VLVL The "Force of Law" in Vineland

[Otto]

RICHARD E. BURKET:
THE STATE LAW ENFORCEMENT APPARATUS AS AMERICA: AUTHORITY, ARBITRARINESS,
AND THE "FORCE OF LAW" IN VINELAND

(...)
The status of systems and their relations to individual agency has always
been a central concern of Thomas Pynchon, and Vineland extends this concern
to one system in particular: the law. While Pynchon's earlier works provide
foreground for the ontological instability that characterizes systems and
the uncertainty that this instability produces, Vineland examines how the
ontological instability of law as a system can produce certainty rather than
uncertainty.
(...)
    In other words, the cliched rhetoric that the United States is governed
by the rule of law, rather than the rule of men, is shown to be a farce. The
fact that law is made by and, more crucially, enforced by human beings shows
this opposition to be a false one that, at best, is an attempt to minimize
the role of arbitrary personal and political motives in the functioning of
the legal system and, at worst (and more likely), is an intentional
deception built into American ideology to mask the real operations of power
involved in maintaining order. Instead of a disinterested, procedural form
of law with some ideal of "justice," and a shared conception of "the Good,"
as its regulatory principles, in Vineland, we have a Justice Department that
operates arbitrarily under the aegis of the "War on Drugs" to pursue
personal agendas and to stifle dissent. Brock Vond, a federal prosecutor,
uses his status within law enforcement to pursue a completely personal
agenda. He is out to track down and control his favorite "snitch" and former
lover, Frenesi Gates, and to make the life of her estranged husband, Zoyd
Wheeler, miserable. He does this through various governmental agencies,
using them as his own personal police force. Further, the occupation of
Northern California serves not simply to eradicate illegal drugs, but is
also an extension of the government's historic attempts to subvert
potentially resistant enclaves of dissent. Thus, the War on Drugs is
presented as merely a convenient cover story for the real war against
anything that might threaten the ability of those in power to maintain and
extend their domain of control.

 What emerges is a portrait of late twentieth-century America in which
critiques of the interestedness of law and its imbrication in relations of
power are ultimately irrelevant. Pynchon insists that we already know that
law is nothing without its enforcement and that enforcement is nothing
without force; we also know that law enforcement is far from a neutral,
disinterested practice. Because of the history of governmental repression
during such periods as the 1930s and 1960s, a history Vineland addresses
directly, in the 1980s and 1990s the situation is one in which we do not
need to be told that law is subject to, indeed, perhaps constituted by, the
will and interests of those in power and enforced through deception and
violence. We not only know that this is the case, but we simply would not
have it any other way. It is the process by which this acceptance and
enjoyment has come about that is the primary focus of Vineland.
(...)
In this way, Pynchon emphasizes the way that images of rebellion are always
already co-opted by the State, for this "threatening" image only advocates
for the need for the police to have more power to protect the public from
this chainsaw-wielding maniac. Further, it contributes to the "War on Drugs"
in which the drug user is constructed as infantile, deranged, insane,
dangerous, and in need of control. Additionally ironic in this episode are
the interspersed exchanges between Zoyd and Zuniga in which Zoyd refuses to
become an informant. Though Zoyd has technically resisted Zuniga's attempts
to "pop" him so far, Zuniga kept coming back, each time with a new and more
demented plan, and Zoyd knew that one day, just to have some peace, he'd say
forget it, and go over. Question was, would it be this time, or one of the
next few times? [... It was like being on "Wheel of Fortune." Since Zoyd was
never one of the political radicals like those in the PR3 but rather a "turn
on and drop out" hippie who simply wanted to be high and left alone, his
"escapist" logic here, giving in just to get Zuniga off of his back, is not
in any way a contradiction. It simply attests to the way some 1960s
"radicals" were not as radical as they may have thought--drug use, free
love, etc., is not a challenge to a State premised on individualism and
consumption. Zoyd uses words like "fascist" to describe the government, but
he does not bother to challenge it or try to resist it; he simply evades it
as much as possible. Not to mention the fact that, despite his protest to
the contrary, he has not really avoided becoming an agent of the State law
enforcement apparatus: his "defenestration" performance, paid for with his
disability check, shows him really to be working for the State whether he
admits it or not.
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/burket24.htm