VLVL Pearson's salted nut roll

[Dave Monroe]

Just 'cos Robt. keeps on a-repeatin' himself, thinkin'
maybe it'll conjure up some sort of acquiescence via
exhaustion on, well, somebody's part, who knows? don't
mean I gotta keep on a-doin' it fer him, so ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> Frenesi's ___-___ 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.

But she doesn't "dismiss" "everything" Hector says,
his sympathies are indeed right-on in such instances,
one doubts Frenesi much disagrees, her objections
there are to his "sentimental pitch, delivered
deadpan" (a la, say, Jack Webb as Joe Friday), his
appeals to "cop solidarity" (uncomforatbly albeit
fairly, accurately implicating her in the process, cf.
"You're an honest soldier, Frenesi"), "Tubal fantasies
about his profession" and 
"their propaganda message of
cops-are-only-human-got-to-do-their-job," and their
Criminal Dramatic way of "turning agents of government
repression into sympathetic heroes."  She is objecting
to an ideologically-inflected representation, and her 
hypocrisies therein don't necessarily negate the
accuracy and impact of that critique ...

> 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....

Indeed, but he does expend an awful lot of provocative
prose at certain moments that serves to emphasize,
foreground such moments ...

> 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."

Agreed, to a certain extent, but it's the ones that
AREN'T so obvious, that, indeed, appear at first (or
even second) glance to indeed cut against the grain of
generic (or whatever) conventions, THOSE are the ones
you REALLY gotta watch out for.  The ones that APPEAR,
even outright CLAIM to be "subversive" or whatever. 
This is a lesson to be learned over and over again
within that Pynchonian oeuvre, e.g., in re: Frenesi
...

> 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.

Neither "absurd" nor necessarily "exaggerations."  At
this point, Frenesi appears perhaps hypocritical, but
such leftist criticism is certainly in character
nonetheless, but, also, at this point, one might wel
say, well, maybe she's coming back 'round, is all ...

> 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).

And that "should have known better" is the key here,
elsewhere, cf., e.g., Oedipa Maas' "we let this
happen," or whatever the analogous line is ...
 
> 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.

Again (and, at the risk of being hypocritical myself,
again and agaian and again ...), it's as often as not
the self-deluding Mithridatism of such "subversion"
that one has to watch out for here, and THAT is the
gist of both Frenesi's critique here and Pynchon's
critiques here and elsewhere ...


	
		
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