Bianca

[kelber at mindspring.com]

 I agree that the Bianca/Slothrop scene, disturbing/erotic as it may be, is loaded with subtext, but how about the scene in V where Profane has sex with a jaded, street-wise teenaged (14-year-old?) girl on a pool-table (sorry, can't find my copy of V right now, so I can't give direct quotes).   It doesn't seem to be suffused with themes of power/control/ innocence or anything of that nature.  The girl says something to the effect: please don't make the obvious jokes about the pool table -- I've heard them all.  Isn't the point of that scene to portray Profane as a bad-boy/hipster, more than anything?   

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net>


>Ummm... First, the word "control" doesn't appear in my post. I spoke more
>broadly (hand-wavingly, if you will) of "*all* the intersections, blendings
>and confusions of power and sexuality," of "Powers... within and without"
>that are at work when you think it's just the two of you.
>
>OK, in the case of Bianca I'd illustrate that with:
>
>1) "He knows he’s vulnerable, more than he should be, to pretty little
>girls... [description of Bianca] . . . help, help. Why do these things have
>to keep coming down on him? He can see the obit now in Time magazine— Died,
>Rocketman, pushing 30, in the Zone, of lust." (463)
>
>Slothrop as victim -- not a chance against Bianca's erotic power, and he'll
>die if (occasion permitting) he doesn't give in.
>
>2) "...what’s she doing with her finger posed aside of one dimpled cheek
>like this—at which point  
>comes the band’s intro, and pre-vomit saliva begins to gush into Slothrop’s
>mouth, along with a horrible doubt into his brain about how he is going to
>make it through the next few minutes.
>	Not only is her song 'On the Good Ship Lollipop,' but she is also
>now commencing, without a trace of shame, to *grunt* her way through it, in
>perfect mimickry of young Shirley Temple..." (465-466)
>
>Slothrop is Ground Zero for pop culture influences, and at that time the
>Jon-Benet Ramsey Chair of Not-Quite-Young-Womanhood rotated among ringletted
>Shirley, Judy Garland in her gingham, and (nipping in at the post in 1944)
>Elizabeth Taylor with all that power between her thighs. Slothrop *knows*
>he's being fed an elaborate riff on a Hollywood archetype, and he
>loves/hates it -- both saliva and vomit.
>
>3) "Slothrop here’s been dreaming about Llandudno... White Rabbit’s been
>talking to Slothrop, serious and crucial talk, but on the way up to waking
>he loses it all, as usual..." (468)
>
>Hey, nobody's responsible for his *dreams*. That Alice, her whole *book*
>turned out to be a dream, right? "I've been watching you sleep," Bianca says
>(and a tip o' the hat to Proust's dreaming Allbertine!) As many have noted,
>from beginning to end this encounter is hedged with deniability, sleep at
>first and a blow on the head later; the whole thing could be nothing more
>than "in the corner of his vision... a flutter of red" (468) now, and
>something "dancing dead-white and scarlet at the edges of his sight" (532)
>later.
>
>4)  "...red taffeta... a tiny black corset... Satin straps, adorned with
>intricately pornographic needlework, run down each thigh to hold up
>stockings with tops of dark Alençon lace." (469) 
>
>Another set of erotic archetypes, pushing buttons that Slothrop probably
>developed closer to Harvard than to Mingeborough.
>
>5) "...she has him all figured out. Knows exactly when to take her mouth
>away and stand 
>up... She posts, his pretty horsewoman, thightop muscles strung hard as
>cable..." (469-470)
>
>Surely one element of the pornography of innocence is: the younger and more
>virginal she is, the more I'm da Man by defauilt -- she can't rate me, judge
>me, find me inept or inexperienced. Here we get the best of both worlds:
>Bianca starts by seeking Slothrop's protection from mean Margherita, ends by
>hoping to run away and hide with him, lotsa Disneyish "chickadee... fern
>lashes... small rodent hands." But iin the act itself. boy, is she HOT!
>Who's in the saddle here?   
>
>So... is this an instance of "control"? In the real-world police-blotter
>sense of "Choirmaster, 28, hides his face from news cameras after
>arraignment for sex with 12- [or 16-]year-old soprano," where our first
>thoughts are of inequalty, inequity, the victimage of the younger party?
>Absolutely not.   
>
>In the sense I was driving at -- that that this genuinely erotic (and yes --
>holding out my wrists for the cuffs -- genuinely hot) encounter is jammed
>full of the Powers that have shaped Slothrop's arousal and Bianca's
>precocity (or corruption, take your pick)? You betcha. 
>
>When our fondest hopes are for just the two of them, are we forcibly
>reminded that the narrow berth also contains Dr. Jamf and two centuries of
>lingerie porn and Margherita's scars, Sacher-Masoch and the whole production
>crew of Alpdrucken? And that at the height of their intimacy, sky-tall
>figures at the horizon are looking through the storm, right through the
>hull-plates and bulkheads of the Anubis, and checking it all off against a
>plan?  
>
>Now everybody--- 
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