Glorious Incoherence & Grotesque Realism: David Lynch’s Eraserhead as Cult Cinema Epitomized

By Cleo Helscher

Cult cinema is fundamentally atypical. During your first viewing of a ‘cult classic,’ you might find it difficult to contain your visceral reactions to the provocative images, sounds, and narratives laid out before you. In any midnight screening of David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature Eraserhead, you’re likely to hear squeals and cries or glimpse other audience members covering their eyes. Despite its disturbing effect on many of its viewers—or perhaps even because of its uniquely unsettling visuals—Eraserhead has remained a significant ‘cult’ film since its release almost fifty years ago. The film’s historic (and current) presence on the midnight screening circuit, generative indecipherability, and indeterminate resolution work in tandem with Lynch’s use of “grotesque realism” and his breadth of temporal and filmic references to create the epitome of a cult classic.

Eraserhead, famous for its incomprehensibility, certainly necessitates more interpretive activity than your average film. Undeniably a cult classic, the film’s impenetrability is heightened by David Lynch’s utter refusal to provide his fans with the intentions and methods behind its creation—a refusal that aims to preserve the film’s magic and mystery. Umberto Eco—in his seminal text on cult film “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage”—writes that a cult film “must live on in and because of its glorious incoherence” (4). While Eraserhead was initially (and somewhat understandably) quite polarizing, critical reception has warmed to its eccentricities over time. Its legacy, both as one of “the greatest surrealist work[s]” and as Lynch’s “most opaque” film, exemplifies Eco’s notion that cult films finds glory in and because of their incoherence—not despite it (Taylor 58, 59).

In an interview with David Lynch, Chris Rodley inquired about the film’s prologue and its relation to the work as a whole, to which Lynch replied simply, “Oh it relates. I’ve got to tell you, it relates … there’s certain things that happen in that sequence that are a key to the rest. And, er … that’s all.” Eraserhead’s opacity extends beyond its inexplicable narrative as Lynch also obscures the methods of its production. He justifies his tight-lipped discussions of his films later in this interview when asked about the creation of the film’s famous ‘baby’ prop: 

Magicians keep their secrets to themselves. And they know that as soon as they tell, someone will say, “Are you kidding me? That’s so simple.” It’s horrifying to me that they do that. People don’t realize it, but as soon as they hear or see that, something dies inside them. They’re deader than they were. They’re not, like, happy to know about this stuff. They’re happy not to know about it. And they shouldn’t know about it. It’s nothing to do with the film! And will only ruin the film! Why would they talk about it? It’s horrifying! (Rodley)

As the ‘narrative’ of Eraserhead progresses, its viewers find themselves with more and more questions swirling around in their minds; ultimately, Lynch leaves most (if not all) of these mysteries completely unresolved, prompting spectators to work toward their own understanding and interpretation of the film’s events and images. Such ambiguity is central to a film’s identity as ‘cult,’ as it fosters a community wherein fans of the film can each claim their own interpretations without any fear of being ‘wrong’ in their analysis. Eraserhead, in particular, includes enough of this ambiguity to “sustain all … interpretations, plus others that haven’t been dreamed up yet,” thus allowing for a rich and complex range of personal identifications, projections, resonances, and readings​​ (Sterritt 2).

At this point in time, Eraserhead has been substantially fragmented—chopped up and re-presented in new contexts that provide new layers of meaning. Eco describes the process of “transform[ing] a work into a cult object” by writing that “one must be able to unhinge it, to break it up or take it apart so that one then may remember only parts of it, regardless of their original relationship to the whole.” While many aspects of Eraserhead have been “unhinge[d]” from their original whole—anybody else remember the 2024 meme-ificiation of the Eraserhead baby? As evidenced here and documented on Know Your Meme—perhaps its most significant unhinged element comes from the Lady in the Radiator’s song “In Heaven.” “In Heaven” has achieved cultural relevance even outside of its “original relationship” to the film through its various covers—performed by the Pixies, Bauhaus, and Devo, among others—and samples that “dislocate” the song from its original absurd context in an act of transformation that allows it to be “adored for [itself]” (Eco 4). Even beyond its “incoherence” and midnight screenings, Eraserhead continues to fit neatly into Eco’s conception of what grants a film a ‘cult’ identity.

