VL-IV a bit more 24fps

[Michael Bailey]

perhaps they're a bit like the Counterforce, in GR, some individuals
who put up token, quirky resistance to the war machine but haven't a
prayer.


anyway: "Pretending to be film editors...but we were really anarchist bombers"
- in context, that was what the sisters were doing *when Frenesi met them*.

 There's nothing but a touch of gonzo and some film editing in the
text for them, during the 24fps time.  and 24fps may have been a
bridge for Ditzah into housewifery (she's now Ditzah Pisk Feldman)

and - can't resist - the complex sentence on 195 to futz with:
"Hearing the synchronized voices repeat the same formulas, evasive,
affectless, cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of
what they would never get to collect on."

a) this apparently issued from Frenesi during an interview (the
context for her being "[a]ware at each moment of the lens gathering in
her own image" - not because she's narcissistic, but because being the
interviewee is unusual for her?)

b) and the interviewer smoothly replies as if he's followed the
tortuous syntax, "Never?"

c) GR fan might interpolate, "Did the Kenosha Kid?" here...

d) but come on, "cut off from whatever they had once been by promises
of what they would never get to collect on."?????

e) who is the antecedent for this sentence fragment?  I guess the
"What viewer" from the previous sentence, right?
But also, to some extent, the owners of the faces and voices.  I
declare, the sentence is enough to put me into an altered state.

just the phrase five times:
cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of what they
would never get to collect on
cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of what they
would never get to collect on
cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of what they
would never get to collect on
cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of what they
would never get to collect on
cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of what they
would never get to collect on

(all right, before I start singing, "Get back, Jo Jo"...)

basically I think it means she thinks it'll be clear to anybody who
looks and listens to, say, Nixon or Reagan that they have sold their
humanity for the prospect of power and control and that they are
emotionally invested in unreality

that if you look at cops beating a picketer and then you look at
Reagan talking about law and order, the cognitive dissonance will make
it clear that his discourse is not in pursuit of truth - that he is
lending his substance to clothe lies in plausibility

f) this leads into a McLuhanesque thought: the Kennedy Nixon debate
indicated that how somebody looked on TV now was a factor in elections
and so forth.  As DL hinted by fantasizing about life as Clark Kent,
TV media rides above print, with images
and voices, like Superman could sail over the Daily Planet.  (at this
point, Takeshi's office in the sky hasn't yet materialized to redress
the karmic imbalances, of course, of course)

g) So, what viewer could watch the faces of 24fps's footage, and still
believe that the political machinations of Nixon's regime were leading
the country through reasonable transactions (like from a budget pov,
what did his Presidency cost us and what did we get for our money?) --
and personalizing it even more, she's explaining it to another TV
reporter.

h) but in fact, corporate Action News Teams are also busy editing the
same material to show Reagan as a lovable paragon of freedom and -
sadly - it certainly might seem that it actually was 24fps who sold
their youth for promises of influence and positive change that they
never collected on...

("Never?"  "Did the Kenosha Kid?")
-- 
--
"Frenesi's eyes, even on the aging ECO stock, took over the frame, a
defiance of blue unfadable."