VLVL [8] When BV possessed her

[Doug Millison]

Many facets of Frenesi, the several ways we see that she looks at the world
and she seems to become more complex the closer we look. Not a bad reminder
that Mr. P., despite the frequent rap to the contrary, consistently creates
wonderfully detailed, substantial characters.  A key to Frenesi, IMHO, is
that she seeks elevation above this plane of spoiled, compromised existence
-- she's got to be at the barricades helping to move society to a new and
higher plane, high on revolutionary daring, danger, and paranoia, as a film
maker lost in the light that tugs at her mystically (the way it drew her
father) until she sees a chance to rise above all that -- at the same time
she comes to see the futility of the Movement and the chaos it's tending
towards -- in Brock Vond's underground above and beyond the law where she's
welcome so long as she yields to his will.  Add sex and drugs, which also
represent ways she can rise above this plane of mundane, preterite toil and
trouble (she will blame her fall on her own weakness for hot sex with
Brock, p. 260, , then on the drugs they force on her, p. 260-261), it adds
up to a powerful web of forces pushing and pulling Frenesi. She chooses the
feel-good route, chasing the false hope of some kind of escape or
liberation, life on her terms instead of on life's terms, and leaves her
past behind. She shows loyalty and allegience only to herself -- she
abandons her child, after all, a cardinal sin for a female character and
not so pretty in real life either for any parent to abandon a child even
when you can see the mitigating factors --  misguided though she may be in
her choice of means to produce the ends she seeks.

On another thread, Dr. Elasmo, with his visage plastered on his television
commercials ("his ubiquitous screen image"),  somehow reminds me of the eye
doctor who looks down from the billboards in The Great Gatsby, with the big
difference that Elasmo is a character in VL, apparently an agent of Brock
Vond, responsible for Weed's  "therapy sessions" (p. 240), which sound a
bit like Frenesi's trips behind the "Thorazine curtain".  Interesting to
see Mr. P. put a dentist in this role, working for a character, BV, that
Pynchon associates with Nazi SS officer, animal predator (raptor),  child
molester, on top of the normal dose of villainy that comes with the
prosecutor territory. On the lighter side, Elasmo is such a goofy name,
plus the "credit dentist" associations that Paul has mentioned -- P's
having fun with this one.



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