VLVL2 (2): Film as Metaphor -- Made-for-TV Movie Theory

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
--- Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net> wrote:

> (By the way, I recall a made-for-TV movie starring Buddy Ebsen that
> centered around a massive automobile pile-up on a highway (a
> true-story?), initiated when Buddy's elderly wife began suffering a
> heart attack while they were driving.  He reached over to grab her,
> lost control of his car for a sec, thus causing a major multi-car
> pile-up that concluded the movie.  The preceeding 90 minutes of the
> movie were spent following several of the folks in the ensemble cast
> as they went about their day, only to have all their lives converge
> at this moment in the accident.  Anyone else remember this one?)

This is why the "repression" of a memory is actually a creative act,
which reminds me of Mason (or was it Dixon?) recognizing in the
transubstantiation of the Host the Mercy of the God. In a smallish way,
of course.

>   Why does Pynchon use a fictitious made-for-TV film in the opening
> scene for Chapter Two?  Why Clara Bow?  Why Pia Zadora to portray
> her?

Clara Bow was possibly the first "It Girl" of the media age --- the
real article, cute as a daisy and wholesome as bread. Her career was
over with the introducion of sound in movies. Perhaps her voice sounded
like a toy bicycle horn, I don't know... Pia Zadora was another in the
endless string of zelf-created or Svengali-ized wannabes that have
sprung into place like sharks' teeth on a bi-weekly basis ever since.
The "Not-It-Girl" par excellence.

Mark

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