IVIV photos, etc.

[Doug Millison]

Putting yourself, myself, ourselves in the picture, creating a picture  
I can climb into, or projecting a world into which I can invite you  
and you can creatively respond (even if it is just text-only linear  
narrative where you interact with the text in your head and not some  
interactive hyperfiction or even one of the new reader/creator online  
experiences out there)  instead of just gazing at the image somebody  
else makes and letting it fill up all available brainspace- that makes  
all the difference.

Not sure if that means that audience participation -- head in bag or  
otherwise -- in a sex movie screening or stage show lifts it out of  
the pornography category, viewed in a Pynchonoid perspective.


On Nov 1, 2009, at 12:19 PM, pynchon-l-digest wrote:

> From: Keith <keithsz at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV photos, etc.
>
> On Nov 1, 2009, at 8:31 AM, Doug Millison wrote:
>
> Photos are pornography in Pynchon.  The picture of the sunset so
> pretty that no real sunset can match it, the movie of sex we'll never
> have -- in turning to the representations we turn away from the
> direct experience that life offers us, and impoverish our lives by
> taking the fake for the real.
> - --------------------------------------------------
>
> I agree with this point as it pertains to photos or films as
> representational. The same could be said regarding nonfiction
> historical narratives or biographies when seen as representational.
> But, Pynchon demonstrates by his participation on the Simpsons and
> his creation of historical fiction, that art does not have to be
> representational, but can be, a la Marleau-Ponty, "a spectacle which
> is sufficient unto itself." The perception of art thus becomes a
> direct experience, not an experience mediating something the art
> represents. Because I agree with the point that TRP may be (who
> knows, really?) opposed to representationalism, I believe we often
> err when we interpret his novels by seeing them as representing
> historical or political or any other realities rather then seeing
> them as the spectacles they are on their own terms as non-
> representational art.