Perspicacity is the ability (faculty, power, Kraft) to mentally understand clearly. For example, "Leo Johnson doesn't currently even have the perspicacity to take the standard CST competency test." Therefore, Leo Johnson doesn't have the mental clarity to take a competency test. Perspicacity is a weird word to use in this context, but, within the context of Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks, it isn't unwarranted. Perspicacity moves beyond simply grasping something, suggesting, in its etymology, having an insight into something. From what we've seen of Leo Johnson, it's questionable that, being comatose notwithstanding, he would have the perspicacity to assess anything. Renè Descares in his Regulæ ad directionem ingenii states: "We should totally focus the vision of the natural intelligence on the smallest and easiest things, and we should dwell on them for a long time, so long, until we have become accustomed to intuiting the truth distinctly and perspicaciously." Perspicacity is linked with intuition (German Anschauung) that there is the act of seeing, of observing, yet there is also a concomitant act of intuiting, of obtaining knowledge independent of seeing, looking. This is different than simply looking at something to deduce information, this is the act of intuiting something only through perception beyond the eyes, looking within for knowledge and truth.
The idea of being able to intuit something beyond sight is a recurrent theme in Twin Peaks (think of Cooper's "Buddhist" method of discerning the killer in episode three, season one), as well as the idea of sight and perception being a mis-perception ("the owls are not what they seem"). The episode begins with the tension between seeing and perceiving: Cooper, while upside down, is able to find Audrey's letter letting him know she's being held captive at One Eyed Jacks. It's only when he is able to see the world anew (upside-down) while doing his "yogic practice" that he has the perspicacity to discern the letter. It's been hiding in plain sight since the end of season one, but its only with a change of perspective (tricking the eyes into seeing the world reversed) that it could be discovered.
The word perspicacity is introduced in the episode during the double-header criminal hearings taking place at the Roadhouse. We have already been introduced to the judge and his administrative assistant in the previous episode. The first hearing involves whether or not Leland will have bail set before his trial for the murder of Jacques Renault. This doesn't require any perspicacity on anyone's part: Leland has confessed to the murder and will most likely be released before trial because, as Sheriff Truman points out in Leland's defense, he's a well liked member of the Twin Peaks community who just suffered the trauma of his daughter's murder. There is, of course, another layer of perspicacity that has not been utilized insofar as Leland, like the owls, isn't what he seems. Once again, kudos to Ray Wise who, upon hearing the judges verdict that he will be released on his own recognizance, gives the audience a perfectly psychotic Leland/Bob smile. No one there has the perspicacity to see who Leland really is at this point.
The second hearing involves Leo Johnson's capacity to stand trial for the murder of Leland's daughter Laura Palmer. Leo is then currently in a coma, in the process of being exploited by his wife and her boyfriend for insurance money (there is a scene involving Shelly, Bobby and Mr, Pinkel (sp ?), played beautifully by the late, great David Lander (aka Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley)) and the idea that anyone might think him competent to stand trial, perspicacity or not, seems unbelievable. The character who utters the world perspicacity is Leo's lawyer, Jack Racine, played by Van Dyke Parks. Van Dyke Parks isn't really an actor, he started his career in Hollywood as a child actor but, if he's known at all, he's known as a songwriter and producer, most famously working with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys on the unreleased album Smile, as well as releasing a number of records under his own name. Parks gave Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys, with Smile, a perspicacity to understand what their band was doing to uphold a certain idea of post-war American culture. I won't get into the essential complexity that is the Beach Boys here, however, Parks arrival as their de-facto songwriter changed their music fundamentally. The pre-Pet Sounds albums, more or less, embodied a post-war optimism replete with symbols representing materially that optimism: cars, bikinis, root beer, surfing, unlimited capital and fun, fun, fun until...well, you know.
Pet Sounds, one of the greatest albums ever recorded, was the result of a very perceptive man in his early 20s asking whether those material pleasures were enough to sustain him. Physical and emotional unguardedness could not be purchased at the car dealership, nor at the root beer stand. The metaphysical certainty of someone being there for you wasn't as sure as the warmth of the sun, the speed of your little Honda, the visual pleasure of California girls. Such metaphysical crises usually lead to drug use, the initial high of perceiving good vibrations everywhere, only to be let down by the limitations of such vibrations. Interestingly, as Brian Wilson was coming down, he partnered with a lyricist who had his own ideas of how to make the most American of post-war bands allow a crack in their particular image. The main refrain of "Heroes and Villains" is "Heroes and villains/ just see what you've done." Within the context of the song, the only evidence we have for what they've done is murder an "innocent girl" from "the Spanish and Indian home" in a "rain of [...] bullets" that "eventually brought her down."
