Vineland: The Sit-Com

[Robin Landseadel]

Previously, on Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

On Apr 19, 2009, at 8:31 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> You know those horrid recap episodes those 70s shows would  
> occasionally have, where they'd have the characters reminiscing and  
> show clips from past episodes?  DL and Prairie looking at the  
> footage of Frenesi is a little like that.

. . . Or Simpson's "clip show" episodes, where someone [usually Lisa]  
points out that they're saving money by recycling old footage.

> And you can almost hear the canned applause-laugh track when Prairie  
> makes the Preparation H joke to Vond at the end.

. . . also very Simpsons. One also can easily imagine canned laughter  
in lots of other spots—the family reunion of Sasha, Frenesi & Prairie,  
with "Gilligan's Island thrown into the mix, or the scene at the Log  
Jam, the Vomitone/Mobster mash up & "Floozie with an Uzi." While it  
might seem like a debasing stretch, this particular quality does seem  
to be embedded in the very essence of the book.

Everything in Vineland comes, one way or the other, from the Tube:

	Brian McHale considers Pynchon a realist because he grounds
	the various allusions and references to TV in the diegetical act
	of television-watching and thus the most time consuming
	pastime for Americans.(107) This is exactly the realism that
	Wallace demands of image-fiction: instead of being simply an
	allusional reference point outside the diegetical realm, the TV
	set is placed in the middle of the characters' universe, shaping
	the way they perceive the world and themselves. In Vineland
	television is not an entertainment source but "has come to
	pervade our lives in more profound ways, shaping and
	constraining our desires, our behavior, and our expectations
	about others."

http://home.foni.net/~vhummel/Image-Fiction/chapter_4.html

This is touched on in the discussion of a Thanatoid TV show, which  
would consist of long shots of "Toids on the couch, watching TV.

	Ultimately, the managed version of reality serves Brock Vond
	and no one else which again indicates that Pynchon's book is
	concerned with questions of power and politics.

http://home.foni.net/~vhummel/Image-Fiction/chapter_4.2.html

The whole article : "Television and Literature: David Foster Wallace's  
Concept of Image-Fiction, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Thomas  
Pynchon's Vineland"

http://home.foni.net/~vhummel/Image-Fiction/TOC.html