Ch 15, pages 367/368

[Robin Landseadel]

On Apr 16, 2009, at 9:00 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

>  Did Robin become a drinker of, god forbid, Hamms?

Yup. Started sipping at my Dad's beer around age 3.

> Do they still make that stuff,

Yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamm's_Brewery

> why didn't the swell jingle and all those nifty bar lights get it  
> more market share?

In its time it did, but we're all into microbrews now—aren't we? Note  
that Hamm's Beer [the name is now owned by Miller] won an award at the  
Great American Beer Fest of 2007:

http://beerdorks.com/articles.php?article_id=47

> Did music give these messages an "advantage" over experience,  
> comparative shopping, word of mouth etc.?

In their time? You Betcha! "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz—oh what a relief it  
is!" "You deserve a break today." "Here's the story, of a man named  
Brady, Who was busy with three boys of his own . . ."

> Anyway what allows a person to break from commercial and culture and  
> its sloganized political equivalent and  develop critical filters  
> and skepticism?

Unplugging from the Tube does help—spend many a year away from the  
warm glow of cathode rays, was better for it, honest. In fact, the  
further away I got from the tube, the more independent my thinking  
became. It was during those years that I first got turned onto Pynchon.

> One thing I noticed this time through VL was a more negative feeling  
> as a reader about Sasha.

Sasha is the Traverse one, ya know:

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Traverse_Family_Tree

. . . and the Traverse family serves as a fine example of the various  
seductions of Fascist impulses among the left—one of the central  
points of Vineland and Against the Day.

> I really don't like her  much. The fact that she thought it cute  
> that her grand-daughter was being seduced by the TV equivalent of  
> baby talk and that it is an important memory for her that still  
> defines Prairie does not endear me.

Me neither, and yet [remembering that I come from a family that—by  
today's standards—is far left] our family had similar rituals. We  
think we are above these propaganda techniques but we succumb to them  
anyway.

Frenesi's like Sasha and Sasha's like Lake. As Gang of Four put it so  
well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z49cmltJJeA

> It's like she's saying, Isn't it adorable how the TV gave us this  
> little island of vacuous wet dreams and replaced our real history so  
> we could gurgle and smile while we got screwed. But maybe this is  
> getting at something more primal. Maybe it is about the desire to  
> infantilize the people we love and even love itself. Ooh, ooh, ooh,  
> baby ,baby.

Grandmas do have the tendency to infantilize their grandchildren. They  
want to hang on to those precious first impressions, the promise of  
spring, hope for the future. Thing is, many of these earliest  
impressions of children—the tabula rosa of a child's mind— have been  
co-opted by media messages, the propaganda of beer commercials and the  
lifestyles of the Brady Bunch. My three-year-old granddaughter Kaia is  
fixated on "Yellow Submarine" and charmingly sings the songs from that  
movie. Her parents block her from regular television, but they play  
the dvd of the Beatles' full length cartoon for her quite often. Cute?  
Sure, but coming from a similar place as Prairie's rendition of a  
theme song from a television show.

There's a good chance that when Kaia is 15, Gail [my wife] will ask  
her to sing "Eleanor Rigby." There's a good chance that this will  
irritate Kaia. No performing seal, that one.