schwarzkommando entertainment (657) /: antw. GR evoking the vietnam war?

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 °°° "what does happen now, and this is quite alarming, is that out of nowhere 
suddenly appear a full dancing-chorus of herero men. they are dressed in white 
sailor suites designed to show off asses, crotches, slim waists and shapely 
pectorals, and they are carrying a girl all in silver lamé, a loud brassy dame 
after the style of diamond lil or texas guinan. as they set her down, everyone 
begins to dance and sing:

                 Pa--ra--nooooiiiia, Pa-ra-noia! 
                 Ain't it grand ta see, that good-time face, again!
                 Pa-ra-n o i-ya, boy oh boy, yer
                 Just a bit of you-know-what
                 From way back when!
                 even Goya, couldn't draw ya,
                 Not the way you looked, just kickin' in that door---
                 Call a lawyer, Paranoia,
                 Lemme will my ass to you, for-ever-more!

  then andreas and pavel come out in tap shoes (liberated from a rather insolent 
 ENSA show that came through in july) to do one of those staccato tap-and-sing 
numbers:

         Pa-ra-noi-- (clippety-clippety-clippety cl[ya,]op!)
         Pa-ra-noi-- (shuffle s t o m p! shuffle s t o m p! shuffle s t o m p!  
            [and] cl[ya,]op! clickety cl[Ain't]ick) it grand (clop)
            ta (clop) see (clippy c l o p) yer good-time face again! etc.

 well, katje realizes long before the first 8 bars of all this that the brazen 
blonde bombshell is none other than herself: SHE is doing a dance routine with 
these black sailors-ashore. having gathered also that she is the allegorical 
figure of paranoia (a grand old dame, a little wacky but pure heart), she must 
say that she finds the jazzy vulgarity of this of this music a bit distressing. 
what she had in mind was more of an isadora duncan routine, classical and full 
of gauzes, and---well, WHITE. what pirat prentice had briefed her on was 
folklore, politics, zonal strategies---but NOT BLACKNESS. when that was what 
she most needed to know about." 

 *** don't know about traditional herero tap-and-sing culture but it's certainly 
possible to think of afro-american entertainment here. note also that the scene, 
by revealing katje's problem with blackness (see also 662: "you black bastard"), 
is corresponding with slothrop's roseland ballroom trip (pp. 62ff) where his 
sexually toned up xenophobia gets connected to the biography of malcolm x. what 
is the biography of malcolm x actually doing in gravity's rainbow? has it 
anything to do with the schwarzkommando? perhaps, yes. while painting the 
rainbow pynchon made a journey into the mind of watts. or two or three. in his 
latest work M&D - and we all know what the mason-dixon-line meant in history - 
there are gershom and washington who might not or might represent the hegelian 
dialectics of master and slave. (watch out for hollander's next article: "is 
gershom sammy davis jr.?") no matter how much enzian loves blicero and no matter 
what mystic ideas he may develop about the rocket and it all, fact is that the 
schwarzkommando, an afro-diasporic military unit, is taking part in the 
imperialistic and racist german war. blicero is in many ways von braun, 
representing the 'techno-fascist' danger for american politics after 1945. is it 
really so difficult to imagine enzian as an afro-american soldier? enzian and 
his herero people are not acting according to their true social interests yet 
under the spell of the post-genocidal displacement since 1904. what did the 
greatest say when asked to join the us-army in vietnam? lawrence c. wolfley 
writes on gravity's rainbow: "the book is pynchon's version of norman mailer's 
'why are we in vietnam'" (repression's rainbow, quoted after the german version 
in h. ickstadt, ed., ordnung und entropie, pp. 197-227, here 198). and in a 
history book (erich angermann: die vereinigten staaten von amerika seit 1917, 9. 
durchgesehene und erweiterte auflage, münchen 1995: dtv, p. 406) i read that the 
late 1960s anti-war protests did mix with the black civil rights movement, also 
because afro-american men were called up for war overproportionally compared to 
other ethnic groups in the united states: "bald verbanden sich diese 
demonstrationen mit den protestbewegungen der farbigen, die überproportional zum 
krieg in vietnam herangezogen wurden". in the twilight zone of negative 
dialectics the schwarzkommando's "white sailor suites" from the above quoted 
passage might also appear as u.s. navy uniforms. and the song's articulated 
paranoia may have here a very specific sense, relating to the despair and 
confusion in the afro-american community after the political assasinations of 
martin luther king --- in hamburg enzian daydreams of "a swell idea - call the 
whole erdschweinhöhle together, get up there say, MY PEOPLE, I'VE HAD A VISION 
..." (525) --- and malcolm x, that are echoed inside the novel's reference to 
walter rathenaus's assasination (163). later it says "eventually jack [dallas, 
dirk, dallas! kfl] and malcolm both got murdered. slothrop's fate is not so 
clear" (688). perhaps he found a way out ... if all this appears cranky, please 
blame it to the super skunk. will be down by the sea for some days: keep it 
rocking! 

 kai +