VL--IV, p80 ff. History is like your average movie script

[Bekah]

On Jan 10, 2009, at 7:10 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> p. 82 YET, movies HAD NOT ennobled 'the finer drama' of [the  
> makers, the workers, of those movies?] A way of Pynchon to say that  
> History as a movie drama does not deal with the 'reality' of the  
> people who suffer in History?....


Oh I don't think Pynchon is saying  anything so broad as that movies  
don't deal with the reality of the people who suffer in History.    
(Although I certainly may be wrong there because Frenesi doesn't see  
the connect between the movies she watches and her memories of her  
real life which included many of the names from the credits.)

I think he's saying that movies didn't  fix the reality of those who  
were working in the industry;  the movies didn't even "ennoble"   
their lives and struggles by making movies about the struggles!

This was back in the McCarthy and HUAAC era (House on Un-American  
Activities Committee)  the era of the blacklist and  the  
Congressional inquisition.  Do we see any movies made then about  
that?  Nope.   Censorship was a big thing then, too.  The strikes and  
scab labor were a bit earlier but Frenesi's parents would have  
remembered.

Frenesi's parents were very political and enraged about the whole  
thing.  And when she looks through the credits  Frenesi remembers the  
names from the politics and drama which infused her life at the  
time,  but there's nothing about any of that "finer drama"  in the  
films and which had "been unfolding all the time."   (see page 74, too).

Bekah