Cult cinema is also characterized by its vested interest in transgression—or, as Cult Movies author Danny Peary posits, “by [its] excess and controversy” (Briggs 43). These markers of cult cinema owe much to Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World—an analysis of folk culture and humor in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Firstly, this text provides us with the Bakhtinian concept of the “carnivalesque,” a literary mode defined by its subversiveness, humor, liberation, and chaos—qualities which all seem to map directly onto the central tenets of cult cinema and midnight screenings. More pertinently for Eraserhead, though, is his elaboration of grotesque realism. 

Any discussion of Eraserhead’s transgressive style undoubtedly centers Lynch’s embrace of the aesthetics of grotesque realism, especially considering the film’s prevalent identification within the genre of ‘body horror.’ As laid out by Bakhtin, the grotesque, and specifically the grotesque body, entails an “exaggeration of the inappropriate to incredible and monstrous dimensions” (306). From its opening sequence, Eraserhead focalizes the deformed and “monstrous” body in its depiction of the disfigured and burned skin of the Man in the Planet. From there, the film’s imagery only grows more unsettling and visually repulsive. The “artistic logic” of the grotesque also “ignores the closed, smooth, and impenetrable surface of the body” in favor of “its excrescences (sprouts, buds) and orifices, only that which leads beyond the body’s limited space or into the body’s depths” (Bakhtin 317-318). This particular aspect of the grotesque body recurs frequently throughout Eraserhead, from its disturbing shot of a litter of puppies suckling their mother to the hideous boils that abruptly appear on Henry’s baby.

Lynch’s use of grotesque images can be traced throughout the film to reveal a pattern; he particularly employs the aesthetics of grotesque realism in allusions or direct references to sex and child-rearing. The aforementioned baby boils and suckling pups fit into this mold, as does one of the film’s most famous scenes in which Henry’s girlfriend’s parents ask him to carve a miniature ‘man-made’ chicken. As he prepares to carve it, the chicken begins to squeal, its legs wiggle, and a dark, dense substance oozes from its orifice. This image can be interpreted as sexual in itself but especially when put in its context: cut together with shots of Mrs. X moaning and shaking until her eventual climax, at which point she begins screaming horrifically and runs out of the room in tears. Here, Lynch introduces sexuality as unsettling, destabilizing, and itself grotesque, with Mrs. X aroused by a sight most would deem profoundly disturbing. 

Later in the film, when Mary—tired of her baby keeping her awake all night—decides to return to her parents’ house, Lynch includes a thirty-second shot of her as she squats and repeatedly attempts to tug her suitcase out from under Henry’s bed frame, all the while sobbing uncontrollably. The scene’s grotesque quality is further amplified by the sounds of the bed frame rocking and creaking rhythmically—a clear sexual reference—though Lynch intentionally renders this sex act discomforting and awkward through his use of grotesque aestheticism. A later, more explicit sex scene between Henry and the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall is sporadically interrupted by shots of his deformed baby as it wails. Thus, Lynch inextricably intertwines sexuality and grotesque realism in Eraserhead in yet another affirmation of its cult cinema sensibilities.

Eraserhead’s final third is so replete with grotesque realism that it necessitates a narrowing of the scope from here on out. While the dream sequence from which the film derives its title engages in extreme grotesque realism, Bakhtin’s conception of the ‘grotesque image’ as a “merg[ing]” of “outward and inward features” more closely aligns with the moment when Henry cuts open the dressings covering his baby’s body. Bakhtin writes that the “grotesque image displays not only the outward but also the inner features of the body: blood, bowels, heart and other organs” (318). In Eraserhead’s climactic sequence, Henry snips open his baby’s wound dressings as it hisses and hyperventilates, wriggling and wailing until its guts are eventually exposed and ultimately stabbed by Henry. Following this violence, the baby’s body begins emitting dark blood, and then out oozes a dense, sandy, goo which engulfs the baby’s body as its head stretches to get away. This graphic visualization of the baby’s insides disturbs and shocks the viewer and, where many directors might have relented the pressure of the scene, Henry’s stabbing of the baby’s organs catalyzes an explosive transformation. This scene constitutes the most unsettling representation of the grotesque in the film, due to its focus on the “inner … body” in all its monstrous impropriety.

