VL-IV: Chap7- Floozy with an Uzi

[kelber at mindspring.com]

We've met DL in the powder room, and she comes across as tough, intelligent and honest.  Now, superimposed on her, is the media image of a tough woman, and it's all about sexiness:

When I could have been a mo-del
And I should have been a nu-un...

The number's all about pandering to male fantasies (something that seems counter to everything DL's about) and draws "cries of 'Who's your agent?' and
'Are you married?'" 

We can look at it as the Reagan-era co-optation (and suppression) of feminism.  A woman with a machine gun isn't threatening so long as she's sexy.  The modestly-dressed young Iraq women who've become suicide bombers are unlikely to become any man's idea of a hip feminist icon.  Charley's Angels, Lara Croft, the protagonist of Kill Bill make feminism safe for men.

Right after we meet fantasy-DL, we meet her fantasy car, a tricked-out Trans-Am that's a far cry from the back-to-nature anti-commodities ethos of the '60s left.  Does Pynchon (and do his male readers) find these images seductive in the midst of critiquing them?  The book is filled with homages to/hatred of media culture.  With the naive idealism of the '60s effectively dismantled and replaced by the slick market-based media culture of the 70s - to the present, we're all left to draw our own lines between progressive politics and crass consumerism.  The crass, corporate solution:  Starbucks, Whole Foods, etc.  Free Trade Whole-grain Organic Frozen Pizza, with 1% of the profits going to a women's weaving collective in Myanmar.  We're being carefully trained by the powers-that- be to see buying these commodities as a substitute for political activism.

The Floozy with an Uzi and a Trans-Am is a media-feminist, a proto-feminist because she carries a gun, AND she's a hot babe.  If we can groove to the sight of a sexy chick with a gun, we must (by inference) be feminist.

Laura