Shadowing Practice: How To Be a Lynchian Woman - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Meow meow, it's me.
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Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here.
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Today I want to talk about what makes a Lynchian woman.
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In this collection of essays called The Women of David Lynch,
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Lee Kelman Kolb writes of the essential duality in his female characters.
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Women are not only angelic caretakers, they are abused and abusive, cheaters and cheated on, murderers and saviors,
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FBI agents, and stay-at-home mothers.
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They are the mysteries and mystery solvers. In this video,
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I'm going to teach you how to be a Lynchian woman by going through some of the defining characteristics
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that I think a lot of his characters have.
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The five exemplary characters
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that I'm going to talk about in this video are going to be Alice slash Renee in Lost Highway.
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I dressed up as her for this video.
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The woman in the radiator from Eraserhead, Dorothy Valens from Blue Velvet, Camilla slash Rita in Mulholland Drive,
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and Lula from Wild at Heart.
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It's imperative that we start out, however, with the idea that a Lynchian woman is a difficult and complex one.
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If you were to adopt these characteristics in bulk, you would be an incredibly challenging woman.
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And I think that's a fun time.
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So let's explore what those characteristics are.
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The first attribute that I think is very noticeable about Lynchian characters is their foreignness.
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And I think that a foreignness or strangeness to the characters is amplified,
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protected, and encouraged by the Lynchian sense of aesthetics,
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the dreamlike quality the kind of atemporality of a lot of his films, like Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire.
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So for a strange setting, for a strange time, a strange feeling, you have to have a strange foreign feeling woman, I think, to go with that.
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Because I believe that femininity and the feminine, in a way, is environmental.
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It is a feeling, right?
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It's experiential.
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This foreignness can also be encapsulated in this otherness.
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You know, she is other.
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She is different.
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She is something we can't explain.
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She is the unknown.
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She is terra incognita, uncharted waters.
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It makes them tantalizing.
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It makes them frustrating, horrifying, but also comforting in many ways and in many scenarios.
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Women in Lynchian films, they are seers.
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They're criminals their mothers, their ghosts, hallucinations.
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They're all of these things.
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You know, the prostitutes, I know these are not, this is not like one of the main people I talk, I'm talking about, but the prostitutes in Inland Empire, for example, they are, they know the future.
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They know what will happen.
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They're kind of like guardian angels in Eraserhead.
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You know, you have the lady in the radiator.
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She's a hallucination of Henry's mind.
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Alice in Lost Highway is a fantasy, but she is also the very thing that violates that fantasy.
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In Blue Velvet, Dorothy Valens is a nightclub singer.
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She's someone seen through slats in the closet.
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She's someone who wields a knife.
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She gives in to these violent and sexual demands and also adopts certain preferences from her abuser.
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She has an aura about her that is not immediately understood.
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It's something we will have to decode throughout the duration of the film.
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These are women that are challenging.
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They need unboxing.
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And at times they will never really be revealed.
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Just when you think even in their nakedness, even in their exposed natures, we are still looking for an answer.
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Just when you think that you were secure in what their intent might be, their truth, you are proven wrong.
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The second key attribute to a Lynchian woman is that she is a refashioned neo-noir femme fatale,
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which means that we are going to greatly reverse
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and subvert the idea or the traditional fate of the femme fatale that we saw in film noir.
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I'm going to read from a really, really cool book.
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If you guys can stand to listen about psychoanalysis from Slavoj Zizek, if you who care about Lacanian analysis.
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This is a very cool essay.
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Zizek wrote an entire essay about Lost Highway.
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It's called The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime.
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So if you want to, if you want to read that, I'll link that in the description.
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But this is how he described traditional feminist theory when it comes to the femme fatale narrative.
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According to the standard feminist cinema theory, in classic noir, the femme fatale is punished at the level of explicit narrative line.
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She's destroyed for being assertive and undermining the male patriarchal dominance for presenting a threat to it.
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The myth of the strong, sexually aggressive woman first allows sensuous expression of her dangerous power and its frightening results,
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and then destroys it, thus expressing repressed concerns of the female threat to male dominance.
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The femme fatale thus ultimately loses physical movement,
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influence over camera movement, and is often actually or symbolically imprisoned by composition as control over her is exerted and expressed visually.