Van Dyke Parks' father, Richard Hill Parks, was the chief psychiatric officer in the Dachau Liberation Reprisals (the same camp where my grandparents were liberated), responsible, one assumes, for psychologically assessing the allied soldiers who killed fifty to seventy SS guards after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Based on the lyrics he gave to Wilson for "Heroes and Villains" as well as lyrics on his own solo albums, there's a transglobal and trans-historical fascination with the colonial and genocidal events of both the 19th and 20th centuries. The law and reconning Parks' character is confronting in Twin Peaks isn't so lofty nor impactful, yet contains a kernel of the larger questions of law and vengeance echoed in the far greater crimes we've historically committed. Regardless of how we feel about Leo Johnson (the drinker, the abuser, the rapist, the hit man) there's a violation of basic human law in forcing a comatose man to stand trial for a crime he may or may not have committed.
Within the episode what is the district attorney's rejoinder to this argument? "The trial does more than punish the wrong doing, it also brings a feeling of justice and retribution to the community. The murder of Laura Palmer is the sort that can wound an entire town." Independent of the individual's right to be spared perceived justice because of his perspicacity (here to mean whether or not he's conscious or unconscious), the collective need for punishment and retribution takes precedence over whatever individual right the accused may have. The social cohesion of Twin Peaks requires a scape goat (here literally because, regardless of what one feels about Leo, he is innocent of Laura's murder) so that the town can heal. The one figure we haven't discussed yet is the judge who, without a jury to offer a verdict, must be both the conduit of law as well as the community (of which, it should be noted, he is not even part). Here's where perspicacity comes into play again: the judge, in his deliberations, merely confers with Cooper and Truman to reach his verdict. No evidence is presented in either case: there's no question that Leland killed Renault and, therefore, the question is merely whether or not Leland is trustworthy as well as important enough to the community to be released before trial. In Leo's case, they're not assessing any evidence presented before them (although Cooper, the character who places the greatest faith in perspicacity, assures the judge that Leo is not the killer), rather whether Leo has perspicacity enough to begin the process to assess this evidence.
Interestingly, the judge himself asks the sheriff for "the temperature of the town" in assessing his verdict. Truman, who, perhaps even more than FBI agent Dale Cooper represents that which is "most just," tells the judge that while the town is shook, it wants "the right man" to be charged with Laura's murder. Punishment is always spectacular (the "spek-" of spectacular is etymologically related to the "spic-" of perspicacity), but why? It's spectacular to remind the citizen (in the town, in the city, in Twin Peaks) what measures will be taken for transgression. It also is spectacular to create a sense of who is outside the community itself. The judge, he who must ultimately be blind and/or as objective as a properly calibrated scale, first asks the police what the "feeling" of the town is like. No judicial verdicts can be rendered objectively without first assessing that the very non-objective community of others think. Not that Harry Truman would say this, but what if he had told the judge the town was at a breaking point? That they absolutely needed a responsible party for Laura Palmer's murder? Would the judge have determined that Leo in a coma should stand trial?
This isn't the only point in the episode in which the "town" must become a metaphor, a placeholder for some other discourse. Later on we see Deputy Andy on the phone with the doctor's office finding out that while he previously had a low sperm count, he now has brought his sperm count up to a "normal" amount. Andy, who isn't particularly blessed with perspicacity, doesn't understand what the doctor is telling him so the doctor's office offers the following metaphor: "before you were three men in a fishing boat, now you are a whole town!" The town is sacrosanct: a metaphor beyond all metaphors. It represents, in one scene, the ultimate arbiter of justice mediated through the law. In another scene it represents potency, procreation, the survival of the species (it's hinted, though not made explicit, that Lucy, Andy's long-standing romantic interest, has lied about visiting her sister and has, rather, sought an abortion for a child who may or may not be Andy's...this is a soap opera after all). In a show entitled Twin Peaks, the town is a fundamental metaphor, a metaphorology, in which all things related to the reality of the show may be subsumed. I think the appearance of Van Dyke Parks and his thorny, dark understanding of the "American dream," suggests that everyone involved in Twin Peaks may not romanticize the town as much as everyone involved in Twin Peaks does.
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