Lynchian Is Not a Synonym for Weird

It's common in film criticism to compare current works with stylistically-similar older films. I have no problem with that practice. In fact, I enjoy doing it as well. Spotting influences and watching movies borrow and talk to each other throughout history is one of the joys of being a film buff. However, I take issue when a director's name is tossed out without explaining what exactly about that director's style matches the film under discussion. I'm also annoyed when a director gets the "-ian" suffix and is then used as a synonym for a common word (examples: Hitchcockian = thrilling, Kubrickian = cold).

The most common example of this phenomenon is the use of Hitchcockian. The Hitchcockian label has been applied to so many films at this point that I'm unsure about what it means. Often, it seems like you could replace it with "thrilling" without losing anything and remove any ambiguity people unfamiliar with Hitchcock's film may have. I'm not an expert on Hitchcock (I've only seen Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo), but based on those films, I'd say there are three elements that make up a Hitchcock picture:

1. An identity crisis, which includes the "wrong man" trope as seen in North By Northwest and the more esoteric identity confusion of Vertigo. 
2. An element of voyeurism. Both Rear Window and Vertigo involve main characters spying on someone else or attempting to control another person. Usually, this investigates the relation between the audience and the film as well. 
3. A messed up male-female relationship. North By Northwest, Rear Window, and Vertigo all have central relationships that twist and turn in various, sometimes dark, ways. Not exactly related, but a sub-theme of Psycho is how men try to dominate women. 

If a film doesn't have any of those elements, then it shouldn't be called Hitchcockian. That devalues the word and causes confusion when a simple "thrilling" would do.

The one use of this type of shorthand that personally annoys me is Lynchian. If you've read a review for any weird film made after Blue Velvet, you've probably seen Lynch namedropped. Like with Hitchcockian, it's almost always a substitute for a common word, in this case "weird". That strikes me as a massive misunderstanding of Lynch's aesthetic. On the surface, his films are nightmarish and bizarre, but never for no reason. Lynch uses a very out-there style to explore a common fear or emotion, in a way that makes those feelings so palpable that they jump off the screen. No film has made fatherhood as terrifying as Eraserhead, feelings of jealousy and bitterness have never been portrayed as overwhelmingly as they have in Mulholland Drive, and very few films have dealt with incest and child abuse as directly as Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. In addition, Lynch's films often contrast the seemingly ordinary, 50-esque surface of a place with it's dark underbelly and, like Hitchcock, involve voyeurism to some degree.

To apply Lynchian to any old weird film without seriously considering what makes his films unique isn't just lazy, it's wrong.