the Tube in VL

[stuck outside of mobile with the memphis blues again]

Doug Millison writes:
>Vineland is prescient precisely because -- as the quotes rj strung 
>together show -- Pynchon  shows TV (and related media technologies, 
>especially the computer mediation of Prairie's relationship with her 
>mother) to be such an intimate companion to the lives of his 
>characters. This shows how these media distort the lives of human 
>beings -- human beings, remarkably adaptable, can adapt to just about 
>anything (some people managed to remain human even in the worst 
>horrors of the Holocaust, for example; scientists continue to figure 
>out ways we can live with pollution and global warming; etc.), and so 
>of course they manage to make even media-mediated moments human to 
>some degree.  I don't find this the fun and flattering picture of 
>human life that some others apparently do (even the smartest media 
>wind up co-opted by corporate interests -- the beloved The Simpsons, 
>for example, recently served to sell Intel microprocessors, in a 
>massive, well-orchestrated, cross-media campaign).  In Vineland, 
>Pynchon punctuates these media-mediated relationships with moments, 
>free of media, that, by comparison and contrast with the 
>media-mediated moments, underscore the way human-to-human 
>interactions are degraded by the intrusion of media that serve 
>corporate and especially government interests. The most powerful 

To me this still sounds very one-sided. If these were statements
about technology in general being dehumanizing, distorting, etc.,
I would ask what the "natural" human state, without technology,
was supposed to be like. For media, though, I suppose the pat
answer is that it's what it's like when we talk to our family,
friends and neighbors, just face-to-face. Do you have anything
to say that could clarify that? Because I am suspicious of the
notion that those interactions are more "natural" than any
media-mediated interactions - it seems to rely on an unstated
assumption that when "technology" (in the obvious sense) is
not involved (again, in the obvious sense), things are more
"natural."

>moments in Vineland -- Blood and Vato feeding Brock Vond to the 
>indigenous ghosts across the river; the older generation passing 
>along the values of direct action against corporate interests; and 
>more -- stand out precisely because they lie beyond the reach of the 
>TV and computer media that mediate and control so much of the rest of 
>the novel.

And can you give some page numbers for the VL things you mention?
Just curious, want to look at them and see in what way they're
beyond the reach of media control.


Josh

-- 
josh blog: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~kortbein/blog/
      tdr: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~kortbein/tdr/