Pynchon and porno (WAS: NP - Porn hurting male libido/attitude towards women??)

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Ya Sam:

>The worst porn I've ever been exposed to is 'The Da Vinci Code'. This is
>really kinky and even worse than skull-drilling or whatever.

Thomas Pynchon (through the revolutionary Vanya in GR):

"look at the forms of capitalist expression. Pornographies: pornographies of 
love, erotic love, Christian love, boy-and-his-dog, pornographies of 
sunsets, pornographies of killing, and pornographies of deduction -- _ahh_, 
that sigh when we guess the murderer -- all these novels, these films and 
songs they lull us with, they're approaches, more comfortable and less so, 
to that Absolute Comfort. [...] The self-induced orgasm." (GR, 155)

- which probably gives a fair indication of P's own feelings about the noble 
art of pornography. Cf. also his description in the same novel of both film 
and calculus as "pornographies of flight. Reminders of impotence and 
abstraction" (GR, 567).

On the other hand, here are Pirate Prentice's musings on the reaction of 
Roger Mexico as he received Bloat's photographs of Slothrop's desk:

"Wasn't Mexico's face tonight, as he took the envelope, averted? eyes boxing 
the corners of the room at top speed, a pornography customer's reflex... 
hmm. Knowing Bloat, perhaps that's what it is, young lady gamming 
well-set-up young man, several poses -- more wholesome than anything this 
war's ever photographed... life, at least..." (GR, 35)

It's probably fair to say that P comes squarely down on both sides of this 
question. FWIW, though, I tend to believe that arousal is the last thing 
that's on Pynchon's mind as he writes his own pornographical scenes. The 
scene between Katje and Pudding in GR, for instance, is an exploration of 
power, of submission, and of the reality of pain. The juicy triangle between 
Cyprian, Yashmeen, and Reef in AtD is equally all about power. I'm not that 
sure of the scene between Slothrop and Bianca, except that - again - its 
main purpose is not to arouse us. One way of viewing the scene is as a 
subversion of the corporate State's cooptation of the culture of childhood. 
Of the rationale behind the children's resort Zwölfkinder we hear:

"In a corporate State, a place must be made for innocence, and its many 
uses. In developing an official version of innocence, the culture of 
childhood has proven invaluable." (GR, 419)

In his essay "Reading Gravity's Rainbow After September Eleventh: An 
Anecdotal Approach," David Rando has (convincingly, IMO) read the sex scene 
between Slothrop and Bianca as "a means of resisting the state's long 
history of appropriating the innocence of its children for its prosecution 
of war." Once again, the main purpose of P's pornography is not to arouse, 
but - like Charlie Parker's music - "to gainsay the Man's lullabies, to 
subvert the groggy wash of the endlessly, gutlessly overdubbed strings...." 
(GR, 64).

There's pornography, and there's pornography, and my guess is that Pynchon 
has little time for, or interest in, the kind of pornography that's merely 
meant to let us approach "that Absolute Comfort - the self-induced orgasm." 
That's certainly not the kind of pornography he practices in his novels, but 
it is probably the kind of pornography practiced by Tristan Taormino, and 
frankly I don't find it overly strange that he has refrained from giving her 
his public support. Pynchon appropriates and transforms some of 
pornography's codes for his own purposes, just as he appropriates and 
transforms other codes of popular culture, but we wouldn't expect him to 
publicly endorse any old porn flick, just as we wouldn't expect him to 
publicly endorse Dan Brown's next novel, o-or Die Hard 4.

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