I have been following the reactions to the death of David Lynch on social media over the last week. He appears to have been a wonderfully weird human being and, to many, the world seems like a smaller place without him.

I have seen all the video tributes and memes, but one in particular stands out to me. It is an image of David Lynch as FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) (also known as Twin Peaks Season 3). He is facing his trans colleague, FBI Chief of Staff Denise Bryson (David Duchovny), who is out of camera shot.

It appears her colleagues were uncomfortable with her presence, which Cole berated them for. As quoted in the meme, he says: “When you became Denise, I told all of your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die.”

It is somewhat of a rallying cry and it is interesting that the series came out just as Donald Trump took office for the first time.

I cannot overstate just how many queer and trans people I know love David Lynch and for him and Mark Frost to have featured a trans character like Denise in a show as prominent as Twin Peaks speaks to that. We are literally always quoting “fix your hearts or die” https://t.co/LhofoVemev pic.twitter.com/Gsp22gWh36

— gregor samsung ???? (@slimjosa) January 16, 2025

The inclusion of a transgender character during the original run in the early 1990s was quite remarkable. LGBTQ+ representation was almost entirely absent from US network television, especially trans representation.

Admittedly, the character being played by a cis man is far from ideal, but she is portrayed as a confident, capable character who has the respect of her colleague (Kyle MacLachlan as Special Agent Dale Cooper). She is not a joke or some kind of monster.

Denise was part of the end of the second season, which Lynch notoriously hated, and was the only element from that returned for Season 3.

I have seen it noted from some trans voices online that they could see themselves represented in Lynch’s work as far back as his first movie Eraserhead (1977). The film follows Henry (John Nance) who lives alone in a bleak apartment surrounded by industrial gloom. When he discovers that an earlier fling with Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) resulted in her getting pregnant, he marries the expectant mother and has her move into his apartment.

Trans folk have noted relating the story, understanding how it can feel to be pushed into a role in society that you don’t align with. Lynch himself was open to interpretation: “People are thinkers. People are detectives and we have life to find clues about in the same way we would with a piece of cinema.

“You see something and it can conjure so many thoughts and interpretations. That’s why I don’t like to talk about my own intentions, because everyone else’s interpretation is so great.”

A more overtly LGBTQ+ work is Mulholland Drive, a 2001 film that earned Lynch an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

After a car wreck on Mulholland Drive renders a woman (Laura Harring) amnesiac, she heads across LA with a Hollywood hopeful (Naomi Watts) to search for answers about her identity. They grow close during the process and eventually sleep together.

Out lesbian critic, Melissa Anderson, wrote about the importance of understanding the film for queer women: “So even if Mulholland Drive is about the tragic loneliness that is inherent in striving to be a Hollywood actress, or the seediness of Los Angeles or crisis and duality of identity, or, at its most basic, life being one fantastical dream (nightmare?), the central relationship between Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla is one that ultimately presents two women in the kinds of complicated and complex roles that are usually reserved for men or, if a woman is deigned to be involved, a heterosexual pairing.

“David Lynch’s utilizing two brilliant actresses as the nuanced leads in his twisted world is worthy of praise and note. And it plays universal, because no matter what the viewer’s sexual or gender identity may be, we’re all left with the same questions: What does it all mean?”

Although not necessarily Lynch’s intention, people have argued that his work is inherently queer. He told stories about outsiders, misfits and outcasts.

I Saw the TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun wrote after his death, “Like Kafka, like Bacon, he dedicated his life to opening a portal. He was the first to show me another world, a beautiful one of love and danger I sensed but had never seen outside sleep. Thank you David your gift will reverberate for the rest of my life”