VL-IV: Chap7- Sisters of Kunoichi

John Bailey sundayjb at gmail.com
Sat Jan 17 18:31:52 CST 2009


Excuse the preamble. I spent May of 2008 wandering around Japan -
stayed in a mountain-top Buddhist temple where I kept offending the
monks with my ignorance; studied loads of early Japanese automata
(karakuri ningyo); spent two days trekking to a remote volcano called
Mount Dread which is considered the gateway to Hell.

Anyway, I was thinking about the start of Chapter 8, where the
Kunoichi retreat became re-envisioned as a theme park. There are quite
a few imaginary theme parks mentioned in VL, and it goes with the
displacement of reality by simulation. There's plenty of postmodern
theory on the theme-parking of America, too.

And while in Japan, I visited Edo World, a theme park recreating Edo
era Japan. There was a ninja house of trick walls and nightingale
floors and messed-up perspectives, a ninja pantomime show, tableaux of
samurai executions and torture techniques. Oddly, of all the areas
which contained "not suitable for kids" warnings, the House of Hell
wasn't one of them. It's a fun-house filled with utterly graphic and
horrific scenes of what awaits wrongdoers in the afterlife - people
being skinned alive, impaled on stakes, dismembered etc. Mostly, I
think, taken from the 60s gore-fest Jigoku
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154683/). Really nasty (but apparently
family-friendly) stuff.

Anyway, back to VL. My two points here are a) P points out the
increasing allure of theme parks as a ridiculous substitute for lived
experience and historical consciousness (same goes for the Film Noir
shopping mall later in the novel) and b) VL's containment of Japan is
actually pretty good. I was initially confused by Takeshi's speech
patterns and the stereotyping he gets, but I think it's a pretty fair
portrayal since the western cliche of Japaneseness he represents has
also partly been assimilated within Japan itself. P's notion of the
image/reality dichotomy in VL is syncretic, rather than binary - the
two feed off one another and aren't opposed - they're co-dependent.
It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.

And even the great, redemptive family gathering which closes the novel
is lit by jerry-rigged tubes and scored by stereos with juice stolen
from the highway power lines.

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 6:14 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> [My sister-in-law has offered me a free trip to Salt Lake City, graciously paid for with her frequent flyer miles, including the promise of seeing some films at the Sundance Film Festival.  No way in hell I'm turning that down!  I leave on Thursday, so I'm trying to get most of my notes on Chap 8 out sooner,rather than later]
>
>
> Aggro World.  Aggro is apparently some sort of term used in World of Warcraft. Given that WOW was introduced in 1994, doesn't have any relevance to VL.  The WOW-wiki I consulted thinks agro is short for aggrevation.  To me, it seems clear that Pynchon derives it from aggression, though it could also be a play on agriculture, the Sisters of Kunoichi Attentives being a rural martial arts retreat.
>
> A kunoichi is a female ninja.  According to our trusty Wikipedia, "They would usually disguise themselves as geisha, prostitutes, entertainers, fortunetellers, and the like to get very close to the enemy. It is thought that they would generally seduce the soon-to-be victim and when they get close enough, would poison them."  These aren't floosies with uzis, but then neither are the SKA.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunoichi
>
> Attentives: couldn't find any specific martial arts applications, but the word implies that this is a mental, rather than strictly physical undertaking.
>
> Pepinares: cucumbers.  No mystery about what these sequestered sisters are doing with all those cucumbers.
>
> Laura
>
>
>
>




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