TPPM Watts: (3) Overview

[Paul Nightingale]

The essay passes through four phases, as follows.

1. The shooting of Leonard Deadwyler and subsequent inquest, clearing
the cop who shot him. This affair brings to mind the events of the
previous August, raising the possibility of repetition: the return of
the repressed. Pynchon's introduction includes both police harassment
and the role of social services, "the humanitarian establishment": the
repressive state is juxtaposed to the ideological state. The latter--in
the form of coroner's court and war on poverty--is shown to be
ineffectual (ie the state's hegemonic control has broken down).

2. What I am calling a second phase begins with Pynchon's juxtaposition
of black and white cultures; yet the description won't be 'even-handed'
or 'balanced'. This phase describes daily life in Watts; white culture
"surrounds" and "besieges" Watts, and "looks ... a little unreal, a
little less than substantial" when viewed from within Watts (another
example of the loss, or absence, of hegemonic control).

3. A third phase begins by highlighting police and employer racism.
Generational change is acknowledged: kids aren't their parents, old and
young cops might be expected to behave differently. The role of social
services, "the outposts of the establishment", is again questioned; and
a class dimension sets black kids (maybe "active disciple[s] of Malcolm
X") against those "middle-class professionals" who, whilst black, are
just as bewildered as their white counterparts.

4. I would identify a final (fourth) phase that begins when Pynchon
shifts from failure to violence, the 1965 riot as a form of resistance.
The description of rioting as a planned activity ("less as chaos and
more as art") might indeed owe something to "mythmaking"; it also looks
ahead to the discussion of popular resistance in 1984's Luddite essay.
The conclusion then replicates the opening to the essay, with a specific
reference to the Easter arts festival.