VLVL2: Why Clara Bow?

[jbor]

on 31/7/03 7:46 AM, Terrance wrote:

> A gag. An on-going gag. And I guess these "weirdly appropriate casting
> mismatches" (McHale) are funny enough.  Place Pat Sajac's glamor shot
> next to Frank Gorshin's  and consider the similarities in their
> personae. But why does P "cast" Pat Sajac as Frank Gorshin in the scene
> when Zoyd goes looking for a disguise and some cash from Millard and
> Blodwen? Why not have Prairie watching Pat Sajac in the Frank Gorshin
> story? 
> 
> And, what has this casting got to do with Brecht?
> 
> Well, it is simply hilarious to have a dope like Pat play such a dynamic
> riddle like Gorshin.

Part of the joke is that most of the people who Pynchon's Hollywood has
started making these biopics about -- Clara Bow, Henry Kissinger as a kid,
G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Gorshin, Bryant Gumbel, Robert Musil, the LA Lakers
-- are almost totally insignificant minor celebrities in the first place, or
else are otherwise thoroughly and ridiculously inappropriate as the subjects
for such a treatment. Another part of the joke is the way that culture is
gradually catching up with itself; some of these biopics are on tv *while*
the subject is still at the peak of his celebrity. And another part of the
joke is indeed the casting, though it's more often a case of dissimilarity,
or a strange sort of lateral thinking-type symmetry, rather than similarity
(Pia Zadora is totally miscast as Clara Bow, for example, and John Ritter
plays Bryant Gumbel!) I don't think the casting necessarily follows any sort
of rhyme or reason, which is also part of Pynchon's play in mocking the
genre.

The other point to make is that Pynchon himself would need to have closely
observed and be very familiar with these actors and minor celebrities
(Zadora, Sajak, Gorshin, Ritter, Gumbel, PeeWee Herman etc), as well as
their career trajectories, to realise some of the thematic and ideological
connections which are being claimed for this leitmotif in the novel.

best