VLVL Pynchon's filtered narration

[jbor]

>> "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,

I can't see any basis for the assertion that Frenesi rejects Hector's appeal
to "cop solidarity" but that she accepts his remarks about "problems with
racism in the Agency" and the female cop's "59¢ on the male dollar". I think
it's clear enough that Frenesi is caught off-guard by Hector's seemingly
matter-of-fact observation that he and she are in the same line of work
(it's possible he's just taunting her, but I actually don't think he is),
and her immediate reaction to the comment is to dismiss everything he says
(before he even has the chance to say it, note -- "Here came ... ") from
then on in and to retaliate or try to offset the truth of what he has said
by thinking up reasons to put him down (i.e. it's a knee-jerk reaction to on
her part to the brutal truth contained in his remark).

It's a bit like Zoyd in the opening chapters not realising what it means to
have been on the government payroll for all these years, and what it
actually makes him (8.16-19). Again, it's Hector who has to spell things out
for him (28-9). And, like Frenesi here, Zoyd doesn't take too kindly to
having to face up to the truth about himself either.

>> 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. 

It's in the context of Hector pointing out to her the fact that she is a cop
just like he is, albeit one who works "underground", that Frenesi is trying
to reassure herself that TV Guide is a "right-wing weekly", that all cops
are "agents of government repression", and that tv cop shows always push a
"propaganda message" which falsely sanctifies police. These are obvious
exaggerations, in the same key as the "all men are bastards" complaint of
the spurned wife or girlfriend. The criticisms Frenesi makes aren't actually
true of any of the three programs in question, or the characters
specifically referred to (and I suspect that Pynchon has chosen these three
shows precisely *because* they don't fit Frenesi's caricature), and nor are
they an accurate summation of the genre in toto either. As media criticism
it's not astute at all: it's not even accurate. In fact, what I think she's
actually doing here, at least partly, is trying to offset the blame onto the
Tube for all the choices she made and everything she has done in her life
since she sold out.

>> And now he was asking her to direct, maybe write,
>> basically yet another one? Her life "underground," with a heavy
>> antidrug spiel. Wonderful. (345)

And the fact that she does seemingly come around, and quite quickly too, to
Hector's proposition also tends to take the edge off her righteous
indignation somewhat.

best