Masturbation & Virgins (2)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Masturbation, the self induced orgasm, is physical and
emotional, intellectual and metaphysical in the system. The
masturbated lives, the solitary individual with a
pornographic image is the perfect citizen of the System. He
or she is alone, or if they are not they can  be. The film
is running, the images give all that is needed to everyone,
spiritual, "Christian love", aesthetic "sunsets", and
intellectual "ah, that sigh when we guess the murderer". So
who needs a warm lover? Why reach out and touch someone in
that cold theatre and threaten the effectiveness of the
"structures favoring death" by affirming the value of
life?    

Pornography, I think,  is for Pynchon a means by which the
System Controls the citizens. What about Pirate Prentice? He
receives, via rocket, military orders written in an ink, but
requiring sperm to be visible. Look, a pornographic picture
which includes all of his private sexual preferences and
desires: 

See GR.71-72 ,   "The drawing, on heavy cream paper
He never
told anyone
how ELSE  would They know?" 


Wild, insidious, grotesque, unreal, fantastic, comic, black,
the thing that operates here are  political and personal,
public and private.. What is it? Is it a new Dynamo or a new
Virgin? On the one hand, Pirate Prentice's complicity with
the  "structures favoring death" is assured by his response
to the pornography, the Virginity, now sexual machinery of
those structures. Pynchon can't be any more obvious, he has
Pirate get his directions from Them  by masturbating with 
Their equipment. Funny stuff! On the other hand, his
sexuality has been conditioned by the images which They have
been providing him all his life. A pornographic imitation of
life, a System that uses pornography to form and condition
the citizens. Do the characters create themselves, as some
have suggested? Or are they creations of the System?
Worshipers of the New Virginity, the Rocket? The citizens
are consumers, the real business of the War is death and
consumption of images that imitate human relationships,
denying life, love, and meaning in the process. Von Göll's
propaganda film about black troops is a good example. They
return, the come to life. How about the gang-rape scene from
Alpdrücken, which  spawns shadow-children, both the literal
flesh and blood kind like Ilse and a series of replays:
Margherita Erdmann, continuing her history of becoming the
roles she plays, replays the scene with Slothrop, who in
turn finds that "someone has already educated him in the
fine art of sexual cruelty." What about Slothrop? Isn't he
attracted to pretty little girls? What of his relationship
with Bianca? Complicated, no doubt, but amoral, I don't know
about that. 

TBC