col49 2 pt2

[cj hurtt]

.
jbor:
>When Metzger arrives at Echo Courts Oedipa "thought at first They, somebody
>up there, was putting her on. It had to be an actor." (p.17) I don't think
>that Oedipa's "They" is quite the same as the "They" in _GR_, if only for
>the fact that she looks up, heavenward I assume. Secular common-sense and a
>vague agnosticism combine for Oedipa to equate, perhaps ironically or
>mock-seriously, some supernatural force with bad luck, malevolent intent or
>illogic. I think this is the "superstition" she referred to back at the end
>of Ch 1, and it includes all those "religious instants" she
>almost-but-doesn't-quite have in this chapter. The fact that the phrase
>"'religious instant'" is apostrophised like that in the text (p.15)
confirms
>Oedipa's scepticism about "God" and gods in general I think. Each time she
>is about to have one of these instants or "revelations" it is interrupted
or
>witheld from her, and this is ongoing. I think the same thing applies to
the
>reader as well. Mucho's vortex ring and the endless reflections desfribed
in
>and (semantic) reflexivenesses of the text pre-empt the typically
postmodern
>trope of *mise en abyme*, or infinite regress. "One of your endless
>repetitions", (p.21) says Metzger, and he's right on the money.

true. the witheld revelation is all over this book.



>What is really amusing in this chapter is the way that Metzger talks about
>the movie as if it was the real war, which serves to unnerve Oedipa (and
the
>reader) subtly. At the bottom of p.20 he talks about the gate in the
>submarine net which the Germans had built for their U-boats to go through,
>while the father on the movie is suggesting that they try to go under the
>net in the 'Justine'. "Wasn't I there?" he says to Oedipa when she
questions
>him, and you can almost see the little animated twinkle in his eye that Mel
>Brooks might have got his FX crew to insert in the final rushes at this
>point. Metzger talks as if he was "there" in the real war again halfway
down
>p.23 when he closes his eyes and says that for "fifty yards out the sea was
>red with blood. They don't show that." What he's saying is that the movie
>doesn't show it but that was what it was like at Gallipoli (and it was,
>apparently).
>
>best
reminds me of an old mad magazine cartoon  I read. the picture is of an
actor sitting in a limo while talking to some reporters at a movie set. he
is wearing combat fatigues and has a gun in one hand  and martini in the
other. he tells the reporters, "man, vietnam sure was hell"