VLVL 24fps: judging by appearances

[jbor]

> Are they still judging people by their xanthochroid looks? 197.2

And the other piece of evidence which rams the irony and satire here home is
the girl's observation that Ditzah looks like "your average suburban mom,
though what did Prairie know, maybe it was another disguise." (194.24)
Prairie's one smart kid, much smarter than these "adults".

"They particularly believed ... "; NOT "They realised ... " or "They
understood .... " The text doesn't endorse what 24fps "believed", let alone
what it was purporting to achieve.

best

>> 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."