TPPM Watts: (9) Culture clash?

[Paul Nightingale]

"The two cultures do not understand each other, though white values are
displayed without let-up on black people's TV screens ..."

The clause describing TV content follows upon the statement about
non-understanding. What does "do not understand" mean? It might refer to
a lack of comprehension on the most elementary level, ie 'they speak
different languages'. Going a little further, it might refer to a
mismatch between values systems, the language of culture clash as found
in classical anthropology: the task of the fieldworker is to put aside
their own accepted values and assumptions and find a way of appreciating
the value system they, at the outset, find alien (and even 'inferior' or
'inadequate'). MMV addressed the question of 'going native', of course,
so we can infer that this concept was of some interest to Pynchon.

"... and though the panoramic sense of black impoverishment is hard to
miss from atop the Harbour Freeway ..." from where white commuters
ignore "the Imperial Highway exit" and avoid "[t]he simplest kind of
beginning".

The stated asymmetry introduces power into the equation (ie, the culture
clash isn't one of equals). However, we shouldn't overlook the reference
to "every working day": "whites must drive" back and forth, and this
commitment to paying the bills provides an opportunity to ignore Watts,
"country which lies, psychologically, further than most whites seem at
present willing to travel". If nothing else, this statement begs the
question: is the reader "willing to travel" to Watts?

According to Seed, "Pynchon invites the reader to make a different kind
of actual and imaginative journey ..." (The Fictional Labyrinths of TP,
154).

However, is he seriously suggesting that commuters should detour and go
to Watts? They "must drive [the Harbor Freeway] at least twice every
working day. Somehow it occurs to very few of them to ... take a look at
Watts". Would a detour, allowing them 'to see what Watts is like'
actually make any difference? It is precisely this kind of tourism that
the Watts text ("a journey into the mind of ...") is set against;
consequently, the "actual" and "imaginative" are juxtaposed, rather than
yoked together. The NY reader is asked "to make a[n] ... imaginative
journey" precisely because they don't have the option of making the
actual journey on their way home from work. (And one might speculate
that the LAer who reads the NYT Magazine is being positioned as an
imaginary NY reader--that is, thousands of miles away rather than "atop
the Harbour Freeway". This is what I mean above when I write that LA
commuters have an opportunity to avoid Watts: their 'ignorance' is one
consequence of social differentiation.

Seed continues:

"In Lot 49 Oedipa Maas makes exactly this kind of journey [ie both
"actual and imaginative"] down from the California freeways and out of
the insulation of her car. The fact that she travels by bus and that she
now looks under the freeway and not down from it gives her access to the
poor and disinherited of San Francisco. Tourism in Pynchon's works
regularly shades over into colonialism." (154)

Hence, the fictional character is one who can move, although I'm not too
sure about "gives her access to ...".