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So this is how the femme fatale is portrayed in old noir cinema.
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But neo-noir, such as like The Last Seduction, Basic Instinct, and Lost Highway, this idea of what a femme fatale is,
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not even, to say it's subverted is way too simple because really it's manipulated and And at the end,
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you're left with more questions than answers.
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And the open-endedness, I think, is perfectly shown in Lost Highway because there is no linear narrative in that film.
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That film is a cyclical death loop.
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There's this famous scene with Alice and Pete, and they're making love out in the middle of the desert.
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And then, you know, he says, I want you, I want you.
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And she climaxes and she says, you will never have me.
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She walks away, leaving him there, humiliated and exhausted.
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And then he turns back into Fred, into another character.
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But this point is that all throughout the film, she kind of transitions into multiple different people.
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In the beginning, she seems like the seducer.
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Then she seems like a damsel in distress.
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And then she turns into somebody that's clearly involved in crime
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and is not ashamed of it and is very open about it to Pete.
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And then later on, we have no idea what's going on.
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If you've ever seen the film, there's the mystery man with the pasty face and the phone and the, you know, the video camera and everything.
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It almost seems like she, she is part of his realm, you know, part of the supernatural realm.
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Like, is she even real?
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Like, we have to ask ourselves whether or not this is a fantasy, whether or not she is a supernatural figure,
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if she's a spirit of some sort from the past or the future or whatever from beyond.
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It's all kind of left up to interpretation this kind of
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femme fatale at the at the very most basic level leaves man in a state of suffering
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and uh because the the worst thing
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that you could leave somebody with especially uh the masculine is
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to leave them without an answer without them knowing them never
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figuring it out the film is also like i said it's cyclical it's like a death loop in a way
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And because there is no linearity,
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there is no gradual, predictable progression that will eventually ensnare the femme fatale and remove her power from her.
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If anything, it feels like this kind of thing is going to happen again and again and again and again.
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In that way, she triumphs.
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If you are to be a lynchian woman, you have to encapsulate that like that unknown, that like great terror that really,
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really cannot be encapsulated by the symbolic, by the masculine.
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Another thing that Jija talks about in his essay in regards to the neo-noir femme fatale is talking about
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that you have to directly act out the threat that you are made out to be.
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The femme fatale is a male threat that he created for himself in order to re-establish male order, male patriarchal order.
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And the greatest that you can be is directly act out the things that he thinks you will do.
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He writes here, I know that in wanting me, what you effectively want is the phantasmatic image of me.
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So I'll thwart your desire by directly gratifying it.
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And this way you'll get me, but deprived of the phantasmatic support background that made me an object of fascination.
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Sometimes total self exposure and self transparency,
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the awareness that there is no hidden content behind make the subject even more enigmatic.
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And then I'm reminded of this one quote, the only way to con a con is to tell the truth.
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So that's the kind of Lynchian attitude.
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She is at times so obvious in her treachery that you're still looking for that good girl underneath.
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Another example of the femme fatale trope kind of like reversed
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would be how Dorothy Valen's character in Blue Velvet appears to be somebody who is very dangerous,
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but in fact, she's actually somebody who needs help.
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She's a mother who wants her child and her husband back and is being abused by her kidnapper.
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So instead of her being legitimately evil or wanting money or wanting to kill somebody, she has learned the behaviors that she exhibits out of fear.
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It's not because she has an ill will and she needs to be transformed.
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She is a femme fatale that needs to be saved.
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The Lynchian woman, no matter what her method is, disturbs people, disturbs men.
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It disturbs the foundation which is set in place for the femme fatale to fail.
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Subverts the idea that the femme fatale is a force to be destroyed.
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The Lynchian woman is going to leave things open-ended and leave you in a less secure place than when you started.
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Another noticeable and actually very fun and performative attribute
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that you can adopt from a Lynchian woman would be to have a double, would be the incorporation of a double.
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You see this, for example, with Rita and Camilla in Mulholland Drive and Renee and Alice in Lost Highway.
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This double is Lynch's homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
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It's one of his favorite films and Lost Highway is like kind of patterned off of that.
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You can adopt this literally as a performative aspect.
