Три типа любви, которые испытывает Дейл Купер в "Твин Пикс"

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— "Coop experiences three sorts of love in his quest to fulfill the above desire – forbidden, ideal, and true – as manifested by three women: Audrey Horne, Caroline Earle, and Annie Blackburn."

GENUINE AFFECTION: THE LOVES OF DALE COOPER



The character of Special Agent Dale Cooper as portrayed by actor Kyle MacLachlan is a many-faceted persona: he’s a realist with metaphysical leanings, a poetic pragmatist, a hopeful fatalist, but above all else, he is a romantic. You can sense it in his zeal for knowledge and alternative schools of thought, in his passion for justice, his search for salvation via truth, and in his affection for the simple things in life like a slice of pie and a damn fine cup of coffee.

In the more literal sense, Coop’s romantic side is best encapsulated by the man himself in the season two premiere when he is lying gut-shot on his hotel room floor telling Diane via microcassette recorder the things he would miss or regret were he to leave this world, including this tidbit:

“I would very much like to make love to a beautiful woman who I had genuine affection for.”

This is said with such longing and familiarity, as though Coop is describing something he’s never had but has glimpsed before, perhaps a metaphorical sun to which his heart flew too close. Over the course of the series, Coop experiences three sorts of love in his quest to fulfill the above desire – forbidden, ideal, and true – as manifested by three women: Audrey Horne, Caroline Earle, and Annie Blackburn. What these woman and Coop’s affection for them reveal about the Special Agent reinforces the idea that in his heart of hearts, Dale Cooper is a lover, and that’s what makes him a fighter.

(The loves of Coop are presented in the order they are revealed in the series, not chronological order, so you know)



AUDREY HORNE – COOP’S FORBIDDEN LOVE
From the first second they are on screen together, there is obvious and simmering chemistry between Coop and Audrey Horne, 18-year-old daughter of The Great Northern impresario Benjamin Horne. I made note of Audrey’s age only because the show was sure to, letting we the audience understand that while the blatant flirtatiousness transpiring between the two of them was, yes, a little May-December (or perhaps more fairly May-September), it was also perfectly legal. Part of this chemistry came from the way the characters were written, and part was natural and came from the actors themselves, MacLachlan and Sherilyn Fenn. As the first season progressed, this flirtatiousness grew into stronger feelings, at least on the part of Audrey, and culminated in the climax of episode six, in which Coop returns to his hotel room to find a naked Audrey under the covers of his bed, lying in wait. This is the Rubicon of their relationship, a tipping point when words turn to the possibility of deeds, and thus Coop has to make a decision. He decides to err on the side of virtue and shifts his role in Audrey’s life into something more like a protector.

A Cooper-Audrey romance was always intended by the writers of TWIN PEAKS and lingers into the second season, when it was set to come to fruition in the wake of the reveal of Laura’s killer, but MacLachlan objected to the idea of it. As his line of thinking supposedly went, Cooper was too virtuous a man to give in to the temptation of Audrey, she was just too young. As a result, the romance was abandoned, but in doing so, the love of Audrey was definitively transformed into forbidden, something it hadn’t really been up until then. Was it a little risqué, the idea of this professional, full-grown man wooing a nubile, virginal 18-year old girl? Of course it was, salacious, even, but literature and film are full of such scenarios, and as such it’s not so scandalous. But it had never been wrong, and that’s what Coop’s refusal of the affair made it. The character denies himself the love of Audrey, which would have been physical, yes, but also would have been true, I think, she did love the Special Agent, and no doubt had the story been allowed to progress, that would have been the emphasis, not just the sultry physicality of the characters. Instead, the love of Audrey serves as a kind of penance for Coop’s hand in the loss of his ideal love, described below, and a penultimate preparation for his discovering actual true love.



CAROLINE EARLE – COOP’S IDEAL LOVE
I know, I know, it’s a little strange to describe another man’s wife as Coop’s ideal love, but that kind of innate forbidden-ness is what makes her ideal: she’s perfect but her perfection comes with an asterisk, in a sense, she’s socially and morally unobtainable, and that only elevates her perfection in the mind of the beholder.

