MDDM Ch. 4 "Bongo" and the benign stereotype

[jbor]

on 30/9/01 10:51 PM, Jasper Fidget at fakename at tokyo.com wrote:

> I would say *already*
> (but always?) "'negative' or discriminatory in a harmful way".

Thanks for your replies. It very much depends on the reader, doesn't it. If
one absorbs, for want of a better word, the stereotype uncritically, as a
young child might for example, then it is potentially a very dangerous
thing. Twain and Conrad are excellent examples, and it was quite legitimate
in my opinion for Achebe to come along and challenge the canonical status of
_Heart of Darkness_ on the grounds he did and from the perspective he was
coming from, for that novel's status *was* partly founded on a thoroughly
uncritical acceptance of Conrad's racism therein, however well-meaning or
unintended that racism might have been. Rousseauism and the romantic
stereotype of the "noble savage" are stereotypes, and can be as "negative"
and discriminatory and potentially harmfully as others.

I guess that part of the way a stereotype develops is from a notion that the
stereotyper (in this case Captain Smith) is superior, or more "normal", than
the stereotypee (i.e. Bongo), and this is a product of simultaneously
stereotyping oneself and one's culture or peer group as "superior" or
"normal". Because the stereotypes in Pynchon's texts are so blatant, and
often apparently cruel as Paul notes, yet they remain uncontested even so,
it compels the reader to react to them in some way. I suspect that this is
quite deliberate.

The twist in the tail in this scene, the punch-line if you like, is that
Bongo apparently *can* detect the "Frenchies" by their smell! Thus he is
also stereotyping an "Other". Yet in this case such a facility is a real
sensory capacity, and it actually provides him, and his colleagues, with a
practical advantage.

best