Fwd: Re: Safe Sex is No Fun

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

Susan M Danewitz writes:
 
> In _V._ the alignment between "bad" or inanimate characters and "perverse"
> sex is fairly straightforward.  When a character brought in a fetish 
> object, or went for a little S&M, almost inevitably the result was corrupt
> and destructive.  Foppl's house is left in disgust, and a judgement is
> somewhat called on all the S&M there.

As you suggest later, one must differentiate between S&M and real 
violence, as visited on the Bondels. Just as rape fantasies do not 
condone or invite rape itself, the ritualized practices of S&M do not 
justify or exonerate sadistic violence. I think that TRP is saying, 
quite simply (in GR, at least) that S&M practises, by being parodies 
of Their violence, offer its practitioners the possibility of 
breaking through Their conditioning.

> When i was looking closely at _V._ I was also trying to understand the 
> change in modern mentality toward "perverse" sex.  Pynchon certainly 
> uses scatology and pain as shock techniques, and what i was noticing was
> that his attitude was kinda archaic.  S&M is linked to the eventual killing
> of the Bondel in _V._.  S&M at this point in his writing is not at all 
> complex, just someone wanting to give pain and another acquiescing.

Although the Bondels do not acquiesc at all. They do not participate 
in the 'games' - when Foppl et al torture them, they are doing Their 
bidding, when Foppl et al play amongst themselves, they try to 
recover some of what they, victims themselves, have lost (similar to 
Pudding's actions). The two must be seen as essentially different, 
even opposite activities. The perfectly logical and inevitable, 
though somewhat sad (ultraparadoxical) irony is that the Foppls and 
Puddings find traces of their lost humanity precisely in the (now 
harmless) S&M games they play, and in the parodic link these provide 
with past violence.

>                                                this 
> rather flies in the face of the growing group of S&M advocates, who easily 
> point to long, loving relationships between couples who participate in S&M.
> im certainly not an expert, but the focus, in books and etc, seems to be
> on the heady interaction that comes from the intimacy of dealing with power
> and pain in the sex relationship.  

One could of course argue that S&M practices nowadays, in their 
increasing acceptability, have become institutionalyzed and are thus Their 
tools, just like the nuclear family and 'straight' sex before them.
 
> Pudding shows a more complex take on the flagellation complex, which i
> certainly feel extends to the coprophagy.  
> 
> "bound by nothing but his need for pain, for something real, something pure.
> They have taken him so far from his simple nerves.  They have stuffed paper
> illusions and military euphemisms between him and this truth, this rare
> decency, this moment at her scrupulous feet 
> . . .
> she was here all the time, sure in her ownership of his failing body, his
> true body: undisguised by uniform, uncluttered by drugs to keep from him
> her communiques of vertigo, nausea and pain.  . . . Above all, pain.  The
> clearest poetry, the endearment of greatest worth . . ."   (234-235)
> 
> Pudding links Them and normal sex--only through this massive brutalizing
> encounter does he feel "something real, something pure."  in GR, if you
> are closer to stable, you have rowdy, but not as shocking, sex.  If youve
> been ravaged by the world like Pudding or Greta you echo that in sex, in 
> scenes which i guess really disturb some readers.  In the Blicero/
> Katje stuff i did find the sex to be disturbing, but that was because
> it wasnt voluntary.
> 
> i found the piece of the turd in the nostril from the trip down the toilet 
> a LOT more disturbing.  man, did i have trouble shaking that image... EW!
> 
> oh yeh--sometime we ought to admit that pynchon's got annoying alignment
> between homosexuality and decadence/perversity.  this read-through of GR
> i really noticed it.  only in the scene when Katje and Pirate talk about
> loving all of Humanity did i find a place where homosexual conduct wasnt
> immediately associated with lisping sub-humans.  yeesh.

     Blicero's seed, sputtering into the poisoned manure of his 
     bowels ... it is waste, yes, futility ... but ... as man and woman, 
     coupled, are shaken to their teeth at their approaches to the gates 
     of life, hasn't he also felt more, worshipfully more past these 
     arrangements for penetration, the style, garments of flaying 
     without passion, sheer hosiery as persishable as the skin of a 
     snake, custom manacles and chains to stand for the bondage he 
     feels in his heart ... all become theatre as he approaches the 
     gates of that Other Kingdom, felt the white gigantic muzzles 
     somewhere inside, expressionless, beasts frozen white, pushing 
     him away, the crust and mantle hum of mystery so beyond his 
     poor hearing  ... there have to be these too, lovers whose genitals 
     _are_  consecrated to shit, to endings, to the desperate nights in the 
     streets when connection proceeds out of all personal control, 
     proceeds or fails, a gathering of fallen - as many in acts of 
     death as in acts of life - or a sentence to be alone for another 
     night .... Are they to be denied, passed over, all of them? (GR, 722).


"..."

hg
hag at iafrica.com