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Like you can throw on a wig and like become a different person and like change your, you know, personality when you're out in public.
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Like I think that's so fun and like kind of trip people up, but like totally believe in it.
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um, play two different roles, play two opposites.
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When it comes to the double, I think a lot of Lynch's female characters have this duality about them.
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If there isn't a literal double, they have duality.
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Like for example, Dorothy in blue velvet is a mother, but also a nightclub singer involved with like the dark underground of the city.
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Um, Lula in wild at heart is very childlike and very sincere and kind of naive,
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but she's also sexually explosive and she's had horrible things happen to her.
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She is knowledgeable of the world, but her and sailors love is very, very like protected and cringy.
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And just like, it's, it's naive and pure and innocent in its own way.
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So you have that, that, uh, dynamic aspect.
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And then you have the woman in the radiator, which is she's meant to come off as this very sweet angelic woman girl
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but she's also if you've ever looked into it she's also a sign that the main character should kill themselves
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ever in heaven everything is all right like she is meant to be someone who encourages him to this
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or this is a voice in the back of your head that's saying you know just die like it's good
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so she has
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that kind of sinister you know total submission aspect to her
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even though she's a character that's meant to look like I
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don't know give off this hopeful feeling this feeling of peace
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and serenity but she's encouraging him to do a very dark thing the darkest thing really the fourth attribute
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that I've noticed in David Lynch's women would be that they're hot pretty cute whatever all those things, attractive, but they're also weird.
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They're also a little ugly too.
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David Lynch loves to combine beauty and ugliness, whether this is aesthetically or in the plotline or literal facial features of the women that he puts in his films.
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The beauty of them is that there's something wrong or off or a little weird.
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It's an authenticity.
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It's a trace you know, that keeps us looking, you know, they're not perfect.
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For example, in Lula, its personality and like how she dresses.
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She's a hottie, but like
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the way that they talk a way that she talks
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that kind of innocence that cringiness that freedom you know
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that meme i'm cringe
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but i'm free like that's lula like i can barely like i i like
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that film i just oh the writing is purposefully like almost nauseating like I can barely watch
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that movie because of how they talk but it is it's like
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that juxtaposition of her just being like a wild cat
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and like just dressing provocatively and just like being so into sailor
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and then just being like just talking the way
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that they do in uh the woman in the radiator
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and erase our head the woman in the radiator has these
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like mud like cheeks like these fake cheeks attached to her face, but it's still like, she's still sweet.
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She still has that sweetness to her.
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Isabella Rossellini, for example, Laura Dern, Patricia Arquette, they all are chosen for a reason.
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It's not just because they're like eighties hot.
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They're chosen because they have something off about them.
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Patricia Arquette has a snaggle tooth and she's a very human looking person.
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She's not like influencer, perfect body.
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Isabella, when at her role in wild at heart, She has like the unibrow practically and the baby pink lips.
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Damn.
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Like it's ridiculous, but it's, it's almost like kind of campy.
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It's cool.
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So you need to be, you need to be hot, but also a little weird, a little ugly.
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You got to have something about you that like makes people like gag a little.
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Seduction is not about perfection.
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Perfection is death.
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Perfection is the end.
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Some other qualities that I have noticed is that if you want to be a lynchian woman, your dilemma needs to be pretty obscure, pretty odd.
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You need to be involved in, I don't know, a crime syndicate or be pulled by forces that you can't explain immediately.
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Um, you should have some good one-liners, um, like Alice, the one that I, this, this one-liner that I started the video with meow, meow.
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It's me like have a good one-liner.
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Like Lula said, this whole world's wild at heart and weird on top,
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you know, have something like kind of poetic or be like Laura Dern's character in blue velvet,
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um, and be like overly cliched, overly sentimental and believe in the cliche and sentiment,
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you know, be like saccharine with your like talk of blinding white light and Robbins and like peace and hope, like talk about stuff.
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Like you fucking believe it, like dreams come true you know talk about it be a grown-ass woman talking about
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that stuff like you were eight years old that's a very lynchian quality I think
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that belief and that we are meant to Zizek talks about this
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that you're meant to take it seriously like you watch wild at heart
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and you're like oh my god like are you joking the integrity of the film is that they
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they believe in this love.
