TPPM (9): "One More Nonfinite Resource"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Any discussion of Sloth in the present day is of
course incomplete without considering television, with
its gifts of paralysis, along with its creature and
symbiont, the notorious Couch Potato. Tales spun in
idleness find us Tubeside, supine, chiropractic
fodder, sucking it all in, re-enacting in reverse the
transaction between dream and revenue that brought
these colored shadows here to begin with so that we
might feed, uncritically, committing the six other
deadly sins in parallel, eating too much, envying the
celebrated, coveting merchandise, lusting after
images, angry at the news, perversely proud of
whatever distance we may enjoy between our couches and
what appears on the screen.
   "Sad but true. Yet, chiefly owing to the timely
invention -- not a minute too soon! -- of the remote
control and the VCR, maybe there is hope after all.
Television time is no longer the linear and uniform
commodity it once was. Not when you have instant
channel selection, fast-forward, rewind and so forth.
Video time can be reshaped at will. What may have
seemed under the old dispensation like time wasted and
unrecoverable is now perhaps not quite as simply
structured. If Sloth can be defined as the pretense,
in the tradition of American settlement and
spoliation, that time is one more nonfinite resource,
there to be exploited forever, then we may for now at
least have found the illusion, the effect, of
controlling, reversing, slowing, speeding and
repeating time -- even imagining that we can escape
it. Sins against video time will have to be radically
redefined."


"the notorious Couch Potato"

Cf., e.g., ...

"'... basically we study and treat Tubal abuse and
other video-related disorders.' 
   "'A dryin'-out place for Tubefreeks?  You mean ...
Hector....' 

[...] 

   "'One of the most intractable cases any of us has
seen. He's already in the literature. Known in our
field as the Brady Buncher, after his deep although
not exclusive attachment to that series.'" (VL, Ch. 3,
p. 33)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0308&msg=84681


   "'Uhk ee ahkhh uh akh uh Oomb,' said the kid
through a big mouthful of Takeshi's food.
   "'But we watch a lot of Tube,' DL translated. 
'While waiting for the data necessary to pursue tehir
needs and aims among the still-living, Thanatoids
spent at least part of every waking hour with an eye
on the Tube." (VL, Ch. 9, p. 171)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0311&msg=87431

Not to mention ...

"It seems that Pynchon's sister Judith once taught at
Suffolk Community College and a colleague of [John
Krafft, editor of Pynchon Notes]'s actually dated her,
and actually asked her, one time, 'What's your brother
likely to be doing right now?' and she said 'Watching
The Brady Bunch.' This, I learn, is a wholesome family
sitcom which was run and rerun throughout the
Seventies, and it's Pynchon's favourite show. So, Tom
is just like you and me! He watches cruddy TV!"

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/bio/influences.html


"these colored shadows"

Cf. ...

"Will our new Edge, our new Deathkingdom, be the Moon?
I dream of a great glass sphere, hollow and very high
and far away ... the colonists have learned to do
without air, it's vacuum inside and out [...] Inside
the colony, the handful of men have a frosty
appearance , hardly solid, no more alive than
memories, nothing to touch . . . only their remote
images, black  and white film-images, grained ..."
(GR, Pt. IV, p. 723)


"Television time"

Cubitt, Sean.  Timeshift: On Video.
   New York: Routledge, 1991.   

http://www.frontlist.com/detail/0415016789


"the pretense [...] that time is one more nonfinite
resource, there to be exploited forever"

Cf. ...

Manifest Destiny -- a phrase used by leaders and
politicians in the 1840s to explain continental
expansion by the United States -- revitalized a sense
of "mission" or national destiny for Americans.

http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/dialogues/prelude/manifest/manifestdestiny.html

http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/dialogues/prelude/manifest/manifestdestiny.html

Note the spatialization of the temporal, and the
denial of entropy involved in "the illusion, the
effect, of controlling, reversing, slowing, speeding
and repeating time -- even imagining that we can
escape it" ...

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com