VLVL TV Parody or a Satire

[Terrance]

> 
> I've been one of the harshest critics of your "VL is about work" thesis,
> mainly because you never quite seem to communicate what you mean by it, or
> how or why this actually "works" in, or as a way of responding to, the text.
> The above is an example: I'm not sure how the prison imagery, which is
> definitely there, and which seems to me to relate to the degree of access
> Prairie feels she has to her mother at this point, has to do with "work".

Prisons and Executions—The U.S. Model: A Historical Introduction

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0701editr.htm

Prairie grows up in Vineland. Her father moves to Vineland because of a
deal (the deal includes his divorce from Frenesi)  that he makes with
Brock Vond to avoid incarceration and keep his daughter.  In VL, Zoyd's
employment prospects are limited. Although Praire's Mother benefited
from a long struggle for worker's and women's rights and went to college
in the '60's, Prairie is a poor working class kid, she is raised in a
single parent household, she works at a pizza joint. Her father isn't
lazy, but he has trouble keeping enough food in the house. She has a
boyfriend and he's real smart, but like her old man, Prairie's
boyfriend, I-24   is a musician looking for a gig. Prairie is very smart
too, she understands that she needs to support  the men in  her life and
she does. 
I-24, a musician like Zoyd, has business plans. Prairie has a job. 


The opening chapter of VL has been the subject of some of the best
criticism. I'll just sum up the deal and comment on two of Prairie's
viewings of Tube model material (McHale's term, "model").   The deal
Zoyd makes with Brock (and there are hints that Hector and Frenesi,
perhaps Sasha, wrote parts of the contract) says that he is divorced
from Frenesi Gates, he has to stay in Vineland,  and he also must
perform some public act of insanity. After Zoyd's jump at the Cuke we go
to Prairie's home. Prairie has been watching one of the mismatched made
for TV movie biographies on the Tube, "4:30 Movie, Pia Zadora in *The
Clara Bow Story.* The allusion here, to the film *It* is important. In
the film, a  government agent attempts to seize a working class
unemployed single mother's child. The second model is Zoyd's window jump
and the TV news analysis. The two models merge, Hector (the agent who
threatened to take away Zoyd's baby daughter) is back in Zoyd's orbit
and he shows up at the jump site. Prairie provides sports commentary
(Prairie wants to be Brent Musberger when she grows up and gets a real
job and she plays Brent to her friends). 

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/27/fancast/

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