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

[Clément Lévy]

I second that! Pornography doesn't always mean sex!
Clément Lévy

On 22/05/07, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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