it as one of the most innovative motion pictures of
the decade. Lynch was nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Director, and along with Hopper
and Rossellini, cinematographer Frederick Elmes,
and the film itself, he won several other important
awards. Beyond critical praise, the film’s central
motif—the use of surreal images and experimental
formal elements to suggest a dark underbelly to
idealized middle-America—became extremely in-
fluential. Lynch himself employed it again in his
television seriesTwin Peaks(premiered 1990), and it
became a staple of independent film and occult tele-
vision in the 1990’s and the early twenty-first century.
Further Reading
Atkinson, Michael.Blue Velvet.London: British Film
Institute, 1997.
Chion, Michel.David Lynch.London: British Film
Institute, 1995.
Sheen, Erica, and Annette Davison, eds.The Cinema
of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions.
New York: Wallflower, 2004.
Woods, Paul A.Weirdsville USA: The Obsessive Universe
of David Lynch.London: Plexus, 1997.
Grove Koger
See also Academy Awards; Film in the United States;
Music.
Boat people
Definition Large number of asylum-seeking Indo-
Chinese, Cuban, and Haitian refugees who fled
their homelands, often in rickety boats
In both the South China Sea and the Caribbean Sea, a flood
of desperate refugees sought illegally to enter the United
States, producing a needed redefinition of the nation’s im-
migration policy.
The term “boat people” was first used to describe the
massive number of Vietnamese and Cambodian ref-
ugees who fled in small boats in the aftermath of the
Vietnam War in 1975. From the start of the Chinese
invasion of Vietnam in 1979 until the mid-1980’s,
nearly 2 million Vietnamese fled to neighboring
countries in Southeast Asia, where they were placed
in overcrowded refugee camps. There, they were
joined by nearly a million Cambodians fleeing the
murderous regime of Pol Pot and by Laotian Hill
People (Hmong), who had worked closely with U.S.
forces before Laos fell to the communist Pathet Lao.
From these countries of first asylum, most refugees
hoped to resettle permanently in the United States.
The U.S. government first reacted to this refugee
crisis by ordering the Seventh Fleet to aid over-
crowded and dilapidated refugee-laden boats in dis-
tress. Nevertheless, thousands of refugees are
thought to have perished in storms and pirate attacks.
In response to this human calamity, the United
Canada and the United States
Orderly Departure Program, in which the United
States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and
Australia agreed to be nations of resettlement. In re-
turn, Vietnam agreed to stop illegal departures and
permit orderly emigration of people accepted by the
resettlement nations. The program drew a distinc-
tion, however, between political refugees and eco-
nomic refugees. To qualify for resettlement, refu-
gees were required to undergo a lengthy screening
process to determine their motives for resettlement.
Only those fleeing political persecution, rather
than economic hardship, would be accepted. From
1981 to 1990, nearly 281,000 Vietnamese refugees
were resettled in the United States. Indo-Chinese
boat people amounted to the largest single group of
refugees ever accepted by Canada: Between 1975
and 1985, about 111,000 of them came to Canada.
The peak year was 1980, when 35,000 were settled in
Canada.
Cuban and Haitian Boat People The term “boat
people” was also applied in the early 1980’s to Cuban
and Haitian asylum seekers, who tried to escape by
sea from oppression and poverty at home. The Mariel
boatlift began on April 15, 1980, and ended on Octo-
ber 31, 1980. During this period, in which Fidel Cas-
tro permitted the exodus of any Cuban wishing to
migrate, over 125,000 Cubans arrived in southern
Florida from Port Mariel, Cuba. Often, boats were
filled far beyond capacity, and there were many in-
stances of distress. As a result of active monitoring of
the exodus by the U.S. Coast Guard, however, there
were only twenty-seven recorded instances of drown-
ing. Of the Cuban expatriates arriving in Florida,
nearly three thousand were criminals sent from Cu-
ban prisons. Hundreds more were mentally ill pa-
tients released from Cuban institutions.
Upon reaching the United States, the Cuban boat
people were detained in processing centers in south
The Eighties in America Boat people 121
