IBM, Disney, Bush: Nazis?

[jbor]

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>From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
>

> Zwolfkinder,
> those various Raketen-Stadten, cannot help but evoke
> the Disney amusement parks (cf. "Tomorrowland" in the
> latter case),

I agree (but Scott's point about the other theme parks is a good one I
think, and I'm less inclined to see the level of anachronism operating in
P's texts that you or others do I must admit), but I'm more interested in
what that evocation signifies, and I'm not certain that it signifies a
Disney-Nazi connection (the only "connection" I'm aware of being the
sponsorship of those von Braun tv spots in the 1960s).

esp. given the "prominence" of both Von
> Braun (nigh unto the first "voice" in the text, and
> ineviatbly associated with the pervasive engineering
> et al. program of the novel) and Disney (which/who of
> course had its/his own problematic associations with
> Nazism, decades before giving Werner von Braun his own
> children's television show).

I'd be interested to find out more about Disney's "problematic associations
with Nazism, decades before ... " But this doesn't appear to be the nub of
Pynchon's beef with Disney in the texts at all.

As far as the montage thing goes I think we're into the realm of effect, or
interpretation. And I'm not so sure as you seem to be that there aren't
other effects, other interpretations, which don't correlate with a Disney =
Nazi tie-in. Doug asserted that Pynchon "doesn't often go for the obvious
jab", but I think he does often enough, what with Melvin Purvis and Richard
M. Adenoid and Ronnie Raygun and that glib comparison of genocide statistics
in _V._, to name four off the top of my head.

> But, sadly, I am skeptical as well about not only
> "disgust" or "outrage," but even just plain ol'
> interest among the "public at large."  People, if and
> when they have the opportunity and/or occasion to do
> so, just don't seem to much want to think about the
> (only) seemingly neutral, trivial and/or inevitable
> heppenstances of daily life, and therein lie the
> insidious operations of hegemony ((c) Antonio
> Gramsci), no?  Yes ...

It's partly this I think, and partly the sort of desensitisation Doug
alluded to. But I also think that it's a bit like preaching to the
converted: these sensationalist exposés (and whether that's just a product
of the jacket blurb, as Paul mentioned, or what the media picks up on in
reviews, or part of the author's intent all along isn't so important in
terms of the montage, quilting etc effects on the ol' general public) have
been pretty much a dime a dozen for a long time now. Those who are likely to
be disgusted are already disgusted. Those who haven't been previously aren't
going to be any more disgusted whether it's IBM, or George Bush (and my
point remains that it's even less logical to try to discredit a government
or corporation or individual today for what a whole 'nother bunch of people
did 60-odd years ago) or Paul de Man or Helmut Kohl or Juan Antonio
Samaranch or the Swiss banks or GM or Ford or whoever. People don't care, as
you say, but I'm not sure that that constant barrage of far-fetched or
deliberately volatile "histories" couched in a rhetoric of hostility and
accusation isn't partly responsible for this lack of interest or credibility
as well.

best