VLVL Pynchon's filtered narration

[jbor]

As well as being provoked because Hector reminds her of how she and he are
in exactly the same line of work, in Frenesi's knee-jerk dismissal of
everything Hector says from then on in there is also a failure on her part
to recognise the validity in his comments about "racism in the Agency" and
discrimination against women in the workplace.

> "You're an honest soldier, Frenesi, and we been out on
> so many of the same type calls over the years. . . . "
> Here came some sentimental pitch, delivered deadpan -- cop
> solidarity, his problems with racism in the Agency, her
> 59¢ on the male dollar, maybe a little "Hill Street Blues"
> thrown in, plus who knew what other licks from all that Tube,
> though she thought she recognized Raymond Burr's "Robert
> Ironside" character and a little of "The Captain" from "Mod
> Squad." It was disheartening to see how much he depended on
> these Tubal fantasies about his profession, relentlessly pushing
> their propaganda message of cops-are-only-human-got-to-do-their-
> job, turning agents of government repression into sympathetic
> heroes. Nobody thought it was peculiar anymore, no more than the
> routine violations of constitutional rights these characters
> performed week after week, now absorbed into the vernacular of
> American expectations. Cop shows were in a genre right-wing
> weekly _TV Guide_ called Crime Drama, and numbered among their
> zealous fans working cops like Hector who should have known
> better. And now he was asking her to direct, maybe write,
> basically yet another one? Her life "underground," with a heavy
> antidrug spiel. Wonderful. (345)

That Frenesi's viewpoint is privileged in the narrative doesn't
automatically mean that it is privileged *by* the narrative -- just the same
as if it were any other of the characters through whom Pynchon's narrative
is filtered. Not all cops are "agents of government repression" (we've seen
how Frenesi has been this to a far greater degree than Hector, obviously,
and how Hector himself contradicts this stereotype); and not all cop shows,
and especially the three which are referenced, depict "violations of
constitutional rights ... week after week." I think it's safe to say that an
attentive reader is expected to recognise the motivations behind (and
ironies in) Frenesi's absurd exaggerations here. As much as Hector is she is
certainly one of those "zealous fans ... who should have known better" (and
not only that, she is also a "working cop", as Hector reminds her).

Not that the Tube doesn't serve as ideological indoctrination, of course
(from the novel, 'Star Trek' and 'The Brady Bunch' spring to mind), but to
single out cop shows (which more often than not subvert the sort of
stereotypes about the profession which Frenesi alludes to in their constant
quest to project beyond the mundane realities of the work) in this context
reflects far more on Frenesi's hypocrisy than it does on Pynchon as media
commentator.

best