The ‘Barbie’ short film David Lynch was “kindly asked” to delete from his website
The internet is simultaneously one of the greatest and one of the worst things to have ever happened to humanity, but if there’s one thing that it has definitely been good for, it’s allowing David Lynch to upload bizarre short films onto his website, something he particularly enjoyed doing during the 2000s.
As his output of feature films slowed, with just Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire emerging that decade, he dedicated much of his time to experimenting with strange short bursts of filmmaking.
It’s something he’d always done since he began making art in the 1960s, with notable early shorts including The Amputee and Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times), but with the rise of video-sharing platforms in the 2000s, Lynch was able to churn out plenty of cinematic experiments that utilised his newfound love of digital filming.
One of these was an advert for coffee he was selling, featuring a close-up shot of a Barbie doll accompanied by Lynch doing a voiceover. It’s a bizarre video, with Lynch advertising his Signature Cup Organic Coffee through a strangely erotic-feeling conversation with the doll. You shouldn’t expect anything less from the filmmaker when it comes to advertisements.
“I’m drinking espresso, but it comes house roast and also decaf,” he tells the doll. “Is it, is it organic?” she replies (it’s just Lynch doing his normal voice). “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s organic. You’re kind of cute. You are beautiful,” he says. It’s rather unnerving, you’ve got to admit, but how else would Lynch advertise coffee? At least it gets your attention.
He made a few odd adverts in his time, like his surreal PlayStation 2 ad, which looks like a deleted sequence from Eraserhead, while the New York PSA he made is a terrifying cry to look after a rat-infested city. But this Barbie ad is probably the weirdest one he ever made, because it feels like something you’d find down a YouTube rabbit hole at two in the morning on a channel that may or may not have been created by an anonymous man hiding dark secrets.
Luckily, it’s a relief to discover that it’s just Lynch being Lynch – strange but ultimately harmless. Mattel wasn’t too impressed, though. The fact that Lynch had used one of their iconic toys to advertise his own product didn’t go down well, and he was “kindly asked” to remove the video from the internet.
That’s understandable, but it’s a shame that Mattel couldn’t see the fun of Lynch’s video. As the director known for loving coffee – it’s one of the first things that comes to mind when you think of Twin Peaks – it only makes sense that he found a bizarre way to shift his own brand of the stuff, Barbie and all.
It’s not the only commercial Lynch made for his coffee, though, so he didn’t have to worry too much when Mattel asked him to take his video down. He also made a rather unsettling one featuring his wife Emily Stofle in 2012, which made it seem like drinking his coffee would send you into a Lynchian nightmare spiral that you’d never be able to get out of. It’s much more appealing than the erotic Barbie video, though, I must say.
