VLVL2 (10) Scrutiny, 199-200

[Paul Nightingale]

(199.16-17) "At some point Prairie understood that the person behind the
camera most of the time really was her mother..."

Following a paragraph that took her "back to and through an America of the
olden days she'd mostly never seen" (198-199). Hence, Frenesi is, or
becomes, the action captured on film, which in turn must represent, or stand
in for, her.

(199.17-19) "... if she kept her mind empty she could absorb, conditionally
become, Frenesi ..."

Earlier, Prairie has seen Frenesi's features in her own face, when staring
into a mirror. This passage brings up the work of Christian Metz in The
Imaginary Signifier.

http://www.rochester.edu/College/FS/Seminars/Modern/MetzFilmLanguage/sld001.
htm

(199.36-200.3) "Brock had convened his roving grand jury up in Oregon to
look into subversion on the campus of a small community college, and 24fps
had gone there to film the proceedings, or as much as they could find with
Brock always changing venues and times on them at the last minute."

The grand jury meets in secret; at the time of the action described, it
wasn't customary to keep a record of proceedings (the system was changed in
1979). It would seem that "prosecutorial misconduct" wasn't uncommon.
http://www.udayton.edu/~grandjur/fedj/fedj.htm

The point of the passage is to juxtapose one kind of gaze (that of 24fps) to
another (that of the legal system). Each close-up scrutinises behaviour, but
uses a different kind of language to report back.