''DumbLand'' is a

animated Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on cel, transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and e ...

web series A web series (also known as webseries, short-form series, and web show) is a series of short scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet (i.e. World Wide Web), which first emerged in the late 1 ...

created and voiced by director

David Lynch David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025) was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Lynch was often called a "visionary" and received acclaim f ...

and was commissioned by gaming and entertainment website, Shockwave.com, in 2000. After the dot-com bubble burst, the episodes were eventually released on the Internet through Lynch's website, and were released as a DVD on March 28, 2006. The total running time of all eight shorts combined is approximately a half-hour. The series details the daily routines of a dull-witted

white trash White trash is a derogatory term in American English for poor white people, especially in the rural areas of the southern United States. The label signifies a social class within the white population, especially those perceived to have a ...

man. The man lives in a house along with his frazzled wife and squeaky-voiced child, both of whom are nameless as is the man in the shows. Lynch's website, however, identifies the male character by the name Randy and the child by the name Sparky. The wife is not named. The style of the series is intentionally crude both in terms of presentation and content, with limited animation.

Production

Each three-minute episode took Lynch ten days to make. The soundtrack was created at his home using a computer and he drew the animation with a mouse.

List of episodes

The final episode "Ants" parodies Lynch's attempts at being a music producer in the early 1990s by featuring a singer who resembles Julee Cruise and music similar to that of long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti (both of whom Lynch worked with on the soundtrack to ''

Twin Peaks ''Twin Peaks'' is an American Surrealist cinema, surrealist Mystery film, mystery-Horror film, horror Drama (film and television), drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It Pilot (Twin Peaks), premiered on American Broad ...

'' as well as the concert film '' Industrial Symphony No. 1'').

Reception

The presentation of the series on the Criterion Channel called it "the angriest cartoon in the world".

Screenings

The series was screened as part of a Lynch

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

in 2007.

References

External links