MDDM Ch. 4 "Bongo" and the benign stereotype

[jbor]

Captain Smith to M & D as he sends Unchleigh and Bodine up the mast ("with a
watch and compass") to verify the approach of the *l'Grand*:

    " ... You'll note how very Scientifick we are here, Gentlemen. Yet,"
    turning to a group of Sailors holystoning the deck, "ancient Beliefs
    will persist. Here then, Bongo! Yes! Yes, Captain wishes Excellent Bongo
    *smell Wind*!" (36-7)

Captain Smith addresses Bongo, the Lascar (a "deck ape" seems to be the
imbedded pun), as he would a domesticated animal. (He's similarly
condescending to Unchleigh it must be pointed out: "there's a good
Lieutenant" he says as he sends him poop-wards.)

While it reminds me of the way Queequeg and other of the dark-skinned, and
thus "savage", crew members aboard the Pequod are regarded and addressed (by
Ahab, by Ishmael, by the implied narrator and the implied reader there - and
thus by Melville as well?), of some of the special skills which these native
crew members possessed, and of the way that these skills and these crewmen
were valuable, valued and generally beneficial to Captains Smith & Ahab and
their respective crews, I think that Pynchon throughout this text (and his
other texts as well) is begging the question about "stereotypes" in general,
and questioning whether or not they are always (and already?) "negative" or
discriminatory in a harmful way. Ethnic jokes, rustic brogues (Dixon),
effeminate Fops (Derek and Algernon), lewd sailors, Bongo here, the
"Frenchies" later: I get a sense that Pynchon is considering these
stereotypes, and the very process and function of "stereotype", from a
couple of directions. For a start, if you're depicting a character or
community or era in which stereotypes prevailed, and where they were
accepted unequivocally and as a matter of fact, by both the stereotyper
*and* the stereotypee, as with Captain Smith and Bongo here, then you will
need to represent this acceptance of the stereotype or else you will end up
distorting the "truth" or reality of the historical situation and
environment (by imposing a later or foreign system of values). Secondly, it
seems self-evident that there must surely be, or have been, a seed of
"truth" which motivated the emergence of the stereotype to begin with, and
Pynchon is at pains to *represent* rather than simply reproduce his
stereotypes. Third, the fact that narrative agency in the text constantly
and overtly shifts around between the C.18th and the late C.20th, and that
the purveyance of the various stereotypes is not really rescinded or
challenged or even questioned by *any* of the narrative voices, leads me to
wonder whether Pynchon is perhaps deliberately flouting the trends towards
political correctness (vis a vis stereotyping in particular) which have
predominated in the last twenty years or more.

best