Eraserhead also involves, to borrow from Eco, a rich “intertextual collage” and distinct historical evocations, each of which contribute to the film’s cult identity and mass intrigue. Eraserhead makes oblique reference to a vast variety of cultural influences: Henry’s Chaplin-esque movements, the “forties and thirties electricity” that reappears throughout the film (and which Lynch himself admitted his fascination with), and the film’s stylistic similarity to German Expressionism (Rodley). 

Many scholars have sought to make sense of the film’s visuals, symbolism, and thematic resonance by interrogating its potential artistic and cultural influences; given the overdetermination allowed by Lynch’s ever-intentional ambiguity, no one scholar can be cast as definitively right or wrong. Notably, Aaron Taylor names “Luis Buñuel, Franz Kafka, and H.R. Giger” as the film’s “thematic and visual influences,” and Violetta Katsaris’s “How Silent-Era Surrealist Films Shaped David Lynch’s Eraserhead” draws additional comparisons between Eraserhead and the work of René Clair, Man Ray, and Germaine Dulac (Taylor 59). I myself noted a visual similarity between one of the film’s scenes and a common visual trope in film noir; the distorted, muted, and deemphasized assault Henry glimpses on the cobblestone street is shrouded in fog—with an uncanny resemblance to classic ‘Jack the Ripper’-esque tales such as Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog and John Brahm’s 1944 The Lodger (based off the same 1913 play).

Beyond these few examples of Eraserhead’s intertextuality, Lynch generally imbues his films with a sense of timelessness. The film’s black-and-white visuals, industrial wasteland backdrop, and unique costuming choices all seem to point to specific time periods, but many of these are entirely irreconcilable, rendering the film’s historical moment yet another mystery over which its fans can speculate.

Writing about Eraserhead feels a bit like becoming Henry picking at something on his robe—A loose thread? Crumbs? Dried food? Who could know besides Lynch and perhaps Jack Nance—desperately grasping for something you’re not sure is even there in the first place. While scholarship on the film still fails to reach a consensus, it’s well within reason to assume that these disparate and personal interpretations are precisely what Lynch intended in his creation of the film and prolonged secrecy concerning both the practicalities of its construction and, more meaningfully, his own reading of its narrative. Eraserhead serves as an exemplar of cult cinema, bleeding into a multitude of genres and styles, all the while remaining revered for its transgressive elements, uniquely enthralling visuals, and overall artistic merit. As a result of its shock value, ambiguity, and lasting cultural impact, Eraserhead screenings draw diverse audiences with a myriad of lenses through which to observe the film. Therefore, just as Eco writes that “Casablanca is not one movie” but, in fact, “‘the movies,’” I would argue that Eraserhead is not a cult classic but the epitome of cult cinema—in its content, form, reception, exhibition, and subsequent cultural legacy (10). 

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky, Indiana University Press, 1984. 

Briggs, Joe Bob, et al. “Cult Cinema: A Critical Symposium.” Cinéaste, vol. 34, no. 1, 2008, pp. 43–50. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41690732. 

Eco, Umberto. “‘Casablanca’: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage.” SubStance, vol. 14, no. 2, 1985, pp. 3–12. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3685047. 

Rodley, Chris, and David Lynch. “I See Myself: Eraserhead.” Lynch on Lynch, Faber & Faber Limited, 1997, excerpt from www.criterion.com/current/posts/3295-i-see-myself-eraserhead.

Sterritt, David. “Eraserhead.” The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love, Da Capo Press, 2008, www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/Eraserhead.pdf.

Taylor, Aaron. “Rough Beasts Slouch Toward Bethlehem to be Born: Eraserhead and the Grotesque Infant (Whose Hour Has Come Round at Last).” Canadian Journal of Film Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, 2000, pp. 55–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24402661.