V.V. (8) Benny (was Re: Violence ON Demand)

[jbor]

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>From: Michael Perez <studiovheissu at yahoo.com>
>

> What do you think of
> his reactions at the end of the chapter - to the gangbang, the beating
> and possible murder, the "code?"  COULD or SHOULD he have tried to do
> something to diffuse the situation?  And since, of course, he did
> nothing, what does this say, if anything, about his friendship?

I take the reference to "the code" at the end of the chapter to refer to the
ethno-cultural "code" which sees Angel as the patriarchal authority within
the family, bound to act in this way given this circumstance, and which thus
perceives or vouchsafes the type of punitive domestic violence which he
exacts as natural and just. Profane, not Puerto Rican, "didn't know how deep
the code ran" but knew enough about "the code" to know that it was neither
his place to interfere nor that he would have had any chance of altering the
outcome/s anyway (nor even whether or not he would have had any real "right"
to attempt to do so or to disdain such a mutually-accepted "code" in the
first place.)

I think that at 150.12 where Benny bites his tongue and doesn't say that he
had been thinking the same thing as Angel -- in order not to "upset" Angel
further, note -- shows just how much he understands *and* cares about Fina,
Angel, the Mendozas et al.

Benny also refers earlier to "the contract" when he blasts that rogue "coco"
to kingdom come at 147.11, and I think "the contract" in this instance is
both a reference to his actual sign-up brief with Zeitsuss's squad in the
first place as well as the sub-textual or subliminal "contract" which he has
worked up from the experiential dynamic in the sewers and which decrees that
the 'gators, as nothing more than discarded consumer objects, *want* to die
and thus that he, as the bringer of this wanted "release" from the burden of
their wrongful existence, is justified in his actions and exempted from any
form of retaliation.

I think the "crocodile tears" myth certainly comes into play here; but what
is more interesting perhaps is that Profane's conditioned reflex is to try
to rationalise everything in terms of "codes" and "contracts" in an attempt
to order behaviour and nature according to some guiding (universal,
objective, rationalist) system of principles. It's a hangover from the
dominant cultural paradigm which he hasn't quite been able to let go of or
overcome ... yet.

best