Pornography

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000 Lycidas at worldnet.att.net wrote:

> I think we can. In V. (remember V. in Love, Bianca and
> Melanie l'Heuremaudit) we get enfishment and history. In GR,
> we get solipsism and history. The big difference is that in
> V., the themes that are woven through enfetishment are
> matter-- and space-- orientated, and history can be
> separated, but in GR, solipsism or the insane commitment to
> self,  that is the end of narcissistic convolution of
> consciousness, stressing the unreality of anything or anyone
> beyond or outside the self, is not so easily separated from
> (his)tory. What is beyond the solipsist must be controlled
> or somehow absorbed into the self. In V. Pynchon uses
> mirrors, in GR, he uses cinema. If the solipsist cannot
> absorb or control, he/she will destroy the other. Cruel
> stuff. Pornography in GR, is an expression of this cruel
> solipsistic drive for absorption or control or annihilation,
> this brutality that is manifest in War, sex with children,
> the relationships between nations, between adults (S&M), is
> an imitation (calculus, calculated, film), an inauthentic,
> REEL, that is produced by and for the  denial of Man,
> Nature, and Man's place in the grand scheme of things.
> Pornography is then confused for the things it imitates,
> what Rathenau, with a clearer, less infected, though not
> perfect, vision or vantage point on the "other side" calls
> "the impersonation of Life" or "from death to death
> transfigured" death converted to more death, when he
> describes "the growing organic Kartel."
> 


I have a problem with identifying the pornography of GR with cruelty and
brutality. I know the fact that Bianca is said to be only eleven or
thereabouts will be taken by some as implicit proof of cruelty. However in
the context of the actual goings on this is rather lame. It is even true
that later on Bianca dies and this may be ascribed to earlier
mistreatment. However again this is remote from the actual scene aboard
the Anubis. In other words we really have to derive the purported cruelty
intellectually and from logic rather from direct experience with the
immediate events. To extend this a little, so-called S&M doesn't have to
involve actual cruelty and in GR doesn't to any marked degree. (but rights
are being violated it will be said--but rights violation though a bad
thing is a pretty weak symbol for cruelty) 

		A.C.L.U. member 	P.