VLVL 24fps: judging by appearances

[jbor]

>> (And note how this description of her ostentatious appearance
>> in the present time circumscribes DL's recollection of the way she and her
>> sister dressed up, their "image", back in the day). Isn't part of the point
>> here that whatever political commitment she . . .
> 
> Ah, yes. The author is indeed trashing the 60's thing.

He's certainly not glorifying Frenesi, DL, Ditzah and the others, let alone
Weed or Zoyd. 

The irony in this section of the text is that power indeed did corrupt
Frenesi, and it didn't keep "a log of its progress" in her face at all. If
it had then she wouldn't have been able to betray Weed as she did. That's
why we get the "reverse shot" close-up of Frenesi in the text, her eyes "a
defiance of blue unfadable", right after the description of the naivety and
narcissism of the 24fps crew, of what "[t]hey particularly believed" about
"the ability of close-ups to reveal and devastate". Pynchon then notes how
Frenesi was "[a]ware at each moment of the lens gathering in her own image",
and then we slide into the flashback. Pynchon uses the film footage here as
a narratological device just as he did with the computer data stored on the
computer back at the Retreat. For example, the conversation between Frenesi
and Brock on pp. 200-201, where she allows him to seduce her, isn't on the
film ("[t]he roll ended"), and it's not a story that Ditzah or DL could have
told. It's detached narration, and we slip into and out of Frenesi's pov.
Her "silence" and embarrassment in the motel room afterwards indicate the
guilt she feels at how attracted she was to Brock, and at how she flirted
with him. Asking the others "Think the light's OK?" is a diversion which
Frenesi uses, trying to cover up her guilt and shame. It's not the close-up
of Brock which has revealed and devastated, it's Frenesi's cinematography
which has revealed and devastated her: "how she focused in on him, on him
alone -- the lines of force."

best

>> Another point to note about this chapter is the way Pynchon
>> emphasises the cultishness and unacknowledged prejudices of the 24fps crew:
>> 
>> They particularly believed in the ability of close-ups to reveal
>> and devastate. When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress,
>> written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face. Who
>> could withstand the light? (195.5)
>> 
>> This is, of course, baloney, phrenological mumbo-jumbo just
>> like Brock Vond's belief that "receding foreheads" and
>> "theromorphic ears" are symptoms of criminality, following on
>> from the work of Cesare Lombroso (272-3). What these chapters
>> disclose is that 24fps, and the student "revolution" from
>> which it was spawned, were primarily narcissistic, a cult of youth.