....in a uniform

[Barone, Charles]

My source for this Zappa quote is the album "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" (may 
be an outtake from Fillmore).  An audience member shouts "Take off that 
uniform, man.  Take off that uniform before it's fucking too late, man".  
Audience applauds.  FZ replies "Everyone in this room is wearing a 
uniform and don't kid yourself".  Audience applauds (louder, this time).  
FZ has a great take on the "Hippie" uniform, and other particularities of 
the culture, on a song called (I think) "Who Needs the Peace Corps" on 
the album  "We're Only In It  For the Money" (features mock Sgt. Peppers 
cover). 

While we're on the subject, I've noticed FZ references a couple times in 
Pynchon (in Vineland).  I see some parallels (as well as big differences) 
between these two artists.  Has this been done on the page?  If not, I'm 
game. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Henry M wrote on 10/27/96 at  3:12p
What is it about uniforms, anyhow? 
Could the uniform be the reason why TRP joined up? 
"I love a man in a uniform..."

Uniform isn't just a costume, it's also an adjective, hence the 
fascist tendencies of all uniforms: gym, school, and of course, the 
scouts. "We are all the same and desire the same goals inside beneath 
our uniform clothing." Zappa on Live at the Filmore answers someone 
in the audience "we're all wearing uniforms here." Tom Lehrer had a 
song "The Folk Song Army."

Well, it's the weekend. Gonna change into my blue jeans and hit the 
trail, pardners.

On 26 Oct 96 at 23:45, Murthy Yenamandra wrote:

>     "Sasha believed her daughter had "gotten" this uniform fetish
>     from her. It was a strange idea even coming from Sasha, but
>     since her very first Rose Parade up till the present she'd felt
>     in herself a fatality, a helpless turn toward images of
>     authority, especially uniformed men, whether they were athletes
>     live or on the Tube, actors in movies of war through the ages,
>     or maitre d's in restaurants, not to mention waiters and
>     busboys, and she further believed that it could be passed on, as
>     if some Cosmic Fascist had spliced in a DNA sequence requiring
>     this form of seduction and initiation into the dark joys of
>     social control. [...] Sasha on her own had arrived at, and been
>     obliged to face, the dismal possibility that all her
>     oppositions, however just and good, to forms of power were
>     really acts of denying that dangerous swoon that came creeping
>     at the edges of her optic lobes every time the troops came
>     marching by, that wetness of attention and perhaps ancestral
>     curse."
> 
> That "helpless turn toward authority, especially uniformed men"
> applies to everyone. Don't all those images tallied up by Pynchon
> appeal equally (perhaps even primarily) to men? I think he is
> letting us see through the eyes of Sasha and Frenesi and discover
> ourselves. Even though most of the traditional interpretations of
> the Fall are misogynistic (yet another one of those convenient
> fictions), the actual Fall itself is not - both Man and Woman chose
> knowledge (and power) over life and this has been handed down the
> generations. While Sasha realizes this potential for going over to
> the other side and it makes her even more watchful as a result (her
> oppositions may be acts of denying that swoon, but deny she does),
> each generation has to make its own choices.
> 
> > Finally, am I way off-center in suggesting that Prairie's
> > flirtation with Brock Vond is but another reworking of the old
> > rape-fantasy scenario?
> 
> Yeah, I don't quite know what to make of that, either. 
> 
> > The sympathy Pynchon extends to Frenesi, Sasha, DL, and Prairie is
> > palpable -- but I also feel that it verges on being patronizing.
> 
> It's here that we really disagree - I think the sympathy Pynchon
> extends to frenesi is sparked by our identification with her
> seduction. This is far from patronizing.
> 
> Murthy
> 
> -- 
> Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota.
> mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu "Always there's that space between what
> you feel and what you do, and in that gap all human sadness lies." -
> _Blue Dog_
> 

Keep Cool, but care. -- TRP
http://www.nicom.com/~gravity


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