VLVL2 The Women's Film Collective

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2004-01-15 at 23:26, Terrance wrote:
> > >
> > > While it is true that Frenesi becomes the pawn of Brock Vond who
> > > subverts the activist agenda of the group through her, to assume
> > > that the group is a failure because of Frenesi's idealism is short-sighted.
> >
> > A pawn? More like a Knight. Or maybe, as Paul implied, a Queen.
> 
> One image I have of Frenesi is that of Eve playing to Brock's serpent.
> P. 214 alludes to the innocence (even ignorance) of the Sixties
> children. (It is easy, for me anyway, to picture them, including
> Frenesi, as happy dwellers in a paradisaical garden--i.e.,a garden of
> permanent revolution.) Frenesi does not quite understand what Brock is
> offering her but wonders if it is the secret about power in the world.

Vond doesn't quite understand it either. He is also young and his
knowledge is limited. Of course he's arrogant and thinks he knows.  

"She was too young to understand what he thought he was offering her, a
secret about power in the world." VL.214

I think that Vond and Frenesi, others in this book, function at two
levels. I've tried to argue that one level is allegorical ... events are
infused with the otherworldly.  At the allegorical level Vond is the
personification of fascist-patriarchial power. At the earthly level,
Vond is deluded by the belief that his acts are the product of his own
choice rather than of larger historical energies. 

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