VLVL(5) Hawaii 5-0n the Tube

[Michael Joseph]

Toby, I'm responding to your Jack Lord references with some of my own
notes, because they happen to touch upon something germane to a later
chapter I've been working on.

The "failure of Jack Lord to show up, as promised in the brochure, for
photo opportunities," is obviously parody, where the metaphysical
implications of Jack Lord pay into a reading of the previous reference,
which seems to spoof the theological notion that suicide is immoral and
therefore punishable in the hereafter. The carnivalesque notion of Jack
Lord as God is coarsened and intensified in Zoyd's reference to Brock as
Steve McGarrett's superior, which Toby politely abbreviated below (and
which I shall note here, only to emphasize the sacreligiousness of the
comparison): "So--I don't see Superfuck anyplace . . .." As well as
implicating Brock's superlative bedroom moves, Superfuck indirectly serves
as a blasphemy of Christ (called in to help JLord), as some
anthropomorphic force that presides over this grand guignol of a creation.

The metaphysical implications are extended later in Vineland (p. 99 in the
Vintage paperaback) when the theme from Hawaii 5-0 issues from Prairie's
purse in one of the bathrooms on the Wayvone Estate.

"All at once, from the stranger's battered cowhide shoulder bag, which
she'd set down right next to Prairie's earth-toned canvas one, on the tile
counter, came a thin piping tune in three-part harmony, all sixteen bars
of the theme from "Hawaii Five-O," which it then kept repeating,
potentially forever."

The theme (and the business card that produces it) introduce D.L. and
Prairie, who will become her guide and, arguably, fill the role of a
surrogate mother to her. The importance of the moment for Prairie's
future, and, perhaps its importance to the ethos of the novel as a bonding
symbol and recognition scene, are thus highlighted by the recurrence of a
musical motif introduced earlier in the context of transcendence. The
Hawaii 5-O link seems intended to contrast senseless self-destruction,
meaningless appetite, futility, with affection and self-sacrifice, and, I
would suggest, to imply that they are eternal verities, agglutinated
"potentially forever."


Michael






> Turning to Television, Pynchon manages three separate references to
> Hawaii Five-O in this chapter. (Hawaii Five-O aired from September 1968
> through April 1980. A long run.)
>
> First during Zoyd's conversation with Frenesi, Zoyd says "what happened,
> Steve McGarrett couldn't solve a case..."  Steve McGarrett was the name
> of Jack Lord's character on the show.
>
> On the next page Zoyd tells the hotel manager that the only thing
> keeping him from suicide is "the indignity of lying there all splattered
> by the pool and in my last few seconds on Earth hearing Jack Lord say,
> 'Book, him Danno -- Suicide One.'"
>
> Finally, a couple of pages later in describing the inadequacies of
> Kahuna Airlines, Pynchon cites "the failure of Jack Lord to show up, as
> promised in the brochure, for photo opportunities."
>
>
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