-American names) to become somehow cleaner, more recognisable. 

When Diane Selwyn is performed by Naomi Watts, her lonesome death is extended, challenged for its individual tragedy, through the granting of a second chance: the act is a gift of not only life but familiarity. We are able to share Watts’ performances between one another, witnessing the deep contrast between performances as we find Betty’s dreams in Selwyn’s nightmares. 

Harring’s Camilla Rhodes, too, offers a similar story. The Camilla Rhodes we come to know, the next ‘star’ in the eyes of those in charge, shares the identity of her predecessor, an actress cut off from her stardom – and own identity – once her time in the spotlight is halted. 

In both cases, the star-names that aim to differentiate instead help its audience find a shared life, a solidarity between the performers in Hollywood with no agency. The film offers a constant communication between each of its ‘stars’, from Rita and Betty’s relationship to these parallel universes. We hear their names – witness how it transforms each actress, until they disappear from all sight. There is no success in Hollywood for these names, no way to hear their voices, until we choose silence.

It’s been two months since David Lynch passed away – enough time for his name to feel a little bit normal again. It was a little pretentious of me to suggest that the act of not naming somehow corrects our problems. Instead, from the moment we have one, we must confront it – perceive it in human terms, decide ourselves who we are and whether they suit us. David Lynch’s names feel iconic, refined, but never complete. The characters that inhabit those names are free to escape those names, those actors, those screens. Their lives aren’t limited, instead universal, shared – coming to life the most on a night like the 1st of march.