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They believe in each other.
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They don't care what we think.
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It's serious to them.
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But that's how you can be a Lynchian woman.
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A Lynchian woman is a little weird, highly seductive, kind of ugly,
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challenging, tender, comforting, but also kind of insidious.
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If you're dating a Lynchian woman, you might say, one day I knew her and the next day,
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like i didn't know her at all you're in for a wild ride but i know i know you're having fun
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at least for a little
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while until you can't take it anymore all right let me know
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if you guys like this video uh if i missed anything
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if i got anything wrong um don't forget to like
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and subscribe as always leave a comment uh on your thoughts please share this video
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if you think somebody would like it and i will see you guys next week bye
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How To Be a Lynchian Woman”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: lynchian, fatale, femme, film, character. This video has 218 sentences and 2823 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:31. The speaker talks at a natural 152 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| noir noun | /ˈnwɑɹ/ | Film noir. |
| radiator noun | /ˈɹej.di(j)ˌej.tɚ/ | Anything which radiates or emits rays. |
| velvet noun | /ˈvɛlvɪt/ | A closely woven fabric (originally of silk, now also of cotton or man-made fibres) with a thick short pile on one side. |
| meow | /miˈaʊ/ | Used to indicate the cry of a cat. |
| attribute noun | /ˈæt.ɹɪˌbjut/ | A characteristic or quality of a thing. |
| adopt verb | /əˈdɑpt/ | To take voluntarily (a child of other parents) to be in the place of, or as, one's own child. |
| duality noun | /d(j)uːˈælɪti/ | The quality of containing or comprising two often opposed parts or aspects. |
| encapsulate verb | /ɪnˈkæps(j)ʊˌleɪt/ | To enclose something in, or as if in, a capsule. |
| foreignness noun | /ˈfɔɹən.nəs/ | The quality of being, appearing, or being perceived as foreign; exoticness, otherness. |
| disturb verb | /dɪˈstɜːb/ | to confuse a quiet, constant state or a calm, continuous flow, in particular: thoughts, actions or liquids. |
| characteristic noun | /ˌkæɹ(ə)ktəˈɹɪstɪk/ | A distinguishing feature of a person or thing, a part of mental or physical behavior. |
| perfection noun | /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/ | The quality or state of being perfect or complete, so that nothing substandard remains; the highest attainable state or degree of excellence. |
| angelic adjective | /ænˈd͡ʒɛlɪk/ | Belonging to, or proceeding from, angels; resembling, characteristic of, or partaking of the nature of, an angel. |
| cyclical adjective | /ˈsaɪklɪkəl/ | Recurring at regular intervals. |
| hallucination noun | /həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/ | A sensory perception of something that does not exist, often arising from disorder of the nervous system, as in delirium tremens. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| act out verb | /ˌækt ˈaʊ̯t/ | To perform something specific. |
| come off verb | To become detached. | |
| dress up verb | To put on special or fancy clothes. | |
| give off verb | /ɡɪv ɒf/ | To emit; to produce and send forth; to come across in some manner. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| see through verb | To perceive visually through something transparent. | |
| start out verb | To emerge suddenly; to jump out. | |
| walk away verb | To withdraw from a problematic situation. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- She is something we can't explain.
- It's me like have a good one-liner.
- They don't care what we think.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you want to read that, I'll link · if you think somebody would like |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are abused · is amplified · be encapsulated |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who wields · somebody who is · somebody who needs |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've ever seen · has learned · you've ever looked |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 41 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: aesthetics /ɛsˈθɛt.ɪks/, authenticity /ɑθɛnˈtɪsɪti/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, tooth /tuθ/, myth /mɪθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/, hallucination /həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/, cliché /kliˈʃeɪ/, experiential /ɪkˌspɪɹiˈɛnʃəl/, fascination /fæsɪˈneɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: radiator /ˈɹej.di(j)ˌej.tɚ/, duality /d(j)uːˈælɪti/, encapsulate /ɪnˈkæps(j)ʊˌleɪt/, characteristic /ˌkæɹ(ə)ktəˈɹɪstɪk/, hallucination /həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like noir, radiator, velvet.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.