Caroline was the wife of Windom Earle, Coop’s former partner and current nemesis in the second season of TWIN PEAKS. Caroline was witness to a federal crime (eventually revealed to have been perpetrated by Windom) and placed under protective custody, which Coop and Windom oversaw. During this time, Coop and Caroline fell in love and began an affair. While the details and length of this affair are never disclosed, Coop does at one point call Caroline “the love of my life,” further cementing her idealness in memory. As Coop tells it, one night in Pittsburgh he let his guard down and an attempt was made on Caroline’s life. It was a successful attempt that left him injured and her dead in his arms, a stab wound to her heart the cause. As for the culprit, Coop learns after the fact it was Windom who killed his own wife, having found out about her betrayal with his young protégé. In the wake of Caroline’s murder, Earle was said to have lost his mind and was committed to an institution (where he would plot his revenge and eventual escape) and Coop was left devastated on all fronts. He vowed to never again get involved with a woman who was a part of a case (this in part explains some of his hesitance to romance Audrey, though her involvement in the Palmer case was peripheral at best) and he insulated his heart in layers of fear to protect it from being hurt again.

Caroline was not Coop’s true love like he wanted her to be. The asterisk attached to her perfection was a big one, and for better or worse, right or wrong, it tarnished their relationship. There was no honor to it, and as a man renowned for his honor, it was a love that made Coop someone he was not. But that does not invalidate the love between Coop and Caroline, it was real and by its tragic ending it became ideal, if only, again, because it was forbidden now permanently from ever truly happening. But the loss of Caroline and the emotional walls Coop erected because of it were not all that came of this tragedy. They were also the final preparations for Coop’s discovery of true love: now that he was no longer seeking it, now that he thought himself in fact immune to it, it was ready to find him.



ANNIE BLACKBURN – COOP’S TRUE LOVE
Though she doesn’t appear until the second season’s final act, Annie is the love that has the most profound impact on Coop’s life, figuratively and literally. Annie is the younger sister of Norma, who owns the Double R diner, and she returns to Twin Peaks after a stint in a convent. As it was with Audrey, Coop’s chemistry with Annie is palpable from their first meeting, but unlike that other relationship, it is Coop who is more immediately and obviously love-struck and Annie the one who seems hesitant to embark that direction. As their courtship progresses we learn that Annie’s hesitancy isn’t based on Coop but rather an ill-fated love in her own past that drove her to attempt suicide and landed her in the convent. In time, love triumphs and the two begin a passionate relationship that is thwarted by Windom Earle, who uses Coop’s love of Annie to both wield her as a key to enter the Black Lodge and lure the Special Agent into following him there.

As Coop’s true love, Annie combines the innocence of Audrey with the sense of emotional completion he found in Caroline without the illicitness of either. She breaks down the walls the latter caused him to build, which shut out the former, and allows him to let a woman into his heart in a way he had never been able to before, either because of his own limitations or the boundaries of morality. This love is pure, it is genuine, and it is his, the one for which he has been longing. It is his ultimate desire, realized. Which is why it is also his ultimate downfall.

It is Coop’s love for Annie that is the root of his greatest fear: that she too will be harmed because of her involvement with him. This fear is what drives Coop into the Black Lodge after her and Windom, and this fear, this vulnerability, is what leads to the division of Coop’s soul into opposing “good” and “bad” halves, the latter of which escapes into our world at the second season’s conclusion. But though once again marred, unlike his forbidden love or his ideal love, Coop’s love for Annie is unchanged by escalation or tragedy, it remains the same no matter the situation and can in fact be said to be strengthening right up to the second season’s final scene. This steadfastness is what makes it true.

To put it in Biblical terms, Dale Cooper would seem to be love’s Job. It constantly tests his faith, as every time he acquires it, there are dire consequences: in one instance, he’s forced to deny it; in another, it is killed; in another, it destroys his own soul. Yet it remains his strongest and greatest desire, to be with one whose beauty inside and out is unparalleled in his heart. Despite everything he’s seen, Coop still believes love is the answer to the most elusive mystery he or anyone ever encounters in this life: how to be happy. Love guides everything he does, everything he thinks, and thus it is being a romantic that makes Special Agent Dale Cooper his particular brand of heroic.

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