VV (3) - The Plastic Zone

[John Bailey]

>
>I've been searching, but I haven't yet been able to locate the Twilight 
>Zone
>episode in which the girl resists getting her face-job.  She's coming of 
>age
>and thus has to pick her new face from a catalogue of choices shared by all
>the rest of society.  She eventually relents, and it is clear from the
>result that her inside has also been changed.
>
>David Morris
>______________________

By sheer synergistic coincidence (or the blind absurdity of lie, depending 
on yr bent), the episode in question was on the tube TWICE in the last 
month. It's called "Number 12 looks just like you." There was also an 
equally interesting and perhaps relevant episode called After Hours, which 
is where the mannequins in a department store come to life. Remade in the 
eighties Twilight Zone series as well. I actually remember this episode from 
the TV of my childhood, and am amazed at how many others cite it as 
something that sticks in the mind. Much like V.V., at least for me.

I think the relation between these episodes and V lies in shared theme of a 
society which increasingly demands its subjects to experience themselves as 
objects. Thus, I don't see the 'inanimate' characters of the novel as 
somehow villainous or malevolent. I think Pynchon is rather showing how 
social structures force these people to (literally) in-corporate the 
inanimate into themselves, and to become objects. This is especially 
important when the V figure is repeatedly depicted in female terms. The 
great institutions of the 20th Century all to a large degree treat women's 
bodies as objects and instruct women to see their own selves the same way.

Anyway, my brain isn't currently fit to complete any of these thoughts.
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