I could go on (and how), but that's enough for now.
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Dave Fiore:

this is all good stuff Charles, but I don't agree with your assumption that affect must be rooted in some kind of ontological ground... feelings are feelings, and it's a romantic fantasy (you could argue, of course, that my own point of view is premised upon another type of romantic fantasy--and you'd be right!) to believe that just because you feel something intensely, it must therefore be real... who says so?

your point about the song at silencio is a great one though--the song goes on, but when the auditors lose their belief that it is being sung to them, it loses its power... so yeah, no question, humans crave "the real"--but does it follow that they ever get it? or do they just go on manufacturing it, constantly attempting to replace the parts that time and chaos inevitably corrode, before the mechanism (fragile--and fractured--consciousness itself) completely breaks down? (as it surely does in Betty/Diane's case?)

my point is that D/B's breakdown ought to viewed as the result of a loss of faith in both love and hate as effective routes to "the real"... her problem is that she can't think her way past the notion that "this (particular) girl" is the pole star (the "reality", in fact) by whose light she must orient herself...

she becomes nostalgic for the object of a desire that precedes their encounter...mistaking the object for the desire itself...that's a danger that each of us faces--and that's why this film is so poignant... memory is a curse--but the ability to make new ones is a blessing--and the only thing that keeps us going...

Diane/Betty loses faith in her ability to ever make anything "real" again--and once that happens, you are dead!
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Charles Reece:

--------" this is all good stuff Charles"

Right back atcha.

I'm not so concerned with an ontological ground as I am with reference. An object term without an object (of some sort) isn't an object term, but an empty signifier, a sound string. The reality of a feeling is the feeling, just like the sound string is real. Sorry for this tautological shit, but the ontological importance of a feeling is that you're feeling it. The degree to which an emotion has significance, however, is what it's linked up with, its reference. If I'm feeling happy after hearing about my dog dying and I loved the dog, you'd say that's not a proper emotion. The feeling, however, would still have happened. Even if the emotion is brought on by a manufactured diegesis, it doesn't mean that the emotion isn't valid. I think, contrary to the subjectivist take on Lynch, he gives us something like a Goodman-like relativism (which is why I like him): we are as rational as we can be with what's given. That's not the same thing as saying everything is equally true. I think MH pretty clearly sets up different levels of reality, but the connection between them is a subjectivity. Do we crave the real? Yeah, otherwise everything and nothing is just shit. Just because we don't get a transcendent viewpoint doesn't mean everything is nothing, manufactured on the fly by whoever is doing the manufacturing. MH shows that there's real responsibility to one's actions, even if those responsibilities fall out of the desire that led to the actions. I can't imagine what anyone would see as sad about the story of Betty if they didn't acknowledge something about Diane killing Camilla. That's what gives the dream it's emotive force. Putting both segments (Betty and Diane's) on the same level makes hash out of the story, resulting in something like destiny being controlled from without (Nochimson insists it's Mr. Roque changing Betty into Diane — ugh). The dream says something about Diane's reality, gives meaning to it — I'm not denying that. However, Lynch doesn't stop there, but goes on to implement the audience, "silencio", i.e., what does this story say about you? (There's also a similar use of silencio here to the way the videocassette is used in LOST HIGHWAY, it keeps reminding the subject to face the facts.) I think it's necessary to recongize the different grounds here, and how the more dream-like worlds (Diane's flashback for her dream, Betty's for Diane's reality, Diane's reality for us) serve as interpretants for the (shifting) ground. It's an interaction of the subjective with the objective, not one or the other.