In a September 2000 issue of Los Angeles magazine devoted to the perceived "lowest common denominator" aesthetic of Hollywood-based dot.com companies and the A-list movie industry talent creating online content for them, David Lynch found himself name-checked in the company of such acclaimed feature film directors as Garry Marshall, James L. Brooks, Tim Burton, and Oliver Stone, all on public record for being open to the idea of fashioning original material for The Internet. Soon to launch his own website, Lynch's effort was to take the form of DumbLand (2002), a Flash-animated series devoted to the antics of a witless and not infrequently flatulent white trash family. Crudely realized at a level just above stick figures, DumbLand is closer kin to Lynch's syndicated 1983-1992 comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World than to the stop motion cut-outs that had distinguished such early short subjects as Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times (1966) and The Alphabet (1968). Providing the voices himself for the web series' trio of antagonists (a father, mother, and son, as well as for sundry supporting characters), Lynch is clearly relishing the boundless possibilities of the medium while staying true to character in describing the rarified - and at times electrified - air around people unsure of one another's motives. That his fans might try to view DumbLand from their work computers was clearly not lost on Lynch, who keeps the series profanely NSFW from the first episode to the eighth. Lynch followed DumbLand with the more aesthetically-pleasing and ambitious eight -episode animated sitcom Rabbits.

By Richard Harland Smith